ODE TO JOY
I know I’ve told you this story before, but I tell it again today for a couple of reasons. One, it fits so perfectly with Confirmation Sunday, and two, it leads so well into where we’re headed with the sermon today. So bear with me, and listen to a story about three ministers who found they had a common problem.
Once upon a time, there were three ministers gathered together in a restaurant having coffee. During the course of their conversation they discovered – much to their surprise – that each of them had the common problem of bats in their belfries…bats in the belfries of their churches, that is.
The first minister said, “I tried shooting them with a BB gun. But those doggone bats are so gosh darn quick that I kept missing them. All I ended up with was holes in my stained glass windows. My bats are still there.”
The second minister said, “I tried trapping them alive. Then I took the trap five miles out of town before I let them go. And wouldn’t you know it? Those stupid bats beat me back to the church. My bats are still there as well.”
The third minister said, “I used to have problems with bats in the belfry of my church as well, but not anymore.” The other two ministers were astounded. “What did you do?” they asked. To which the third minister replied, “It was easy. I simply baptized them, confirmed them…and I haven’t seen them since!”
Now that little story would probably be a whole lot funnier if it didn’t come so close to the truth. I’ve seen it time and time again. The kids come to class every Sunday prior to their confirmation, and then many of them simply disappear into the woodwork. We seldom – if ever – see some of them again.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, that seems to be the trend in America today. The cover of Newsweek’s April 13th edition was, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” The article itself went on to quote the recent American Religious Identification Survey. They note that the proportion of Americans who claim to have no religion at all has increased from 8.2% in 1990 to a whopping 15% today. The percentage of people who claim no religious belief has nearly doubled in less than 20 years.
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge wrote a recent article in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “God Still Isn’t Dead.” They began the article with these words:
America was famously founded by companies and churches. The woes of American capitalism are well known: Wall Street is a synonym for excess and greed around the world, and Detroit is tottering on the edge of bankruptcy. But just as its temples to Mammon are under fire, so suddenly are its churches to God.
They go on to note that while mainline churches may be declining, well-organized “mega churches” are taking their place. They theorize that people aren’t leaving the Church, they’re simply leaving certain churches. What’s more, five of the ten biggest churches in the world are in South Korea. And Christianity seems to be booming all across China.
Time magazine’s Easter issue in 1966 asked the question, “Is God Dead?” Thus, the title of Micklethwait and Wooldridge’s article, “God Still Isn’t Dead.” Religion may be changing, they say, but God still isn’t dead. In fact, it seems God can never die in the minds of his people. It seems our brains are actually hard-wired for God.
“Religious belief and behavior are a hallmark of human life, with no accepted animal equivalent, and found in all cultures,” says Professor Jordan Grafman, from the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders in Bethesda, Maryland. A recent study published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences would seem to back him up. For the analysis, researchers used an MRI machine to examine the active regions in the brains of volunteers who were asked to think about religious and moral problems. They found that people of different religious persuasions and beliefs – including atheists – tended to use the same electrical circuits in the brain when solving a moral conundrum as well as when dealing with issues related to God. Are we, in fact, hard-wired for God? There are solid scientific studies that seem to conclude we are.
Perhaps we could even say Jesus was aware of that, as evidenced by what he said in the passage we read from the gospel according to John. Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” What happens to a branch when it is cut off from the vine? It dies, does it not? Why, it’s almost as if Jesus is insinuating that we are, in fact, hard-wired for God. So then Jesus adds, “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, for
apart from me, you can do nothing.”
Could Jesus possibly be any more brutally clear? If we abide in Christ and Christ abides in us, we will bear much fruit. Yet apart from him, we can do nothing. So how do we bear much fruit? The answer…is love. Jesus goes on to say, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.” Yet to abide in Christ’s love is not just to revel in it. To abide in Christ’s love, that love must be shared. In other words, we must learn to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Of course, it’s easy to love those people who love us in return. It’s easy to love those people with whom we agree and we find to be agreeable. The challenge here, I think, is loving the unlovable and loving those with whom we disagree. For you see, when we do not love someone, we have a tendency to become judgmental.
Margaret Feinburg describes this very well in an article she wrote entitled, “Friendship Overcomes.” Listen to what she has to say. She writes:
You see, love is the opposite of judgmentalism; it tempers our views, attitudes and interactions. In our cultural climate, love is foundational. Now some say that love has no agenda, but I believe love is the agenda. Whether in our communities, workplaces, or government, we must be committed to love those we work with and serve.
