January 17, 2009
Rev. Doug Horner

Time of great joy

During a wedding rehearsal, the groom approached the pastor with an unusual offer: "Look, I'll give you $100 if you'll change the wedding vows. When you get to the part where I'm supposed to promise to love, honor, obey and be faithful to her forever, I'd appreciate it if you'd just leave the faithful part out.

He passed the minister a $100 bill and walked away satisfied.

At the wedding, when it came time for the groom’s vows, the pastor looked the young man in the eye and said: "Will you promise to prostrate yourself before her, obey her every command and wish, serve her breakfast in bed every morning of your life, and swear eternally before God and your lovely wife that you will never even look at another woman, as long as you both shall live?"

The groom gulped and looked around, and said in a tiny voice, "I will." Afterwards, the groom went to the pastor and hissed: "I thought we had a deal!" The pastor put a $100 bill into the groom’s hand and said: "She gave me $200."

Vows mean everything. Weddings are important moments. For Jews, a wedding was not just an hour long ceremony or a beautiful Kodak moment, but a seven day long experience shared by the entire community. That sounds strange to our modern way of thinking, but this weeklong community-wide binge offered a bright interlude in an otherwise dreary existence. Weddings were a time of great joy.

At the wedding in Cana of Galilee, there was great joy but a shortage of wine. Not only was that a social embarrassment, it was also an omen, a bad sign that this particular marriage wouldn’t reach its full potential.

So Mary approached Jesus, who happened to be standing there minding his own business, and asks him to get some wine. He is a little indignant about it, like he had something better to do, but does it anyway, because he doesn’t want to disappoint his mother, and because he could. After all he’s Jesus . . . and the party goes on. Not only is it wine, but this is great wine. The best! He did the bridegroom a favor and saved the best for last. It is a moment of great joy for all. And not the last one.

There were other moments of great joy in Jesus’ life. At Jesus’ baptism, a voice from the heavens spoke and said “this is my son, whom I love; with whom I am well-pleased.” I can imagine him coming up out of the water and really experiencing the thrill of being alive all over again, which is the hallmark of a good dunking. And there were other recorded moments of great joy: (Matthew 13:20) The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy.
Or . . .

(Matthew 13:44) "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Here’s another . . .

(Luke 2:10) But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. And . . .

(Luke 6:23) "Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. And my all time favorite parable goes like this: "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Do you not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until you finds it? 5And when you find it, you joyfully puts it on your shoulders 6and go home. Then you calls your friends and neighbors together and say, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' 7I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

That one sheep on the shoulders of the shepherd could very well be you. If we don’t let the troubles of the world bring us down.

There is a lot of activity in the world which will bring us down if we let it. The recent earthquake in Haiti killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed homes and city buildings, forced people to run to the hills for fear of bandits and gangs of thieves. This affects people whom I know and love. It has my stomach in knots; this could bring me down. But I won’t let it. Violence in my church, in the schools and programs could bring me down, every time I see people solving their problems with fists rather than words, it grieves me. Sex trafficking, here in our city and world wide is a huge dark issue, which is really a form of modern day slavery. Young people run away from troubled homes and find more trouble. Poverty of such an extreme nature that it causes families to sell off their young girls, some call it arranged marriages at 10 years old, this is becoming more and more of an issue; and the fact that poverty is such a huge overwhelming problem can really mess with my mind.

Another thing that could bring me down is the fact that more teenagers right here in our neighborhood are having babies. . . and another thing is that more teenagers are using drugs at a younger age, and they’re even drinking at home. These things affect all of us, not just in our city but in the suburbs. Drug addiction, meth, crack, heroin, pain killers, alcohol, sniffing glue and paint. These things sap the life out of communities, families and people. These things can bring us down if we let them. We can get into such despair that we might want to take our own lives.

I have counseled more than a few individuals recently who have been so low that suicide is an option for them. Face the facts. Over one million people commit suicide every year, making it the tenth-leading cause of death worldwide. It is a leading cause of death among teenagers and adults under 35. Teenage suicide is worse today than ever before. Do you know why? People cannot pull themselves up. They give up.

Go to the Bible passage and you may see a story about a wedding. But I see an invitation. It is an opportunity for us to get to know the joy of being one of the guests at the banquet set for us by an extremely compassionate, loving, forgiving and gracious God. Salvation is ours for the asking, but it isn’t going to be handed to us like a baby gets the rattle that falls out of its hands onto the floor. We have to ask.

