Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Party Time

by Dave Wilkinson

2 Samuel 6:12-21, Luke 19:29-44, John 16:22

April 8, 2001

I've got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart.

Down in my heart.

Down in my heart.

I've got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart

Down in my heart to stay."

We all know the words. But do we know the beat?

Do our lives match the song we sang as children? Even as children, did our hearts ever sing along with our mouths? How long has it been since we have acted truly joyful? How long has it been since we greeted a new day with deep felt excitement? When did we last exclaim when we saw the dawn, "O Lord!! it's morning!!" rather than "O Lord, it's morning."

For some people it's been a very long time.

"The fire goes out." That's how Bob Green says it in The Fifty Year Dash: "You can see it in certain people you've known for much of your adult life especially those who are a little older than you. They're people you have worked with. The look in their faces, the way they move around the office, the sound of their voices and especially the cast of their eyes -- you can see that the fire is gone."

The fire went out early for a man named Mario Carolla. Listen to what Jim Carolla wrote about his brother Mario a few years ago in the L.A. Times. I've read this numerous times and it still makes me sad. Jim Carolla writes: "I watched my brother die of an unknown disease. I call it half-heartedness. Through a gradual closing of the heart, many of us seem to be joining the ranks of the living dead. Since his death, I have come to understand how magic in a child is wounded early by adult cynicism. The poison produced by half-lived lives shows in our frowns, frustrations and fears. It acts like a toxin to close the door of a child's heart.

"My brother's aging face reflected the closing of his heart. Once full of childhood wonder and surprise, it aged to a clown's mask covering dark cynicism. It looked like an engraved sneer. That mask became the way he dealt with the world, because he could no longer be deeply moved by experiences of the heart." He died because of a stroke. But he had checked out years before.

"My brother spent his entire life avoiding conflicts and issues that could have prepared him for the final crossing. As I watched him gasp for each breath, I pondered whether Mario realized how much of his creative energy he had used to avoid life."

Well I am not like Mario. I have hope in my life. I have people I love. I have things I look forward to. I have things that thrill me. I do walk with God. I do have the joy joy joy joy down in my heart. It's just that I sometimes have a hard time letting it bubble to the surface.

Today is Palm Sunday the day of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The gospels tell how the followers of the Lord celebrated before Him as he entered the city. I wish I could have been there. But if I had been there, I wonder if I would have enjoyed it as I should. Or would I have spent all my time wondering if I was holding my palm branch at the right angle, worrying that some child was going to get poked in the eye with the sharp leaf point, debating if it is correctly "Hallelujah" or "Alleluia."

I other words, although I am named David, I am not Davidic. Our Old Testament passage tells how David led the company bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. David danced and leaped before the Lord while wearing a rather short linen kilt called an ephod. Everyone was celebrating and shouting and blowing trumpets except of course for David's wife Michal who was scandalized by David's undignified behavior and especially by the fact that David neglected to wear his swim suit under his kilt a fact that became obvious to everyone as he celebrated. Remember that Michal was the daughter of King Saul. She had pretty definite ideas of kingly behavior which David was failing to meet. David assured her that the Lord had chosen him and that he had to celebrate. He assured her that would "be even more undignified than this."

Michal disapproved. I'm sure she was confident that God agreed with her because we all know that God is big on decency and restraint. But apparently God didn't agree. He approved. He even overlooked David's indiscreet dress for the sake of his celebrating spirit. God later calls David a man after His own heart. And I believe that part of the reason for this is because, unlike me, David knows how to let himself go and enjoy the party. In this way, David is like God -- the God who parties.

Is God joyful? The evidence says "Yes" -- very joyful. Creation is one big bash. Genesis describes God's creativity by saying again and again, "And He saw that it was good." There is a flamboyance about it all. He doesn't just create flowers. He creates all kinds and colors and shapes, and hides some of His most glorious designs in the most inaccessible corners of the tropical jungle, or on the snowy slopes of mountains. He does it for no utilitarian reason, but for joy. He doesn't just create a minimalist solar system just large enough to support life on an earth. He creates millions of galaxies. Who else but a joyful God would have thought of hiding pearls in the bottom of the sea in a dull looking oyster, or putting diamonds and rubies deep in the ground? There is a flamboyance, an extravagance about God's creation. God could have made it all so dull. But He enjoys His creation. He delights in it!

Of course it is Jesus, God made flesh, who gives us the best clue to God's core nature. And one criticism leveled at Jesus was that He didn't act religious enough. He not only went to parties. He enjoyed them. He was charged with being a "wine bibber and a glutton." Jesus was a joyful person, and His joy was rooted and grounded in His consciousness of God. His awareness of God was not a damper on His capacity for joy. It was a release. Jesus saw God's delight in the birds of the air, the lilies of the field. He saw God's delight in little children, and in adults seeking Him. Jesus understood that life is hard, that there is suffering and tragedy, but it was His expressed intention that as His followers we are to be full of joy His joy. At the Last Supper, His betrayer is in their midst. Jesus is to face death on a cross the next day. But as He talks to His disciples about the Kingdom of God and their relationship to it, He says: "these things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:11).

Then there's the testimony of scripture. God delights in His people. We are accustomed to imagining people rejoicing over God, but here is God delighting in us. Isaiah 62 quotes what God says to Israel: "You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord -- you shall be called My delight is in her -- for the Lord delights in you -- and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you." So many scriptures point to a God who had a wonderful time creating and has a glorious time sustaining what He has made. And He delights in us.

