Speaker 1: So we are in the end of our sermon series on rhythm and we believe that we are people, that we are what we repeatedly do, and so be careful of the things that you do over and over again, because it will shape who you are and the kind of person you become 10, 15, 20 years from now.
Speaker 1: And, yeah, so they sort of ossify and become the kind of person you are.
Speaker 1: So there are these ancient people that have all these rhythms and Christian practices that help shape them, turn their hearts towards God and even shape their desires, and so we've been going through those, from fasting to silence and solitude to submission.
Speaker 1: Last week we talked about worship and how we worship as individuals, also as collective, and this morning we're talking about my favorite one celebration.
Speaker 1: Are you ready Now?
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but every year around wintertime my big family gets together and we have a celebration and we have food and there's lots of good food and drink and there's all kinds of stuff to drink and people bring gifts and we exchange gifts and we call this celebration Christmas.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever done this yourselves, but I have to work on that day.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a bummer, but most everyone else has it off, and I love it, though.
Speaker 1: It's a great celebration to have friends and family, you exchange gifts and you have a meal together, and my father-in-law is a big Vikings fan.
Speaker 1: He got this as a gift last Christmas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a Vikings helmet.
Speaker 1: This is our year.
Speaker 1: You guys, the Vikings, are going to win it this year.
Speaker 1: I believe in it.
Speaker 1: Jj McCarthy, all the way.
Speaker 1: We're riding them all the way to the championship, because sometimes you just got to celebrate and have friends over and have a nice meal and exchange gifts and remember what happened in the past, and no matter how big or even how small sometimes the moment is small you want to celebrate the moment that's small as well, like my goddaughter.
Speaker 1: Her name is Emma and she graduated from kindergarten.
Speaker 1: A couple days ago, I got a text from my sister-in-law, excuse me and I said Brian, emma has graduated from kindergarten.
Speaker 1: Now, I know that everyone's supposed to graduate kindergarten right, I get it, but like this is something to celebrate, I said, hey, have no fear, I'm going to send her a gift from Amazon.
Speaker 1: Look for it in the mail.
Speaker 1: So I sent her this really beautiful bracelet.
Speaker 1: It had all these beads on it and a cross, and it had like a little encouraging note.
Speaker 1: It was all pink, like the young girls like, and I wrote this note in there and I said hey, emma, exclamation point.
Speaker 1: Emma, with some vigor, you know, congratulations on graduating from kindergarten.
Speaker 1: You did it.
Speaker 1: Woo.
Speaker 1: Uncle Ryan that's me is so proud of you, I love you and I'm praying for you.
Speaker 1: Proverbs 3, 5 through 6.
Speaker 1: I had to have the obligatory scripture there because I'm a pastor From Uncle Ryan.
Speaker 1: Now, here's the thing you don't know she goes to a Catholic church.
Speaker 1: Her mom grew up in the Catholic church and as a Catholic, they're allowed one Protestant godparent, and it's me.
Speaker 1: Yes, so I infiltrated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've snuck in behind enemy lines and I'm back there.
Speaker 1: You know influencing and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've snuck in behind enemy lines and I'm back there.
Speaker 1: You know influencing and teaching them the real stuff.
Speaker 1: In fact, at the baptism, the priest was there.
Speaker 1: I go, I can do these too.
Speaker 1: So I go.
Speaker 1: Do you want some help, father, with the baptism?
Speaker 1: He's like no, I don't.
Speaker 1: Fine, I got this picture back from my sister-in-law.
Speaker 1: This is her.
Speaker 1: This is Emma.
Speaker 1: This her as Emma.
Speaker 1: This is the 830, the same thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, wearing the bracelet, because sometimes you just have to celebrate, am I right?
Speaker 1: Like yesterday morning, my son and I went out to Ida Lake, like sometimes we'll do in the summertime, and we went bass fishing and early morning bite was good.
Speaker 1: We caught lots of fish.
Speaker 1: Here's Gavin and the 10 pounder he caught.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, you can celebrate, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's 10 pounds.
Speaker 1: Just trust me on that one, the camera makes it look smaller 10 pounds.
Speaker 1: We caught five fish each.
Speaker 1: If you count dogfish as a fish I do I'm like I caught a dogfish and they're like we're counting that as my tally.
