SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Lord be with you. Thank you very much. What a gift to be with you on this outstandingly beautiful Sunday morning. People on the lawn today. Can I hear a shout from the lawn? Love it. Great work. People online, people in here on this Father's Day, without a doubt, one of my favorite days of the year. Maybe you've got the smoker smoking something glorious. Maybe the tea time is set. I don't think I'll make you late. But maybe, and and for my purposes on this Father's Day, I just have one verse. Taking it easy on myself. Just one verse, does that sound okay? It's not even a verse about dads. Unless, maybe, unless you're among the men, at least sociologists will say in America, who are a part of the manosphere, described as toxic masculinity. Apparently extremely lonely. I think I've mentioned the stat that the average American man has half a friend. And it's not really just guys either, if we're being honest with ourselves. The youth group we just saw? 61. That means 10 of them would describe themselves as extremely lonely. And in 1990, I'm borrowing from David Brooks now in a book titled How to Know a Person, in 1990 to 2018, the number of Americans who checked extremely unhappy on the social survey rose by more than 50%. And that's the context in this Father's Day into which I offer this. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. I've been preaching this same sermon up and down the lake shore the last several weeks, so I've had like fascinating conversations after each service. Last week, a woman came up to me. I just offered rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice, and she came up to me. She was kind of waiting, you know. Sometimes you can feel that when someone's waiting to talk to you, and she shared with me that two years ago her husband died on Father's Day. Rejoice in the Lord always. Couple weeks ago, I was I was somebody was dialing in online and they heard me say, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice, so they emailed me. Always a pastor's favorite. Sharing his angst and ache around the socioeconomic realities of our global situation with its violence and its inequities, and he was just sharing the the turmoil of his spirit, and I was like, thank you for the email. Rejoice in the Lord always. Or what about the kid who was sitting in the second to back row during the 9 o'clock service who was supposed to get married next weekend, but she broke it off. Always? I mean, we borrow it, you know. That's Philippians 4.4, by the way. I'm not making that one up. It's Philippians 4.4. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. We we borrow it and we throw it around. And it seems like to me, either as an act of like blind ignoring the ache and the agony that exists, so just rejoice in the Lord always, friend. Or we just wallow and it the ache is so real and the pain is so heavy, you just sort of like, I don't want anything to do with that. Does that ring true in any way? The sermon I've been preaching up and down the lakeshore the last couple weeks has a has a story that goes with it. I don't think I've told you this story before. If I have, uh just endure it. Uh probably 10 years ago, Kristen and I, with our kids, uh flew out to the Pacific Northwest where we had lived uh for a little while. It's now basically become like an annual pilgrimage for for us. Uh it's where our older kids were born, you know, it's just sort of a place of meaning for us. So uh we were we were down, there's a picture, we were down in Seattle, southwest of Pikes Market. Anybody been to Pikes Market? You know, where they throw the fish. So we were, I was sitting on the wharf uh eating some lunch over by that Ferris wheel, turkey sandwich, chips, Diet Coke, absolutely glorious. Watching all of the tourists that cram into the city streets of Seattle, just sort of watching them with that sort of smug feeling you have when you're not the tourist, at least you didn't think of yourself as a tourist, watching them all sort of flounder around. You know, you've got the family with of three little kids, you're you know, you're just like, oh man, it's gonna be okay. And then you've got the bikers who are cruising in and out of the traffic in Seattle, and then you've got the people without shoes on and tie-dye shirts and the dreadlocks, and I'm thinking to myself, it's gonna be okay. And I'm eating, I'm eating my turkey sandwich and my chips and my Diet Coke, and I see a guy, he's I'm assuming he's a tourist, I'm pretty sure he's a tourist because he's wearing cargo shorts, an untucked button-down short sleeve shirt with a pocket, and out of the pocket is flapping a map. That was that was the telltale. And he's got a Fisher hat on with a brim, you know, to protect his skin from that intense Seattle heat. And he's got his hands, um, he's lost. I'm assuming he's lost. He must be lost. Either that or the one he's with is lost because he's got his hands over his mouth like this, and he's he's shouting, great! Great. And I'm eating my turkey sandwich and my chips and my pastoral imagination just starts going wild. You know? Wouldn't it be amazing if we all had someone in the corner of our lives, whether a tourist or not, shouting, great, great, great? You know when the when the when the headlines hit the news feeds and pop up as notifications and your blood pressure begins to rise. If just there were just somebody, anybody, I don't care if you're a tourist, just somebody shouting Grace.