Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
I think we imagine this ending sitting in judgment of Sarah, right? Like, I mean, how could she laugh at God? But, is that really what we're supposed to take away from this? I mean, think about it. God drops by, you're sitting in the shade, everyone stays for lunch, the Lord makes a crazy promise, and you laugh.
Jeremy Duncan:And so God turns to you and says, what are you laughing about? And you say, not me, but God says, get out of here. I heard you. We'll talk again in 9 months. I don't think this moment is meant to communicate anything but the surprising joy that catches you off guard when you least expect it.
Jeremy Duncan:In the Christian calendar Easter is only the start because it leads us into the 50 days of resurrection celebration that we call Eastertide, and it's fitting that each spring, each year we revel in the return of life and we celebrate tide season with a series that is called Fittingly Joy, a theology of celebration. However, before we jump into all of that, let's take a quick moment here to gather up where we've just been. Because yes, there was of course Easter last week, and Easter is always the culmination of Lent. But for us this year at Commons Easter was really the climax of a story that we started way back in the fall. And so all through the fall, and then picking up again at Ash Wednesday, and carrying us through Lent and Easter Sunday, we found ourselves journeying through the gospel of Mark together.
Jeremy Duncan:And, in the end we used 15 sermons this year to work our way through the gospel. Part of what I love about Mark in particular is the way that the author leaves so much room for us to find ourselves in the story though. And I think we just saw this over and over again as we worked our way through the text. By the way, if you missed any of those sermons from that series, I'd encourage you to go back and look through the archives. We have recently restructured the sermon section on our website to make it a little easier to navigate and find what you're looking for.
Jeremy Duncan:But I think we saw this invitation from Mark to find ourselves in the story on beautiful display on Easter. Bobby did this marvelous job of inviting us into a story that ends honestly probably somewhere other than we might expect it to. Now, there was a later tag that was written and added to the end of Mark in the 2nd century. But it's well known and footnoted in basically every Bible that the original text of Mark ends at chapter 16 verse 8. The women go to the tomb, and they find not a body but an angel who says to them, you are looking for Jesus the Nazareth who was crucified, but he is not here.
Jeremy Duncan:He is risen. See the place where they laid him. It is empty. Now go and tell the disciples he is ahead of you in Galilee. There you will see him again.
Jeremy Duncan:But then, instead of an encounter with the risen Christ, or instead of getting to see Jesus, we read that trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled. They said nothing because they were terrified. The end. Now, of course, we know they overcame that fear, and we know that Mary Magdalene did tell Peter what happened. We wouldn't be here if not.
Jeremy Duncan:But for Mark, the first gospel writer, he decides to leave us there in that moment, perhaps just as scared confused as the women are about what will come. And that feels very real even on Easter. Because the truth is sometimes the truest things are the hardest things to believe. And that doesn't make them less powerful. It makes them the bedrock of who we slowly become over time.
Jeremy Duncan:I love what Bobby said here. It does us no good to make the women more heroic, so heroic that they lose their humanity. No. These women were disciples and apostles just like every other disciple and apostle. They followed.
Jeremy Duncan:They loved. They led. They served. They chickened out. They found their voice.
Jeremy Duncan:They tried again. Because Jesus came to tell us that he'd meet us in the midst of our humanity and that's exactly where resurrection meets us in Mark. Remember this, whatever you take away from Easter, hold onto this. It's not always how you react in the moment. Sometimes your instinct is to be scared, or to get small, or to run away, and that's okay, because what matters in the end is how you choose to respond.
Jeremy Duncan:And what Mark is telling us, even by writing this story and leaving us here at the end with these women, is that these women responded eventually with courage. Their fear in that moment didn't become them. Their faith did. And that is what resurrection is about for all of us. That we can always try again because Christ is risen.
Jeremy Duncan:Christ is risen indeed. Alright. Let's pray. And then today it's joy. Our joyful God who returns to life with us each day, who fills us with hope when we struggle to believe, who reminds us that there is always time to change our path and pursue a new way to rewrite our ending if the story feels like it has gone off course.
Jeremy Duncan:Might our resurrection start now in our response to your grace. And if in the past we have reacted in fear, would you help us respond with courage? If we have respected in greed, help us respond in generosity. If we have reacted in defensiveness, would you help us respond with openness today? If we have reacted in sin, would you help us respond by turning back to you, toward your grace, toward your peace, and toward the path that you have walked before us ahead of us.