Speaker 1: You know my tally.
Speaker 1: So we tied five to five and the dogfish pooped all over my kayak.
Speaker 1: It was a mess.
Speaker 1: He still counts.
Speaker 1: So, like after we're driving, I'm like dude, we got to celebrate this great morning Because we're out there early.
Speaker 1: It was a beautiful morning on Ida Lake, we're going to Caribou.
Speaker 1: So I got a coffee with two pumps of vanilla in it, sugar-free, and Gavin got a cinnamon, something or other I don't even know what it was.
Speaker 1: Because sometimes you just have to celebrate, no matter how big or how small the moment or the event or the day is, and just celebrate and bask in the goodness of life, are you with me so far?
Speaker 1: Now, if you think I'm weird, this is actually Jewish law.
Speaker 1: You heard it read a moment ago.
Speaker 1: Here's the law.
Speaker 1: It says three times a year, three times a year, every year, you're to celebrate.
Speaker 1: This is Jewish law.
Speaker 1: There's three festivals the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the one of the harvest and the Festival of Ingathering.
Speaker 1: These have like different names, so I'm going to go through them quickly.
Speaker 1: The first one, the Festival of unleavened bread, is also called the Passover.
Speaker 1: This was a great moment in the Jewish history, in Israelite history.
Speaker 1: They were slaves in Egypt for 400 years and God delivers them, using Moses and Miriam and his brother Aaron, and they get set free and they're liberated.
Speaker 1: And so every year they would have a celebration to celebrate this moment.
Speaker 1: And when they did, they had a meal, they had food and they had wine and they had friends and family come together and over the years, as it grew and they moved forward as a nation, they would regather in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: There'd be thousands, if not millions, of Jews coming to celebrate Passover.
Speaker 1: Now we know, in Jesus' day, that's when they were gathering around the time of the crucifixion to celebrate Passover, because they wanted to celebrate as a people.
Speaker 1: That was what they were commanded to celebrate.
Speaker 1: The second one, which was called the Festival of the Harvest, is also called Shavuot.
Speaker 1: Everyone say Shavuot.
Speaker 1: Now Shavuot could mean it also is rendered as the Festival of the Harvest or the Festival of Weeks.
Speaker 1: It's actually today.
Speaker 1: Anybody know what today is in the church calendar?
Speaker 1: Pentecost Exactly, church calendar Pentecost.
Speaker 1: Exactly it's 50 days after Passover, and so Shavuot means like 70 or seven because it's 49 weeks after Passover.
Speaker 1: And so it's 49 weeks or 50 days sorry, not weeks, days or 50 days after Passover they celebrate Shavuot and it goes back to this moment.
Speaker 1: They're celebrating the moment when Moses goes up on Mount Sinai and receives the law, and so they're celebrating every year hey, gather together, remember God giving you the law, so his commands, his goodness.
Speaker 1: They thought the Torah was a gift from God, his provision of guidance along the way, his faithfulness, and the Torah itself.
Speaker 1: And I've never seen an image of the stones being so small.
Speaker 1: You ever seen that?
Speaker 1: This is like the mass paperback edition of the law, I guess.
Speaker 1: But third festival was this one the festival of the tabernacles.
Speaker 1: Every year have a festival, have a big party to celebrate the tabernacles, and what that meant was that they were to look back on their history when they were wanderers in the desert for 40 years.
Speaker 1: And though it was a desert, it was hot and they were were dry and it was sometimes miserable God provided for them food and quail and manna and water.
Speaker 1: He was with them in the desert.
Speaker 1: So three times a year, god's like hey, gather together and remember these stories in your history and celebrate and have friends and family over and celebrate.
Speaker 1: It was awesome.
Speaker 1: Also, there was this one of my other favorite ones.
Speaker 1: You probably have heard of the tithe.
Speaker 1: Well, the tithe was this 10% gathered in Jewish history.
Speaker 1: They would gather a tenth of all the things that they earned, so their crops, their livestock, their goats, their animals, whatever it was and they would bring a tenth of it to the temple and they would give it to the priests and the Levites, because the priests and the Levites didn't have other jobs.
Speaker 1: That's what they did.
Speaker 1: They ran the temple.