So if joy is God's nature and if we are made in God's image then why don't we enjoy as God enjoys? The problem is sin. We are so hung up on sins and guilt that we often miss getting to enjoy His delight in us. Sin makes us old before our time. Since God doesn't sin, this means that compared to God, we tend to be worn out and worn down. So the joy we see in the happiest child is but a fraction of the joy that resides in the heart of God. Because God is not weighed down like we are.

In fact, "God is younger than we." That's the point made by G.K. Chesterton is these marvelously insightful words. "Because children have abounding vitality," Chesterton writes, "because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown- up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

We sometimes picture God as an old man with an long white beard. But that is just our projection of how we expect to look. That's not who God is. Our Father is younger than we. He is and always will be a supremely joyful being.

If He weren't, the story of creation would not read the way it does. If God were old and worn out then Genesis would read very differently. John Ortberg offers his hilarious version of how an old, worn out God would have created. in The Life You've Always Wanted:

"In the beginning, it was nine o'clock, so God had to go to work. He filled out a requisition to separate light from darkness. He considered making stars to beautify the night, and planets to fill the skies, but thought it sounded like too much word, and besides, thought God, "That's not my job." So He decided to knock off early and call it a day. And He looked at what He had done and He said, "It'll have to do."

"On the second day, God separated the waters from the dry land. And He made all the dry land flat, plain, and functional, so that---behold---the whole earth looked like Idaho. He thought about making mountains and valleys and glaciers and jungles and forests, but He decided it wouldn't be worth the effort. And God looked at what He had done that day and said, "It'll have to do."

"And God made a pigeon to fly in the air, and a carp to swim in the waters, and a cat to creep upon dry ground. And God thought about making millions of other species of all sizes and shapes and colors, but He couldn't drum up any enthusiasm for any other animals- -in fact, He wasn't too crazy about the cat. Besides, it was almost time for the Late Show. So, God looked at all He had done, and God said, "It'll have to do."

"And at the end of the week, God was seriously burned out. So He breathed a big sigh of relief and said, "Thank Me, it's Friday."

Of course Genesis reads nothing like that. Instead it throbs with joy in creation. On the first day, "God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good." God did a little dance. And the next day God said to the light, "Do it again." And the light did it again, and God danced once again. And so it has gone every day down to this one down to the morning of the day you were born; down to this very morning.

We will not understand God until we understand this about Him: "God is the happiest being in the universe." God also knows sorrow. Jesus is remembered , among other things, as "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." But the sorrow of God, like the anger of God, is His temporary response to a fallen world. That sorrow will be banished forever from His heart on the day the world is set right. Joy is God's basic character. Joy is His eternal destiny. God is the happiest being in the universe.

And Jesus said that we are to live with joy. Paul says that joy is one of the fruits of God's Spirit. Christians are supposed to be joyful people. Our goal as believers should be to die young as late as possible. But am I off base in assuming that some of you, maybe many of you, find it hard to be joyful because of the circumstances of your life and the circumstances of the world about you? All of us know someone in our acquaintance with enough grief and tragedy to wipe out any one of us. Any day we can pick up the paper and sink into depressed feelings. Why can't we live lives of happiness, peace and joy all the time?

We may be confused in our understanding of joy. There is a difference between short-lived pleasure and deep, abiding joy. True joy comes from deeper roots.

This is why Jesus, on Palm Sunday is able to experience both sorrow and joy in the space of a few moments. When he saw the city He wept over it for He knew what the people's rejection of the way of peace would bring. But when the rulers tried to get Him to quiet His followers he said, "If they were silent, the rocks and stones themselves would start to sing" -- because this is party time.

Sure life is tragic. But wherever did we get the notion that tragedy cancels out joy? Jesus knew that life is tragic. Think of the turmoil He must have felt that last Thursday night of His earthly life. But in the midst of that agony, He said to His frightened friends: "these things have I spoken to you that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full. Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world."

Just because there is agony in the world we do not need to be depressed full-time. We don't need to choose between sorrow and joy -- any more than a woman in labor needs to choose between the pain and what is being produced by the pain. Ecclesiastes 3 says There is "a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance." We live with a deep abiding joy through all of life because we are God's people. He delights in us, and He comes to us in Jesus Christ with infinite resources. If we feel high levels of emotional stress His Spirit comes to put our lives in perspective. If we feel loneliness He relieves it with the mystery of His fellowship. If we have sinned, are living a lie, He comes to forgive if we desire forgiveness. If we feel despair about our lives or our world, He lifts our lives with hope. Then comes our encounter with the final enemy, death, and He transforms it into Resurrection.

At the Last Supper, Jesus says to the disciples: "So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you." Without violating this text we can apply it to our lives today. All of us will face the sorrows that come in this life. And there are times when Christ's presence is in eclipse. For example, we may experience a dreary, rainy morning. But is there any question in your mind about the sun's shining even though you cannot see it?

The clouds are your sorrows and the sun is Christ's continuous presence. Your sorrows will at times overshadow His Presence. But He is ever present and the ever-present Christ calls for rejoicing. We should live, can live, must live with a deep abiding joy, because God made us and delights in us, and abides in us.

How can we keep from being joyful -- and maybe even dancing before the Lord? If we are silent, the rocks and stones will cry out. Because it's party time. Let's stand and sing!

"Blessed be the King" led by Praise group