My friends, there are three things we can do to help bring more joy to the world. First, we need to start praying more. Praying by ourselves. Praying with each other; praying for each other. We can pray on our knees, pray in a chair, pray on our bed. We can pray over the internet, pray over the phone. It is good to get in the habit of praying as a group, as a family, even your youth group, do you pray together? And if you get real in your prayers, you will hear what is really going on in a person’s life; because you cannot pray and hide the pain of the human condition. Prayer breeds honesty. It forms lasting bonds with each other. These bonds can save someone’s life. And that is a miracle. That is the kind of healing that Jesus does throughout his ministry. Because what we pray about is what we want to ask God to help us with. God knows we need plenty of help.

Another kind of prayer is more personal: Centering Prayer. This helps me daily -- with patience, tolerance and acceptance. The habit of centering prayer is something I enjoy working on; practicing the method of centering prayer makes my life better. And you know what? There are moments of joy in prayer. Often, I will end a session and feel so much better, almost joyful, knowing, feeling, sensing intuitively that I am a child of God and God wants only the best for me, that God is working to make my life better, and that God is supporting and nurturing my life, my relationships and my work. God’s goodness feeds my soul. This is real for me. After I sit with someone who wants to kill themselves, I usually need a moment or two to get my mind back in the game. So I pray . . . I want everyone to look at psalm 36 when they get home, if we need to make more copies. . . It is a lifesaver. Use it as a prayer and it could be someone’s last hope. So start praying more, first of all.

The second thing we can do to bring more joy into the world is addressing the immediate needs of the people who are suffering. We must try to prevent the success of teenagers who may be considering suicide. Or help end suffering from hunger, homelessness, lack of education, lack of access to quality medical care. A good thing is to help rake leaves for an elderly person, or delivering meals to shut ins. An intervention may be as simple as making an anonymous call to get help; and be a good friend – be there for each other on the phone or in school, in prayer, at the store, so that friends don’t suffer.

In the Haiti disaster, the fact is that 100s of thousands of people are homeless without food and water. It seems that the world is mobilizing to quickly get some resources together and do on a large scale what we cannot do alone; soon we will be able to send resources to the people we trust and they will help distribute them. Soon, but not now. For now we have to wait and trust that God knows the right time for responding. Right now in Haiti, any aide that arrives will have to have armed guards to secure it. There are immense risks involved in disbursing relief. But we can formulate plans and we can communicate with our friends and electronically transfer money. And these simple things can alleviate suffering at one level.

And the third thing we can do to bring more joy in to the world is get together and make plans to intervene when the time is right. As we wait to see how things unfold, we can work on a plan to help in the best way, the most helpful way. We cannot do it all. We will teach later, we will share what we know about budgeting money, cooking new foods, building better earthquake resistant structures when we have the chance, but for now all we can do is pray, offer moments of hope for resources, and be there waiting while they make the decisions that will save their lives. And practice patience, tolerance and acceptance.

When the time is right, we can talk to our friends who might want to commit suicide. We will know what to say. God will tell us what to say. What we want to do is think of the most helpful thing to say. Think of the most helpful phrase that will get the conversation flowing. And then be ready to listen. For example, we could say something like this: “you know, Tony, I have noticed that you are not yourself, lately. You seem a little down, and others have noticed it, too. We are your friends and we care about you very much and we want you to know that you can tell us. We are not scared of what you might say and we will not walk away. You don’t have to go through any of this alone, but we can face this together.”

But, you know something. People stop there at that particular activity. And it is too soon. This is where we take our friend by the hand and say “can I pray with you.” And you don’t stop for the answer, then you say a prayer for healing, asking God to give us strength and courage to get through the tough times, asking for guidance and a clear direction in a clouded, confusing situation. We have to pray with them and ask, it is not going to just happen.

This is what people do who really profess a belief that Jesus can change things. This is the miracle that we can perform. To offer our faith to other people so that they can see it and use it and maybe it will save someone’s life. This makes our faith tangible to others.

We offer the faith which passes all understanding; the faith which comes from God, which says that in time, joy will return to our hearts. God’s love is real and tangible. Peace will return, hardship will cease and suffering will be a thing of the past.

Malinda Elizabeth Berry writes: “Jesus is the One whose ministry is characterized by wonders. But these wonders were not, like the magicians of the day, intended merely to astound or amuse the observer. He performed reliable signs of God’s glory.” If we believe in a God, a mighty God who does wondrous things, then it is not a matter of if God can heal us, only when God heals us – when we ask God for the healing that is coming our way.

Now this is something we can rejoice about. This is why “joy” is one of the seasons of advent. This is why the leper went away singing Jesus praises. This is why the man buys the field with the treasure buried in it. The kingdom of God is like going to a wedding, and it lasts a week, and the wine never runs out. The kingdom of God is a place free from fear, like the “world house” about which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.