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Redford
Aldersgate
United Methodist Church
Sermon
Celebrate All Times, Com' on!
March 5, 2006
Nehemiah 8:9-12
The Olympics are over. The athletes
have gone back to their own countries and now the winners get busy doing
things like endorsing products and appearing on talk shows. The Olympics
are over until the summer Olympics come around again. But our upside
down Olympic Rings are still on the altar because our Spiritual Olympics
are just beginning. We are using the 5 Olympic Rings to symbolize 5 of
the many Spiritual Disciplines that we can use to grow closer to God.
They are like our spiritual calisthenics. The goal is not to become
extremely proficient in them, but to use them to win the Gold Medal.
That Gold Medal is a close relationship God. It’s similar to the fact
that there are no gold medals for push ups, but most athletes who win
gold medals have done push ups to help make them stronger so that they
can accomplish their goals. So we use these disciplines to help us
accomplish our goal of growing closer to God. The material from the
cross goes through the hoops signifying the way God works through these
disciplines to help us have a beautiful life.
Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Liturgical Season of
Lent. Ash Wednesday is the day to confess your sin and repent. It’s the
day you come face to face with your sin and realize how short you have
fallen from living the kind of life God wants you to live. Then for the
next 40 days, you use spiritual disciplines to draw closer to God.
Christians down through the ages have used Spiritual Disciplines during
Lent. Usually we think of fasting and prayer and self denial. These are
Spiritual Disciplines that Christians have used help make us aware of
the importance of putting God first in our lives. Traditionally, Lent
has become a rather somber, grim and bleak time. The instructions in the
Book of Worship tell us to remove all bright objects from our altar.
Obviously, we didn’t follow those instructions! I’m not quite sure how
all the bleakness came about, but I’m afraid the traditions got turned
upside down. This Lent we are going back to observe Lent in a more
“Nehemiah” style.
Now just in case you’ve forgotten who Nehemiah was, let me give you a
quick history lesson in “fast forward.” Israel had become a great nation
under King David and King Solomon. But after that things sorta went
downhill. There were various kings, some good, some bad. But the bottom
line was that the people were forgetting about God. So their country was
defeated by the Babylonians and most of the people were taken into
captivity in Babylon. Then various things happened until finally there
was a new king and the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem under
the leadership of a couple guys named Ezra and Nehemiah. When they got
back to Jerusalem they came together and the Law was read to them. Now
they had been in captivity and were not able to read or study the
scripture. So when they heard it after so many years, their hearts were
filled with remorse. They realized that they had not remained true to
the way God wanted them to go. They realized their sin and repented. You
might say it was their “Ash Wednesday” ... the day they came face to
face with themselves and realized how short they had fallen. Their first
reaction was to cry and mourn because they realized how sinful they had
been. But listen to what Ezra and Nehemiah tell the people:
Nehemiah 8:9-12
Isn’t that great?! He tells them to go party. It’s like he’s singing the
80's hit song by Kool and the Gang: Celebrate good times, come on!
Only... it’s not really good times. Yes, they are back in their
homeland, but things have been destroyed. It’s a mess. And, moreover,
they are in the midst of grief because they have realized how sinful
they have been. It’s not good times. It’s hard times. So Nehemiah’s song
really is: Celebrate ALL times, come on! He tells them to go eat French
Fries and have Root Beer Floats because “the Joy of the Lord” is their
strength! Think about that. Do you realize that the Joy of the Lord is
your strength? Do you even think of God as being joyful? In the book
that we are using for a guide this Lent, The Life You've Always
Wanted, John Ortberg states that “Joy
is God’s basic character...God is the happiest being in the universe”.
(P. 63) Is that your image of God? If it’s not, then perhaps you need to
read a little more scripture and see the joyful nature of God in it.
