Joy in the Sky

[Plaid]

[Trigger warning]

There’s something about the power of a single light. I really like lighthouses. The Christmas we moved to Stratford Pam bought me a 2 foot tall lighthouse from a local craftsman. There’s something romantic and powerful about these lights, standing as lone sentries in the night and fog, helping to guide ships away from danger. If you’re a fan of the Lord of the Rings, you may remember the moment when the beacons of Amon Din are lit, Gandalf says they kindle hope. [play youtube]

A lit candle has long been a symbol of hope. Perhaps a family of a missing solider or child place a lit candle in their window to symbolize their hope that the child will return home. Or the members of a community might hold a candle light vigil to remember the victims of some tragedy. More positively, at the start of the Olympics we light the cauldron to symbolize unity and peace.

Perhaps you have been a light to someone when they needed encouragement or you have people in your life that are lights to you. The biggest light of all, of course, is Jesus Christ. In John 8:12 Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”

There is another important light, a beacon of sorts in our Christmas story, that has become known as the star of Bethlehem so let’s read about it in the Gospel of Matthew:

New Living Translation (Chapter 2)

Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. About that time some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him.”

King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem. He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, “Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?”

“In Bethlehem in Judea,” they said, “for this is what the prophet wrote: (They are quoting Isaiah)

‘And you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah,

are not least among the ruling cities of Judah,

for a ruler will come from you

who will be the shepherd for my people Israel.’ ”

Then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, and he learned from them the time when the star first appeared. Then he told them, “Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him, too!”

After this interview the wise men went their way. And the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy! They entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

When it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another route, for God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod.

But why did three non-Jewish wise men see this star and compel them to undertake this dangerous journey and why did seeing the star bring them joy?

The text of scripture doesn’t tell us much, but we know they were astrologers who the stars as a sign of what may be about to come to pass. We don’t know exactly why this particular star peaked their interest. Perhaps it was unusually bright or perhaps it was a star they had never seen before. It was not unusual for the arrival of a new star to be connected with the arrival of a new ruler.

Regardless of the exact reason, a lone distant star, thousands of kilometres away from earth gave them hope enough to embark on their expedition.

This is a sermon about joy, not hope. And yet here we are. I didn’t arrive here on purpose, it’s just where my fingers took me. But of course, we can’t have joy without hope. We have joy, because of our hope.

Pray with me

As I am want to do, we’re going to read a lot of scripture today, starting with James 1:2-18

James 1:2–18 NLT

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do. Believers who are poor have something to boast about, for God has honored them. And those who are rich should boast that God has humbled them. They will fade away like a little flower in the field. The hot sun rises and the grass withers; the little flower droops and falls, and its beauty fades away. In the same way, the rich will fade away with all of their achievements. God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else. Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession.

——

James was the half-brother of Jesus - tough life - and it’s generally believed the epistle of James was the earliest written of the letters we have in the canon of scripture.

James is writing around AD 45-50, so after the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. As the half-brother of the messiah, James didn’t accept who Jesus was until after the resurrection. He rose through the ranks quickly, becoming the leader of the Jerusalem church. Scripture records some of the work and decision he made, sometimes with Paul and Peter. Eventually, James was martyred around AD 62. Also, don’t confuse him with James, the son of Zebedee, brother of the Apostle John, who became one of the three disciples who were closest to Jesus.

James is writing this letter to Jewish Christian congregations scattered outside of his Palestine, where he had setup camp. His home base so to speak.

The word here translated as troubles is the greek word πειρασμός (per-as-mos) is variously translated as temptation, test or trial. To these early Jews, what would this have meant? The early Hebrews and now Jews had been through a lot of testing and of them testing God.

For example, the story of Abraham and Isaac:

New Living Translation Chapter 22

Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called.

“Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.”

“Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”

The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”

So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”

“God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.

When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. At that moment the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!”

“Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”

That’s quite the test. And what about when the Hebrews were rescued from slavery in Egypt?