Jeremy Duncan:And in that, might we begin to experience the profound joy that goes far beyond just a moment of celebration. It might background our essential identity as beloved children, Longed for and loved and welcomed home each morning. May that joy lead us forward into new life even this day. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan:Alright. Joy, a theology of celebration. And today we're going to talk about gravity, shade, a quick side quest, and then back to the basics. But for the next 5 weeks we are going to look at different examples of joy, different aspects of joy, different ways that we can train ourselves to spot and hold on to, to cultivate, and hopefully properly celebrate joy in our lives. And we've structured this series as a bit of a survey.
Jeremy Duncan:Today we're going to reach all the way back to the story of Abraham, But in the series we'll look at the prophets and the psalmist. We will turn our attention to the early church and the apostles. And, we'll try to find different aspects of joy in each of those different eras to learn from. And I think it's going to be fun, and maybe even a little joyous, but certainly probably an Eastertide that we find ourselves in. Because let's be honest here.
Jeremy Duncan:One of the things that can happen at Easter, at least if you work in a church, is that there is so much build up to Easter Sunday. As a team we put in so much work to make sure that Palm Sunday leads us into the story, and Good Friday drives us into the depths, and Easter Sunday raises us up in concert with resurrection, that if I can be honest here, it all feels a little anticlimactic on Monday morning. Like Monday morning when you have to come in, and take the lights down, and the decorations need to get put away, and the half eaten macarons are disposed of. Let's be honest. There was like 3 of those left, but you get the idea here.
Jeremy Duncan:Big moments are wonderful, and yet they can still feel us a little underwhelmed in the aftermath. And I think that's where talking about joy becomes important. Because at its best joy is more than just a party. Right? In fact, in the quote realm, one of my favorites this month was from Michel de Montaigne, who was a French Renaissance philosopher, who once wrote that the most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.
Jeremy Duncan:And I'm going to talk a little bit more about Montaigne today. He was an interesting guy. But I like that as a starting point for a conversation about joy. Because I think we all know conceptually at least that there is a difference between joy and pleasure, or between joy and happiness, or between joy and fun. And yet in practice pleasure and happiness and fun are just a lot easier to put our finger on at times than joy.
Jeremy Duncan:Like, I know what feels good, and I know when I'm happy, and I know when I'm having fun, I struggle sometimes to cultivate a joy that comes up from within me. And, the idea of the gravity of joy is pun intended grounding for me. Because I want to have fun in my life, and I want to eat good food, and I want to celebrate happy moments just like we all do. But I also want to put in the work to cultivate a sense of joy that has this constant gravitational pull that keeps dragging me back to the center whenever I drift a little too far afield. And that ultimately I think is what all of this conversation in this series is about.
Jeremy Duncan:And so to begin that I want to go all the way back to what is in some ways I think the simplest and therefore perhaps the most essential expression of joy in all of our lives. And that is the sense that there is a profound joy in the simplicity of being human. Now, don't get me wrong. There's a place for big dreams, and I'm all about reaching for what's next. Like that is kind of hardwired into my personality, whether I like it or not.
Jeremy Duncan:And we'll talk about the joy that can be found in all of that dreaming as well in this series, but from experience, reaching for what's next is never satisfying unless there is a solid foundation of joy in the ordinary underneath it. And so perhaps that's where we need to start or at the very least I think it's where I do when I talk about joy. And for that I want to reach all the way back to the story of Abraham for a moment that at least on the surface could absolutely seem like a huge W. But I want to suggest the real power of this story lies in something far more mundane. So, this is Genesis chapter 18 starting in verse 1.
Jeremy Duncan:The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. And by the way, capital l o r d here. That is the divine name Yahweh, which was always pronounced Adonai by the Jewish people which meant Lord in Hebrew. And that's why you see it spelled this way in your Bible. It's the signal.
Jeremy Duncan:Don't say the name. Say Lord. Say Adonai. But they want you to know what word is being used here. So, the all caps are not yelling 'Lord' at you.
Jeremy Duncan:When they're in your Bible, they're telling you it's the divine name for God. Except that means that this is in some sense that we will struggle to completely comprehend today. God actually appearing to Abraham. And God just happens to show up while he's out there sitting on the front porch enjoying some shade. And I want to pay attention to that just for a moment.