Speaker 1: So the people would bring a tenth of what they earned, a tithe, and they'd bring it to the temple.
Speaker 1: This is our model for giving to a church.
Speaker 1: It's not the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: It's what it's modeled off of and they would bring it to the temple to give it to the priest.
Speaker 1: But the tithe was also used for something else.
Speaker 1: Check this out out.
Speaker 1: I love this.
Speaker 1: In Deuteronomy it says, hey, make an offering of 10%.
Speaker 1: This is the tithe, also A tithe, all of your produce.
Speaker 1: Now what do they do with it?
Speaker 1: Bring it into the presence of God and there eat the tithe from your grain so they're supposed to eat their own tithe, okay and drink the wine and oil and the firstborn from your herds and your flocks.
Speaker 1: Cook one of those bad boys up and fillet it and eat it.
Speaker 1: In this way, you will learn to live in deep reverence before God.
Speaker 1: Now, some folks lived so far away they couldn't like bring their whole herd of goats, like to travel the you know the dozens of miles, and so they would sell all, they would sell their crops or their animals that their tithe was, and they would get that money and they would take the money and bring the money to Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: Now, with that money, then God commands them hey, with that money, buy anything you want Cattle, sheep, wine, beer, a Chipotle burrito, anything you want yeah, it's in there, it's in the scriptures Anything that looks good to you.
Speaker 1: How cool is that?
Speaker 1: You and your family can then feast in the presence of God and have a good time.
Speaker 1: Do you know that the tithe was like a sacred party, a sacred meal, a celebration of the provision of God.
Speaker 1: So they would gather, they would bring their tithe and they would have this massive party with all these people coming from all around to remember and rejoice in God's provision.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 1: It was a celebration.
Speaker 1: So the word for celebrate in Hebrew is this word haggag.
Speaker 1: Everyone say haggag.
Speaker 1: Haggag, as you can see, means to celebrate, to feast, or to hold a feast, or to have a festival or to dance.
Speaker 1: It can also though I love this it can mean to stagger around or to reel to and fro.
Speaker 1: Now, look, I get it.
Speaker 1: We're all very serious people, We've got serious jobs and serious lives.
Speaker 1: We're all adults in here and we can't be messing around.
Speaker 1: We're in church, we're very serious people.
Speaker 1: But, my friends, sometimes you and I need to just reel to and fro and stagger around just a little bit.
Speaker 1: Are you with me?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 1: Jewish law called for the people to throw a party.
Speaker 1: Don't blame me, it's in the Jewish law.
Speaker 1: Now, here's why Because celebration helps us remember.
Speaker 1: So when they would celebrate these festivals, the festival of Passover and Shavuot and the tabernacles.
Speaker 1: They would retell these stories of God's provision and his salvation, his rescuing of them, his presence with them, and they would remember their call, the call that God had on their lives.
Speaker 1: That happened maybe generations earlier.
Speaker 1: And they would remember their call, the call that God had on their lives.
Speaker 1: That happened maybe generations earlier.
Speaker 1: And they would remember that God's providing for them in the desert or in the dry times, that he provided enough sustenance for them, and they'd remember God's presence, that he wasn't far away, he was with them.
Speaker 1: And they would retell these stories.
Speaker 1: They'd have a feast and food and wine and drink and they'd have family and friends, food and wine and drink and they'd have family and friends and they would remember the Passover.
Speaker 1: It would help them remember as though it were happening today, so like they recall.
Speaker 1: Somehow in this ritual of celebration, they recall the past into the present, so like when we share around the meal, we're not just remembering with our brains oh yeah, jesus died, he loves us.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go about our work.
Speaker 1: No, it's this ritual, that somehow the sacred thing that recalls the past into the present moment, as though it were happening today, and they would celebrate.
Speaker 1: They have a party.
Speaker 1: It was a huge deal for them in order to remember, as though we're happening today.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who did marriage counseling for older couples who had been through many years of marriage and they would come to him when they were like things had become dry and they were strained and they were stressed out and they were on the verge of divorce and he would lead them through practices where he would help them remember why they first fell in love.
Speaker 1: So he would say, well, tell me how you first fell in love and tell me why you first like each other, because sometimes you forget why you liked the person across from the table, from you, you know.
