Transcript of the sermon preached by Pastor Shawn Coons on March 26, 2023

This is our final week in our big feelings series, and we're going to talk about fear this week as our final emotion, as we've got happiness and anger and sadness. What am I missing? No, happiness, anger, sadness. Oh, there was an intro week. There we go. I'm like, "There's an emotion I preached on and I don't remember it at all." If I can't remember what I say, how can I expect you to? So there we are.

So we're talking about fear this week, and as we approach Easter, as we get towards the events of Holy Week, Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and those last hours of Jesus, starting to get closer to that story, starting to reflect a little bit. In a moment, we're going to read the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, which takes place after the Last Supper. That's where Jesus prays that, "Can there be another way, God? Do I have to go through with this?" It's always been for me a powerful passage, a very moving passage. I've felt as I read it, and sometimes there are movie versions of it that bring it out very well, but I felt the grief in there that Jesus has at that moment. I felt the worry that Jesus has at that moment.

But until I started preparing for the sermon this week, I had never really thought about that story in terms of the fear that Jesus must be feeling at that moment. And as I started to reflect on that, well, obviously He's worried, He's stressed, but I've never really thought of Him as afraid. I'm like, well, why haven't that thought occurred to me? And I wonder if it's partially because it's troubling to think of Jesus as afraid. I wonder if that's troubling because that leads us to the next step, well, can God be afraid? So I want to ask that question and we're going to unpack it as we move along. Is it troubling for you to believe in Jesus or a God who can be afraid?

Keeping this lens of fear in our mind, let's hear our gospel lesson this morning. Matthew 26, starting with verse 36. "Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and He said to His disciples, 'Sit here while I'll go over there and pray.' And He took with him, Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be grieved and agitated, and He said to them, 'I am deeply grieved even to death. Remain here and stay awake with Me.' And going a little farther, He threw himself on the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not what I want, but what You want.' Then He came to the disciples and He found them sleeping, and He said to Peter, 'So could you not stay awake with Me one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.'"

Again, He went away for the second time and prayed, 'My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, Your will be done.' And again, He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, He went away and He prayed for the third time saying the same words. Then He came to the disciples and said to them, 'Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? See the hour is at hand, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.'" This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So let's back up a little bit. Let's walk through this passage, where it fits into the night, Jesus' final night before His crucifixion. The passage, it begins just as the Jewish Passover begins, as this festival, this ritual, begins. And Passover is an ancient Jewish tradition. It's still practiced to this day. Many of the same practices are done as have been done for millennia.

And one part of the ritual of the Passover dinner, the Seder dinner, is reading from the Psalms. Some certain sections of the Psalms are read every year, year after year. I wonder though if Jesus could really focus on those words, on the ritual of the Passover, knowing what was ahead of Him. I want you to think of a time where you have had something coming up very soon that you're not looking forward to, that you're fearful of, that you're worried about. Maybe it's confessing up to a mistake, like you have to share with someone how you kind of let them down or something that happened and you don't want to tell them. Maybe you're sitting on bad news and you don't know how you're going to be able to tell your family member, a coworker, a friend, a classmate. Maybe it's the night before you go into surgery.

Something is coming up and you're worried and you're scared, but you still have to go through with daily life, to go through your job, you have to go through classes, go through sitting down to meals with folks. I think this is where Jesus was at this moment. He knew what was ahead, maybe not in every last detail, but He knew generally what was coming. But it was the Passover. It was with the disciples. They were expecting Him to kind of lead them through this ritual. And so He did. But as He broke bread, He was probably thinking, "What's up next?" And maybe there was some worry and maybe there was some fear as He poured the cup. He was anxious. Maybe His hand trembled a little bit.

As He washed his disciples feets as it says in John, scared of what the next day would bring. And so it's in this state of mind that Jesus is hearing these Psalms read at the Passover meal. And some of the words from those Psalms are the words that Rick read just a moment ago from Psalm 118. This is verse five and six, "Out of my distress, I called on the Lord. The Lord answered me and set me in a broad place. With the Lord on my side, I do not fear. What can mortals do to me?" With the Lord on my side, I do not fear. I wonder how Jesus heard those words on this night. Was it reassuring? Were they words of comfort? "With the Lord on my side, I do not fear." Or was it a gut punch to a Jesus who was afraid?