Jeremy Duncan:Sometimes I think we have this expectation that encounters with the divine come at the climax of some kind of ecstatic moment, or life changing struggle that we meet God in the fantastic like resurrection Sunday. And I'm not saying that doesn't happen. Certainly does. But here Abraham not only encounters God, he gets a flesh and blood visit from Yahweh while he's sitting on the porch enjoying a cold one in the shade. And I don't want to make too much about this, but I will tell you that some of the most profound moments, realizations in my life have come, Not here in the sanctuary on my face in prayer, but more likely on the Q Bluff just up the hill walking my dog overlooking the city.
Jeremy Duncan:The same walk that I have taken twice a day every day for 10 years now. And it's a beautiful walk. Don't get me wrong. But I'm convinced it's actually the ritual of that walk that makes it such an important part of my life. Like your porch, your tree, your walk, your dog, whatever it is that feels sacred and ritualistic to you is as close to God as anywhere else in your life.
Jeremy Duncan:Please do not let religious expectations steal from you the ordinary moments that are trying to desperately change your life. Because the Bible does not introduce us to a God that we conjure up religiously. It shows us a God that shows up often when we least expect it. And in my experience those moments have most often come when I find myself not trying very hard at all, but just simply content. See if you back up to chapter 17 in Genesis, things are a little intense there.
Jeremy Duncan:Like Abraham has another encounter with God. It's very moving. So moving in fact that he decides to circumcise himself at 99 years old, and then decides that all the men in his household have to do the same. And I offer no opinion on that decision, or whether any of us should be making rash decisions in ecstatic moments in our lives, perhaps way today. But what I do find interesting here is that when Abraham actually meets God, like face to face encounters the divine, it's not in that dramatic and demonstrated fealty of chapter 17.
Jeremy Duncan:It's here instead while he's just chilling out, making himself comfortable in the heat of the day. There's something special about those moments where we're not trying so hard. And I don't think I want to say God is closer there, but I do think sometimes we see God more easily when we're not trying as much. So I like to pray. And usually at some point each week, I will find myself here in the sanctuary when it's empty, walking and praying, pacing, and preparing for Sunday.
Jeremy Duncan:But I will be honest here. Rarely is that a moment for me. Walking my dog is where I most often encounter something that feels divine. Still, the story is just getting started here. So we read this.
Jeremy Duncan:Abraham looked up and saw 3 men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent and he met them and he bowed down to to the ground. He said, if I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. No. Abraham switches now to using singular pronouns here.
Jeremy Duncan:Let a little water be brought and then you may all wash your feet and rest under the tree. He goes back to plural pronouns here. Let me get you something to eat so you can be refreshed and go on your way now that you've come to your servant. Very well, they answered. Do as you say.
Jeremy Duncan:Now, we have to do a bit of a side quest here before we can back out of track because the big question here is what's up with these 3 guys called Yahweh? Well, Christians often unsurprisingly see Trinity here. Three figures that at least on the surface are collectively called by the divine name that must be Father, Son, and Spirit. And that is not at all unreasonable. However, it's also almost certainly not what the writer of the story had in mind at all.
Jeremy Duncan:In fact, the most straightforward way to read the Hebrew here is that Abraham is addressing one of these figures as Lord, but then switches back to plural pronouns when he invites them all just to stay for lunch. And that actually makes a lot of sense of the earliest Hebrew conceptions of Yahweh. Where God is often talked about surrounded by a divine counsel. So, back at the start of Genesis. God talks about creating humans in our image.
Jeremy Duncan:That's not a plural God. That is God addressing the divine counsel. Now it's God who's going to do the creating, but that is God explaining God's plan to this group of, you know, we can call them lower case gods that accompany the God in the heavens. And you can see this idea, for example, in Psalm 82 when the poet writes that God has taken his place in the divine counsel in the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. Now over time, concepts of God evolve throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, and later the divine council kind of falls away as monotheism becomes a central pillar for the Hebrew people.
Jeremy Duncan:And all those lower case gods, Elohim start getting referred to as angels. Malak more commonly as the scriptures unfold. But considering that we're only in Genesis 18 here and Abraham very directly refers to the divine name Yahweh, it's likely that this is some form, some expression of that divine counsel being invoked here. This is Yahweh and Yahweh's entourage. Sort of.
