Loving, Living, Learning, the Joy of Faith
“Loving, Living, Learning the Joy of Faith”
Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B May 6, 2018
Acts 10:44-48 John 15:9-17
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Well this is a busy weekend! Yesterday we had a wedding here. After worship today we have a Potluck to celebrate our shared ministry as I’ve been here seven years now and we begin year number eight. This afternoon there is a memorial service at the Heartwood Center for a member of our contemplative prayer group, and in the sanctuary here at 4 p.m. is a concert from the Sandpoint Youth Orchestra. A busy weekend, and life is full through the spectrum, from wedding bliss and music’s melodies to finality of death and the struggles of grief.
As we experience life we understand what happiness feels like and we tend to enjoy being happy. We also know what sadness and despair is like, and sometimes you just get stuck in those for a while, sometimes a long while because life is hard. Whether things are going well or challenging, our scriptures this morning share good news about what it is that helps us through life to have a sense of fullness, of purpose and meaning, and the strength to endure times when it’s difficult to see or feel; times when faith is all we have.
In John 15:9 we hear Jesus say, As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. Love and abiding, which is another way of talking about the intimacy of relationship and connection. God is in Jesus, Jesus is in God, we are in Jesus, and Jesus is in us, meaning God is in us just as God is in Jesus. We, in Christ, participate in the dance of the divine Trinity, and we do this through love.
Putting together the wedding service, and putting this sermon together, I recognized that today’s lectionary passage, the assigned reading from the Gospel of John is from 15:9-17. The bride and groom in their wedding also had John 15:9-12 as one of the readings shared during the service. The same scriptures chosen for the same weekend, without knowing that it was the lectionary passage. Providential! Serendipitous! What amazing coincidence, which is God’s way of remaining anonymous. It was thrilling to make that connection, a confirmation that God is at work in our midst. This simply added to the wonder and amazement and happiness of the wedding.
During a wedding, happiness is tangible as people have good intentions, highest hopes, and sincere openness to the vulnerability and strength of love as two people come together and life is forever changed. As I said earlier, this is a full weekend, and even as we celebrate a wedding, we also are mindful that as our prayer partner has died, the wedding vow with his wife, “as long as we both shall live” has been fulfilled. Death has come and he has died, and as people gather this afternoon I’m sure there will be tears even as we celebrate his life, claim resurrection hope, and are thankful for the love God shared through his life. But I don’t think Happy will be the word to describe the general vibe of that gathering. Not Happy like a wedding, not happy.
We need more than Happiness to sustain us through the fullness of life. We need more than grief because we also need released from despair. What we need, as we claim the gift of God’s love, is JOY. In verse 11 we read, I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. Joy is in us! Happiness and sadness are emotions, and as emotions they are fleeting, they come and go, ebb and flow, peak and level off, and they are not reliable indicators of life’s larger picture. Joy is different than happiness, much deeper than despair. Joy cannot be taken away; even when we don’t feel it, it is still there because it is a gift from God. The joy of the Living Christ is in us. With that Presence, our joy is complete. As some theologians, such as Tony Compolo, define it, joy involves getting to the end of your life knowing that your purpose for living has been fulfilled.
Churches try to express their collective purpose through Mission Statements. As we celebrate 7 years of shared ministry here, one of the things we’re recognizing more and more is that the church is changing. After Pastor Nancy left, this congregation entered into a Mission Study process that took a couple of years. Without looking at the bulletin, who can recite the Mission Statement of this congregation, from memory? Although a few of you might be able to, most people can’t. That Mission Statement is long, and outdated. It was written almost ten years ago. Even Industry recognizes that corporate mission statements only worked for about two years before they needed updated, and many parts of industry today consider mission and vision statements passé, too limiting because our context changes so fast that one static statement can’t keep up.
A few years ago, I tried to wrap my head around what it is that we really do here at First Presbyterian Church, and I came up with my own form of mission statement. It’s short, memorable, and gets to the main points. It says this: Loving, Living, Learning, the Joy of Faith. The very first thing is Loving, just as all God’s commandments and the biblical stories head us toward the main point, that God is love and in loving, we are in God and God is in us. This love is what shapes our Living, which is the second thing. We live out this love and it is expressed and finds it’s foundation in JOY, the joy given by Christ, that makes our joy complete. Again, this joy doesn’t exclude challenges, pain, suffering, and isn’t limited by emotions such as happiness. This deep joy is what shapes our Living. That third aspect of what we do involves most of all, humility. Learning is another way of saying that our stance is open, that we recognize that mystery always has more to reveal. Contemplation and spiritual disciplines teach us to hold things lightly, so that our egos are not stumbling blocks, but become translucent as we allow God’s Spirit and the light of life to flow through us. Learning implies activity, such as hosting retreats and having book studies, finding ways to challenge ourselves to follow Jesus on his path of wisdom and enlightenment.
Loving, Living, Learning, the Joy of Faith! The first part of this is featured on our new website, so as new people search the internet they can see right away what our shared ministry involves. The Presbytery of the Inland Northwest, that regional body of which this congregation is part of is also helping explore what mission and ministry in our context involves. Last weekend we had a regional gathering called The Great Merger, which means the usual presbytery meeting merged with another process, the Learning Communities Process as congregations engage in experiments, then come together to share stories about what their experience involves, how God is revealed through the process, and how we are changed by this engagement. Presbytery is not expressly trying to save the church or grow the membership or make us like the ‘good old days.’ Presbytery is trying to coordinate a group effort at deepening faith, listening to the Spirit speaking through scripture, through the voices of others, and to help JOY be more than theory or theology, but something that makes us complete no matter what the circumstances may involve. Learning; as a Community. Not doing the same old thing expecting different results: this is actually the definition of insanity. Rather, abiding in God, heeding the call to bear fruit that will last, loving one another; these are not done in service or obligation because we are not servants. Verse 15: I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
Loving, Living, Learning, the Joy of Faith. Embracing the fullness of life, we trust that in Christ all things come together. As love and unity claim us, may we live to the glory of God, now, even as forever! Amen.