Uncomfortable Advent 3 - Uncomfortable Joy

Scripture: Luke 3:7-18

Luke 3:7–18 NIV

7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” 10 “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. 11 John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” 13 “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. 14 Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” 15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.

12/15/2024

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 3:

Opening Prayer:

O God of the exiles and the lost,

you promise restoration and wholeness

through the power of Jesus Christ.

Give us faith to live joyfully,

sustained by your promises

as we eagerly await the day when they will be fulfilled

for all the world to see,

through the coming of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Uncomfortable Joy

How to Find Joy

“To find joy in life, you can: practice gratitude, be present in the moment, connect with nature, cultivate positive relationships, explore new hobbies, prioritize self-care, celebrate achievements, laugh often, and actively seek out beauty in your surroundings; essentially, focusing on the positive aspects of your life and actively engaging in activities that bring you pleasure.” - Google.

Joy can be quite an elusive thing. Our cats were never good at hunting mice, even when we lived in a house that had a problem with mice. But they loved hunting flies. Gizmo, the one cat we have left, was the least agile of all the cats we ever had, yet somehow, she could bat flies out of the air and pounce on them. She would sit still for a moment, her paws on them, looking slightly confused but slightly pleased with herself. When she realized what she had done, the flies often escaped her clutches and returned to the air again.

We often experience joy that way. Brief, accidental moments that are far too fleeting, where we often get more actual enjoyment from the memory of them than any feeling we have at the moment. And the culmination of all our knowledge, held together on the internet, not only supports that thought but teaches it passionately. You cannot make joy happen in your life. You can only do your best to be prepared to grab it as it flies by your head and to hold onto it as long as you can because it won’t last.

As people who believe in God, we can claim that our joy comes from Him to show that we are set apart from the rest of the world, who look for joy in other places. But if we are honest, most of the time, we do not feel we have any more control over getting joy from God than anyone else has looking for joy in the rest of the world. Sometimes, it feels like the rest of the world can consistently find joy easier than we do. That is not just a modern cultural phenomenon. If you pick any three pages of the Psalms, you will find two pages of woe in their prayers compared to one page of praise.

Those who follow Jesus wherever he takes them are also no better than those who only believe in God. Before and after Jesus's resurrection, the disciples often found themselves confused, saddened, disappointed, and distraught by their situations. This shows us that there is no magic button to attaining consistent joy.

While we all instinctively know what joy is, perhaps from times before we could even walk or talk, different kinds of joy work through us in various ways. The kind of joy that Jesus wants to bring to our lives is often more than we are comfortable with. It is a joy that moves and empowers us beyond our abilities.

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Settling for Less

Two things keep us from experiencing the joy Jesus wants to bring into our lives. The first of those is settling for less. When we get into a mindset where we are not well connected to the love of God and our hope is dwindling, we give up on joy altogether. These Advent themes are more than just candles on a wreath and words we use to celebrate the arrival of Christmas. They build upon each other. Without hope, there is no joy. Without love, there is no joy. As mentioned before, joy is not something we can manufacture. It is a response to something greater than we are entering our lives, filling us with grace and blessings we don’t deserve.

Many people who came to hear John the Baptist had no hope. Jews and Romans alike found themselves servants of an empire they had never chosen. They witnessed the destructive force of an authority without God and knew they could do nothing about it. They found it difficult to love without hope, so they settled for less. Rather than go for the whole Messiah, reclaiming the throne and the hearts of all people, they looked for the fastest way to achieve peace. And most of them knew that peace itself was impossible. They were willing to settle for their safety.

John called them all to repent. He told them they had no reason to fear God would lose His children, meaning themselves. Indeed, God could raise new children from the very stones under their feet. Decades later, when a new group of scoffers gathered to dampen the joy of God‘s children, singing praise and dancing in the street as Jesus came in on the back of a donkey, Jesus would point to those same stones and tell those leaders that if they silenced God’s children, those very stones would begin to cry out in praise.

Fear is not the opposite of joy. John put the fear of God into the people to make way for the joy of the Lord and to push out the real culprit: the desire to be in control. We mistake the feeling of pride, the feeling that I did it all by myself, for joy. But we can never feel pride in something greater than ourselves. On the other hand, we can feel joy simply by seeing what God is doing, whether we are doing anything or not.

Don’t settle for the joy you can find on your own. Seek God and the joy He wants to bring you.

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FOMO

Fear is not the opposite of joy, and a reverent fear filled with awe and wonder from watching God work in our world through Jesus will lead you to greater joy than you could ever find on your own. But a particular kind of fear will pull you away from the joy that Jesus has for you. The popular term for this fear is FOMO, “fear of missing out.” It is precisely how it sounds. It is the fear and anxiety we feel when we get it into our heads that everyone else is experiencing joy and the pleasures of life while we are left out. It may be a new term to you, but the concept is as old as the Garden of Eden. There may have been a desire for power and knowledge that convinced Adam and Eve to listen to the serpent in the garden, but behind that desire pulling them forward was a fear of missing out that pushed them from behind and ensured they left the presence of God.

This fear comes to us as a warning masquerading as wisdom, pretending to have our best interests in mind. “Don’t just stand there,” it says. “Everyone else is getting in and participating, and soon, no room will be left. Strike while the iron is hot. The early bird gets the worm.” You’ve heard these things before and others like them. Let me tell you about when they don’t work.

