The One That Got Away
The One That Got Away
Fishermen look back on their great fishing excursions and always have a story to tell about “the one that got away”. I’ve heard people talk about past loves like that. I look at the 2008 NY Giants season like that. If Plaxico hadn’t shot himself in the leg, they were going to win back-to-back championships. They were dominant that year.
That was the one that got away.
The same is always true (for me at least!) for sermon series. They can’t last forever, but there’s always a little more to say, one more sermon to squeeze in, another Sunday to add to the series. This was true in the Need to Know series that we just wrapped up. It could have been twice as long – easily. Philippians is filled with all kinds of jewels that were left uncovered in the series.
But if I could just add one more sermon – the one that got away – it would be about the theme that is like the rushing current of Philippians, the blood pumping and bringing oxygen throughout the body:
joy.
In Philippians 4:4, Paul says it – and then says it again:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, Rejoice!
Always and again: joy!
I mentioned this in the sermon on Sunday – and it pained me not to be able to stop here and just talk about joy the entire time! I’m kicking myself for not building in another week in the series for joy. It really is the wind in the sails of the entire letter.
Just look at what commentator and biblical scholar Gordon Fee has to say about it:
Joy, unmitigated, untrammeled joy, is—or at least should be—the distinctive mark of the believer in Christ Jesus. The wearing of black and the long face, which so often came to typify some later expressions of Christian piety, are totally foreign to Paul’s version; Paul the theologian of grace is equally the theologian of joy. Christian joy does not come and go with one’s circumstances; rather it is predicated altogether on one’s relationship with the Lord and is thus an abiding, deeply spiritual quality of life. It finds expression in “rejoicing,” which is an imperative, not an option. With its concentration in the Lord, rejoicing is always to mark individual and corporate life in Philippi. They who “serve by the Spirit of God” (3:3) do so in part by rejoicing in the Lord, whatever else may be their lot. In this letter “whatever else” includes opposition and suffering at the hands of the local citizens of the Empire, where Caesar was honored as “lord.” In the face of such, the Philippians are to rejoice in the Lord always.”
There’s so much to say, but let me reiterate what Fee said:
joy is meant “always to mark” our life together as a church.
So as we take our worship services outside to the gazebo this Sunday, let’s do it with joy. Let our life together be marked with joy, and let the world see it. It may be hot, it may be a little inconvenient, I don’t like sunscreen either. But let’s go out in joy, worship with joy, welcome newcomers with joy, serve with joy.