Woohoo
Notes
Transcript
John 16:16-33
Moments of Joy
Moments of Joy
What does joy mean? Is it different from happiness in some way? And if it is… is it really all that great?
I had a joy-defining moment this week.
Dylan had his art featured, along with other Adams 12 elementary school kids in the Frontrange library this week. Anna had the kids and I pulled in and met them there, kind of across the parking lot. And I called them. They were a couple hundred feet away. And Arabelle heard me and she just took off running. To me. And Dylan took off running after. To me.
Logan was too cool. He walked.
They reached me and did the trusting kid lunge where you just leap knowing that Dad is going to catch you somehow.
It was absolute beauty, absolute joy. Their joy, maybe, but I was full of joy.
Having my kids running towards me at the library. (Logan was too cool).
If I could bottle that moment… joy. It filled me up, I felt warm and loved and great and exactly where I was supposed to be in place and in time and in relationship. And I always want to feel that way. I want more and more of that. It is happiness, it is beauty, it is joy.
Suffering Servants
Suffering Servants
There is a perception of Christianity out there that goes like this: Christianity is about how Jesus died for your sins. So you should feel bad that Jesus died and you should feel bad about your sins, and if possible, you should try and make other people feel bad about theirs. That’s called evangelism.
This is a religion of guilt and shame.
Now I wish that were a strawmen, but I interact regularly with Internet peoples saying pretty much exactly that. And many of the threads we have followed in Jesus’ teaching can play into that kind of thinking.
We talked about Jesus giving the Holy Spirit. And that’s like a double whammy because that means God is watching me from the inside and judging me and also anything I do wrong with my body is now sacrilege to the temple of the Holy Spirit. Guilt and shame.
We talked about Jesus calling us to this kind of trinity of equality: loving abiding obedience. Or obedient abiding love. Keeping his commands which is to love which is to abide. But we can easily take that obedience piece and build a cage of guilt and shame every time we fall short.
WE talked about Jesus warning us that the world will hate us as it hates him, and there will be trouble. And, just as taking that as an excuse for being loudly self-righteous is a danger, we can also imprison ourselves in guilt and shame and sorrow, and then tell ourselves that “oh, it’s awful and Jesus said there will be trouble so there you go.”
And it makes all the sense in the world that this teaching would be kind of dark and gloomy because after all, this is Crucifixion Eve, Jesus is hours away from betrayal and arrest, minutes away from his agony and stress in the Garden of Gethsemane.
So, in conclusion, life sucks, then you die, and then probably it gets better because heaven.
Now I hope that doesn’t sound like Christianity to you. Or Jesus. Or the gospel. Because that is absolute garbage. And, miraculously, on the very night he was betrayed, Jesus makes it so absolutely clear what his intention is for his disciples; what all of these things and teaching add up to for them. And it is this:
Joy.
That Your Joy May Be Complete
That Your Joy May Be Complete
John 16:16-33
16 “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” 17 So some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?” 18 So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.” 19 Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? 20 Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.
Your sorrow will turn into joy. A total reversal. You were sorrowful… then… it turned into joy.
It looks like this. We could not find Dylan’s artwork in the library. The kids had already searched before I got there, couldn’t find it anywhere. Sad face.
Then, Dylan looked up and says “Oh, there it is.” Happy face. We had sorrow, then we had joy. Complicated.
When I first approached this passage I wanted to preach on the difference between joy and happiness. I have heard that sermon and it’s pretty great. The problem I had is that I did a word study and found no meaningful difference between the words. In fact, one is usually defined using the other.
And so I have a very complicated, technical definition for us.
Joy is: That inner feeling of “woohoo.”
Jesus says sadness is coming, and he refers here to his betrayal and crucifixion and death. But something is going to happen that turns that into “woohoo.”
And then this powerful analogy:
21 When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
If you have been in the delivery room… then you know. I have a friend who has “gone into labor” a dozen times over the last few years. Screaming, pushing, excruciating labor and then… kidney stone. No joy. Relief… but no joy.