During the Passover, He shares that one of the disciples is going to betray Him. Then after they leave the supper, as they head to the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus shares, "You know what? You're all going to desert me. You will all become deserters of me this night,"" Jesus says to them. Peter protests, he says, "Not me Lord. Never going to leave you." And Jesus tells him, "Not once, Peter, but three times you're going to deny even knowing me." And so this is how Jesus comes to the Garden of Gethsemane. He comes grieved. He comes fearful of what is to come. He goes there knowing His closest companions, who have been with Him every step of the way these last three years, they are all going to scatter. None of them are going to be there when He needs them most. "With the Lord on my side, I do not fear." What do these words mean to Jesus at this time when He has every reason to be afraid?

We've talked about our emotions during this series. Fear is one of those emotions. And we said there's no good emotions, there are no bad emotions. Fear serves a good purpose in our life. It tells us something is out there and you should be paying attention. Something is out there that could be threatening your wellbeing. There is nothing wrong with being afraid. It is not a sign of weakness. I would suggest to you that there are some people actually who could use more fear. I read this week a story of these two pilots who were working with Red Bull, that energy drink, to do this stunt where each one would go up in their plane, they would put their planes into nose dives together right near each other. They would each exit their plane. They had a parachute on their back, but they would try and swap planes as they're falling, and their planes are falling. One of the pilots made it to the other plane. The other pilot did not. He parachuted out and was safe. The plane was not. Some people could use more fear in their life.

We lift up fearlessness in our society, but it serves a good purpose. Maybe one reason we don't like the image of a God, of a Jesus, who can be afraid can be because we have bought into this sign that being afraid is a sign of weakness. And so we are, ironically, scared to reveal our own fears. I want to question, a question for you to think about real quickly. When was the last time you shared your fears with someone else? Just think about that for a moment. When was the last time you shared what you are afraid of with someone else?

We've been reading through the book This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley, and she writes, "For something at the root of so much of human behavior, it is rare that we ever truly behold another person's fear. So many of us express our fear in ways that only serve to mask it. In conflict we may see anger or hate or apathy, but it is much more difficult to perceive fear in a person. It's even more difficult to name it. Yet fear stalks so much of our words and actions and even loves." How alone do you feel in your fear? How comfortable are you sharing your fears with other people? Let me flip the question a little bit. Can you think of a time someone close to you shared their fears with you? How did that make you feel? Trusted? Important? It is a gift to be able to have someone who sees in you something that says, "I am safe to share my fears with you." It doesn't make the fear go away, but it makes it easier to bear.

Another quote from Cole Arthur Riley, "Find those who tell you do not be afraid, yet they stay close enough to tremble with you. This is a love." Reflecting on fear in this way, let's look back at Jesus in the Garden, praying with all His being, with everything He is, praying to God, "Let this cup pass from me. God, I don't want to do it. If there's another way, let's find that way." And He goes to his friends, looking for some support in this hour. But they can't stay awake. They are so tired. I don't know what stresses they are under, but they just are unable to stay awake with Jesus. Three times this happened. Three times He goes to them for support. I mean, who knows? Maybe this would've kept happening over and over again if Judas hadn't shown up with the soldiers at that moment. I don't think Jesus got over His fear. I don't think God calls us to get over our fear. We're called to move forward, fear and all. Not get over it. Not erase it. Just move forward with the fear.

Oftentimes, if we think about what are we afraid of? What's the root of our fear? And sometimes we go, "Well, I'm afraid the worst is going to happen. I'm going to afraid that this situation is going to go down this road and it's going to be an awful. And the worst thing I can possibly think of will happen." If we think through, usually the worst won't happen. Oftentimes, the worst can't happen. And usually the worst does not happen. But let's also be honest, sometimes the worst does happen. Jesus feared the worst and the worst happened to Jesus, but He still moved forward. And even if the worst happens, even if our fears are realized, we move forward.

