FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Rev. Craig N. Goodrich

Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 22, 2009

“THE GIFTS OF GOD FOR THE FAMILY OF FAITH:

THE GIFT OF JOY”

John 15:7-12

2^nd Corinthians 8:1-7

Philippians 4:4-7

Well, it has been quite a week here at First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, hasn’t it? And you thought “March Madness” was about basketball!! We will talk about the events of this week a little later in this sermon, but I want to move right to the topic of the day and that is JOY, JOY as a gift of God to this family of faith.

But can we be joyful in these hard times. Is it even permitted in Lent?

It was the psalmist who proclaimed, “This is the day that the Lord has made, Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” So my answer is “Yes!”, if we are still breathing, it is a day for joy!

This past Tuesday night prior to the Session meeting the elders met for our regular communion service in the chapel. George gave a meditation on “Joy.” He asked all of us to close our eyes and to think of our times of greatest joy. What came to my mind was a picture of my immediate family, my wife Andie and our three adult children, Caitlin, Peter and Lara, sitting at the dining room table, laughing together. It was poignant for me because not only are we empty nesters, but Pete is 7000 miles away to the west in Fiji, and Lara is 7000 miles to East doing a semester of study in Uganda. It will be awhile before we are all together again. My heart ached with joy.

What about you? What are the times of greatest, your deepest joy?

And what exactly is joy?

One definition I read this week is this “joy is intense, ecstatic, or exultant, happiness or pleasure.” (www.bible-history.com). Now, that doesn’t sound very Presbyterian, does it!?

I like this one better:

“Joy runs deeper than mere pleasure; especially in the spiritual context, it runs deep into the core of us, and radiates throughout. It is the response of something deep in the soul to someone (such as God, or a loved one) or something (like liberation) [that is]…. supremely, even overwhelmingly wonderful.” (www.spirithome.com).

The Greek New Testament word which we translate “joy” is “chara” meaning cheer, gladness or celebration.

For the Christian, joy is a direct response to the love of God in Jesus Christ. Our confessions attribute such joy to the Holy Spirit. (Shorter Catechism at 7.036) And those of you who are Presbyterian born and bred, you will remember the first question of the Larger Catechism from the Westminster Assembly of 1649, “What is the chief and highest end of man?” The answer: “To glorify God and fully enjoy him forever”. You see, joy is Presbyterian after all!!

We identify ourselves in our Purpose Statement on the cover of our worship bulletin as “people of praise.” And we have opportunity to express our joy in worship each week in our prayer and in the hymns we sing.

Do you remember the glorious hymn “Joyful Joyful, We Adore Thee?” The lyrics were written by Henry van Dyke, a Presbyterian minister. He wrote them in 1907 on a visit to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts where he was to lecture. Van Dyke was so moved and inspired by the beauty of that place and the surrounding Berkshire Mountains, God’s good creation, that he in joyful response set words to Beethoven’s final movement of the Ninth Symphony, what we know as the “Ode to Joy.” I believe it is one of the great hymns of all time, a hymn of pure joy in response to the love of God.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus commands his disciples to love one another just as he has loved them that “my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” You see, God’s love and Christ’s love and joy go together.

What is striking in the New Testament is that this joy about which we are speaking, this joy which comes from the overwhelming love of God, does not depend on our circumstances. The apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians while in prison and yet he encourages them, he commands them, to “Rejoice in the Lord, again I will say rejoice.” Joy is a spiritual discipline, if you will, and it is closely associated with gratitude and thanksgiving.

Sometimes joy emerges on the other side of pain and struggle. Think of the expectant mother who knows that she cannot avoid the pains of labor but who also knows that incredible joy waits on the other side. Many of you have experienced that!

In 2^nd Corinthians 8, Paul writes of the churches in Macedonia, Gentile Christians, who in a time of trial and affliction, perhaps even persecution, experience both “extreme poverty” and “abundant joy.” In fact, it was this combination of contrasts, at least to our way of thinking (poverty and joy), that led them to give so generously to the offering Paul sought to take to the believers in Jerusalem. They gave not just according to their means but they gave with abandon, even beyond their means, because they were so excited. They felt privileged to be part of the ministry in which Paul was engaged and eagerly and joyfully contributed to the offering for those fellow believers who were in need.

Well, what about us? Do you think we can become like these Macedonian Christians whom Paul praises? You know, there are many ways to interpret the action of the congregation last Sunday, but here’s one upon which I think we can all agree. I think what this congregation is saying is that we do not want the vital ministries and mission of this Church to flag or to falter even in these hard economic times.

This past week I watched a sermon online which was given by Jim Wallis of the Sojourners Community at the Washington National Cathedral last Sunday. He said that he had recently learned two facts about the Great Depression that he had never known before. The first was that during the Depression the entire building and construction industry had collapsed with one notable exception, the building of churches. There was a boom in church construction. And the second was that during the Great Depression in 1933 the level of giving to churches and to the poor was at an all time high, at a percentage that has never equaled before or since.

