Sermon for August 6, 2006REJOICE!!5th in a series based on the book of Philippians by Rev. Dr. Harvey Martz |
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Scripture: Philippians 3:1a
1 Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. Many of you have heard me talk about Tim Hansel before. About thirty years ago now Hansel was climbing in the Sierra mountains in California with some friends. They were on the Palisade Glacier while there was still snow and ice, and Hansel slipped, even with his snow spikes on, and fell about sixty feet. Miraculously he survived; in fact he drove himself home, had dinner with his wife and then awoke during the night in excruciating pain because his body’s shock mechanism was wearing off and he began to realize how seriously he had damaged his spine. He has seen many doctors over the years and is in pain every day. At first he tried to not slow down much and just push himself to stay active including continuing to jog and play tennis, but he wrote that in 1976, a few months after his accident, he was playing tennis and when he hit a hard serve, he heard a very loud cracking sound. He had separated some of his ribs from his spine. He said, he still aced the serve, but then he entered a new period of pain and treatment. Hansel kept a journal during his first few years of treatment, and that journal, plus some additional material, has been available for years now in his book, “You Gotta Keep Dancin”. The book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and I suppose that we have distributed over 100 copies from our book shelves over the years here in our own congregation. I had contacted Hansel twenty years ago and had lined him up to come and speak in Colorado Springs but he had to cancel at the last minute because of his fragile health. You have heard some of Hansel’s quotes before and you may recognize them. Many of them are on the quote sheet in your bulletin.
Hansel has a whole chapter on joy in his best selling book, and he says he has learned in his illness that joy is something much deeper than just feeling happy because we are in some fortunate circumstances; joy is something entirely different and it is always a choice of attitude regardless of how fortunate or unfortunate our circumstances might be. That might sound offensive until we remember how much pain and suffering Hansel has been through and the sort of credibility that he has earned to make that statement. Tim Hansel understands the same thing the Apostle Paul understands in this warm and intimate letter to his friends in Philippi: joy does not depend on whether we hurt or not, whether we suffer or not, whether we have much or whether we have little; JOY IS AN INSIDE JOB! We remember that Paul is writing this letter from a jail cell. He has come to terms with his impending death. He has suffered much from beatings, stonings, ridicule, shipwrecks, being run out of towns several times because of his passionate invitation to consider Christ. And in this letter more than any other of his letters, Paul has a deep and abiding attitude of JOY! Why do you think this is? Is he just nuts, or does he know something deeper than many of us have yet to know? In fact, in the four short chapters of Philippians, Paul uses the Greek word for “joy” or for “rejoice” twelve times. In the third sentence of the letter he is already saying that he is praying for his friends “with joy” in all of his prayers. He continues to rejoice for these friends, and even if his life comes quickly to an end, he says he will rejoice with all of these close friends. And in chapter 3 and 4 he reminds us again that we can rejoice in the Lord always-and again he urges, rejoice. His confident spirit shows up not only in Philippians but also in the earliest of all of his letters in the Bible, I Thessalonians, where he says that the will of God for us is this: “that we will be joyful always, that we pray continually, and that we will give thanks in all circumstances.” Paul does not say we are to be thankful FOR all circumstances but IN all circumstances, and so when Josh and Angela Van Manen prayed together on Thursday in the intensive care unit after she had two major surgeries in 48 hours, we began by thanking God for the success of those surgeries and for the skills and training of the medical team that is caring for her. That attitude of thankfulness, like Paul’s attitude of joy, does not depend on what is happening to us but it depends on the presence of God that is with us and surrounding us and sustaining us through anything life can throw at us. It is significant that Paul says, we can rejoice in the Lord. We can rejoice because of the presence of the Lord beside us and guiding us and strengthening us. Our rejoicing is because we are with and in Christ. And, Paul says, we are able to rejoice wherever we are and whatever state we are in because of this secret he tells us in chapter 4: I have learned whatever state I am in to be content and at peace; I have had much and I have had little. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. The book of Habbakuk in the Hebrew Bible tells us this same secret:
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