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Grace. Grace You've been holding on so tight. You're holding on, you're gonna make it work. It's gonna work. And the tighter you hold and the more control you wanna have, the worse it seems to get. And someone, then someone says, Grace. Grace.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Theologians uh we use that word, you know, we throw it around like grace. Would someone say grace, please? You know, or like grace, it's uh it's it's the it's another way of saying a really elegant person. You know, theologians, they really kind of have three three ways of understanding grace. There's prevenient grace. I'm borrowing from John Wesley now, is that okay? Uh prevenient grace, justifying grace, sanctifying grace. Prevenient grace is that grace that goes before us, so like before you do anything good, some would say it's grace. Like, you don't get to take any credit, sorry. And then there's justifying grace, that like forgiving grace, saving grace, redeeming grace, and then there's sanctifying grace, that grace that builds us up into full maturity in Christ. Prevenient grace, justifying grace, sanctifying grace. And when I'm saying grace, I mean them all. Grace! We love the verse, uh rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I'll say rejoice. We we love it, it's a great verse. I'm all for it. You know, we like to put on a three by five card and shove it into the frame of our bathroom mirror and we look at it as we get ready in the morning, and this time we're gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna rejoice in the Lord always. If that weren't bad enough, then the author says, again, I'll say rejoice. And I I mean I like the verse. It's a good verse. Um, I just have there's just one, I there's a rub for me with just one word. Guess which word? Yeah, apparently you feel it too. I mean, I could do rejoice in the Lord, like I'm good with that. Like, it's 73 degrees and sunny. Rejoice. But always that's where I just take exception. A couple weeks ago, I went up to Butterworth Hospital. I don't think we call it that anymore, Meyer Hart Hospital. There were four pillar people at the same time at Meyer Hart Hospital. One couple, he had been diagnosed with one kind of cancer on the same day that she was diagnosed with a different kind of cancer. Always?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

What are we even talking about?

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Our daughter Tab, but she's 18, she graduated from high school this couple weeks ago. Uh I've told you the story. You walked with us through this story. When she was seven, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Started wreaking havoc on her kidneys, blood and protein in her urine, you know. Took her to the doctor. It started out that her ankles hurt. You know, did you fall? Acting like arthritis. And then, like the next day, it blood blisters started to crawl up her legs and up her back. We took her to the doctor, they said she's got a urinary tract infection, we gave her some antibiotics. The next day we get a call from the doctor, take her off the antibiotics. It's not send her to the Voss Children. So we rush up to Grand Rapids, we get her into a nephrologist, they're called, the kidney specialist, and that requires all kinds of tests, and eventually, this sort of biopsy surgery type thing, and the way they do it, you the parent, walk your kid into the OR at the children's hospital, and she's got the Tigger, you know, thing on, and they're dialing her all up with the stuff, and then you, the parent, have to leave. You leave your kid in their hands, and then Kristen starts to cry. So she we walk into the waiting room, she doesn't even stop. She just goes right into the bathroom because she's not gonna cry in the waiting room like that. And I put my head in my hands and I'm thinking to myself, always, always rejoice in the Lord always. Are you with me on this or am I should I just stop? A couple weeks ago, we invited this guy, Andy Root. I've mentioned him before. He's written a bunch of good books. Uh, one of them is titled When the Church Stops Working, which is a great book for a pastor to read. So he he was in town talking to a bunch of pastors, ministry leaders, college student types, um, about what he calls the secular. That's how