From the very beginning we see a joyful God ... the God of creation is
joyful and enthusiastic and sees everything as good. To point that out,
Ortberg rewrites the creation story from the point of view of an
Un-joyful God. Listen to just a part of this version of the creation:
And God made a pigeon to fly in the air, and a carp to swim in the
waters, and a cat to creep upon dry ground. And God thought about making
millions of other species of all sizes and shapes and colors, but he
couldn’t drum up any enthusiasm for any other animals–in fact, he wasn’t
too crazy about the cat. Besides, it was almost time for the Late Night
Show. So God looked at all he had done, and God said, “It’ll have to
do.” (P.62, The Life You've Always Wanted, John Ortberg, Zondervan)
That’s not our God! God is joyful. Jesus came to help us see that. He
told his disciples: “These things I have spoken to you, so that my joy
may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” But somehow, the
church has gotten things upside-down. We think we have to be solemn and
even sad in church. I love this column by Erma Bombeck way back in the
‘70's. It originally appeared in the The Atlanta Constitution, but I got
it from the little devotional booklet: Alive Now. I think we’ve made a
lot of progress in this area, especially in this church. But I’ve kept
this article because I like to bring it out and read it every now and
then to remind myself why it’s so important to have our Family Service.
Listen to this:
In church the other Sunday I was intent on a small child who was
turning around smiling at everyone. He wasn’t gurgling, spitting,
humming, kicking, tearing the hymnals or rummaging through his mother’s
handbag. He was just smiling. Finally his mother jerked him about and in
a stage whisper that could be heard in a little theatre off Broadway
said, “Stop that grinning! You’re in church!” With that, she gave him a
belt on his hind-side and as the tears rolled down his cheeks added,
“That’s better,” and returned to her prayers.
What must these children think? We sing, “Make a joyful noise unto the
Lord” while our faces reflect the sadness of one who has just buried a
rich aunt who left everything to her pregnant hamster...
Suddenly I was angry... I wanted to grab this child with the
tear-stained face close to me and tell him about my God. The happy God.
The smiling God. The God who had to have a sense of humor to have
created the likes of us ... the God who even understands my shallow
prayers that implore, “If you can’t make me thin, then make my friends
look fat.” ... What a fool, I thought. Here was a woman sitting next to
the only light left in our civilization ... the only hope, our only
miracle ... If he couldn’t smile in church, where was there left to go?
(Alive Now, Test Issue 1971 reprinted from The Atlanta Constitution,
Atlanta, Georgia, Feb. 26 1970)
I’m with you, Erma. We need to smile in church. God is a joyful God. I’m
with you, Nehemiah, we need to celebrate! I don’t know how the church
got so solemn. Even the great founding father of theology and the
church, Augustine said “A Christian should be an Alleluia from head to
foot.” The center-fold of tha
t Alive Now that I’ve kept all these years
is this neat picture. I used to have a copy of it on my mirror and I
used to draw it as a doodle when I was bored in meetings. It’s very
60ish ... but I like it. After all, there’s nothing wrong with being
60ish! A Christian should be an Alleluia from heat to foot. Ortberg
calls joylessness a sin and suggests that this is the sin that the
church most readily condones and even encourages. Let’s not be part of
that sin. As with all our sin, we need to confess it and determine to
overcome it. We overcome it by participating in the Spiritual Discipline
of Celebration. Celebrate all times, come on! ... for the Joy of the
Lord is our strength.
Think about the rest of that verse. The Joy of the Lord is our STRENGTH.
Did you ever think about joy being a strength? Ortberg quotes a man
named Dallas Willard who says ‘Overcoming temptation will be easier if
we are basically happy with our lives.” (Dallas Willard, The Spirit of
the Disciplines. San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1988, 81) When I read
that, I thought: Yea! That’s right. Over the years, I have seen lots of
teenagers resist temptation... and lots succumb to temptation. It was
the ones who were the happiest that were the most successful in
resisting, therefore they stayed the happiest. The same is true with
adults. If you are happy in your marriage, it’s not all that hard to
resist the temptation of adultery. If you are happy with your life, it’s
not that hard to resist the temptation of embezzling money. The list
could go on and on. Willard is right. But we also need to take it a step
farther and point out that being happy doesn’t depend on everything
going just right. I have a little sticky note by my computer that says,
“Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect, it means you have
decided to look beyond the imperfections.” No marriage is perfect. No
life is perfect. But those who look beyond the imperfections to find
things to celebrate are the ones who are happy.
