Joy

 

 

 


                                 

Watch this week’s service on YouTube by clicking:

October 20 Worship Service Video

 

 

Join us for Worship Sunday at 10:00 AM followed by fellowship and refreshments in the He/SheBrews Café

 

 

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Dear Friends

Welcome to worship for Sunday, October 20, 2024.

I had a couple of welcome responses from last week’s sermon that came from members of our online community. They all resonated with the teaching of Jesus “Do not worry.” We are all in agreement that we would do well to worry less. But isn’t this the ultimate in ‘easier said than done’?

One of the things I said last week was that we might consider what is the opposite of worry/anxiety. I referenced a commentary that suggested the answer was joy. I liked that and people seemed to connect with that idea. Joy as an antidote to worry seems logical and given that last week was Thanksgiving I think we could see that being in a joyful state of mind and heart makes it easier to be thankful. In a worrisome state it is hard to find anything to be grateful for.

All of this is well and good as long as we don’t think too deeply about how difficult it is to choose our emotional state. ‘Do not worry’, Jesus says as though we can simply agree with that intellectually and get on with it. ‘Choose joy’, Michael says as though joy can be summoned with cognitive assent. Anyone who has seen the “Inside Out” movies knows that emotions arise out of circumstance and experience and not as a consequence of thought. Frankly, we all are very well aware that emotions seem to come from anywhere other than rational thought. (I could go off on a Star Trek/Spock tangent here but I am going to resist. It isn’t logical!!)

I would be disappointed if I thought that Jesus believed that the way to alleviate anxiety was to simply choose otherwise. But I don’t think that is what he was saying in those verses from Matthew. The pathway to not worrying, just like the pathway to knowing joy, is, I believe, rehearsal.

Jesus invites us to rehearse joy. And the more we rehearse joy the better we get at it. And the better we get at it, the less room there is for worry to creep in. Rehearsing joy can take many forms. It is self care. It is sabbath rest. It is following your passions. It is time with loved ones. And it is singing and praying and reflecting in worship. Worship is an excellent antidote to worry if worship can be thought of as rehearsing joy.

One of the things that our in-person community got to experience last week that our online community did not was being present for the sacrament of baptism. I may have talked about it in both places but talk is cheap. Those of us who were present got to witness nervous parents and crying children and uncomfortable visiting family members. We rehearse joy in baptism precisely because we know there is so much to worry about in the caring and raising of children. My hope is always that in some small way the memory of baptism will help parents remember joy when it becomes difficult to do so.

Caring for the spirit, attending to our spiritual needs, placing ourselves in a community that rehearses joy, these are the ways to heed the lesson, ‘Do not worry’.

 

Grace and peace,

Michael