St Luke’s, Havelock North – OT 28, 2008 – ‘’It Don’t Mean A Thing …’

Readings: Exodus 32: 1-14, Philippians 4: 1-9, Matthew 22: 1-14

I want to say from the start that I really wanted to preach today about Moses’ role in our Exodus reading and the concept of divine anger that we see illustrated in that and our gospel reading, but as seems to be happening more and more often lately, I kept finding myself pulled in a different direction. So I ended up in Philippians, which was annoying because I had wasted a lot of time on the other ideas and besides, it’s Paul! But like it or not, that’s where I am, which is just as well because what I’ve come to understand is that just as this epistle sits at the centre of today’s readings, so its dominant theme lives at the heart of true faith.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

The picture of a wedding banquet is often used as a metaphor for the kingdom of God, just as it is in today’s gospel reading, albeit in a very particular – and importantly so – context. But as we’re constantly reminded by scripture, the kingdom of God isn’t so much about the hereafter as it is the here and now, so one commentator suggests that an even better metaphor for the Christian life would be the title of the old Duke Ellington tune, ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing’.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the song. It’s fundamentally about life and music and claims that neither one counts for much in the Duke’s opinion if it’s lacking that sense of swing - that essential rhythm – that gets people out of their seats and on to the dance floor.

Don’t worry, as a confirmed non-dancer I have no intention of asking you to jive in the aisles or boogey in the back room. But what I am going to do is suggest that if we take seriously what Paul says in Philippians then we can replace the word ‘swing’ with ‘joy’ and say with true conviction that ‘it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that joy’. I know, it just doesn’t sound quite the same, but according to Paul it’s exactly the right way to describe a true life of faith.

There are times when I think the advances made last century in our understanding of human psychology have been more of a hindrance than a help. In particular those advances gave us some convenient labels for some of our more annoying idiosyncrasies. So I can’t possibly lead that group because I’m an introvert, or no I can’t go to a quiet day because I’m an extrovert or, in my case, I can hear the word ‘rejoice’ and quickly whip out my badge and say, ‘I’m a pessimist, go away’.

The thing about being a pessimist is you always expect the worst so you’re seldom disappointed. The problem with that is what do you do when Paul says ‘rejoice’?

There are two key points to be made here: First, joy and our expression of it is not dependant on situation or circumstance, and second, before we start to explore the first point we need to examine just what we mean by ‘joy’.

“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown”.

As always when dealing with a translation, we need to be careful that the word we use means what we think it means – and in this case, even more so. When Paul, of all people, writes about joy we need to be aware that he isn’t referring to some kind of euphoric, don’t-worry-be-happy state of consciousness where the pains and concerns of this world somehow fade away.

At the risk of delving into areas beyond my expertise, the Greek word translated here as ‘joy’ is ‘chara’. It’s an important word in scripture because ‘chara’ is also the root word for ‘charis’ which we translate as ‘grace’, and if we add the common Greek prefix ‘eu’ we get ‘eucharist’, or thanksgiving. Notice nowhere in these definitions or translations do we find words like ‘happy’ or ‘carefree’ or ‘lighthearted’. What we find inevitably is that in scripture joy is anything but lighthearted.

C.S. Lewis in his autobiography wrote that, ‘Joy is the serious business of heaven. It’s the grand truth. It’s the surprise that happens when we discover God’s love.’

“It’s the surprise that happens when we discover God’s love.” Joy, for Paul and others, is surprising, and it’s about living in the aftermath of that surprise.

Back to point one, joy and our expression of it is not dependant on situation or circumstance.

One of the commentators I read during my abortive attempts to create a sermon on today’s first reading suggested that to understand what happens in that Exodus passage we need to remember that while Moses was up on the mountain in the presence of God, the people were stuck in the valley alone. Once you grasp that concept you can start to see the golden calf as a desperate attempt to make God real for them. How could they feel joyful in the absence of any real, tangible, experience of God?

Paul writes to the Christians at Philippi from his prison cell in Rome and tells them ‘you are my joy’. He writes to a group on the leading edge of what would become full-blown persecution, people who were seeing their friends killed and their own lives endangered. Similar events lurk in the background of today’s gospel reading. Matthew is written in the shadow of the expulsion of the Christians from the synagogues by the Jewish authorities and then the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Rome.

How does one respond to such circumstances? It’s simplistic nevertheless at least partly true that one option is to take a peaceful parable from a much earlier source and imbue it with some righteous anger and judgment aimed squarely at those responsible for the present state of affairs. That’s one option. Another is to say, ‘rejoice in the Lord always.’

Karl Barth described Paul’s calls to rejoice as a defiant ‘nevertheless’ to the circumstances he and his audience found themselves in. It’s fair to say that in the Epistle to the Philippians at least joy’s companions are most definitely not euphoria and a problem-free existence. In Philippians those companions are pain and fear and for Paul joy is not the absence of such things, but rather the presence of Christ. ‘Rejoice in the Lord’. Live lives immersed in Christ, accept your invitation to the banquet and commit yourself to it entirely – or in other words, come dressed for a wedding, not golf.

It’s a nice thought of course, to be able to ignore the slings and arrows of our current circumstance and rejoice in the Lord, but again, that’s not what joy means in this context.

“Rejoice in the Lord always … Let your gentleness be known to everyone …Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God …Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me”.

This is Paul’s understanding of joy – a life lived in Christ and for others. A life of grace and gentleness, a life of prayer and thanksgiving, a life of passing on what’s been seen and learned, a life that faces pain and suffering and uncertainty and sorrow, not with some sort of banal grin or shallow platitudes, but with a defiant ‘nevertheless’, a life lived constantly in surprised awareness of God’s love.

That is what it means to rejoice in the Lord always. The question is, do we?