I was really intrigued with Ortberg’s comparison of Hedonism and
Celebration. Hedonism is the demand for more and more pleasure for
personal gratification, i.e. what produced joy in us yesterday no longer
does today. It used to be that riding a Merry-go-round gave us pleasure,
but then that got old and we went to the Ferris Wheel. Then that got old
and we went to the Roller Coaster. But the Roller Coasters had to get
bigger and bigger and faster and faster until now even the Millennium
Force is too boring and too tame for some people. That’s Hedonism. Since
we need more and bigger and faster and more exciting things to bring us
joy, our capacity for joy diminishes. What used to bring us joy no
longer does. Celebration - the Spiritual Discipline of Celebration - on
the other hand is the inverse of that. When we practice this discipline,
we are able to take delight in something we wouldn’t have even noticed
yesterday. We celebrate simpler and simpler things so that our capacity
for joy increases. (P 67) Interesting isn’t it? So would you rather be
on the fast track to boredom through Hedonism or the slower track to
Happiness through Celebration. It seems like a no brainer to me ... but
I’m afraid I tend to be in the minority in society ... but if all of you
join me, it will be less of the majority that is on that fast track to
boredom. So let’s get busy finding more and more things to celebrate.
Keep in mind, things don’t have to be all sweetness and light to have
things to celebrate about. Those people in Nehemiah’s time had a ton of
trouble. Their beloved city and temple lay in ruins. Times were tough.
But Nehemiah told them to have french fries and root beer floats and to
celebrate because the “Joy of the Lord” was their strength. Ortberg
points out that “often it is the people closest to suffering who have
the most powerful joy.” (P. 68) He uses Mother Teresa and Dietrich
Bonhoeffer as examples, but I’ve seen many of you deal with difficulty
in your lives and have moments of joy. I’ve seen people with severely
handicapped children laugh and sing and enjoy life to the fullest. I’ve
seen people at the bed side of a beloved family member sing and laugh
and remember and give thanks and experience a joy and a peace that the
world can not give, neither can it take away.
We sang “Lord of the Dance” which is a song that recounts all the
difficult times in Jesus’ life. Sometimes we complain about our
difficulties, but they all pale in comparison to his. His life was
definitely not easy. Yet he was the Lord of the Dance and the dance goes
on. Bob was telling me an interesting story as to how that song got into
our hymnal. It happened after Bishop Woodie White who came out of the
Detroit Conference preached at General Conference. He preached on the
joy of our faith and said that we ought all to be dancing with Jesus. At
the end, he had them sing Lord of the Dance. And people were so moved
that all those church big wigs that often seem like stuffed shirts got
up and started doing the Bunny Hop all around the General Conference
floor. Now if all those church “big wigs” can let their inhibitions go
long enough to bunny hop at General Conference, we ought to be free
enough to let the Spirit move us to celebrate this Lent. So let’s
Celebrate ALL times, come on!
It’s THIS day that is holy, Nehemiah says. Don’t wait until tomorrow.
Don’t be caught in regret over yesterday. THIS day is HOLY. This is the
day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Nehemiah
said, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine ... for this day is
holy to our Lord, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your
strength.” Let’s go eat fries and drink root beer floats... or better
yet, have baked potatoes with all the toppings! For this is the day the
Lord has made and we will rejoice and be glad in it. Let’s get busy
practicing this Spiritual Discipline of Celebration
But, don’t forget that the reason we celebrate is that the day is holy.
The big key to this Spiritual Discipline of Celebration is that while
we are celebrating we are reflecting on the wonderful God who has
given us such wonderful gifts. It’s not just celebration for
celebration sake. It is Spiritual Celebration. We remember who has made
it possible for us to celebrate. We remember who gave us the gifts. We
remember that it is the Joy of the Lord that is our strength! As we come
to communion today, let’s do it with a smile. Let’s rejoice that Jesus
died and rose again so that we could have abundant life ... in the
here-after, but also in the here-now. This is the day the Lord has made.
This is a holy day. There is strength in the Joy of the Lord. So let’s
Celebrate ALL times, come on!