In the spring of 2023, on a random Wednesday in February, one man delivered a message to the students he worked with regularly in chapel. There was nothing unusual about the message or the response to it. What was remarkable was that all the students stayed after the service. They skipped lunch, missed their classes in afternoon activities, skipped dinner, and some remained throughout the night. They stayed and prayed.

Many of you heard about this here in Indiana—the Asbury outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Within days, it grew into something different than it was initially. After a couple of weeks, the leadership gently and gracefully shut it down for the sake of the students and the community. Bekah and I visited twice during that time, only staying about 20 or 30 minutes. It was a beautiful thing and was certainly from God as He poured His love on those students. And it was not for us. In some ways, it felt like barging into someone else’s birthday party uninvited and expecting to receive gifts.

However, many people from all over the world felt differently. We had a friend who traveled over 500 miles to experience the movement of God on that campus. He was going through an awful time in his life. There was no joy, and he struggled to find hope and love. When he arrived on campus, thousands of people waited in line to enter the chapel. Some local churches opened their doors at the seminary across the street to begin live streaming the prayer and worship from the university in their chapel. The seminary chaplain spoke to those gathered to watch the live-stream events. She addressed the crowd about FOMO – the fear of missing out. She identified that distraction that masquerades as the work of God, and she told the people that if they were there because they didn’t want to miss out on experiencing whatever everyone else was receiving, they were there for the wrong reasons and should turn around and go home. That sounds harsh, doesn’t it?

Our friend only stuck around for a short time. He returned home to the joyless drudgery he felt his life had become and began seeking God there. Like the soldiers, merchants, and even tax collectors who came to John the Baptist, he was encouraged to prepare the way for joy by being faithful in the small things: sharing what he had with others and being diligent and faithful in his work. He learned again, like Mary and Joseph, that we do not search out the joy of the Lord. We follow Jesus faithfully, and the joy of the Lord comes looking for us.

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Joy in the Morning

FOMO is the fruit of a sinful weed whose root is coveting or envy, and it’s a nasty weed. Sins, like lust and rage, are brazen and obvious. Even greed and gluttony look like weeds in the light. But we don’t talk about coveting and envy very often. That nasty sin makes us blind to everything God has given us and convinces us that everyone else has it better. Coveting came at the end of the 10 Commandments because it is often the gateway to every other sin. Certainly, coveting opened the door to every other evil they entertained in the history of Israel. However, as with all temptations, we can believe and act on those feelings or follow Jesus faithfully. When we feel left out, we can ask Him to open our eyes to what He has already given us. We can ask Him to help us see the hope ahead of us, to recognize and receive the love He is giving us now, and to make room for the joy He wants to bring into our lives.

We are looking for an experience of joy like a water baptism. Or maybe we’re just looking for a quick rinse. We want to feel fresh and clean without having to do the hard work of repentance because we think baptism is about getting wet in a moment. We don’t understand that it’s a way of life. But the baptism that Jesus has for us and brings to us each day is not about water. He brings the fire of the Holy Spirit, which will burn away everything from our lives that does not belong. Not wash away for us to go and pick up a day or maybe a week later, but burn away for good.

There is a unique kind of freedom we experience from our life being radically purged from everything that is not of God. In the broken world that we live in, it will make us feel like outcasts. We may feel that we must give up everything like John the Baptist, living in the wilderness and surviving only on what God provides us. But there is an incredible joy that goes far beyond anything we could find ourselves in when we are finally free to be the people God created us to be.

There is a line in our communion liturgy that I never noticed until our former bishop in Kentucky pointed it out to us several years ago.

“Freed for joyful obedience.”

In Christ, because of His sacrifice for us and the grace we receive from Him, we are freed for joyful obedience. When we love our neighbors as ourselves, when we love our enemies the way Jesus loves us, when we share even when we don’t want to, and treat others right, even when we are mistreated, repenting of this broken world and living the life that Jesus calls us to, what are we doing? We are being freed for joyful obedience. And when we lean into that freedom and joy and live into that hope and love, no matter how dark the present night may be, we begin to see the light of Christ and the rising sun breaking through.

Where are you struggling to see the light today?

What has God given you that you can share with those trapped in the dark?

Jesus doesn’t want you to settle for less than His best. And He doesn’t want you to chase after what everybody else seems to have or is experiencing. He has a life filled with hope, love, and joy that He has made just for you. You can’t go out and grab it, and you won’t find it spending your life searching for it. But you can receive it one day at a time as He brings it to you. Can you set aside everything else to receive the Spirit of Christ and the life He brings you today?

Closing Prayer

Lord, you are mighty and wonderful. We, your humble people, struggle so much with little and petty things. We are blind to you, your actions, and the blessings you bestow on us. We don’t understand why we often have to get to a place of such brokenness to truly see you for how good you are to us. To truly see you at all. We yearn for the life you want to give us, a life freed for joyful obedience. We know that while we still feel we cannot be faithful and obedient to you, we are not free. We are slaves to sin. But we know you came into our world and lives to set us free from that bondage to sin, and so we pray, Lord Jesus, come and set us free. Baptize us with the fire of your Holy Spirit and fill us with your joy. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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