How do we move forward? Well, there's lots of different ways, and then sometimes time helps. But I'm going to come back to kind of our lessons that we've been trying to learn during this series. One way of move forward is simply naming the fear, naming the feeling. "I'm afraid. That's what I'm feeling right now. I'm trembling, I'm short of breath." Name the physical sensations that go along with that feeling. Share the fear. I think that's what I'm convicted of most as I was getting ready for this, is we keep our fears to ourselves way too much, maybe more than any other emotion. Sharing the fear. Find those who tell you, "Do not be afraid," yet stay close enough to tremble with you.

So here's your homework for today. Share a fear with someone, today, this week. And it can be a small thing. If you want to share, "I'm afraid of clowns," share that. If you want to share something that's been weighing on you heavily, and you find that person, you have that person in your life that you trust, share that fear. Let people help you. Invite people into your life.

Let me leave you this morning, as our closing prayer, a blessing from Kate Bowler. "God, I feel afraid. My heart is melting like wax. God save me and quiet my fears. Hold me when I feel there is no place to stand. God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy. Blessed are we who admit, 'God we're afraid.' Blessed are we who confess, 'We don't know how to rest.' You know our anxious minds. You fill our restless hearts. You promise us Your presence, the quiet of Your love, God. You say, 'Come away with Me and I will give you rest.' God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy. Breathe. Settle on this truth. Our God is closer than air." Amen.

Transcript of the sermon preached by Pastor Shawn Coons on March 19, 2023

Our theme for our big feelings series has been every emotion has a story to tell. Every emotion is a storyteller. There are no good emotions, there are no bad emotions, there are just emotions. Some may be more welcome than others. Some may be more challenging than others. I want to talk today about what happens once we listen to that story. Our theme for today is the emotion of anger, and I want to suggest that once we listen to the story our emotions are telling us, we still have a choice. We can go down any number of paths with that emotion. So when we listen to the story that our anger may be telling us, what path do we follow? Where will our anger lead us?

Robin read just a moment ago from Exodus and it was a passage where God gets angry, and passages where God gets angry are not uncommon in our Bible, Old and New Testament, when God gets angry with the Hebrew people at this point for making that golden calf, turning to worship an idol. God initially starts down a path, one path, a path of a violent destruction of his people. Moses talks to God and has God follow a different path, as we continue on in that passage. As I said a moment ago, anger is prominent in scripture. There's the anger of God. But if you read in the New Testament, you're going to find the apostle Paul as he writes letters to certain folks in various places, he expresses joy but Paul also expresses anger. We can read in the Book of Ruth, Naomi, who is angry at her situation. We read in the Book of Job, Job is angry. Moses gets angry.

In Judges 4 there's a very wild story of a woman named Jael and what she does in anger. We can read from the Psalms, there are a number of Psalms that express anger. Even Jesus gets angry as we read the gospels. There's points where Jesus uses such colorful phrases as calling a group of Pharisees you brood of vipers. He says angrily to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan." And then there is probably the most famous passage of Jesus' anger that we're going to read today, although it's found in multiple gospels, we're going to read it from John 2 starting at verse 13. And this is the beginning of Jesus' ministry, at least in the Gospel of John. This scene, this cleansing of the temple, takes place at the end of Jesus' ministry in the other gospels. But in John, it's at the beginning of Jesus' ministry right as the Passover is beginning

John 2 starting with verse 13, "The Passover of the Jews was near and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple He found people selling cattle, sheep and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords He drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables, and He told those who were selling the doves, 'Take these things out of here. Stop making my Father's house a marketplace.' His disciples remembered that it was written zeal for your house will consume me. The Jews then said to Him, 'What sign can you show us for doing this?'.