New Living Translation Chapter 14

Then the LORD said, “I will pardon them as you have requested. But as surely as I live, and as surely as the earth is filled with the LORD’s glory, not one of these people will ever enter that land. They have all seen my glorious presence and the miraculous signs I performed both in Egypt and in the wilderness, but again and again they have tested me by refusing to listen to my voice. They will never even see the land I swore to give their ancestors. None of those who have treated me with contempt will ever see it. But my servant Caleb has a different attitude than the others have. He has remained loyal to me, so I will bring him into the land he explored. His descendants will possess their full share of that land. Now turn around, and don’t go on toward the land where the Amalekites and Canaanites live. Tomorrow you must set out for the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea.”

——-

God rescues them out of slavery, showed them wonders and signs, provided for their needs while they were in the wilderness and STILL they could not bring themselves to be faithful. The old testament being written in Hebrew, the word in this sense means to test, to try, to examine, to try (cause trouble), to be quizzed about.

Most of us can relate to this. I was explaining to one of my sons the other day was it means to try someone’s patience. Why were they like this? You may recall that after they were rescued and were going through the wilderness, the people started to rebel. They said they would be better off back in Egypt.

Exodus 16:3 NLT

“If only the Lord had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned. “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.”

So, which are you? Are you Abraham who trusts God to the point of being willing to do anything God asks you to do? Or are you someone who lets God help you out of a tough situation and then complains about where he’s taken you?

The Hebrews got stuck in the wilderness because of their stubbornness. Normally when people come out of slavery you’d think they’d be full of joy. But something kept the Hebrews from fully seeing and appreciating what God had done for them.

They were in a time of testing and they failed miserably for 40 years. We do the same thing sometimes. We keep asking for signs, as if to say “ya, but what have you done for me lately” forgetting that God owes us nothing. He doesn’t owe us our life, He doesn’t owe us our sight, our families or our friends. He doesn’t owe us anything and we owe Him everything.

I will say this. It is difficult to wait. A lot of us are terrible at waiting. Even when Amazon can bring us purchases sometimes on the same day, we get upset when it then gets delayed by one more day. We don’t even have to do anything except push a button in the app from our couch, they do all the work but we get upset when it takes an extra day.

Incarcerated people are most likely to try and escape the closer to their release date they get. The closer they get to tasting that freedom, the more anxious they are to get out. in trying to escape of course, they risk prolonging their incarceration.

From a global perspective, we live very comfortable lives. We’re so damn comfortable that any discomfort seems unreasonable. We’ve become a collection of individuals instead of communities looking out for each other and being impatient for the welfare of others.

There are actually hard things that aren’t choices, like an illness, joblessness or homelessness. That’s hard. Near the end of World War II when soldiers started liberating the death camps, the prisoners who up to that point had not at any viable prospect of being rescued were often so emaciated that the soldiers couldn’t even give them bread, because their bodies were too damaged to break the food down and it could kill them. They needed to be treated properly and rehydrated and re-nourished very slowly. That’s suffering on a whole other level that hopefully none of us will ever have to experience.

It’s really easy to do the usual “be an Abraham” not a “wandering Hebrew” when it comes to trusting God and having hope. But I can only do that if I use superficial examples how ridiculous we can be sometimes. Going back to my opening story of the little girl that drowned, how do you find joy in that? How do you find hope in that? How do you not question God in those moments of extreme distress?

It’s really easy at this time of year to give glib answers because Christmas tends to make us feel really good. The older I get the more I resonate with this quote from 19th century Scottish minister Ian MacLaren: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Because even if they aren’t, the world won’t suffer from a little more kindness.

Where shall we find our joy? This Christmas our world seems to be in about as terrible a shape as its been - certainly in my life time. Wars, homelessness, the risk that politics as a means of solving problems will fail and the failing or faltering of democracies around the world.

I know, we’re supposed to be talking about joy. It’s Christmas. Happy feelings. Happy joy joy. For many of us, I just don’t think we can get to joy without acknowledging the darkness. In our congregation we have sickness, the death of a parent, and trouble with marriages. But we also have new life being born and a whole lot of loving and giving people. And while we take this for granted, we have no fear of being arrested and jailed for being here and doing this.