I remember the delivery room with each of my kids. Arabelle’s I remember particularly well. The transformation of the room. Messy screaming pain gross. Push cry, nurses go “swish, wash, swipe” they are gone in 5 seconds and we just have this magical new human being in our arms. Pure absolute joy.
22 So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. 23 In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Now this is my favorite part. Until now Jesus has been talking the disciples through a very specific set of circumstances that is going to occur. You are going to have a moment of suffering, but it is going to transform into joy. Because I will be dead… and then I will be alive. Sorrow… then joy.
But then he adds this bit at the end the brings in the whole rest of their lives. In fact, it is the whole rest of discipleship and Christian living.
In that day, the coming day, you will ask nothing of me… because Jesus won’t be there. He will leave after a short time and send the Holy Spirit. And then you will ask the Father in the name of Jesus. And he will give it to you. And it will happen this way… that your joy may be full.
And that isn’t the first time we heard the phrase.
John 15:10-11
10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
John 16:23-24
23 In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
That your joy may be full.
Cup with Free Refills
Cup with Free Refills
It is like I have a cup within me. My cup looks a giant silver chalice. Because I’m a nerd.
I have a cup within me. And it is for joy. It is my joy cup. And certain things fill up my cup with joy. My kids being born, my kids running to me across a parking lot. Joy filling up.
And that actually kind of lasts a bit. I can sip and enjoy that for days. Sometimes life pushes me around, kind of spills out some of my joy. Jesus says this:
That cup of joy… it is refillable. And I am offering free refills. In fact, the Holy Spirit I am sending you, yeah one of his first gifts is this: joy.
And those commands I am giving you, “these things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Fill it up.
And remember, you are loving one another constantly. Fill it up.
And prayer in my name? That is prayer in and on my mission towards my purposes? That whole reason for the prayer cycle, the request and the answer, you will receive, that your joy may be full. Fill it up.
Jesus wants you to be full of joy. Happiness. And there will be struggles and even persecutions along the way, but he is constantly wanting to fill that cup up, even in the midst of pain and all the things.
Now here is how free refills changes everything. And I am going to use wine because that is God’s favorite metaphor for joy.
Imagine you are at a restaurant and you just ordered an expensive glass of wine to go with your steak. And just as you’re about to take that first sip… life happens. You drop the glass. Wine gone. That is sadness… unless your waiter is feeling very generous, this just means no wine for you.
Now you are on a cruise… and it is free drinks all week. The boat heaves and your wine goes all over. Ah well, napkin and time for a refill!
That your joy may be full
God wants your joy to be full
God wants your joy to be full
God is for you. He is not against you.
He doesn’t want you trapped in guilt and shame. He has already done everything to free you from that.
God wants you to be full of joy. God wants you to be happy. Or, to use our technical Greek definition: God wants you to say “woohoo!’
Now God knows it isn’t always easy. In this world you will have trouble. And every one of us has a laundry list of “troubles” that we can trot out and compare. We can develop a point system and compete as to who has more or worse or the troubling trouble of them all.
And there are times of grief and sorrow. And it is right to grieve, and it is right to grieve with those who grieve.
But in the midst of all of that, God is faithful to refill our cup. Go get a refill.
Again, this joy brings together all of Jesus’ threads.
The Holy Spirit is within you, gifting you his fruit: love, joy, peace, etc… (those are the best ones).
And even the persecution from a world that hated Jesus, rejecting you because you look and sound and act like him. Consider it pure joy my brothers when you face trials of many kinds.
Jesus commands are, understood and practiced rightly, all for your good, that your joy may be full. Abiding in loving obedience fills your cup, enlarges your cup, supersize that sucker. And what is his first command in this context? Love one another ridiculously. Awkwardly if necessary. And that fills my joy up: giving that kind of love, receiving that kind of love. I love you guys!
Let us worship God together. That your joy may be full.
Let’s hear that inner “woohoo.” And just to make that all too literal. Let’s give 3 woohoos together.
Even if your cup is empty this morning, that’s okay, I call on you to rejoice with those who rejoice, and that is us right now. So three woohoos.
In Jesus name, amen.
