“Finding Joy”

Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
On October 28, 2001

“Make A Joyful Noise Unto the Lord”

 Psalm 100

The kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Spirit.

       Romans 14:17

What is the kingdom of God? What is the kingdom of heaven? I’m using a verse from the letter to the Romans that I used earlier this month, this seventeenth verse. When I preached about the kingdom of God being justice and peace. When I tried to say that the kingdom of God always includes not only peace but also justice.

But I didn’t say anything about this third word, joy, at all. So I wanted to return to it before the month was over. Because the apostle tells us that the kingdom of God is like three things. Always like the kingdom of justice and the kingdom of peace, but joy is the emotional state that pervades the kingdom of God.

This is what the kingdom of God looks like. This is what the kingdom of God feels like. It feels like joy.

Where did you find joy in the last week? What was a moment of joy for you?

One of the moments of joy for me was taking some of my children pumpkin shopping. We went up to the farmers’ market, and I let the children each pick a pumpkin. I told them that they could pick any pumpkin they wanted, as long as they could carry it back to the car. Of course, the nine-year-old picked a pumpkin nearly as big as she was, and she was muscling it back to the car. About halfway there, the pumpkin started to get the best of her, and she started going around in a kind of pirouette and I wasn’t sure whether she was carrying the pumpkin or the pumpkin carrying her.

I found myself thinking, at one moment, this is what the kingdom of heaven is like. The kingdom of heaven is like the experience of joy.

I was having Coffee with the Pastor one Wednesday evening, and there were about five members of the congregation there, gathered with me. We got to talking about the story of Mary and Martha, out of the scriptures. One of the parishioners said, “It’s always bothered me the way Martha doesn’t seem to be appreciated in her need there. Why does Jesus tell her that Mary has chosen the better part, in just resting and meditating. I can understand Martha’s point. I can see all the work that needed to be done, and I wished Jesus had been more sympathetic to Martha there.”

And I found myself thinking, Oh, good. I can talk not only here about the story of Mary and Martha, but I can share about the story of the Good Samaritan, which is also there in the gospel of Luke, right up against the story. So I said to the person who asked the question, “Well Jesus does tell us in that story that we ought to be listening and paying attention and quiet. But he couples it by placing immediately before it the story of the Good Samaritan, which is the story where he says Go and do. Go and do something specifically like the Samaritan did. I said let’s look at it, and we’ll turn to the gospel of Luke in the tenth chapter together. Right before the story of Mary and Martha, you’ll find the story of the Good Samaritan there.”

So we turned and we looked, and we looked at the story of the Good Samaritan. We looked for Mary and Martha right before it, but we couldn’t find it anywhere there. I knew that the folks at Coffee with the Pastor were beginning to think, the preacher just makes this stuff up most of the time.

And suddenly, in our silence as we looked for a text that wasn’t present, Bea David, who was there with us, (I should say now, the famous  Bea David, out of her Tampa Tribune article). She said to me, “You know, John, I think you’ll find the story of Mary and Martha in the tenth chapter of the gospel of Luke coming not before the story of the Good Samaritan, but immediately after the story of the Good Samaritan.”

And of course, she was absolutely right. As I sat there having been bested in scripture memory by this wonderful woman who cannot read the scriptures, except that she has been able to with Braille over time. It was a wonderful moment. A moment of comeuppance. It felt to me like a wonderful, warm, moment of fellowship. I found myself thinking, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. “

The kingdom of God is like sitting around in a circle studying the Bible with Bea David and being bested by her in the scripture memory game. It felt like joy.

Where has joy been present in your life in the last week?

Helen Gibbons and Ethylene Miller told me that their children had a teacher who had said to them when they were growing up, to each of their children, “Children, there will be some moments in your lives that are extraordinary moments. Some precious moments, that will contain great joy in them. When the whole world will look like a sweet place. Those are crystal moments.” She said that in their family system, they continue still to speak of crystal moments. A child will come home and say, “Oh, there was a crystal moment today!” A moment of joy.

