Joy Work (6-21-2020)

Joy Work Devotional for 6-21-20 Beginning Scripture: Hebrews 3: 6 " But Christ, God's faithful Son, is in complete charge of God's house. And we Christians are God's house-he lives in us!-if we keep up our courage firm to the end, and our joy and our trust in the Lord." I think I am falling in love with the book of Hebrews. As I did in chapter two and now in chapter three - which today's Sunday School lesson is based on - the very first verse caught my attention and made me pause to consider it. "Therefore, dear brothers whom God has set apart for himself-you who are chosen for heaven-I want you to think now about this Jesus who is God's Messenger and the High Priest of our faith." Hebrews 3:1 TLB It refers to us as brothers and sisters set apart by God just for himself. This is not a small thing. I don't always listen for God's voice, but Tuesday morning I did hear him speaking in my journaling and the Father called me his dear son whom he loves. That touched me - maybe because Monday had been a down day for me and I felt totally uninspired a good part of the day. So I guess Tuesday morning I was ready for some light. That's when I read Hebrews 3. In light of what Jesus has done for us, the author says he wants us right now to think or to consider. The Greek word "consider" carries the idea of contemplating thoroughly. (p. 17) And Hebrews has a sense of urgency about this contemplation. The Message says: "Take a good hard look at Jesus..." God's House So I really concentrated on this chapter and there were several things - that I imagine Brother Bennie will talk about - but one of the things that it says is that we Christians are God's house, but he adds: IF we keep our courage, joy, and trust in the Lord. I think it is a challenge to keep joy in these days when we hear increasing numbers of people dying daily from COVID 19 and unjust actions against ordinary people like you and me. I recently heard a talk by Willie James Jennings, a teacher, preacher, and theologian who talked about the work involved with keeping joy. God's desire for ecstasy for us Joy work, as Jennings calls it, aims at experiencing ecstasy, bliss, or to put it another way, experiencing joy means getting high on God. Jennings says something that surprised me at first. He said that this joy work involves resistance against despair. Despair and discouragement are like dark clouds hanging over us these days. But in mass media we also see and hear a lot about resistance and protest. I believe that underneath resistance and protest is a basic desire to experience joy and the ecstasy. At some level - we all want and need a blissful entanglement with God. Isn't that what heaven is supposed to be? We must resist this darkness if we want the ecstasy of heaven. Hebrews 12:1-2 says this: "...let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the JOY set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame..." There is so much in this passage. For one thing, it says that to get to joy, Jesus had to suffer and even die. We too are suffering, but we if we don't want to stay in the darkness of discouragement, we really need to turn suffering into a teacher. I'll bet if you thought about it you could probably state how various sufferings you have gone through taught you some lesson. I can already see how the suffering and the abuse experienced by people at the hands of authorities is beginning to yield some lessons for our country. For example, in some cities we are beginning to see the first steps of creating new forms of policing and dealing with conflict situations. Some local governments are talking about allowing professionals such as conflict resolvers, social workers, and other people who are not police officers, to go into difficult situations to help people to find creative solutions to the problems they are having. From many police chiefs we are hearing of the importance of de-escalating volatile situations. We are beginning to see the kind of improvisation that hopefully will eventually lead to joy. Joy a communal thing Joy work involves creativity and improvisation and it can't be done alone. It must be done in community. Recently Helen and I we were feeling down and depressed. We decided to go out to eat and to go to Fort Worth to spend a little time with our niece - whom we hadn't seen in months. We just wanted to visit and maybe play some cards. I noticed both of us started to feel better even in the car ride over to see Dorothy. I later asked Helen if she en-joyed that afternoon. And she said, Oh yes! I pointed out to her that both of us had more joy because we were with other people, chatting, laughing, telling stories, and playing with the Tucker the dog. The joy of the evening was more intense and important to us in light of the dark moods and isolation we had been going through. We resisted discouragement and depression and that resistance yielded joy. To me, this shows that joy can come when we resist despair and joy work is a communal experience. Space is required This work of creating joy requires space, our church here can be such a space. Even music can be a space for joy work. For example, blues music has been an example of people creating joy in the womb of suffering. Joy work is communal work. It should entangle us together. Willie Jennings says we are creatures created by God for ecstasy. I don't know, but I think God can create joy in a jazz club or people enjoying each other and singing and laughing on a street corner. I also wonder: Is there a better place for God to create ecstasy than in churches, right here in this church? Lecture by Willie James Jennings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jGG5ZtABH0 [The Holy Spirit and God's house In a recent conversation with our pastor we were talking about the Holy Spirit and he said that the Holy Spirit is working to create unity. We are all one. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. He said it breaks the heart of the Holy Spirit to see anything that brings division to the Body of Christ. But unity does not mean uniformity. We have a God that loves diversity. We don't all speak English, we speak different tongues, there are thousands of species of flowers, and look at the colors and shapes of humans. I started with the passage from Hebrews 3:6 which says "...we Christians are God's house-he lives in us!-if we keep up our courage firm to the end, and our joy and our trust in the Lord." It occurs to me that we are in a unique position to allow God to work in our house but we have to work too, we have to work with the Holy Spirit to create unity in diversity in this house. We are in a place to do good joy work in union with the Holy Spirit. That is our challenge in coming weeks, months and years.] Questions and Challenges * How can we allow our suffering to be a teacher for us? * How can we as a community create a physical and psychic space for the work of joy here at Free Will Baptist? * How can each of us nurture courage and trust in the Lord in ourselves and others? Prayer Father, lead us, guide us through our suffering and difficulties and inspire us to do the work of joy as a preparation and prelude to our ecstasy and bliss with you and your Son when our work, when your work here is done. Help us to create new structures and approaches to our social problems. Create in us a clean and passionate heart focused on love, for you, Father are love. In the name of our precious savior Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.