Jeremy Duncan:Because the other complicating factor here is something called the angel of the Lord. You see in Exodus, next book, we're going to be told that no one can see God face to face and live. In fact, God is so desperate at one point to show God's self to Moses that God decides to let Moses see God's hind parts. Which disappointingly is not a reference to the divine derriere, probably instead points to the place where God has just been. You can see that.
Jeremy Duncan:Still, if that's the case that seeing God means death, then how does God show up here for lunch with our boy, Abe? Well, that's where the angel of the Lord comes in because in later Hebrew scriptures, even near the end of Genesis, when God wants to show up, we find this character called the angel of the Lord or the angel of Yahweh. People speak to that character as if it was Yahweh. The character makes pronouncements as if it was God, and yet people get to live. And the basic concept there is that that this specific angel is the personal representative of Yahweh on the earth.
Jeremy Duncan:And so the character can speak for God. The character carries the full authority of God. And that makes a lot of sense because even though we have a lot of fan fiction about angels, the root of the Hebrew word malak simply means messenger. And in the ancient world, messengers did carry the word of a king or a dignitary. That was the job, literally.
Jeremy Duncan:So if you as a human encounter the personal specific messenger of God, then you are for all intents and purposes standing in the presence of God. You get to hear directly from God, but thankfully you get to walk away from the encounter. And so, it's also possible that in this story here in Genesis 18 what we are seeing is one of the first sort of conceptual appearances of the angel of the Lord. A concept that gets codified with specific language later in the story. So this whole story is kind of this neat little glimpse into of Hebrew thought, and how they imagined Yahweh in the earth.
Jeremy Duncan:But the bottom line is this trio represents God here on the earth. It's just a little hard to be more specific than that. We just have to take it at its word. This is Yahweh somehow. Still, now we can get back to our main quest here, because here Abraham is chilling on the porch.
Jeremy Duncan:Three representatives show up. One at least who speaks as God. And Abraham invites them for lunch. So here's a question. What do you do when you meet God?
Jeremy Duncan:Because, as much as I love in this story that Abraham is just chilling in the shade when God shows up. I kind of love how he responds here as well. God appears and he's, like, let me get some water. So y'all can wash your feet. Sit down.
Jeremy Duncan:Enjoy the shade. Have a bite before you go. I'm sure you got lots to do, but why don't you chill here with me for a minute first. That's literally what he offers to God. And there's sort of a beautiful naivete in it all.
Jeremy Duncan:Right? Like he doesn't even offer to wash their feet for them. He's just like, look, I'll get some water. You clean up. I'll get some food.
Jeremy Duncan:We'll lean against the tree. Fill your heart before you go. That's literally what this word refreshed means here. And, notice how small this story really is for a divine appearance. Abraham's chilling in the shade.
Jeremy Duncan:God pops over. Abraham offers lunch. God agrees to stay. And even this big climax. It's coming here.
Jeremy Duncan:But Abraham asked his wife to get some lunch for them all to eat. And God responds and says, like, where is Sarah actually? Well, she's over there in the tent. Abraham responds. And then one of them said to him, I'll come back about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.
Jeremy Duncan:Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind them. And Abraham and Sarah were already very old. Sarah well past the age of childbearing. So she laughed to herself at the thought. Am I this worn out, and my husband is old, and I will now have this pleasure?
Jeremy Duncan:By the way, word pleasure here. It's actually just the Hebrew word for lust. She's not talking about the idea of getting pregnant. She's saying to herself, you really think we're going to get it on at this age? My angel, give me a break.
Jeremy Duncan:How great is that? Like, she's not even thinking about miracle bursts. She's just worried about her back. And how weirdly low key is all of this right now? And then the Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh and say, will I really have a child now that I'm old?
Jeremy Duncan:There's those capital letters again. That's Yahweh talking directly here. Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son. Now Sarah was afraid, and she lied and said, I did not laugh, but he said, yeah, he did.
Jeremy Duncan:And that's the end of the story. Now, of course, it picks up later in a couple chapters, and Isaac is born, and we're off to the races, and to all of father Abraham's children. And that story is large and poetic and beautiful, and it guides us through the rest of the Hebrew scriptures and toward the story of Jesus. All nations are blessed through Abraham's faith. Yeah.
