Sometimes, our best laid plans are wilted by the
realities of a broken world. Sometimes, words that
seemed suitable turn to ash before they are ever
spoken. Owing at least partially to my passionate
proclivity for advance preparation, my practice is to
plan service themes each summer for the full program
year, September to May. And so, way back in July,
putting together a series of sermons on the demands
that faith makes of us, October the 15th was deemed
the day to extol the virtue of joy.
And now, that day has come, and that very virtue
feels improper, unseemly, even tasteless. For a full
week now, we have absorbed the agonizing images,
videos, firsthand accounts, and news reports of
terror, of senseless violence, and the commencement
of war in Israel. The toll of the suffering is only
beginning to come into focus. There will surely be
more to come. The coordinated cruelty of the terrorist
attack will reverberate in ways that bring incalculable
pain to Palestinians and Israelis alike. The world
watches in heartbreak, horror, and helplessness.
And so, clearly, I missed the mark on those sunny
summer days of planning.
Who commends joy when misery is raw and grief
is overwhelming?
Who preaches that sermon today?
Maybe the Apostle Paul does. Paul, an evangelist
and itinerant church planter, did not have the luxury
of planning sermon series, much less an entire
year’s worth. Paul wrote urgent letters, appeals
addressed to communities of faith facing the full
range of human emotion and experience. Scholars
agree that First Thessalonians is the first of Paul’s
many letters. In the opening chapters, the apostle
describes some of what he has already endured
in his mission of sharing the Gospel in the Roman
world, writing how he has “suffered and been
shamefully mistreated in his travels and for his
preaching.” Then, Paul turns to the circumstances
of his readers. They are in the grip of grief. We don’t
know all the details, but some shared communal
experience of pain and loss has overwhelmed the
nascent faith of the Thessalonian Christians.
Given all of this—Paul’s suffering and the
community’s grief—we may be surprised that
Paul gives the instructions we just heard. “Rejoice
always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all
circumstances.” In all circumstances? Does Paul
really know what he is asking of us?
We may want to explain his folly. Afterall, Paul is still
an amateur apostle. He’s new at all this. Perhaps
over time he will grow out of such unreasonable
demands. Not so. If you keep turning in your Bible,
you will come to the Letter to the Philippians, likely
Paul’s final correspondence. He writes the letter from
prison in Rome where he is awaiting a sentence
that is likely to demand his own life. In those
circumstances, the seasoned, experienced apostle
writes, “Rejoice always; again, I will say rejoice.”
What is it that leads Paul to commend joy no
matter what else may come? Here’s what I think.
It is not naivete. It is wisdom. It is not starry-eyed,
pie-in-the-sky, flippant positivity. The joy which
Paul commands is fed by a deep well of trust in
the goodness of God. Like his ancestor David,
Paul has found the presence of God in the least
likely of places. And so, despite everything, Paul
rejoices as David danced.
Admittedly, it is a radically irrational choice.
Sometimes, joy is the unexpected guest at what
feels like the wrong moment. Sometimes, joy
feels inappropriate, out of place. Sometimes, joy
interrupts our grim solemnity. And sometimes, joy
is the only sustaining response to a world beset by
tragedy and lives upended by grief.
This week, our family traveled to Colorado for fall
break. The beauty of those Rocky Mountains and the
gift of unhurried time together felt incongruous with
the news I read whenever I picked up my phone. All
week long, I struggled with the blatant contradiction
even as I soaked up the grace of those days together.
On Friday evening, we visited the Estes Park Memorial
Observatory for an extraordinary experience of
stargazing. With twelve other visitors from all around
the country, we sat on metal folding chairs as Mike
Connolly introduced himself and the stars and planets
we would be viewing. But before we climbed the
stairs, Mike told a story.
On July 2, 2005, two of his three children were
tragically killed in an accident. As they waded through
the fog of grief, Mike and his wife Carole made the
choice to do something to honor the memory of their
children and perhaps give them a purpose. Mike is an
aerospace engineer, and as he grieved the loss of his
children, he also remembered how many nights he
stayed up too late with his children viewing stars and
planets through the telescope. And so, they formed
a foundation, built the observatory, and immediately
gave it away to the community. Now, Mike spends his
days teaching students in the elementary, middle, and
high schools in town to identify stars and marvel at
the night sky. And a couple nights a week, he invites
visitors—no charge—to come and do the same. He
explained to us how this simple act of giving back
brought him a sense of peace and, in time, even
joy. That joy was obvious as we sat huddled under
blankets with a group of strangers witnessing the
wonder of the heavens and the beauty of one man’s
grief transformed.
We can choose joy even in the most daunting of
circumstances. But we cannot do it alone.
Lost in the English translation of Paul’s original Greek
is the important detail that every imperative in this
morning’s passage is plural. In fact, this section of
the letter begins with instructions that enable us to
embrace joy preemptively. “Encourage one another,”
the apostle writes. “Build up each other.” Friends, joy
is never a solo endeavor. You simply cannot produce
joy all by yourself.
The practice began early this summer. Our son
Ben was feeling left out as a group of older boys
rode bikes without training wheels around the
neighborhood, and Ben asked if we could talk.
At the edge of our yard, there is an old wicker
bench, and there we sat down. For months now,
Ben and I have made our way to that bench. We
call it our talking bench. That first day, together
we created an imaginary neighborhood. It looks a
lot like our neighborhood, but there are dramatic
improvements. For starters, we imagined that
there was a series of tunnels from one house to
the next so that children could go from basement
to basement to play with their friends without
disturbing their parents. We thought about zip-lines
and slides. We added a full-sized swimming pool in
the cul-de-sac and a basketball court on the lawn.
Every kid gets a go-kart to ride.
And then, Ben had a timely idea. “Hey, Dad. What if
every person in our neighborhood had a button they
could push whenever they wanted someone to play
with them? I would call it a lonely alarm. If you’re
feeling lonely, you just push the alarm, and someone
will come and be with you. That way, no one will be
sad or left out.”
Don’t you think there would be high demand for one
of Ben’s lonely alarms? Paul tells the Thessalonian
Christians, “If you want to experience joy in a time
of grief, you have to build each other up; you must
encourage one another. Joy shared is joy multiplied.”
And so, I think of Paul, urging members of the early
church—whose hearts were hurting—to rejoice
anyway, to trust a deeper power at work in this world
of pain. I think of an aerospace engineer in Colorado,
who still feels every single day the sting of loss and
the absence of his precious children, who gathers
communities of amateur stargazers and creates
space for wonder. And yes, I think of this moment in
our world, which demands so much of us, can leave
us feeling weary and frayed. This moment when
we might find deeper reservoirs of compassion for
each other, a greater capacity to savor the joy we are
given. This moment when we might choose to offer
one small gesture of kindness, one simple act of care
for another.
Friends, there is a choice. We can keep pushing
joy out into an unknown future, or we can seek the
goodness of God in this moment we’ve been given.
There is a choice. We can try to go it alone, all by
ourselves, or we can welcome the gift of community
that creates the capacity for deeper fulfillment. There
is a choice.
Here’s what we know intuitively or learn as we
travel the road of life. If we delay joy, if we put it off
until everything is perfect, if we insist on the right
circumstances or the right crowd, the joy we seek will
simply never come. And in time, we will look back on
a life of missed opportunities and declined invitations,
a life spent wishing we had one more chance.
Joy comes despite everything else.
Faith asks us to welcome this gift of grace. Amen.