Jack McKinney
December 17, 2006 – Third Sunday of Advent
Text: Philippians 4:4-7
A True Test of Faith
There are some basic rules or principles that guide me when I sit down to write a sermon. Some of these are fairly obvious such as “Don’t say anything that will embarrass KaKi unless I want to sleep with the dog that night.” Other rules are bit more bizarre like “Never use one version of the Bible to write a sermon and another version of the Bible when you actually preach the sermon.” I did that in one of my first sermons only to discover, much to my horror, that the phrase I was basing my whole sermon on was not found in the version we read in the service. There’s just so many times you can say, “If we had been reading the New International Version this morning,” before people catch on that something is amiss.
Still, some rules are more important than others, so I give you now my top three rules about preaching in descending order.
Rule number 3: Don’t talk about how you write a sermon, just preach the dang sermon. Since I am presently violating this rule big time, let’s keep moving along.
Rule number 2: Limit the number of sports illustrations you use. Most people don’t care to hear the heroic deeds their preacher performed in a junior varsity ballgame thirty years ago, so it’s best not to go there too often.
And finally, drum roll please, my number one rule of preaching: Don’t try to tell people how they should feel. You can tell folks how to behave in certain situations; you can encourage them toward healthier ways of thinking and believing; but don’t tell folks what they should be feeling. We feel what we feel, and no matter how persuasive or interesting a sermon may be, you can’t force anyone to feel what you want them to.
I bring up rule number one this morning because two things are going on in this service that threaten to violate this principle. First, this is the third Sunday of Advent, the day when we light the candle of joy. Now you can try to give people hope on the first Sunday of Advent, and you can encourage them to believe in peace on the second Sunday of Advent, and you can certainly urge people to love each other on the final Sunday of Advent, but I tell you that trying to make people feel joy on the third Sunday of Advent is about as successful as the homerun pitch I threw to Ray Morales back in 1978. Oops, I think I just broke rule number two.
The other reason I bring up the danger of trying to make people feel one way or another is that our scripture lesson seems to do just that. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Philippians, says:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone…. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
In just a few sentences Paul almost
commands the Philippians to rejoice, be gentle, don’t worry, and pray with
thanksgiving. It might be helpful to know that the immediate context for Paul’s
words is that he is urging two members of the church in
While Paul is violating my first rule of preaching by telling these people how to feel, and while I have yet to see anyone commanded into joy, thanksgiving, or a worry-free attitude, it is only fair that I point out one other fact about this text before passing judgment on it. Paul is sitting in prison as he writes these words. He has been whipped for preaching about Jesus and he is facing a possible death sentence. And while none of that changes my mind about the inefficiency of telling people how to feel, it does cause me to wonder. How does a man in that circumstance write to people in conflict and encourage peace, joy, thanksgiving, and a non-anxious presence? If it was me I might have written, “Quit your petty bickering and hire me a good attorney.”
It does get your attention, or at least raise your suspicions, when someone seems calm and serene when they are actually living through hard times. Have you ever known someone like that? The person with a debilitating disease who seems happier than you are; the person who seems to have very little in the way of material goods but seems more content than you are; the person who suffers one disappointment after another but just keeps plugging ahead with an unshakeable optimism. These people produce caustic remarks from the rest of us like “I wonder what happy pill she is on.” But even more than that, we are tempted to go up to them and say, “Have you noticed how lousy your life is. I think you shouldn’t be quite this cheerful.” But if the truth be known, we are green with envy. Because who in this room wouldn’t like to feel peace and joy and thanksgiving, especially when life is falling down around us? Those feelings sure beat fear and depression every day of the week.
So what do those people have that we don’t have? And if we feel what we feel regardless of what I or anyone else says, is there really any point in talking about this? I think there is, but first you have to accept the premise that our feelings are the flower connected to the stem and roots called beliefs and ideas and experiences. Simply put, how we feel is the direct result of what we believe, and how we think, and what has happened to us. And while it is pointless to try and force people to feel one way or another, it is possible to change our beliefs and ideas so that our feelings shift as well. But it is far from easy.
The easiest thing to believe is that the world, including our own lives, is filled with heartache, despair, cruelty, violence, and unmitigated suffering. It’s easy to believe that because we know it to be true. Our own experiences teach us this. We witness such things on a daily basis. We see what is happening in our community and our world on the television. In addition, we are fairly well convinced that we ourselves are lacking in many ways. In the language of the church, we are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God. This is all easy to believe. It takes almost no effort at all. As my seminary theology professor, David Kilpatrick, once said: “You don’t have to convince people they are sinners; they already know that.”
What is harder to believe, much harder in fact, is that beyond the suffering and despair and brokenness of our world and our lives, there is something good. And not just something, but the thing, the One, the being or Spirit or reality we call God. The greatest test of our faith is can we believe in goodness when there are so many reasons not to? Can we believe that the source of life is filled with beauty and wonder and love when wars rage, and greed reigns, and suffering rules? Yes, the test of faith that is most challenging for us is not whether or not there is a God. The bigger question is, is that God worthy of our trust and devotion?
And beyond the big metaphysical questions, I wonder if we can we believe in our own goodness when we know what we have done or haven’t done? Is the spark of the divine in us, or have we extinguished it with our doubts and despair?
And my friends, this is where the rubber meets the road in our spiritual lives. We either believe in the ultimate goodness of the creator and the creation, remembering that we are part of that good creation, or we believe that the pain and losses of this life are it. And putting it that simply might make it sound simple, but it isn’t. Because every day we have reason not to believe that the foundation of it all, the foundation of us all, is good. And to see beyond the ugliness to the beauty and wonder of it all takes effort, but more than that, it takes faith. It takes the faith of a teenage girl who is willing to believe that her pregnancy isn’t a tragedy but a sacred mystery. It takes the faith of three strange travelers willing to journey far from the east to bring special gifts for that girl’s baby. And when that baby becomes a man, it takes a lot of faith when he is rejected by his neighbors but he still goes out to heal and bless and love even the most despised people in his world because he believes they are the children of God.
And if this is what you believe, if you believe that underneath all the mess of this world there is goodness, maybe you can sit in prison and feel joy. Maybe you can suffer disappointment and still feel optimism. Maybe you can have very little and feel like you have all you need. I’m not telling you what to feel this morning. You feel what you feel, and I feel what I feel. But I’m inviting you to believe that the foundation of this world, and your life, rests on an indestructible goodness. And I’m trusting that when we risk such an outrageous faith in the ultimate goodness of the creator and the creation, then we can know a taste of joy, peace, and thanksgiving.
One final sermon rule. In the history of the world, no one has ever complained about a short sermon. So I will close now with a simple wish that you can believe in the wondrous mystery of this season, and that such faith will bring you good tidings of great joy.