Monday, October 13, 2014

Picked to Party! Message for October 12

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Satan opposes joy.

So Satan opposes anything that leads to joy.  Satan opposes music and humor and laughter.  Satan despises laughter and play and silliness.  Satan is disgusted by loving and serving and giving.  Even the slightest whiff of joy will lead us closer to God.

Real joy freezes Satan in terror.

So Satan supports the serious.

Too often I cooperate in this.  God may well be throwing a party.  It appears that I am invited.  But why would I bother with a party when I have so many important things to do?

I have a farm to tend.  I have a business to build.  I have a church to serve and books to read and meetings to manage.  I have sermons to preach and classes to prepare.

Let’s not even start with the yard work and house work and book work staring me in the face.  Then there are the lessons and practices and games and concerts.  I simply don’t have time for some foolish party—even if the invitation comes directly from God!

Satan supports the serious.

When I am serious, I tend to focus on me.  The more I focus on me, the less I focus on God.  For example, I spend so much time working for Jesus that I never spend any time with Jesus.  I am so busy studying God that I never take time to enjoy God.  I am so consumed with worry that I have nothing left for worship.  I am so busy handing out invitations that I never get to the party.

Satan supports the serious.  Because the business of Hell is serious—deadly serious.

God invites me to the party.  Am I going?

I align myself with the first invitees in the parable.  I have made my confession about that.  I know you can make your own confession.  We all face the same charge.  Count One of God’s indictment is “Failure to Party.”

After all, Jesus loves a good party.  He does dinner with Pharisees and tax collectors.  He makes sure a wedding has enough wine.  He supplies a picnic for thousands and dances with those freed from demons.  And what does he get?

The serious people are not amused.  “Look,” they say, “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!(Matthew 11:17).  Guilty as charged, Jesus says.

The deadly serious people could not take Jesus seriously.  The charge against them was “Failure to Party.”  They, too, were guilty as charged.

God invites me to the party.  Am I going?

I can excuse all those serious people.  They had not yet seen the end of the story.  They didn’t know the reason for the party.  But what about me?  Where is my excuse?  I know how things turn out!

This is the Marriage Feast of the Lamb!  Sin, death and evil have done their worst to Jesus.  And they have failed.  In Revelation twenty-one, we hear the song played at the Divine wedding dance.

“See, the home of God is among mortals…
And God himself will be with them;
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
Mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
For the first things have passed away.”

If I cannot sing that song, then why am I here?  If I cannot dance to that tune, why did I come?  If that song doesn’t make me smile, I am in the wrong place!

God invites me to the party.  Am I going?

Worship is a party, first and foremost.  Worship is joy—joy embodied and enacted.

But we are serious people.  We demand decorum and decency.  We clamor for cool and calm control.  We regulate our rituals and domesticate the Divine drama.  We cooperate with Satan in corralling the Spirit.

After all, how dare we be happy?  People are still dying.  Diseases leap from continent to continent.  Missiles rain down on the innocent, and murderers still stalk their victims.  Women are abused, and cancer still rages.  Hungry bellies growl for food, and naked bodies shiver for clothing.  Depression deepens into darkness.  Children are stolen for sex and soldiering.

What business have we to celebrate anything?

Here is what I imagine.  I imagine that I go to a wedding reception.  The bride and groom radiate happiness.  The joint is jumping with joy.  And I—I just can’t stand it.  “What is wrong with you people?” I shout.  “Don’t you realize that this is the beginning of sixty years of misery?  There will be a miscarriage.  There will be horrific arguments.  There will be debt and discouragement.  There will be ungrateful children and unloving parents.  At best it will end with death and at worst with divorce.  You should be weeping in despair, not laughing love.”

In my dream I hear a little tune.  “Every party needs a pooper.  That’s why we invited you.”

God invites me to the party.  Am I going?

Yes, the journey has its share of puzzles and pitfalls and pain.  But we know how it all ends.  “He will wipe every tear from their eyes…for the first things have passed away.

Worship without joy is like balloons without helium.

If we church people can’t jump for joy with Jesus, then Jesus will find people willing to learn.  Our worship must be more like a wedding and less like a funeral, more like a circus and less like a class.

God invites me to the party.  Am I going?

We can’t just show up for the buffet and then slip out during the toasts.  That’s the problem with the underdressed guest in the parable.  A good host provided proper wedding duds for underdressed guests.  So this fellow must have turned down the offer of proper party clothes.

He just came for the food.

We get our wedding clothes when we are baptized.  “As many of you as were baptized into Christ,” Paul writes in Galatians three, verse twenty-seven, “have clothed yourselves with Christ.” 

The only question is whether we will stay dressed or not.  Because with Jesus, every day is a party!

Three years ago I bought our granddaughter a princess outfit.  It came complete with tiara and wand.  When I bought it, the dress reached her ankles.  Now it hardly covers her bottom.  But she still wants to wear that dress every time she comes.  It is a sign that she is our princess and our joy.  It says much about who she is.

Our baptism dresses us for lives of joy.  As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Joy is the serious business of heaven” (Letters to Malcolm, page 93).  Resist the temptation to pour water on the Holy Spirit’s fire.  “Do not quench the Spirit,” Paul writes in First Thessalonians five, verse nineteen.  Instead, blow on the glowing coals of joy until they burst into flame.

This means focusing every day on what is good and gracious, what is pure and positive, what is enduring and excellent.  The world has no shortage of crabby critics.  The world has an abundance of shouting heads.  It takes no talent to trumpet trouble.  It takes no skill to celebrate sin.  It takes no wisdom to whine about the world.

No, we celebrate what is true, honorable, just, pure, and pleasing.  We lift up what is commendable, praiseworthy, and excellent.  That’s the music at God’s party.  We are called to know how to dance.

God invites me to the party.  Am I going?  You bet!


Let us pray…

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