"And Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.' The Jews then said, 'This temple has been under construction for 46 years and you will raise it up in three days?' But He was speaking of the temple of his body. And after He was raised from the dead his disciples remembered that He had said this and they believed the scripture and the Word that Jesus had spoken." This is the Word of the Lord, thanks be to God.

So as I mentioned a moment ago, we find this story, this cleansing of the temple, in all four gospels. They were written, the gospels, at different times out of different circumstances. And there are many stories and sayings of Jesus that are unique to one gospel or just a couple of the gospels rather than being in all four. So the fact that we see this in all four gospels means this is a significant story. This is a memorable story. The gospel writers included it in their gospels. The church included passing these stories down. Why did it get passed down? Why do we remember this? Probably in part because Jesus gets angry. This is not the image of Jesus that we tend to have. We like the warm, fuzzy Jesus. We like the Jesus that welcomes all. We like that Jesus that says love your neighbor, love your enemy. But Jesus gets angry here.

Jesus gets really, really angry here. And it can be tempting to say, "Well, I'm not sure Jesus, you should have done that. That's a little overboard. I don't know, Jesus, that you should be getting angry." But remember, anger, not bad. Anger is not bad. Anger isn't necessarily good. It just is. And anger happens for many reasons. I want to suggest this morning we mull over two questions for when we get angry. Why are we angry and where will our anger lead us? Why are we angry? Where will our anger lead us? All right, so let's start with that first question. Why do we get angry?

There are all sorts of reasons we get anger and some of them are big, injustices of the world, and some of them are small, stubbing your toe. None of them are good or bad, they just are. My most regular source of anger is, I hate to admit it, is driving. I get mad at people when driving, especially if they're taking liberties or getting something I don't think they should. They're getting ahead of me when they shouldn't. But why? Why do I get angry when I'm driving? Well, I think if I boil it down to just kind of a statement it's because I feel like someone's getting something they don't deserve. Now, when I do this and someone merges late when all the rest of us have merged before and they're getting ahead and not waiting in the line of cars we all wait in, does that hurt me? No. Is it really hurting anybody else? No.

Maybe it's making us a couple seconds later but that is no big deal, and that's not really my reason for being angry. It's because they got away with something. Let's look at bigger reasons. Nobody mentioned politics as a source of anger, indirectly at least, but anger is so present in our political world and our political discourse for today. And all sorts of different kinds of anger for all sorts of different kinds of reasons, but turn on some of those news shows and it's just outrage. What's the latest reason to get outraged today? If you remember years ago there was the outrage and the anger when President Obama wore a tan suit on the wrong occasion. I'm not fashion conscious enough to know why that was a bad thing. I thought he looked pretty good, but I guess you don't do that.

But when we think about this political anger and the anger in our political discourse, is it anger that someone is getting something they don't deserve? Someone is getting something more than me? Or is it anger that someone is being hurt, someone is being denied justice? One of the questions we need to ask when we are angry, one of the stories we need to let our anger tell us, who is my anger for? Is it for someone in need? Is it for someone who is vulnerable? Is it for someone that needs protecting or am I feeling angry because I feel slighted? Not that that's always a good or a bad thing, but who is your anger for? Is it for, let's put it in biblical language, is it for the least of these? Is it for the marginalized? Is it for the oppressed? Is it for someone who can't defend themselves or speak up or is it for me?

And sometimes that can be us, absolutely, but a lot of times it's not. Jesus' anger, as we go back to the story in John 2, Jesus' anger was for people whom the faith was supposed to be protected. Jewish faith is all about caring for the marginalized, the poor, the oppressed, the refugee, the widow, the orphan, and Jesus' own faith, the temple, the centerpiece of the Jewish faith, was mocking those people, was taking the need of those people, especially the poor and impoverished, and turning in temple into a marketplace. And there were some unfair practices going on if we look deeper in to that. Jesus was angry because He saw the Jewish faith, He saw following God being perverted. It was supposed to be fruitful, it was supposed to be producing all sorts of wonderful fruit. In this story, I think it's one of the other gospels, I can't put my finger on it, it's sandwiched with this weird story of a fig tree Jesus comes across.