he describes our current cultural conditions, the secular, which isn't to say you are secular, like you person or or versus like a good person, like a bad person versus. He's talking about the conditions of our cultural moment, which is basically even if you talk about believing in God, we live as if God doesn't exist. And he's not the only one, like all kinds of people are saying. It's called practical atheism. He calls it the secular. And here's a way of kind of giving your taking your own temperature on whether or not we live in the secular. If you go to the grocery store and you grab all of your groceries and you shove them into the grocery cart and you get to the checkout line, and they are all running through the conveyor belt, and it's $197.92, and you're reaching for your card to tap it, and then you get you can't, you forgot your wallet. And you didn't bring your phone either, the wallet app on your phone, and you're like, oh. You know what? The Lord will provide. The Lord will provide. And the cashier is like, that's sweet. I need your credit card. The secular. Cashier's not bad. It doesn't make the cashier bad. You know, it's just like, come on, guys, you gotta pay for your groceries. So the way the way Andy Root gets us to this moment we call the secular, he it's it starts out, this is like hundreds of years ago, it starts out from the separation of secular and sacred, where there's really now clear boundaries between the two. And secular and sacred then becomes public facts versus private values. You hanging with me? Public facts we all just know are true, and then your personal opinions, like private values, which include religion. Like, it's fine. You can believe it. It's fine. It's quite nice. Actually, some will say it's even good for you. It's but it's private. Keep it to yourself. You can believe whatever you want. Just keep it, and then when it becomes privatized, individualized, the goal down the line becomes your own comfort. Just so long as you're happy. So God's primary purpose is making sure you're happy. That's what happens. Happiness becomes our God. Happiness becomes our goal. He borrows, Andy Root borrows from this French guy, Francois Jean de Casteloux, who said something like the chief purpose of government is to render people happy. You're thinking to yourself, who cares what some French guy said? Well, here's the thing: the French guy was really good friends with our guy, George Washington. Like real good friends, which is why, in that thing we call the Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all people are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights, among which include life, liberty, the secular. Happy. Which is fine. I like it. The problem with happiness is it's self-referential. You decide what makes you happy. Like I love Chibani yogurt, vanilla yogurt with fruit and oats, you know. That same yogurt makes my daughter Mariah gag. Makes me happy, makes her sick. It's self-referential. So we here rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice, and we intuitively think be happy. Be happy. Be happy. It's self-referential. It's like a cul de sac. Eventually, you just run in circles, and you find you're not happy. Joy, now I'm disentangling happiness and joy. Joy comes from something other outside of us. Rejoice in the Lord. That is the necessary subclause to understand our terrible word always. Rejoice in the Lord. It's in the Lord, not in the ache, not in the pain, not in the circumstance, not in the situation. Rejoice in the Lord. And Paul, who wrote it, is referring to the Lord Jesus, who left the glory of Father and Spirit and entered into the finite realities of our lives. He took on what we are, all of it. The ache and the pain, the sadness, and the sickness and the suffering, the brokenness, and all of its versions. He took it on himself and he took it with him to the cross where they killed him. And as he's dying, he says, Forgive them. They don't know what they're doing, and they buried him, and he rose up in resurrection so that we can have life, joy, rejoice in the Lord. Union in this wandering world. This chaotic world. This broken world. It's not asking you to define your circumstance as happy, it's asking you to be present to the one who's present with you. You with me? Which is why some smart people like Ross Gay, who wrote a book titled Inciting Joy, can write, What happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? Or then Andy Root, you can read it on the screen if you want. Andy Root in a book titled The Promise of Despair. It's through suffering and despair that God is made known to us. For God is found on the cross. Rejoice in the Lord. Always. Again. I'll say rejoice. So I looked up that word always. Greek lexicon. Greek lexicons are these funny books. They take one word and they give you like 79 pages to help you understand one word. And I read all 79 pages. Guess what always means?