Speaker 1: And they would tell these stories and, like over the course of time, he would somehow, as this therapist, bring the past into the present and they'd remember.
Speaker 1: Their hearts would soften, they're like, oh my gosh, not every time, but they remember why they fell in love.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm getting emotional, but they remember like, oh, this is why I like you and why I love you.
Speaker 1: And it would heal a lot of times the wounds they'd experienced, not every time, but like remembering somehow made them present and what happened back there brought them into today, and so celebration does it.
Speaker 1: It helps us remember in the past where God was present, that God was faithful before that.
Speaker 1: God delivered me before that.
Speaker 1: God was with me before and he'll be that way again.
Speaker 1: Celebration also does this.
Speaker 1: It creates awe and wonder, and again, I know that we're so serious and we're adults, but man, sometimes it does the soul good to just make room for awe and wonder, and I've quoted this many times this last year.
Speaker 1: But Abraham Joshua Heschel said that awe and wonder is the beginning of faith.
Speaker 1: So if you're here today, you're like I'm struggling with my faith, I just don't always.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need to go outside and just like, look around and drink in the miracle of life itself.
Speaker 1: It's a miracle that any of us are in here.
Speaker 1: I just want to remind you.
Speaker 1: It's a miracle like scientifically, this is a miracle that you're even alive.
Speaker 1: I forget the odds, but it's like one in billions that you're even alive and you're here right now.
Speaker 1: And what are the odds that all of us would be here in this room together?
Speaker 1: And yet here we are.
Speaker 1: Life is this incredible, precious gift.
Speaker 1: It's a miracle.
Speaker 1: And, celebrating, we pause, we take a minute to sort of stop our normal everyday lives.
Speaker 1: Like, oh yeah, this is an incredible gift.
Speaker 1: Like, look around and drink it in and don't miss it.
Speaker 1: Now look, in the modern world we're very much utilitarian people.
Speaker 1: Like we have our task list, we're very goal-oriented.
Speaker 1: Well, I will do these things as long as my outcome is such and such, or it produces X amount of dollars or this goal of mine.
Speaker 1: If not, I'm not going to bother with it.
Speaker 1: Right, we don't like fluff, we don't like to go off the path too far, because we're very much into utility, you know.
Speaker 1: But did you know that food has taste?
Speaker 1: Yeah, food tastes good.
Speaker 1: Most of it, a lot of it.
Speaker 1: You ever had a pineapple man?
Speaker 1: It's so good.
Speaker 1: Sprinkle a little bit little salt on there, it just cuts the salad so good.
Speaker 1: You ever had one of those.
Speaker 1: You ever drink like pure guava juice, man, incredible.
Speaker 1: Why does food taste like anything?
Speaker 1: If food was just for utility, just for calories, it could taste like dirt.
Speaker 1: Who cares?
Speaker 1: But it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Food tastes good and and laughing, laughing feels good.
Speaker 1: You ever laugh really hard and you're like, oh my gosh, that was like a therapy session.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm 12 again.
Speaker 1: This is incredible.
Speaker 1: And dancing, dancing is fun.
Speaker 1: Don't lie to yourself.
Speaker 1: It's fun, I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: I have a rule for life If somebody ever asks you to dance, you got to dance.
Speaker 1: Here's the secret.
Speaker 1: None of us are good at it okay, maybe the half person that take lessons fine, but everyone else kind of stinks at it.
Speaker 1: That's part of the fun.
Speaker 1: Dancing can be fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, life is sort of made almost to be enjoyed and there's awe and wonder to the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't mean certainly I don't mean some kind of like off-the-rails hedonism or indulgence run amok or awry.
Speaker 1: Of course these things like pleasure can get off the rails pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: But God has made life to enjoy and pleasure seems to be this theological experience that human beings can have.
Speaker 1: Otherwise, pineapples would taste like apples, would taste like grass and taste like dirt.
Speaker 1: That's what life is.
Speaker 1: Life is incredibly beautiful, wonderful gift, and these things are meant for you and I to enjoy, to take pleasure in these things.
Speaker 1: And here's what I love about wonder and awe.
Speaker 1: Any of us can cultivate a life in wonder and awe.