I don't know if you remember this story. Jesus was just kind of walking along with His disciples. It is not the season for fig trees to producing fruit, and so He sees a fig tree, He goes over to see if there's any figs on it. It's not that time of year, so it's not, and Jesus gets angry and He curses that fig tree. Later they come across it and it's withered and died. And that seems like a little, I don't know if you can get road rage while walking, but I mean we look at it and go, "It wasn't supposed to do fruit." It wasn't about the fig tree, it was about the message. It was about a bigger message of the people of Israel, of the Jewish religion as a whole at that point. It was supposed to be fruitful. It was supposed to be producing wonderful fruit and instead they did things like this in the temple.

And probably a good point as an aside, when talking about the Gospel of John, the author of Gospel of John uses the phrase the Jews a lot, and Christians throughout the centuries have done some pretty antisemitic things with verses like that. And more proper reading of that might be the Jewish authorities or the Jewish leaders, it was not Jews as a whole. I mean, Jesus was a Jew, so let's just put that there. Jesus was angry because the people who His faith were supposed to be protecting and lifting up were the ones His faith was stepping on. Cole Arthur Riley in her book, This Here Flesh, says that anger is never holier than when it acts in defense of the dignity of a person or a piece of creation, but you can be a person of profound anger without allowing it to eclipse your or anyone else's personhood. Every emotion has a story to tell.

Our anger rises at times when we perceive that something is not right and so we need to listen. We determine who is our anger for? Is it for truly someone in need, someone truly wronged? And that can be ourselves, and if it is, then what choice or what's the choice we have? Which path are we going to go down? We have seen one path many times in our history. We can go down the path of just blindly striking out, just going into a rage and just being angry at whomever comes across or being horribly angry and mean and even violent to people we think are the perpetrators or maybe not even, the people who are just in front of us. We've seen too many mass shootings in our country that have been the result of that. Put the January 6th protests in there. There are other protests that have turned from a peaceful protest to violence and destruction, treating others with contempt, a blind rage that spills into all of our interactions onto anyone in front of us.

Have you known, do you know, that person who's kind of always angry? That person who's just kind of simmering at this low level of anger and it comes out in all of their interactions, at work, in the family. They're dealing with some levels of anger and so you ask them and ask that question and you get this tone of voice or you get a response from them that is just attacking you and you know haven't done anything, but they're just so angry and they haven't really listened to the story. They're angry and they've chosen a certain path to follow that anger down. It's not the anger that's bad, it's the path we let it lead us down. Gandhi once said, "I have learned to use my anger for good. Without it, I would not be motivated to rise to a challenge. It is an energy that compels me to define what is just and unjust."

Brian McLaren, another Christian author, says it this way, "So yes, you bet I'm angry. It's my source of creativity. It's a vaccination against apathy and complacency. It's a gift that can be abused or widely used. Yes, it's a temptation, but it's also a resource and an opportunity as unavoidable and necessary as pain. It's part of the gift of being human and being alive. And if you're not angry, I think you should check your pulse, because if your heart beats in love for something, for someone, anything, you'll be angry when it's harmed or threatened."

In today's passage the disciples recall that scripture that says zeal for your house will consume me. Zeal is not a word we use very much anymore, and I think part of it is because we don't really associate it in a positive way. Zeal, another form of that word is zealot, and usually when we talk about zealot we talk about someone so blindly devoted to something they're just doing kind of extreme actions and usually not good. We hear the word zealot in the Bible. There's Simon the Zealot was one of the disciples of Jesus. That's a Zealot with a capital Z. The Zealots were a group within first century Judaism. They wanted to see a more military kind of overthrow of the Romans. Jesus got angry and when He listened to that anger He was moved to drastic action on behalf of those in need.

