Sermons

Psalm 86:1-7; Philippians 4:1-14 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – October 12, 2014

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might be our most authentic selves with you and with one another, laughing with those who laugh, weeping with those who weep, and finding the joy of life in Christ through it all.  We pray it in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Are you aware that there are some serious mis-understandings of church out there in the world?  I don’t have time to go into all of them today, of course, but there’s one I’d like to talk about, because it’s not always just out there.  Sometimes we convince ourselves it’s true too.  There are people who think that to be part of a church means that you have your life totally together, that you’ve figured everything out and everything is fantastic all the time.  That has to be why church folks are so cheerful, right?  How else could we possibly want to thank God every single Sunday?

A variation of this confusion is the impression that we don’t have it all together, but that it’s required that we pretend we do when we come to church because apparently God is only interested in cheerful people.  We will make those smiles happen, no matter how painful it is.  Some will even say that pretty much every person in a congregation is probably wearing a mask.  We’ll let you have whatever you want going on underneath, so long as you’re bright and smily on the outside.  We do, after all, say things like, “Rejoice in the Lord always.”

The first thing we must do when we’re faced with characterizations of the church that distress us is recognize that they didn’t come out of nowhere.  There are reasons people think this stuff about churches.  There are reasons people in this very room are thinking right now that those things are true.  Usually, the reasons boil down to this one simple, over-arching truth:  churches are full of human beings.  And as it turns out, human beings prefer not to reveal their vulnerability to one another.  We prefer to be around positive people, and we’ve mostly been conditioned to believe complaining is impolite, so we often choose to keep our messy, ugly personal realities to ourselves, and smile politely and say “Fine” when someone asks us how we’re doing.  The truth is that most of us have very little emotional reserve to spend on other people’s messes because we’re so engulfed in our own, and so when we ask how someone is, it’s rare that we’re truly hoping they’ll bare their soul to us.  And honestly, we’re so good at hiding stuff, that even though our own junk is painfully obvious to us, it appears that everyone else is doing just great.  This is how we end up wearing masks, not just in church, but almost everywhere.

And then we come to worship and we hear things like, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. … Do not worry about anything.”  Who is this guy?  I will be the first to admit it:  Paul sometimes comes off as smug.  His confidence in his role as an apostle and his handle on the truth of Jesus is almost off-putting at times.  But here’s the kicker:  when Paul wrote this letter to the church he’d founded in Philippi, he was in prison.  And if you extend the regular lectionary reading – which stopped at verse nine – a little farther like we did this morning, you get a brief glimpse behind the scenes.  He has received a gift from them, and while he’s not effusive, you can tell that it meant a lot to him.  And in his fairly bumbling attempt to express his gratitude, while desperately trying to avoid sounding needy, he gives us some helpful background through which to read his earlier words.  “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”  It turns out that these are not the words of a man who has everything he needs, for whom life has unfolded smoothly and generously.  This is hard-won wisdom from a man who’s in prison for his beliefs, who has learned, as he writes, “the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.”  “It was kind of you,” he tells the Philippians, “to share my distress.”

And I think that last line there is perhaps the most telling.  Part of how Paul stayed so strong, so positive, so faithful, while in danger at sea or in prison, was that he never felt alone.  He knew that he was part of the Body of Christ, and he had experienced that Body of Christ all around the Mediterranean.  He knew the Body of Christ to be one that laughs with those who laugh and weeps with those who weep.  He knew that following Christ doesn’t mean your life will always be awesome, but that you’ll have support throughout everything that comes your way.  He knew that the church is called to support each person through whatever comes their way.  And when the church managed to live up to this calling, he was grateful.  Because he also knew the church was full of human beings.

The thing about being part of the church is that too often, we let the human beings get in our way, and we forget that the true foundation of the church is God’s love, not how nice and compassionate we manage to be to one another.  Yes, the primary way we experience God’s love is through other people, but people are unreliable.  We mess up.  We fail one another, far more often than we’d like.  We do our best to support one another, even when our own emotional reserves are low, but that’s rarely going to be enough for most of us.

The gift we can give one another, as the church, is not just the support that flows from our own hearts, but the gift of knowing how to call upon God when trouble comes.  Paul was able to tell the Philippians to rejoice and stop worrying with a straight face because he’d been through plenty himself and discovered that God is faithful.  Contrary to how it seems sometimes, the point of being in a church is not that you have it all together, but that you know you don’t have to have it all together.  “Sharing the Joy,” in this context, isn’t about having an infectious smile, although that’s not a bad thing.  It’s about talking with one another about what gets us through.  It’s about being willing to be vulnerable enough to put down our masks and admit we need help.  When we’re going through a rough time, encouragement from someone who seems to have never had a tough day in their whole life doesn’t mean much.  But words of support from someone who made it through to the other side can be transformative.  Holding hands can warm us up a little bit, but if we can all gather around the fire, we’ll find a more sustainable source of warmth.

What does “Sharing the Joy” look like?  It looks like listening with respect and concern as each person shares during prayer time in worship.  It looks like parents of grown children offering encouragement to parents of teenagers.  It looks like people telling others about the prayer practices that got them through a difficult time.  It looks like friends talking through what Jesus means in their life and how that has transformed the way they live.  It looks like opening our doors wide to our community and welcoming in all people without judgment.

I do not think the joy we celebrate here is a superficial cheer.  But we always have to guard against that impression that masks are required, because it’s an impulse that lives with each one of us.  We must push ourselves to be honest, to be authentic, to be real about what’s going on in our lives.  We must push ourselves to trust one another with the tender parts of our lives, and we must do our best to hold those tender places as gently as we can for one another.  We will all have moments when we need to be led back to the fire.  We will all have moments when that fire seems like the only thing we have to give thanks for.

I think that is another of the little clues Paul leaves in his letter.  He has learned the secret “of having plenty and of being in need.”  And I think he actually does tell us what it is, though he doesn’t underline it all that clearly.  The secret is thanksgiving.  This is not about forced cheerfulness or displays of hypocrisy.  It’s about the way giving thanks actually changes our hearts and our minds.  It’s one thing to give thanks when things are good.  This is a way of maintaining our humility, by recognizing that things aren’t good simply because we’re awesome and deserve to have awesome lives.  And sometimes that is a challenge.  But even more challenging is sincerely giving thanks when it seems there’s nothing to be thankful for.  Paul pushes us to recognize that there’s always something.  And when we do, when we can bring ourselves to remember God’s love and God’s grace and God’s care, it changes us.  It shifts our perspective and revives our hope.  This is the gift we must share with one another.  This is the joy of life in Christ that we are offered each week – a time to give thanks, a time to recall all that God has done and trust in what God will do.

So however you’re feeling today – whether your life is on track or whether it’s unraveling in a multitude of directions right at this moment – let’s give thanks.  Whether you are smiling or smiling through tears, let’s open our hearts to the joy of Christ’s presence.  Whether the gift you bring is a coping strategy someone else desperately needs, or whether it’s the gift of modeling vulnerability as bravely as you can, we need your gift, so that we can multiply our joy.

Let us be the church together – a messy, joyful gathering of human beings, centered around a fire of joy not of our own making, one that sustains us and redeems us, so that we might offer the light of Christ to one another in all circumstances, with gentleness and hope.  Alleluia and Amen!