Speaker 1: You can be young, in fact.
Speaker 1: Young folks do this very naturally.
Speaker 1: They just like live lives of awe and wonder Like oh, everything's like a surprise.
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: You can be old, by the way.
Speaker 1: That's probably why Jesus said, hey, unless you have the faith like a child, you won't enter into the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1: Maybe we you and I should just watch young kids and just see how they engage the world and maybe try to follow and mimic them.
Speaker 1: But you can be old and you can also experience awe and wonder.
Speaker 1: You can be rich and experience awe and wonder.
Speaker 1: You can be dead broke and still experience awe and wonder.
Speaker 1: It's like the great equalizer.
Speaker 1: Any of us can do it.
Speaker 1: I love it, all of us.
Speaker 1: Now, birthdays are a great chance to experience awe and wonder.
Speaker 1: A good friend of ours turned 47.
Speaker 1: Last night went to a birthday celebration for her.
Speaker 1: Now here's the deal.
Speaker 1: I know many folks who don't like birthdays, and I get it.
Speaker 1: For many folks it's just another reminder that one day they're going to die.
Speaker 1: Let me let you in on a little secret.
Speaker 1: All of us are going to die.
Speaker 1: Look at me If you hear nothing else.
Speaker 1: We're all going to die.
Speaker 1: God forbid anytime soon.
Speaker 1: We're all going to die, even you young ones.
Speaker 1: You're going to die sometime, hopefully a long time from now.
Speaker 1: But here's the other thing Every moment until then, we're not going to die, we're alive.
Speaker 1: So birthdays could be like this beautiful celebration, like, oh my gosh, I've made it, I'm 45.
Speaker 1: I made it 45 years.
Speaker 1: And here we are, and look at these friends and family I have around me.
Speaker 1: We're going to exchange some gifts and have a meal and we're going to celebrate all the wonderful gifts I've been given over this course of 45 years.
Speaker 1: What a beautiful thing to celebrate the birthday and we'll sing some songs.
Speaker 1: And we'll sing some songs and we'll exchange some things and we'll remember what a gift it is to be alive, because celebration creates awe and wonder and somehow, in all of it, it deepens our own faith.
Speaker 1: Yeah, perhaps some of us today need to just experience some awe and wonder this morning, because it's all a gift, all of it.
Speaker 1: So we might as well stagger around a little bit and reel to and fro.
Speaker 1: Are you with me?
Speaker 1: Celebration also does this.
Speaker 1: Oh, by the way, I love this quote by Khalil Gibran.
Speaker 1: He says the soul cannot celebrate unless it learns to see the wonder in existence.
Speaker 1: By the way, I think it can go the other way too, that sometimes you can't experience awe and wonder until you fully enter into celebration and like let go and experience in a deep way this joy and rejoicing, that sort of transcends understanding sometimes.
Speaker 1: But the soul cannot celebrate unless it learns to see the wonder in existence and that God is the source of all blessing and all goodness.
Speaker 1: Celebration also does this.
Speaker 1: It can heal the human condition, because many of us we're so serious, we tend towards things like despair and existential angst or dread.
Speaker 1: Now I get it like look, the elephant in the room is that life is hard, it's very hard, it's very hard, and life can be full of pain and suffering and loss, and you might be betrayed in the course of your lifetime.
Speaker 1: You might lose a loved one, your spouse might leave you, you might get a diagnosis.
Speaker 1: It's just too much to bear and I get it.
Speaker 1: It's hard, man, life is tough, and if life hasn't punched you in the face yet, it will one of these days, or maybe it's done it to a friend of yours or someone close to you.
Speaker 1: But life is hard and so it's easy for us to just sort of tend and lean towards cynicism and becoming jaded or disconnected or people who fall into despair and loneliness and these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And this way, celebration, though, I think is the antidote to this because it zooms out and reminds us that we're part of a bigger story.
Speaker 1: And our story began a long time ago in the Hebrew scriptures with this story about humanity and Adam and Eve walking off the path and doing life their own way and all the destruction that sort of was in the wake of all of that.
Speaker 1: But Jesus promises to fulfill and renew all things and he says this kingdom of God, which will come in fullness one day down the road you can read about it in Revelation when God restores and renews all things and heals the world and puts things back to right.