Sometimes it is okay for zeal to consume us as the scripture says, as long as it leads us down that path of standing up against what is wrong, what is unjust. Anger is not the opposite of love. Even when we are angry, even if it's a righteous anger, especially if it's a righteous anger, it calls for love. Methodist minister Steve Garnaas-Holmes says it this way, "Let the furnace of repentance refine your rage into desire of kindness for all. Some things need to be burned down but not people. Let nothing diminish your love for wrongdoers." That's hard. Let nothing diminish your love for wrongdoers. I mean, we can all think of those people that we're angry at, that we feel are just doing injustice in the world, that are doing wrong. And to hear let nothing diminish my love for them, I don't want to hear that. There are hard things in the Bible. There are parts of the Bible I don't want to hear.

There are parts in the Old Testament where God seems to encourage genocide. There's violence in the Old Testament. But maybe one of the most troubling things in the Bible for me that I don't want to hear is love your enemies. Why did you have to say that, Jesus? Even in my anger I'm called to love my enemies. How do we do that? How even in our anger do we continue to work with love? Well, don't be afraid of anger. Listen to the story it tells. Name it, feel it, name how it feels in your body, but then be aware you have a choice of what path to take. Nadia Boltz-Weber is a minister and author and speaker and prominent kind of personality in certain circles, and she gets a lot of internet trolls, if you're familiar with that phrase, people online who harass and then say awful things to her. She does not look like your typical minister. She's tattooed very heavily and just kind of looks a little bit alternative. But she writes how she has tried to learn to respond to her harshest and most mean critics online.

"Well, I'd like to say my first response to almost everything is screw you." She uses a different word there. "But I almost never stay there. But if I'm honest, I have to admit that I almost always start there. It's only by the grace of God that I ever move from my first reaction to something softer. But the older I get, the quicker that grace seems to come. Option one, take my hurt and pass it like a basketball either back to the person who hurt me or to someone more convenient, like the guy driving too slow in the left lane, or maybe my partner. Option two, perhaps I remember that no one who feels well loved, who is a psychologically integrated person, who has a happy life, would ever choose to send someone a message telling them they look like a freak and should get cancer. Someone has hurt them, and I know what that feels like. I'm never going to get this right, but option one feels like poison and option two feels like freedom."

It's hard to take option two. I mean, when someone is just so unjustly mean and cruel to us, it's hard not just to want to dish that right back like Nadia says, pass that hurt like a basketball right back to them. That's the poison. It's hard to say why would someone do this? They must have been hurt already. How can I love them? So I'm sorry I'm asking you to do the same thing. I'm asking you to do something really hard. Listen to your anger but don't let it overwhelm you. Act in righteous anger but act in love at the same time. I'm asking you to do that, but really it's God asking all of us to do that. Let me close with, I think this is again from the writing of Steve Garnaas-Holmes, and I think I put that in the bulletin at the end of it.

You can see Steve's writing... well, let me close with that, with his words. Let your rage be refined with sorrow. Out of the death of grief let passion rise, burning desire for love among all. Let that passion fuel your work for restoration. The fire of love be your courage to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God. Let us pray. God, we thank you for the gift of anger that when we listen to the story helps us to see that not everything is right. That helps us to move in love to work for justice for all. Let us listen to our anger and let it lead us down the right path. In your name we pray, amen.

Transcript of a sermon preached by Pastor Shawn Coons on March 12, 2023

Week three of our Big Feelings Series and we've been talking about the various emotions that we experience. Not wanting to call some of the emotions good and some of the emotions bad, maybe some of them are more welcome and some of them are more challenging, but every emotion that we feel has a story to tell, has something important to tell us, and there's something for us to be gained if we sit, if we listen to the story that emotion has to tell.

I want to start this morning by reading a little bit from the book that we're kind of going through this year, Flesh, to hear about the story that sadness may have to tell us, and this is a story from the author, Cole Arthur Riley, of a time she was in college or after college, sorry.

