I Wanna Go Back
Notes
Transcript
I Wanna Go Back
I Wanna Go Back
Intro -
You know, of all of the qualities of Advent that we go over every year, Joy is the only one told better in the past tense. I mean, who wants to think about how peaceful life was? Or how hopeful you used to be? Or how great love was?
To be sure, you can find some wonderful memories that bolster your spirit and gird your soul, but those emotions are generally best felt in the present. That is where they are the strongest.
The peace in this moment is always the greatest. The hope you have now, is always bigger than the hope you had before now. And love, in the moment, is always strongest. Strong enough to build entire kingdoms. Strong enough to destroy hate without lifting a finger.
But joy is different. The joy we feel now, rarely eclipses the joy we once felt. It seems almost as if we have never been as happy, or could never be as happy, right now, as we were back then. Whenever “then” was for you.
But Advent reminds us that Joy isn’t made for then, it is made for now. And if we want to experience joy, and the best that this life has to offer, then we need to rethink how we look at it, and how we look at ourselves and this world.
Today that will begin with our look into our scripture...
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends! I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
scripture
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pray
[starwars picture]
So this week was a big week in movies! The latest Star Wars came out - “The Last Jedi.” And at the risk of seeming irresponsible with my resources, I have seen it twice. Once was free, though, so that makes me feel a little better.
By the way, for those who haven’t seen it, I won’t be spoiling it for you. But please, please - go see it so we can talk about it, ok?
Anyway.
Every time these movies come out, church, I get pretty pumped up. I start watching trailers - over and over and over and over - and there is some part of me that starts investing in these characters, hoping for the story that will play out in their lives on the screen. To be clear, I am not living vicariously through them, but living rather in a sort of symbiosis with them. I give them energy and attention, and they give me joy.
But this isn’t just any old joy. This joy is different. This is the joy of a 5 year old boy going to see his first movie with his dad. The joy of the start of a great adventure that would convince a shy small child that anyone - even a poor farm boy - could change this world.
Anyone could be a hero.
It is a joy that would pull me outside day after day to fight storm troopers. To imagine saving the world from hate. A joy that, like the very force lying at the center of these movies, extends through all of creation, just waiting to be awakened again in our hearts.
It is a joy that cries out to the sometimes hard hearted man occupying my soul. It cries out, “I wanna go back.”
[mangerpic]
I wanna go back to when that joy was enough to move me to choose between good and evil, and not just pretend that choice only mattered in my mind - but to know that choice holds with it the very fate of the world.
I wanna go back to the time when joy was real, and raw, and not only that, a time when joy mattered!
[nostalgia pic]
But I am not foolish enough to think I am the only one to feel that way. We all do. We all, in some way, want to go back and feel the feelings we felt back then again. I know that, because we all talk about how good things used to be!
Simpler times, we call them. Back when life was as easy as waking up, feeling joy, eating, and going back to sleep. There was love there. There was peace there. There was hope there. And on top of all of that, if not BECAUSE of all of that, there was joy there in abundance!
It was almost as if joy was all we were looking for.
And that joy pulls us back there. It calls out to us, to remember when life was everything we wanted it to be.
[Christmas advert nostalgia]
And this time of year, we can be overwhelmed by that. Between TV shows, commercials, decorations, traditions, and family get-togethers, this time of year almost begs us to remember the joy of our youth, and to want nothing more than to go back and live it out again!
And church, I need you to know, there are far too many times when all I want to do is just go back. So much so, that I forget where I am.
But then I realize the truth. Listen, we all know we can’t go back, I know I can’t go back, but even in the face of that knowledge I still want to go back! And that feeling, church, that longing for that youthful joy is just what I think this season is supposed to do for us. It was given to us, in a way, to remind us of how we used to be when we understood the truth, when we understood pure joy.
When we best understood God.