unknown 19:06

Always.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Yeah. Always. The next page it said it means at all times. The page after that, it said every when. That didn't help. So then I looked up the word rejoice. Surely that's going to get me out of this. Rejoice, defined by the Greek lexicon as delighting in God's grace. Experiencing God's grace. Being conscious of God's grace. Looking for grace. Grace. Grace. Grace. Paul, just for the record, since it's Father's Day and I kind of get to set the terms of the moment, he's riding from prison. You know? Like he was so insistent that Jesus Christ was Lord, which confronted political ideology and challenged religious authority. And so they're like, but just shut him up. Just shut him up. Throw him in there. Keep him quiet. And what does he write? In jail? Rejoice. Look for grace. In the Lord always. And he's writing to a small band of Christian believers in this town called Philippi, this Roman outpost. You want to know about Rome and its power? Look at Philippi. That's what they were saying. Statues of the emperor everywhere, Pax Romana in the air, the peace of Rome, you know, the peace of Rome, which worked out really great if you're the elite. And not great at all if you're a Christian. He writes to them. Look for grace. In the Lord always. Again, I'll say. Look for grace. Prevenient grace. Justifying grace. Sanctifying grace. Look for grace.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Grace.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Which means consolation is the reality. Presence. And empathy becomes the action. A couple weeks ago I woke up, it was Memorial Day. Memorial Day, when you're a pastor, it's just like an amazing gift. You know, all of the other holidays, well, not all of them, but a bunch of the holidays, you all are like, oh, it's Christmas. And we're like, oh, it's Christmas. Got seven services. And Easter, yeah, how was the brunch? We're like, hey, honey, I'm home. You know, but Memorial Day is great. You didn't even see it coming. You just wake up and you got Nothing to do. So I'm sitting there Monday morning, it's quiet. I'm thinking about my grandpa Johnson, Memorial. You know, he fought in World War II. And when I say fought, the way he described it is we fought the mosquitoes. That was his version of the fighting. And then I started thinking about my friend Pablo. Pablo, he grew up, he was about 18 in the height of the Vietnam War. And as I'm thinking about Pablo on Memorial Day morning, he texted me. It was one of those moments like, no way. He said, I was looking through some stuff and I seen these pics. I was 18 years old, and this was my graduation picture from the United States Marine Corps. There's old Pablo. And then he sent a picture of his company, company infantry. He asked me, which one do you think I am? He's like, Pablo, I'm gonna need a little help, man. He's top row, fifth from the right. When I was asking his permission to share this, um he wanted me to let you know that he was 18 years old. I'm just reading now what he wrote. In the platoon pick is my best friend, private first class, Michael Voss, 18. Rifleman, died, Vietnam. And my second best neighborhood friend, Nick, also died. I know it's not a memorial service, but I'd like you to know their names. Uh Pablo wasn't drafted. And he carries that. Kind of guilt. What kind of sadness? When I texted him, like, hey, what does this all stir for you? He's like, I'm sad and I'm angry. 68 and 69, he wanted you to know there's a lot of death. 70s and 80s, a lot of alcohol. Uh 90s was treatment. I met him in the 2000s. We ended up going to uh Chiapas, which is like right next to Guatemala, on a mission trip. He had this kind of spiritual experience. So I changed his name. You know, like Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah. I just changed it. Uh I was really creative. I went from Paul to Pablo. Now they describe it, they would, they would, um, they've diagnosed it as bipolar. Um but for a while, you know, it was just he didn't know, he didn't know what was going on. So all these voices that he hears guilt and shame and sadness and anger. Like I didn't know what when I when I met him, I didn't know really how to like, what do we do with all these voices? And so we just I just said, hey, what if we started memorizing the Bible together? Not like all of it, but you know, like let's just add different voices. So we started with, I think it was uh John's gospel, you know, the light shines in the darkness. And then we moved to uh Romans. Uh there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And then we went to the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. And Pablo just started memorizing the Bible. And now he lives, we met out west, he lives here now, and he's his like his call in life is to help college students memorize the Bible. That's what he does. So on Memorial Day, we're texting, and he's feeling the anger and the sad. He said, I think about them every day. It's 58 years. So I suggested, hey, let's add some voices, you know, let's add some different voices. What if you what if you interiorize, that's what we like to call it, what if you interiorized Philippians 4 today? So he sat with it. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be made known to everyone. The Lord is near. Don't worry about anything, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, if there's anything excellent and worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing and thinking the things you've seen and heard in me, and the God of peace will be with you. So Pablo gave himself away to Philippians 4. And then I got this text from him. This is what it said: amazing grace. Look for grace. Look for grace. Grace. Grace. You know? In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.