"When I moved to Philly after college, my first friends were a group of nuns. I was leading small groups at a quaint Catholic university and Sister June worried that I was lonely, but never saying so, but invite me for meals and rosary walks. I went with her a handful of times to a prayer labyrinth that she walked weekly. The first time I went, I thought it would be a maze. I was hoping it would be, but prayer labyrinths aren't meant to trap you and the goal isn't to get out. It's a journey to the center and back again, and the way is long but clear. It's an ancient practice of embodied meditation and Sister June would mumble to herself as we walked the path from different ends. I'd pick leaves and rip them into smaller and smaller pieces as I made my way.

"Sometimes when Sister June approached the center, she'd begin to cry. I'd linger awkwardly in places to avoid the center while her mumbles became a gentle whaling. But one time she just peeked over her shoulder at me and said, 'Well, come on then.' And I entered the center with her and she slid a photo from her skirt pocket and pressed it flat between her two palms without showing me. 'My sister,' she said, and she wasn't wiping her tears away. I asked, 'Older or younger?' And maybe she knew I just didn't know what else to say because instead of answering, she said, 'I come here to cry for her and then let me tell you about her.'"

"We walked the path out together and as she told me about their love and the loss and how she once and still sometimes hated God, she told me that as she walks to the center, she travels into sadness. As she walks out, she reminds herself that she isn't imprisoned by it. We are born knowing how to cry, but it takes another to teach us how to cry well and with purpose. As we watch our elders cry, we are learning. Sister June taught me how to grieve with my body. She taught me how to feel the tears on my face and not wipe them away. Her rhythm of lament has settled into my soul."

This morning I'm inviting us to try and learn how we can let the rhythm of lament settle into our soul. This rhythm of lament we find a lot in scripture. There's an entire book of the Bible dedicated to lament, appropriately called Lamentations, and I realize coming upon the sermon I've never preached from Lamentations, but we're going to hear from it today. Lamentations chapter one, starting with verse one. It's a short book of the Bible. It's five poems, all of lament.

"How lonely sits the city that was once full of people! How like a widow has she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vessel.

"She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.

"Judah has gone into exile suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress.

"The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate; her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter.

"Her foes have become the masters; her enemies prosper, because the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe."

This is the word of the Lord. This passage marks the fall of Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel, the fall of Jerusalem, the exile where many of the inhabitants were taken off in captivity to Babylon. And the rest of the chapters of Lamentations are similar themes on this, and we can go to the Book of Psalms and we will find Psalms of lament. Often we read some of them in our Lent services at Ash Wednesday or on Good Friday, or Monday, Thursday.

Why is there so much lament in the Bible? Why is there so much sadness in the Bible? If every emotion has a story to tell, what are these stories of lament and sadness trying to tell us? It's the story of a world gone wrong. It's the story of a life gone wrong. It's the story that something is not the way it's supposed to be. The temple should still be standing. Judah should still be a kingdom. Our loved ones should not be prisoners in Babylon.

I want to ask you this morning, what stories of sadness, what stories of lament are you hearing from your emotions, of a world not as it should be, of a life not as it should be. My loved one should still be here. I shouldn't have to choose between rent and medicine. Bombs shouldn't be falling.

Cole Arthur Riley writes, "When we weep for the conditions of this world, we become truth tellers in its defense. People who can say this is not good. It is not well. It is born in the knowledge that things were good and can be good. We know sadness because we know there is more than sadness." I think that's an important line. We know sadness because we know there is more than sadness. It's hard for us at times because we know things were better, things can be better.

The Bible is full of sadness because it witnesses to a world that should be and can be better. And actually, let's think for a moment. Imagine if there weren't these stories of sadness, if there weren't these stories of lament in the Bible. Imagine, and some of you may not have to imagine so hard, imagine you're in a time of sadness and you're in this time of lament. And so you turn towards scripture, you open your Bible, and all you find in that Bible is be happy. All you find in that Bible is praise God, isn't life great? Imagine you turned toward the Bible and your story of sadness was not in there. Imagine you turned towards scripture and you couldn't find your story. You'd wonder, wouldn't you? You'd wonder if God had room for you. You'd wonder if God had room for your sadness. Your story is there. All of your stories, including the sad ones.

