Overview

“A person will be called to account on Judgement Day for every permissible thing he might have enjoyed . . . but did not.” - Talmud

This is an old rabbinic teaching found in the Talmud. And it’s gold. “A person will be called to account on Judgement Day for every permissible thing he might have enjoyed . . . but did not.”

Just run with this for a minute. 

We will be judged for not enjoying life. We often associate our fate by what we do and the actions we take. But what about the things we don’t do and the actions we don’t take? Could we be called into account for those? 

This new sermon series isn’t about our final judgment day, but it is very much about the things we might be missing, or at least searching for up until our judgment day . . . and that thing is joy. 

Joy is the bedrock of a sustained faith. It’s deeper and weightier than happiness. It doesn’t dismiss or overlook or sidestep the pain of life. It actually consoles it. It lays at the bottom (or underneath or just beyond) the pain cycle we’re in.

Think of it like this: Last month we introduced a way of categorizing our faith journeys labeling it, “Order. Disorder. Reorder.” We’re using this construct, taken and adapted from the Center for Action and Contemplation, as a lens for seeing joy.

When we’re young, we’re happy. We pursue happiness. We fall in love with things. We create things. We explore things. We’re pursuing happiness. 

But then pain enters the fray. Life gets bumpy and our orderly happiness is haunted and interrupted by inexplicable and even sometimes irreconcilable pain. 

Order turns into Disorder. 

A lot of people’s faith journeys stop here. They can’t get passed the pain or baggage of life (or church or family or health or careers or failures). But, as Christians, we need to, and here’s how: We must find and live out of joy. 

Joy is the secret ingredient that we need in order to live faithfully. 

When you’re with the spiritual teachers of your lives . . . those real . . . holy . . . gurus that move you on a soul-level, they all, without fail, are tapped into joy. Is it because they’ve suffered less? No! Quite the opposite. 

But they have done the painful, soul-searching work of processing their pain and found joy on the other side of Disorder. They’ve Reordered themselves by building on the foundation of joy. And we can too. 

This was true for Paul as he wrote Philippians from a jail cell. He had every reason to be “disordered,” but he wasn’t. And it wasn’t because he had a toxic positivity either. Paul was in touch with his pain; he understood the fragility of life and accepted the fact that he may not make it out of prison alive. It’s why he so famously says, “to die is gain.” You can hear his joy coming through even in the face of pain. 

So how do we live with this joy? How to we discover and claim it ourselves? 

We have to work through our pain to get to joy. To avoid pain is to revert back to a toxic positivity that lands on the shallow realities of happiness. What we’re called to do as Christians if work through our pain and find the depths of joy on the other side. 

This, and more, is what we’ll explore together in September’s new sermon series, “With Joy.” We look forward to worshipping with you online and, perhaps, in-person this September.