Community Church Sermons
December 17, 2006
Philippians 4:4-7
Listen to this Sermon!
“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say, rejoice!”
Today we light the Advent Candle of Joy.
Smack dab in the middle of the pain and despair represented by the first two purple Candles on our Advent Wreath, we light a rose-colored Candle. And we call this rose-colored Candle Joy!
Now we Americans are not all that good at metaphors and symbolic things. We like the hard-cold facts, and our tastes run more toward technology than to art. So lets be sure we all understand what’s going on here with the Advent Wreath today.
You might say that this Advent Wreath represents your life! Human life! The way things really are! And things are not always as we wish they were.
When we were children, our parents taught us that we were the smartest, most athletic, most beautiful kids in the whole world. And then they sent us off to school. And all of a sudden we found ourselves living in a world full of kids who thought THEY were the smartest, most athletic, most beautiful kids in the world! How STUPID of them to think that!
Our grandson Ryan – who is
4-going-on-5 – played pre-school soccer last October. We were there to see a
game. To be honest, Ryan has a lot of work to do to become a good soccer
player. The first thing he needs to work on is getting over the myth of
“sharing.” Poor kid! His parents have filled him up with this crazy idea that
you’re supposed to “share” things with others, and “take turns”! So there he
was, standing in the middle of the field as all these little hooligans ran
circles around him, his hands plaintively upturned, crying, “But guys! Its
MY turn!” When old Ryan came over to the sidelines during a timeout he was
really upset. “They don’t understand about sharing!” So Ryan’s
grandfathers - Roger and Marty - took the boy aside and said, “Ryan, you
don’t have to share in soccer. Go out there, knock those kids on their butts,
and TAKE THE BALL AWAY!”
That’s why kids need grandfathers – to teach them how life really is and that “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” doesn’t always work in a world whose Golden Rule more often seems to be, “Do unto others BEFORE they do unto you!”
Life, it turns out, is never what we wish it would be. There is pain and disappointment. There is injustice and oppression. We quickly learn that other people do not always share our values, our opinion, our perceptions, or even our religion. Nations rise and fall. Societies crumble. Plants close. People get laid off. Hurricanes devastate. Famines come. Terrorists blow up innocents. Families splinter. Doctors offer frightening diagnoses. Loved ones die…and so do we.
Life never turns out the way we thought it would back in the days when we were told we were the brightest and the best and the most beautiful who could become whatever we wanted to be.
And this process of disillusionment could very easily send us into despair, except for one thing – faith!
What would life be if we simply settled for all that? What would the world become if we simply gave in to the chaos? What would happen to our children and grandchildren and all the kids of the world? What would happen to US?
So we need faith.
Faith is looking into life as it really is – with all its sin and sadness – and yet being able to visualize the possibility of a better world. Faith is, the Bible says, “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Faith is the thought captured by
George Bernard Shaw in his play “Back To Methuselah.” Now you have
probably never seen that play, but we have all heard a paraphrase of one of its
best lines when Bobby Kennedy said, “There are those who look at things the
way they are and ask, “Why?” I dream of things that never were and ask, “Why not?””
Faith is looking into the chaos of life and seeing the possibility of HOPE and PEACE.
So we light the first two candles of the Advent wreath. What a powerful declaration of our faith that there is a better world coming, and that we are lighting the way toward it. A candle of HOPE even in the face of death! A candle of PEACE even in the face of war.
Do you have the faith that sees out to the future God is creating?
If so, then you need to light the next candle – the candle of Joy!
I wonder what would happen if Christians taught that one of the first responsibilities of being a follower of Jesus is to practice Joy!
I’ve heard a lot of sermons on how Christians need to believe, and Christians need to pray, and Christians need to stop doing all the fun things we love to do. Christians need to serve, and to go to church, and tithe – we wouldn’t want to leave that one out! We’ve all heard countless sermons on how Christian wives ought to be submissive to their husbands (although you haven’t heard one from this pulpit, have you?), and that we should not spare the rod on our children, and that we should treat homosexuals like criminals without basic human rights, and that we should never boil a goat in its mother’s milk. Okay, maybe you haven’t heard a sermon on not boiling a goat in its mother’s milk, which just goes to show you that we are very selective with the Old Testament rules we want to enforce on people today. But we’ve all heard lots of things about what Christians are supposed to do.
I wonder what would happen if, instead of any of those things, we taught that Christians are first and foremost to practice Joy!
I think more people would want to be Christians! I think the world would be more receptive to Christianity!
Listen to St. Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord!”
And then, just in case we weren’t
listening, Paul says, “And again, I say REJOICE!”
Come to think of it, isn’t that the same thing the Christmas angel said? “Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great…JOY!…which will be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord!”
And don’t we love to sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” And in a few moments we’ll sing, “Good Christian men rejoice, with heart and soul and voice!” And even the women here today can join the Christian men in singing it!
“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice!”
The Christian faith moves from visualizing a better world to actually using our lives to bring about that world by practicing the discipline of JOY! Faith is not just about believing. Faith is also about DOING. And one of the first things Christians are to do is to practice JOY!
Paul, of course, was talking about Jesus.
Rejoice in Jesus.
A Hindu friend of mine once
asked, “Why are you Christians always so sad?” He went on to reflect
about how ministers usually wear black robes and – in those days – black
clerical shirts. “We Hindus wear white,” he said, “because it is the
color of life and hope. Black is the color of mourning and death.” Then he
went on to talk about how Christian churches talk so much about how bad things
are in the world, and how they are often so judgmental and quick to see the
speck in the brother’s eye long before seeing the log in their own. He – a
Hindu – actually quoted that saying of Jesus to me! And then he capped it off
by saying, “You Christians just don’t seem to have any joy!”
Wow!
Could that be true? Is it true of you? Are you a person of joy? Are we a joyful church? Do people say about us what the angel said about Jesus – “…I bring you glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people, for unto you is born…a Savior who is Christ the Lord!”
If not, perhaps it is because we have lost our focus on Jesus. When Paul says to rejoice in Jesus, I think he is telling us to discover the joy of who Jesus is, and why Jesus came, and how Jesus lived.
He is God-with-us. He came to befriend humanity, and to save the world and to transform it into a world of Hope and Peace. And Jesus demonstrated that by loving the unlovable, and accepting the unacceptable, and healing broken people, and teaching that loving God means loving your neighbor as yourself. And ultimately Jesus loved us by giving his life for every human being – for you and me, and for our children and grandchildren – and trusting God for the promise of resurrection which he holds out to all of us as a gift.
And when you look at Jesus and his life, how can you help but find JOY?
Maybe we need to set Jesus free from the Church. Maybe we need to help Jesus break out of the prison of judgmental religion. Maybe we even need to let Jesus loose of our own personalities and values that would prefer a dour religion of rules instead of a living faith based on joy!
Maybe we ought to try living like Jesus – cutting people a break – accepting folks and loving them as they are – finding beauty in them even when the ugly seems to go to the bone – telling them that there is a God who loves them, and demonstrating that love in all we do and say.
What would happen if we lived like Jesus lived?
I think Joy would break out all over!