Anticipating Joy
Human gratitude as seen in Acts 8, Karl Barth, and South African liberation
About the author: Tim Hartman is Associate Professor of Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary. He is the author of two books: Theology after Colonization: Kwame Bediako, Karl Barth, and the Future of Theological Reflection, and Kwame Bediako: African Theology for a World Christianity. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). His scholarly interests include contemporary Christian theologies worldwide, Christology, Lived Theology, Election/Predestination, antiracist theologies, ecclesiology, postcolonial mission, and the work of Karl Barth, Kwame Bediako, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and James Cone.
The image above is from thirty years ago, April 26–29, 1994, when the first democratic election occurred in South Africa. These black South Africans, including Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, voted for the first time in their lives, ending the reign of the Apartheid government. The joy at their political liberation erupted despite knowing that more liberating work remained. The image reminds us of Psalm 66, in which the writer exhorts us to “rejoice in God,” similar to that of the Ethiopian in Acts 8.
Throughout the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is active and on the move in tongues of fire, in healings, in powerful sermons, in baptisms, and in communities. In Acts 8:26–40, the Spirit is moving in the boundary-breaking encounter between Philip and an Ethiopian man, demonstrating that the gospel is for all. The gospel is especially for this man who was ethnically and ritually marginalized. The impact of Philip’s words when he “proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus” (Acts 8:35) was that the Ethiopian felt that he, too, could be marked with water—the sign of the covenant community. He asks Phillip, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” To this, Philip’s silence communicates the truth of the gospel’s inclusive reality: there is no barrier to his immediate participation in the Kingdom of God.
The Spirit of the Lord—who launched this whole encounter and prompted Philip to approach the chariot—returns now and snatches Philip away to proclaim the good news elsewhere. And what about the Ethiopian? He “went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:39). According to Willie Jennings in his Acts commentary, “The Spirit has intervened, and that intervention was also redemptive.”1 The Ethiopian is left with no one to tell him what it means for him to be a Christian. No one to impose their boundaries upon him. Jennings continues, “Disciples do need direction and guides, but first disciples must know their freedom in Jesus Christ…There will be no correct or proper image of a disciple, no bodily model by which to pattern himself, and no one to begin a process of erasure or eradication of his differences.”2 He is left without a guide or a plan. But the Spirit is with him. And he responds with unbridled JOY.
Karl Barth writes, “Joy is really the simplest form of gratitude.”3 There is an unmistakable connection between joy and gratitude. As Barth reflects, “When we are joyful, time stands still for a moment or moments because it has fulfilled its meaning.”4 The thing about joy is that it does not just happen. Joy erupts—breaking into our everyday reality. The journey is sweeter when we prepare in advance. Barth notes that “most joy is anticipatory,” thus requiring us to continually hold ourselves “in readiness for joy.”5 Circumstances can make us happy, and yet, only for a time. Happiness is fleeting, whereas, in the case of the Ethiopian, joy erupts as he is accepted and engrafted into the covenant community of the people of God through baptism. His deepest hope, which he had long worked for and yet saw as fleeting, was to be one within God’s covenant community. When this yearning was realized, his gratitude burst through all his “running and striving and fighting and struggling.”6 As followers of Jesus, Barth states that we too can be
necessarily confident that there will be such moments. [We are to be] prepared and ready for the arrival of such moments and therefore for joy. [We are] ready, then, not merely to hurry on with [our] own work, but to pause in gratitude for what life really is as the gift of God before and after and over all [our] own works.7
Barth’s insight is both to anticipate joy and to slow down to experience and appreciate gratitude. Instead of assuming that all the good happening in our lives results from our efforts, Barth is clear that everything good comes from God. This “real joy comes and is present like the Holy Spirit. Indeed, it is really when the Holy Spirit comes and is present that one experiences true joy.”8 The Holy Spirit is the author of joy. For Barth, to be joyful is both a response in gratitude and a posture of gratitude. We experience joy because we “expect that life will reveal itself as God’s gift of grace.”9 Further, for Barth, “To be joyful means to look out for opportunities for gratitude.”10 As Mandela and Tutu knew, and South Africans today are currently experiencing in the attempt to form a new government, experiencing joy can require human involvement or work.
God continues to break boundaries—geographically, ethnically, and ritually. At times, like Philip—whether we know it or not—the Holy Spirit invites us to participate in freeing others from restrictive understandings or exclusive practices. Additionally, at times, we need to work to include and accept individuals or different communities of people actively.
God is chasing after all of us. Anticipate God’s freeing acts, God’s divine liberation. The Holy Spirit is on the loose, seeking to bring us joy. And this “Joy is really the simplest form of gratitude.”
Willie James Jennings, Acts (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 86.
Jennings, Acts, 86.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4, (London: T&T Clark, 1956), 376.
Barth, CD III/4, 376.
Barth, CD III/4, 377.
Barth, CD III/4, 378.
Barth, CD III/4, 378.
Barth, CD III/4, 379.
Barth, CD III/4, 378.
Barth, CD III/4, 378.
Thank you for this inspiring comment on Acts 8 joy and Karl Barth. It makes me courious to read your Book about Kwame Bediako.
Dieter Zellweger, Karl Barth Center Basel, Former theologisch teacher in Tanzania
Thank you, Tim, for a very fine article - reading it brought me joy!
Patrick