Speaker 1: That day is dawned in Jesus, but it's not here fully yet.
Speaker 1: We live in the in-between time in between Adam and Eve, if you will, and the restoration of all things and the renewal of all things when God heals the world.
Speaker 1: So we live in this sort of now, but not yet, and celebration reminds us of the end of the story.
Speaker 1: We kind of zoom out, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and we get a taste, a foretaste, a sliver, a hint, maybe a whisper of the picture of the kingdom of God that will come in fullness that one day, though.
Speaker 1: Things are kind of mucked up and messed up right now and I experience extreme pain and suffering which is very real.
Speaker 1: One day God will restore all things and renew all things, and so I can experience healing and wholeness in a small way, here and now, and it gives me a bigger worldview that I can hold kind of close to my heart and begin to heal how I see all things in the world.
Speaker 1: That's what celebration does.
Speaker 1: The Jews believed that celebration could actually heal the world.
Speaker 1: They believed that celebration was an act that would restore and heal the world.
Speaker 1: That's why God made them do it.
Speaker 1: Restore and heal the world, that's why God made him do it.
Speaker 1: That's an act itself of restoration.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 1: Jesus shows up.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, the kingdom of God when God restores all things.
Speaker 1: But the kingdom of God is when the reign and rule of God comes on earth as it is in heaven.
Speaker 1: So it's when justice will reign, when the way God wants things will come into fullness and in flesh.
Speaker 1: It's the restoration of all things, the healing of all things, a new creation.
Speaker 1: And Jesus said when the kingdom of God comes, it will be like a feast, a great banquet, something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look at that bad boy.
Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh, that's asparagus on top of salmon with some onions.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I love asparagus.
Speaker 1: I'm hungry already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why would Jesus say that?
Speaker 1: The kingdom of God?
Speaker 1: He could explain it in any way.
Speaker 1: He's like oh, it's actually like eating this beautiful meal and dancing and staggering around and wriggling to and fro.
Speaker 1: It's a celebration.
Speaker 1: This is the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1: In this way, then, celebration is a defiant act of hope.
Speaker 1: It's saying, hey, I know that the world is not how I want it to be or how it should be, but I know that one day it will be, and in the meantime, I can experience moments of it, a taste of it, and so I refuse to let life sort of get the better of me and I'll hold on to hope.
Speaker 1: For dear life, I'll hold on to hope.
Speaker 1: Celebration is this sort of act.
Speaker 1: It's like sort of this divine protest against despair, because despair can easily overcome all of us, or each of us.
Speaker 1: And here's the reality about celebration when you go into one, your troubles were there before you got into the celebration, and your troubles will be there when you come out of the celebration, like when you go celebrate or have a party or have friends over or host a dinner or go out for a birthday dinner, your bill that was due before you went into it, it's still gonna be due after you come out of it.
Speaker 1: You know, or that diagnosis that you got when you went into that celebration it'll probably be there when you come out of it, and the ripples or the rifts in your marriage that were there before they'll probably be there after.
Speaker 1: But for a moment you can experience something unique, like this gift from God and your eyes can be opened to the way things could be and like, oh, everything is a gift anyway.
Speaker 1: It's this defiant act of hope.
Speaker 1: It's not ignoring all this stuff, it's recognizing the presence of God in the here and now, even here, and that somehow can heal us long term when we have this ritual, this rhythm of celebration.
Speaker 1: I love this.
Speaker 1: This one of the singers from Run Collective.
Speaker 1: He says this.
Speaker 1: He says joy is a spiritual discipline.
Speaker 1: We as people are much more inclined toward negativity and cynicism.
Speaker 1: We don't find it easy or natural to pursue joy and that's why God, in his word, actually commands us to celebrate.
Speaker 1: We come by a gospel worth celebrating before a king who celebrates.
Speaker 1: We need to get down to the serious business of joy.
Speaker 1: We must wrestle for our blessing, must fight for our joy, because cynicism can be so easy.
Speaker 1: By the way, here's how I would maybe define cynicism.
Speaker 1: It's folks who say, oh, I've seen it all before, it's not that impressive, nothing really matters and nothing will change.
Speaker 1: That's easy.