And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
[read scripture at spanish church]
You see we fill our minds and our hearts with all this stuff. Knowledge, life experiences, even bible study! And when we fill ourselves up, we start to think that we know everything there is to know. But the truth is, the more we are filled with ourselves, the less we can be filled with God!
You have heard me say that before! And I repeat it because we need to hear it almost every day!
The more we think we know, the less we are willing to learn. The more we think we have experienced, the less we are willing to experience. Faith demands more from us than all of that. Faith demands that we empty ourselves and approach God as a child! That we continually experience that same wonder we had as children staring at that movie screen, or playing the first ball game, or dancing, drawing, singing - whatever - for the first time!
Faith demands that we want to go back to that time, for that feeling. But it doesn’t want us to leave that feeling there! No, God wants that feeling to so overwhelm our lives that we become changed by it! Changed, not so that we then know so much, or can do so much, but changed so that we can feel His joy and presence in all things! Especially in those hard moments in life.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!
[RASC]
It amazes me, church, that people can ever wonder if there is a God...
And God doesn’t just want us to rejoice that it happened, but that it can happen again and again if we only allow God to soften our heart to His love, hope, peace, and joy!
If only we could remember how it was, church, then we could have that same feeling again! And not just the feeling, but we could become changed again, just like we were in the beginning!
We can go back to that feeling. We can rejoice in all things! We can find the joy that seems to leave us with age if we would just remember that we aren’t meant to grow old in our faith, but we are meant to keep our hearts anchored in joy - so much so that those feelings of our youth, the feelings of unparalleled joy and hope, stay with us every day of our lives!
That is what it means to become like a child. To look at the world through the lens of the moment and the lens of God, not through the lens of worldly wisdom and the pain of our experience!
To rejoice in the Lord always. To see hope.
But it can be hard to see hope in this life. Darkness sometimes clouds our eyes, and our minds, and hope seems to disappear.
It is in those times, especially in those times, that we need to be able to find joy in something. And understand, we need to find joy because joy can lead us to hope! Joy can lead us to God! And it can do that, because joy softens our hearts to be able to hear God speak to us in that still small voice - a voice that brings with it hope.
So even in the dark times, we must hold out hope, and find joy.
“Hope is like the sun, if you only believe in it when you see it, you will never make it through the night...”
[RASC]
I don’t know about you, but I can remember that kind of joy, and that kind of hope. I can remember believing there was some greater good - that there was a God in the world! I remember that feeling knowing that I was loved even when I was alone and in the dark! I remember thinking to myself, that if I just waited, if I just made the best of where I was, God would see me through!
I remember the joy that I felt when I knew that I would never be alone again!
And church, I want to go back to that.
And I am sure it isn’t just me, because church, God wants us ALL to go back to that. I believe that is why this season brings those feelings of nostalgia back into our minds so strongly. I believe that is why the songs about joy were written, and why joy is such a prevalent theme in the Bible!
God wants us to rejoice that way every day! Not just when we are children! No, God wants us to live out that child-like faith every day of our lives! God wants us to go back - not to a time when we didn’t believe, but that time when we saw the seriousness and the beauty in all that God did! A time when our simple lives weren’t invaded by complicated rituals and traditions that push God out, but rather, a time when God overwhelmed our souls so much that our only response was for our souls to smile!
Everything we were was God’s, and God was in everything we were.
I wanna go back to that.
But how do we do that? Thankfully, Paul speaks to that.
I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.
You see, these two women mentioned here were leaders of the early church in Philippi. And while we don’t know the disagreement that they were having, we know it was important enough for Paul to address here in this letter! And we can assume that they weren’t acting like children in a good way either!
That said, the resolution of their fighting, at least to Paul, could only happen if they were on the same page, or as Paul says, “of the same mind in the Lord.”
Now that doesn’t mean that they needed to agree, that only means that they needed to both agree that God was bigger than their situation. That God offered hope - a light in the darkness. That God can, and would, guide them to the proper resolution, if only they stayed close to each other, and closer to God!