What do you think? Could that happen here and now at First Presbyterian? Is that what the Spirit is saying to us? If this last week is any indication, I think maybe so. This week even as the Session continued to work on reductions of up to $300,000 to our 2009 budget, over 55 elders, staff members, and others have contributed to the challenge fund. I would like to share with you one of the many conversations I had this week. On Monday I received a call from one of our members who had been at the congregational meeting. First, he wanted to know if I was OK then he said, “Craig, you know that I usually give $10,000 above my pledge to a specific ministry of the Church. I wasn’t sure I could do it this year because my own business is really struggling, but now I think the Church is going to need it. If you want, I will give that amount to the Annual Campaign and general budget.” I thanked him, checked into it and on the next day, Tuesday, I called him back. I explained to him what was happening in the challenge pool and what I believe is truly a holy energy, a momentum that is occurring, and I asked if we could use his $10,000 for the challenge or matching pool. He listened thoughtfully and then responded “No” and then he paused, make it $15,000.” Listen, we are not asking you to give or increase your pledge that much, unless of course God is leading you to do so. But whatever you give, I pray that you will give it freely and joyfully, with abandon, with faith, trusting God. It is not only your participation but the spirit of your giving that really matters.

Just these final thoughts on joy and our circumstances. While we know that joy is often on the other side of pain, and knowing that helps us get through it, the gospel also maintains that by faith joy is possible even in the midst of hard times and some times even because of them. . James says this: “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete lacking nothing.” James 1:2-4). I think Henry Van Dyke would call this being “victors in the midst of strife.”

Oswald Chambers was a Scottish minister of the early 20^th century died too early at the age of 43 in service as a YMCA Chaplain in Egypt during the First World War. After his death his wife, Gertrude, called Biddy, collected his writings and her notes of his lectures and organized them in what has become one of the great daily devotional books of all time, “My Utmost for his Highest.” The entry for March 7 is entitled “Undaunted Radiance” and is a reflection on Romans 8:37, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Listen…

“The bedrock of the Christian faith is the unmerited, fathomless marvel of the love of God exhibited on the cross of Calvary, a love we never can and never shall merit. Paul says this is the reason we are more than conquerors in all these things, super-victors, with a joy we would not have but for the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us. [And then he gives this illustration]

The surf that distresses the ordinary swimmer produces in the surf-rider the super-joy of going clean through it. Apply that to our own circumstances, these very things -tribulation, distress, persecution, produce in us the super-joy; they are not things to fight. We are more than conquerors through Him in all these things, not in spite of them, but in the midst of them. The saint never knows the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation but because of it… Undaunted radiance is not build on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can alter. The experiences of life, terrible or monotonous, are impotent to touch the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Now that may seem incredible to you, maybe even delusional, but think again of the surf and surf rider illustration.

When I was a boy we vacationed every summer at the beach, first Rehoboth Beach Delaware, then on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

When we were little my father taught each of us three boys (I am in the middle) to body surf. The way he did it was to take us one at a time out into the surf, often the water was just about over our heads. It was scary and exciting, but I was with my dad, hanging on tightly on his back, hugging his neck. We would wait for just the right wave and then he would find just the right spot and tell me “Now! hold on tight!” and then we would take off, Dad throwing himself forward with the momentum of the wave, me hanging on to him for dear life. He with his head down, I with my head up, we rode the waves together and it was exhilarating!!

That is how I learned to ride waves and it is how I taught my children to ride waves. If you have had this experience you know there is nothing like it, the thrill of finding just the right spot, then the abandon, the risking all outstretched in the take off and catching the wave, and then the pounding in the ears, heading to shore being carried by the wave and if lucky, if it is really a good ride, ending up beached on the shore and out of breath, only to turn around and run into the water to do it all over again!

We Goodriches are a wave riding family. Even now when we vacation together at the beach we are all in the water, the three brothers, our wives and the nine children between us all waiting for and riding waves. Even my Dad who is now 83 caught a few waves last summer. But one brilliant sunny day a few years ago when we were all together in the water I got caught up in the exuberance of the moment and on the spot composed a little song which was quickly picked up by the rest of clan. So now when we stand in the water looking out to sea, hoping and waiting for a big wave we sing the Goodrich wave chant. This is how it goes, “Send em biggum wave Oh! send em biggum wave, Oh!, Oh! Oh!” “Send em biggum waves Oh! Send up biggum waves Oh! Oh! Oh!” It’s pretty easy to learn, and if you want I will teach it to you before the next time you go to the beach!

I know, I know. It is not exactly the “Ode to Joy”, but here’s the point and the question, what will you do when the waves come? What will we do? And are we ready? For the waves will surely come. Some are building and looming, and some are here even now. They are waves of trials, of economic crisis and distress, of uncertainty, of dread, anxiety conflict and fear. And yet by the grace and love of God, there is potential for joy in each of them.

So I want us to imagine that we are all together at the beach. We are out in the water up to our chests.

The waves are coming. Some big ones that we did not ask for. But we have to react. What will we do? What are we doing, individually and as Session, Staff and Congregation? It seems to me we have three choices.

Our first option is to freeze; to try to simply brace ourselves for the crash and absorb the blow. We have all seen what happens when we take this approach haven’t we? We bear the full force of the wave; “BOOM!” and we are knocked down and tumbled in the foam.

Second, if we are wiser, more experienced with the ocean, we can try to survive by diving deep under the wave so that as it breaks we come up safe on the other side. But the problem with this approach is we often find ourselves in deeper water and the next wave is quickly bearing down on us.

Or third, we can move out into the deep and meet the wave, find that sweet spot, and turn. We can abandon ourselves and take the risk. We can give it our all and get on top of that wave and then ride, letting the churning wave with all its power carry us together to the shore.

So which shall it be for you, for me, for us? We know the answer.

Let’s go for it!

Let’s trust God and enjoy the exhilaration of the ride!

Thanks be to God for the gift of the unshakeable love of God in Jesus Christ, and thanks be to God for the gift of His abundant JOY!

Alleluia! Amen.