Jeremy Duncan:I get it. But just for a moment, I want you to try to forget everything you know about where the story goes, how important it is, and how big it all becomes. And I want you just for a second to sit here in the shade to enjoy the breeze with God for a second. Think about this story at the scale of the story. Because often I think we imagine this ending sitting in judgment of Sarah.
Jeremy Duncan:Right? Like, how could she laugh at God that way? But is that really what we're supposed to take from this judgment here? I mean, think about it. God drops by, you're out in the shade, everyone stays for lunch, the Lord makes a crazy promise, and you laugh.
Jeremy Duncan:And God turns to you and says, what are you laughing about? And you say, not me. But God says, get out of here. I heard you. We'll talk again in 9 months.
Jeremy Duncan:I I don't think this moment is meant to communicate anything, but the surprising joy that catches you off guard when you least expect it. In fact, I wonder if this moment is meant to communicate that big, existential, world shaking, trajectory altering joy actually has a very hard time finding us unless we learn to laugh at the absurdity of grace. And that big joy begins when we learn how to enjoy a cold breeze on a hot day, or dropping everything for lunch with unexpected guests, or when we giggle at the prospect of good news that seems just a little bit too good to be true. They've actually come to believe that healthy, mature, joy cultivating theology of celebration begins not in 10th anniversary celebrations, or unexpected births, or even in good news that we've been waiting for for a very long time, but actually in our ability to notice these small, joyful moments that are surrounding us all the time. The moments that become the basis for bigger stories, larger joy somewhere else down the road.
Jeremy Duncan:Shade and lunch and laughter, those are the building blocks of celebration. And celebrating those is where you start to find your joy that shapes who you become in the future. And I want to come all the way back to Michel de Montaigne today before we close because he was this guy who once said, there's more of gravity than of gaiety in joy. And that's interesting because he was a guy who fancied himself a philosopher during the French Renaissance. To be honest, a pretty intimidating time to consider yourself one of those.
Jeremy Duncan:But you know what his big contribution to philosophy was? Was telling all the other French philosophers they didn't really matter as much as they thought they did. And in the end, neither did he. See, he loved philosophy, and he read a lot of books, and he wrote books. But what guided his imagination was the idea that it wasn't the outliers that really mattered.
Jeremy Duncan:It was the long, slow, fumbling, stumbling, ordinary, frail, joyous and tumultuous everyday lives of everyday people that really fueled the world. He once wrote that in practice, thousands of little women in their villages have lived more gentle, more equitable, more constant, more important lives than Cicero. And I wonder if sometimes in our endless pursuit of joy that isn't where we need to come back to to start as well by abandoning our image of ourselves as Abraham, the father of nations, and in embracing our image of ourselves as Abraham sitting in the shade with God laughing, in letting go of our pursuit of ecstasy, and in constantly choosing to cultivate our ability to notice the small goodness that surrounds us right now. Because I actually think that small moments savored well can lead us into moments we never expected to see. And there is so much more to talk about joy in this series, but perhaps first we should learn how to savor the joy of ending on time as well.
Jeremy Duncan:Because small things are beautiful and that's where our joy begins. Let's pray. God, for all the times that we have skipped past and missed the moments where a cool breeze lightened the load of the heat of the day, or friends stopped by and perhaps we were annoyed to be caught off guard, Where a promise came up and we thought it too big and we laughed it off and yet in those moments you were present to us reminding us of the goodness that surrounds us all the time We pray that your spirit would be with us this week so that those moments would never pass us by again. That we could sink into them and savor them and go for a walk and enjoy the sun and realize that's not just a fleeting moment It is an expression of the joy that grounds the universe and holds it together. You are present in all of those moments.
Jeremy Duncan:And that the more we gather them up the more we build for us a base of joy that will translate somewhere down the road in ways we least expect into the ability to believe for big things and life altering things and joy that will overwhelm us with gratitude. May we start small and savor the ordinary of being human. And, may that be enough today. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan:Hey. Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information. You can find us on all of the socials at commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community.
Jeremy Duncan:You can also join our Discord server. Head to commons.church /discord for the invite and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week.
Jeremy Duncan:We'll talk to you soon.