And to Paul, the ONLY way they could ever do that, is to find joy!
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Phil 4:4-
Don’t be anxious, just pray! Don’t worry yourself, be thankful to God and present your requests to Him! Find the joy wherever you are! And church, we can find that joy, but the only way to find it is to actually be looking for it!
So often we look for the bad. We wait for the mistakes. We look for the problems. But that isn’t at all what God calls us to! And if you remember being a child, you know that to be true!
Children don’t look for problems, they look for joy! They look for the good in everything they do, and church, we are called to do just that very thing in our lives!
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
phil 4:8
We must look for the good, the noble, the right, the pure, the lovely, the admirable! We can’t waste a minute hoping to find the ugly, or the stained, or the evil - no, we have to take whatever God gives us and look beyond those things and then look squarely in the eye of all that is good and rejoice!
We can’t just have hope for good when it is light around us! We must look for the good, even when the light is gone! And church, if there is none to be found, then we must hold out until the light comes!
And make no mistake, it will come! That is what Advent reminds us! It might not come like we expect it, but church, the light will always be there! God will always bring us cause to rejoice, if we only look for the reason!
So we set our minds, then, on Christ. The joyful Christ in the manger, and the joyful stillness of the empty tomb. He is what is good, and pure, and right, and lovely and excellent - and He alone is praiseworthy.
Think about Him.
And don’t just think, church. Paul goes on to show us the way in which we are all to walk.
Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
Phil 4:
[RASC]
Whatever you see Jesus do, you do it. Whatever you have heard Him tell you, or experienced Him reveal to you, do it! Don’t take these words, and His Spirit, and talk about it in committee! Make His Spirit, and His words, your goal! Make His life your example! Make His joy complete by finding all your joy in Him, and then like a child, emulating everything that He is!
Put it all into practice. Become a vessel of His light and joy. Become a vessel of hope. Do it, church, because that is when “the God of peace will be with you.” Then you will know His joy and love. And more than that, you will become a part of His great joy and love.
Let’s all go back to that - together - and see just how deep that rabbit hole goes.
But to get there, church, we have to want to go back - and not just to the simple life - not to the things that we thought we liked as a child, not to all those things that seem to give us comfort back then. We need to want to go back to Jesus. To set aside all those things that we've allowed to get in the way of the joy that he has for us, and to instead choose Him! To put aside old differences, to put aside all those things that divide us. To put aside hatred, and bigotry, and violence, and anger, and strife; and to instead take up the Grace that is offered through the Cross of Christ! A Grace that is exemplified through the child of Jesus, the very same child that lives in our hearts just waiting to be free, able to truly rejoice every single day! Rejoice in the Lord always! Again I say rejoice! Don't waste another second living in a place you don't want to be when you can go back to Jesus and live with him everyday of your life! He is our hope! He is our life! And He, church, can be found in all that is good! And is waiting to be found by you, every day of your life!
Go back to Him, and become His light, church. Rejoice in Him, in all things.
It only takes a small spark, to light the fire that will bring burn in your heart. Joy can be that spark. Light that fire today church.
Invitation
The idea should be that we should want joy the way we had it when we were kids not the way that we think it we should have it as adults. Childlike faith. Pure joy. Being grateful for Mysteries and grateful for surprises and not having to be in control. You can't Rejoice always if you always want to be in control. You have to give control to God and rejoice and whatever he gives you.
Be sure to search for scripture about the children being with Jesus. Show how they rejoiced. Waving in the Palms. How happy we are When We're Young just to know that someone loves us, balance that against how often we forget to Rejoice that we are loved as much as we are in
Maybe talk about times when we wanted to go back and do something differently? Going back knowing what we know now. Making a different decision. Talk about how we have the chance in Jesus every Christmas every day in fact to go back and do things the right way to rejoice in all things have joy and act like a child do not take yourself too seriously and to make the right decision to be a part of him and not apart of hatred and ugliness in this world.