One of our weaknesses is that we’re far more concerned with being right than
being righteous. We become like the Pharisees whenever we focus on issues rather than (on) people. Judgmentalism creeps in whenever we deal with issues as if they were black and white, rather than flesh-and-blood humans in need of redemption. Do you want to remove the unhealthy judgmentalism you have in regard to the poor? Make sure you have poor people whom you love and welcome into your life. Do you want to remove the unhealthy judgmentalism you have in regard to homosexuals? Make sure you have gays and lesbians whom you love and welcome into your life. Do you want to remove the unhealthy judgmentalism you have in regard to our government? Make sure you have people involved in politics whom you love and welcome into your life.
Then, when we talk about issues, we won’t just be talking about those things we care about, but people we care about. And the judgmentalism, well…it will naturally begin to fade away like it did for the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, and so many others.
How’s that for a profound definition of love? Love overcomes judgmentalism, and the last time I checked, judgmentalism was still a sin. We love not only those who love us in return and with whom we agree. We also love those who do not love us and with whom we may disagree. That’s the fruit the good branch produces. And that’s the way we abide in Christ’s love.
But what’s the point? Why bother to go through the labor of all this difficult loving? “What’s in it for me?” we are wont to ask. Jesus lays it out in one of the most profound statements he makes in all of Scripture. In verse 11 Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Again, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
It’s all about joy. Our lives are meant to be joyful. As it says in The Shorter Catechism to the Westminster Confession, “What is the chief end of man?” Pardon the archaic, sexist language, but the answer is this: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll say it again. Our lives are meant to be joyful.
Yet the joy of Christian living is a very difficult thing to explain. I researched this and I researched this and I researched this some more. I found a lot of evidence as to what the joy of Christian living is NOT. The Rev. Carl Haak, in an article entitled, “The Joy of Christ” says, “The thing we must clear up is that we must distinguish the joy of Christian living from the superficial and artificial joy which is so commonly held up in the church world today – a joy which is based upon things going our way, on getting from God what we want, of being somehow worked up – groundless and merely fickle joy.” Well if that’s what joy is not, then what is it?
I began to think that joy – like love – is not something that can be defined. Perhaps joy – like love – is something that must be experienced. Let me give you a personal illustration.
Last Sunday we had our annual Mother’s Day musical during the worship hour. At 2:00 that afternoon, Kevin Dill and I were responsible for the worship service at the Hillside Home. Now what I generally do is preach the same sermon I preached at 8:30 and 11:00 right here. But since we had the Mother’s Day musical, I didn’t preach a sermon. What I planned to do was preach the sermon I had preached the week before.
Then I spoke with Professor Julia Marshall – a member of this church and a Hillside Home resident herself – right before I left the church for lunch last Sunday. She said to me, “I hope you have something related to Mother’s Day for us. Some of the women have been saying that on Mother’s Day, they hope to hear a Mother’s Day sermon.” I said, “Of course, Professor. You will have a Mother’s Day sermon.”
So I took my wife and my kids to lunch for Mother’s Day, then I came back to the church. I searched my files for a Mother’s Day sermon and I found one from 2002. I took that sermon to the Hillside Home and began it with an Erma Bombeck story entitled, “When God Made Moms.” From the looks on the faces of those women gathered to worship at the Hillside Home, I knew I had done the exact right thing. Their faces just beamed. And for what I had done, I felt a true and sincere joy in my heart.
That’s what joy is. It’s a profound feeling within. It comes not when we do for ourselves. It comes, rather, when we do for others. When we put the happiness of others first – and we do what we can to please them – joy just naturally happens.
You don’t have to go to the Hillside Home to preach to find your joy. You can if you want. I mean, I’m sure they’d be glad to have you. But the key is putting the happiness of others first, and doing what we can to please them.
We live in a community that could use a little joy. I keep hearing stories about the vicious and brutal fights that take place in the high school and the unbelievably audacious behavior of kids in the elementary schools. It’s not the school’s job to socialize these kids. The schools can’t begin to teach these kids about the joy of Christian living. The law, of all things, prevents that. You can say it’s the parents’ job to do that and I agree with you wholeheartedly. But if the parents aren’t doing it, then maybe the churches should.
Who feels God’s call within them to make a difference in the lives of the children in our community? Who has a burning passion to come up with a program at the church that could fill young hearts with love? Who has the conviction to give of themselves so that someone else’s life might be made just a little bit brighter? If it’s you, I’d love to talk to you about it. For in so doing, you just might find your own true inner joy. Amen.
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