Speaker 1: It's easy to grow jaded and cynical and disengaged from life and to say things like this from afar, but in reality this is really.
Speaker 1: It's a protection from disappointment.
Speaker 1: Most folks don't want to engage in life.
Speaker 1: It's just easier if I stand back here and avoid any engagement in life to avoid ever being disappointed again.
Speaker 1: That's one way to do it.
Speaker 1: It's actually quite easy, though it's quite lazy to be a Seneca.
Speaker 1: You can just stand back there and not do anything.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I've seen this before.
Speaker 1: Nothing really ever will change.
Speaker 1: It's really a mask for fear, because we're afraid and we're vulnerable people.
Speaker 1: We're afraid.
Speaker 1: If I engage in it, it might not go well, I know, but celebration is an invitation.
Speaker 1: Try it anyway.
Speaker 1: Cynicism also is this refusal to risk.
Speaker 1: It's a refusal to love again or to try again.
Speaker 1: Celebration is this incredible antidote that fights against cynicism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: The Jews believe that celebration would heal the world and our cynicism.
Speaker 1: By the way, after World War II, many of the Jews, after millions of them had been slaughtered and killed mercilessly.
Speaker 1: Many of them wondered aloud like has God abandoned us?
Speaker 1: What does the future even hold for us?
Speaker 1: It's all lost.
Speaker 1: Like almost half of them had been killed, like this is.
Speaker 1: And many of them lost hope and they succumbed to despair.
Speaker 1: Like how can we even be?
Speaker 1: We're the chosen ones of God.
Speaker 1: How can we even be in a world like where this could happen to us?
Speaker 1: But there were some in the midst that said hey, you know what, we're going to keep going.
Speaker 1: And they refused to lose hope and this act of defiance, like we're not going to stop.
Speaker 1: And so you know what they did.
Speaker 1: They said we're going to have babies Because we know the world is broken and messed up.
Speaker 1: We're going to keep going anyway.
Speaker 1: We're going to have kids Because we're going to push against despair, to be a cynical.
Speaker 1: No, it's all worthless.
Speaker 1: We're not going to have kids.
Speaker 1: No, we're going to have babies.
Speaker 1: And, by the way, in case you didn't know this, to have babies you have to have sex, and sex can be pretty great.
Speaker 1: I'll leave it there.
Speaker 1: But that's what they did.
Speaker 1: And they had babies.
Speaker 1: And, by the way, you must know this.
Speaker 1: But lots of young people.
Speaker 1: If you read any kind of sociology reports out there, a lot of young kids are not having kids.
Speaker 1: They don't want to have kids.
Speaker 1: Do you know this?
Speaker 1: And they don't want to because, like no, the world is too messed up.
Speaker 1: I'm not bringing a child into this world, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: We must push against despair and cynicism that so easily erodes our hope and our joy, and protest have kids or something like that, and celebrate, because it's all a gift.
Speaker 1: It's all just a mysterious, wonderful gift.
Speaker 1: Last thing I'll say is this you know, god is full of joy and God celebrates.
Speaker 1: So celebration is our entering into and imitating God's own joy.
Speaker 1: I love this version from the book of Nehemiah.
Speaker 1: I think it's Peter's favorite or Peter's dad's favorite.
Speaker 1: But the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, god.
Speaker 1: You know God experiences joy.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's the one who commanded them to celebrate.
Speaker 1: How about this one from Zephaniah the Lord, your God, is in your midst.
Speaker 1: He's a mighty one who will save you.
Speaker 1: He will rejoice over you with gladness.
Speaker 1: It's so easy to think, oh, god's pissed off at me, he's angry again.
Speaker 1: I get that, but he wants to rejoice over you with gladness.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: And he'll quiet you with his love and he will exult over you with loud singing.
Speaker 1: Now, I know you guys, we're all Minnesotans and we don't want to sing too loudly, if at all.
Speaker 1: But, my friends, god will exult over you and I with loud singing.
Speaker 1: How undignified is that of God?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because celebration is this deeply, profoundly wonderful thing that God has called each of us to do.
Speaker 1: I love this quote.
Speaker 1: I'll end with this and then a couple of ideas on how to do it.
Speaker 1: But this great Jewish line that they had amongst their people was that there is no joy without wine and without meat.