We do not find our joy in this world. This is a fallen world. Our ancestors ate an apple and screwed it all up. God gave us His son, His sacrifice overcame death, but we are still here and now and have to contend with what Paul in Ephesians calls the “evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world”. We get distracted thinking we’re fighting what we see in front of us, but we need to remember we’re really fighting real, actual, personified, evil. This evil creation hates God, hates us and wants to destroy it all. But we have been given the weapons to fight against it. The most powerful weapon is prayer. Paul tells us to “Put on all of God’s armour so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.”

Joy is not so much an emotion, like happiness, but rather a state of being. And because it is not an emotion we can choose the state of joy regardless of our situation, because it is located in our hope. Our enduring, everlasting, unchanging, hope that are the promises of God that came to culmination in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The most excellent news in all of human history is that the King of kings and of all things, didn’t make us come to Him. He came down off His throne to come to us. He was born into this world on Christmas Day as a baby. The most vulnerable a human being can ever be. He was raised in the Jewish tradition, became a man, and was baptized. His public ministry lasted somewhere around 3 years and when He was arrested, tied and nailed to a cross. He died, but didn’t stay dead. 3 days later he rose again and was among us again for a short time when he finally rose to be at the right hand of the Father and founded His church. He sent the Holy Spirit to help guide, teach and convict us. The faith spread and throughout the last 2000+ years, despite many trying to stop it, the faith endures and it is here now with us in an in us.

That is our hope and in that is our joy. As John writes in Revelation, one day:

Revelation 21:4 NLT

He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”

The human race has done and will continue to do some pretty horrible things to itself until the day God finally calls us all home and brings about the new creation. Until then, no matter what you’re facing, you can know that no matter what you’re facing in life, no matter what human promises may be broken, what evil or injustice you face, there is a 100% iron clad promise and a hope you can trust, because He has always been faithful. You can find joy when you’re happy (happiness and joy are not the same thing), you can find joy when you’re sad. You can find joy when you’re devastated. Joy doesn’t require you to have a smile on your face. If you have repented of your sins and follow Christ, you have the assurance that this is not all there is. This is not the end.

Now, practically speaking, what can we do in the meantime to stay focussed on our hope so we can continue to cultivate the joy that comes out of it?

Philippians 4:9

New Living Translation Chapter 4

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

There is a lot that can discourage us in the world, but there is also a lot to be thankful for. There is a lot of beauty and good will and good news out there if we choose to see it. So turn off or limit the intake of the negative stuff and turn up the volume on the good stuff. I often say I can’t care about everything all at the same time. So focus your attention and pray to God to help you: “to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

2. 2 Tim 3:16 - All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

Read your Bibles. It’s about as basic advice as you can ever get for the Christian life, but read your Bible. I’m telling you, it is not just another book. You don’t have to go to seminary to get value out of it, and it will have an effect on you. Believe what it says, believe that Christ sent us the Holy Spirit to work through the words of scripture to change your heart. It happens. But you need to get in it and stay in it.

If reading through the bible in a year is daunting, then don’t do it. Pick a book you’ve never read before and read it. Just read it as often as you can. Don’t read it because you want to make God love you more. Read it so you know how boundless God’s love is for you already.

3: Matthew 6:9 Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy…. you know the rest. Pray. Don’t know how, yes you do. If you talk to another human, then you know how to pray. It’s just a conversation. Yes, there are some beautiful liturgical prayers out there and there are many prayers in scripture you can borrow, but prayer is just a conversation. Tell God what’s going well, tell Him what’s bothering you, tell Him WHO is bothering you. Thank Him for all He’s done for you. This deepens your connection with God and makes it more real and present to you.

4: Revelation 22:16 I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this message for the churches. I am both the source of David and the heir to his throne. I am the bright morning star.”

Go to church or you might miss the message Jesus has sent. Seriously though, stay in community with other Christians. Serve each other. Support each other. Love each other. Come and worship, give thanks and be taught and reminded of God’s love and how to live a faithful Christian life. Come and be charged up for the week to come where you leave here reminded of God’s promises, filled with His hope and in a state of joy.

Finally, John 15:9–12 ““I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.”

Until His glorious return we must resolve to help carry each others burdens, to stay in Scripture and be reminder of His teachings. Don’t be a stranger to God or to His Church.

Let’s pray.