Where is there a moment of joy in your life?

Romans fourteen, verse seventeen, says the kingdom of heaven is not food or drink. It’s not these physical things that we are always seeking to obtain. It’s not worrying about how we’re dressed or what we are going to eat the next day. But the kingdom of heaven is righteousness and peace. And joy. The feeling of joy.

What is joy? Webster says  joy is a feeling. An emotion. An emotion evoked by well-being or success or good fortune. The emotion evoked by the prospect of obtaining what one desires. A state of happiness out of obtaining what one desires.

Of course that’s the rub for us, isn’t it? It has to do with what we would desire. We get confused about what we really desire.

What is joy? The sense of well-being that comes from obtaining what our hearts really desire. And Augustine taught us early in Christian thought, what our hearts always desire are God. Our hearts are restless, said Augustine, until they find their rest in thee, O Lord.

Joy comes from finding God. Where does joy come from? Joy comes from the realization that there is a God. That God is good and that God is in charge, and that God is personally related to us. And when we are aware of that, in the revelation of Jesus Christ, then we are aware of what a good life God has created. And of the good news that God is calling us to joy. The same God who was good and personal and active in our lives is preparing us for a future of peace and of justice, but also of joy.

How can we obtain it? How can we get joy? The scriptures teach us that God intends for us to be joyful. That God desires joy for us. We think in terms of obtaining it like we do other things. Something that we could go out and get. But this text seems to tell us that joy comes to us as a gift. As a gracious gift of God. A gift from the one who has already obtained joy for us, in what God has done in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

When we find ourselves in this life burdened by things, or struggling with problems, the good news of the Gospel calls us to remember that these burdens are temporary struggles that fall into the larger context of the achievement that God has already made in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Joy comes from the realization that nothing can take that from us, because it comes as a gift from God.

Even the cruelty of a Roman cross couldn’t stop the joy of Jesus from filling up the world. Joy is the great message of his resurrection, even today as we feel his presence in our lives. God intends joy for us. God is calling us to a kingdom of peace and justice. And joy.  And the knowledge of that is one of the vehicles for joy, even in this life.

God calls for us to repent, to turn from those things that do not lead to joy and to turn back to those things that lead to God that lead to joy.

CS Lewis said that the ability to laugh at ourselves may be as close to true repentance as we get in this life. The ability to laugh at ourselves and to realize that God is in charge. And that the future has been established by God.

So when the apostle says, “I am poured out,” as we looked at that text from Second Timothy last week, meaning “my life is given, my life is spent in the great cause of God,” he means that as a positive. As an occasion of deep satisfaction and joy for him.

And one of the truths about the Reformation I want to give you this morning is the truth that the Christian faith gives us joy. And in the Reformation, our ancestors discovered that that joy came through the experience of serving and of giving.  And of loving. Not in obtaining, but rather in serving and in giving. And in loving. It comes to us as a gift out of the moment of giving ourselves away.

The great paradigm for that is God’s gift to us of Jesus Christ. I’m hoping in the week ahead that you might do two things. One is that you might look for the joy and the joyful moment around you. It comes as a gift from God. It might be a moment in the periphery of your vision. A child carrying a pumpkin. Or being bested by someone in a scripture study. Some moment that you don’t have to obtain, but that God gives you as a gift. Look for those moments of joy, because they are meant by God to confirm your faith that God is good and loving. And in charge.

And then seek to be a witness of joy to someone else. To do this is to witness to Jesus Christ, who lived a life of joy. Be a witness to someone else of the joy that God is seeking to bring them. And in doing this, by pointing out to them some joy or in serving them or in helping them in such a way that it creates even a crystal moment of joy in their life.

You will be witnessing to them of the truth of the Gospel. For the kingdom of heaven does not consist of food and drink, but of peace and of justice. And of joy. God intends joy for you.

© John T. DeBevoise, 2001