Speaker 1: And there's also alcohol-free grape juice and tofu available for those who don't eat meat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: I wish we had a lunch today.
Speaker 1: That would have been a good idea.
Speaker 1: But here's how we're going to do it.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to have some time to celebrate here.
Speaker 1: We've got time.
Speaker 1: But here's some ideas for how you can be a person who celebrates and engage in the discipline or the rhythm of celebration.
Speaker 1: Here's some ideas you can sing.
Speaker 1: I have a very close friend who sings in the shower very loudly all the time.
Speaker 1: He's a college kid.
Speaker 1: He will sing so loudly.
Speaker 1: His college friend's like what are you doing in there?
Speaker 1: Just doesn't care, sings loudly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's worth singing.
Speaker 1: You can host a meal, and maybe you aren't a very good cook, I get it, that's okay.
Speaker 1: Invite a couple friends over, you could even get something catered in.
Speaker 1: But maybe make something together, maybe have a bottle of wine or a bottle of Gatorade whatever your drink of choice is and just have a dinner and have some friends over and celebrate.
Speaker 1: By the way, when I came in this morning, sam goes hey, this is awesome.
Speaker 1: What are we celebrating, bro?
Speaker 1: It's Sunday and I'm here and you're here, we're going to celebrate.
Speaker 1: So folks are like what are we celebrating?
Speaker 1: We're celebrating life.
Speaker 1: Man, we're here, let's go.
Speaker 1: You can dance, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Dance on your own dance at a wedding.
Speaker 1: Don't be Johnny Too Cool.
Speaker 1: No more Johnny Too Cools.
Speaker 1: Okay, we've got enough of those guys around and ladies Laugh, hey, laugh, it's okay to laugh.
Speaker 1: How about play some games?
Speaker 1: You can invite some friends over and just play some board games or card games or whatever games you like to play.
Speaker 1: Maybe play some hide and seek.
Speaker 1: If you're an adult, that could be kind of fun.
Speaker 1: I'll come and watch.
Speaker 1: It'll be hilarious.
Speaker 1: How about practice the Sabbath?
Speaker 1: Just take a day and do nothing and just see what happens.
Speaker 1: That's a celebration.
Speaker 1: That was another ritual they had to do as the Jewish people.
Speaker 1: How about somebody?
Speaker 1: Unexpectedly True story Somebody put a fishing rod in my office.
Speaker 1: I think it's a handmade fishing rod.
Speaker 1: It's got my name on it.
Speaker 1: It's made of Broncos, orange and blue colors.
Speaker 1: I have no idea who put it in there.
Speaker 1: Someone just dropped off.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they're, you know, and it said Ryan Fisher of Men.
Speaker 1: That was very, very cool.
Speaker 1: So thank you if you're in here.
Speaker 1: Whoever did that.
Speaker 1: But, yeah, do that.
Speaker 1: Why not Celebrate life?
Speaker 1: How about this one?
Speaker 1: Make your events as a family into celebrations.
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, if your kindergartner graduates, good for them.
Speaker 1: I know it's easy, but they could have not graduated, they could have just not.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 1: But here we are.
Speaker 1: Buy them a gift, light a candle, smash something.
Speaker 1: This is a great day to be alive.
Speaker 1: How about this one?
Speaker 1: Treat yourself.
Speaker 1: Or, as they say in Parks and Rec, treat yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe you've always wanted this shirt.
Speaker 1: You're like there's no good reason to.
Speaker 1: Or you have that thing in your Amazon cart for all this day.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead and treat yourself why not?
Speaker 1: Because today we're alive and we're here, and it's a gift.
Speaker 1: So, central Lutheran Church, may you know the joy of God this morning.
Speaker 1: May you have this deeply ingrained sort of sense that celebration is a good and wonderful and divine act, and may you drink in the moments that are all around us all the time.
Speaker 1: May you have awe and wonder.
Speaker 1: May you remember God's presence in your life back then and the reminder that God will renew all things and in the midst of this pain and sorrow that we live in, that's also filled with beauty and wonder that we can, without any kind of like malice, we can defiantly push against despair and cynicism and be people of hope.
Speaker 1: So, central Lutheran Church, this morning, may we celebrate.