We even turn to points of scripture and find that God is sad in the Bible. Remember in John when Jesus' dear friend Lazarus died? The shortest verse in the Bible, good memory verse, if you ever want one, John 11:35, "Jesus wept." Jesus cried. God grieves for Israel in the Old Testament time and time again. We hear the sadness, the grieving, the mourning, the loss that Israel has gone away from God.

Another quote from Cole Arthur Riley, "I have never felt closer to God than when he has tears running down his face. There is no such thing as a lone whale. Every howl reverberates off the walls of God's chest and finds its way back to us carrying God's own tears with it." I think when God bears witness to our lament, we discover we are inviting God as a nurturer. A mother who hears her child crying in the night, she wakes, rises and comes to the place where we lie. She rushes her holy warmth against our flesh and says, "I'm here."

Our stories of sadness are God's stories, and so we need to listen to those stories of sadness. Often I think we are afraid. We're afraid to listen to those stories of sadness. We're afraid to sit with those stories of sadness. We're afraid if we do that, that sadness is going to overwhelm us, that there's going to be nothing else left. We believe that if we sit with our sadness, if we listen to our sadness, that's going to be all that we can feel. But it turns out the opposite is true.

Michael read Ezra 3 just a moment ago, and it was a time when they were rebuilding the temple that had been destroyed and they were dedicating the new temple. And we heard that as they were celebrating the new temple, there were people there who remembered the old one and they were sad and there was joy and sadness at that moment, both, and there was room for both. There's room for joy and sadness in the community. There's room for joy and sadness in us, both of them. I do actually kind of find it interesting. I didn't plan it this way to hear that scripture. As we sit in our sanctuary, there's joy and sadness. As we home our pews to good places and we remember the memories and the fondness and all the folks that have sat there, we can be sad for that and be excited for some new pews that allow us some new possibilities.

If you're familiar with the movie Inside Out, there is this point in the movie, I don't want to give too many spoilers, but it's been out for a while and it's still a great movie. There's this point in the movie where there's the character Bing Bong there, the elephant-looking character, and he is sad. The folks need his help to move forward and he can't help because he's sad. And the way they move forward is not by rushing him, but by sitting with him listening to his sadness. And it's in that listening that there is allowed to be more than sadness.

I'm reminded of Sister June again. As she walks to the center, she travels into sadness. As she walks out, she reminds herself that she isn't imprisoned by it. The Book of Lamentations is a journey into sadness, but it's also a communal journey into sadness. It isn't the sadness of one person just writing, it's the sadness of the nation. It's the sadness of the community. It's been an honored part of scripture handed down to us. It's part of our communal journey into sadness, our communal grief work. So much of scripture is that communal sadness, sharing with one another our laments.

Psalm 1:37, if you remember that, "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, there we wept, when we remembered Zion," which is Jerusalem. But, if you notice that, they're mourning for the loss of Jerusalem, of the country. But notice it's plural. There we sat down, there we wept. How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?

Tragedy can be even more tragic if we keep it to ourselves. Tragedy can be more tragic if we don't share it. In the Jewish tradition, there is a festival holiday called Tisha B'Av and it's when they remember the destruction of the temples. They remember other losses. It is a time for sadness. We listen to the story that our sadness is telling. We aren't afraid to name it and we aren't afraid to share it.

There's a powerful example I came across this week of sharing sadness. Rachel Held Evans was a Christian author who died suddenly at the age of 37, very beloved, and it was a hard loss for many people. Nadia Bolz-Weber's another preacher and writer, but she was a friend of Rachel's and she gave the sermon at her funeral and she was preaching on Jesus in Lazaruth. She's preaching on Mary Magdalene coming to find Jesus, not find Jesus at the tomb. And Nadia says this: "Right now, I have faith that our grief is actually holy to God. I have faith that Jesus stood at the tomb of his friend Lazarus and cried tears as salty as our own. And yes, I do have faith that in any spiritual and eternal way, death has no sting whatsoever, but it stings now and I feel it sting in my eyes."

So as I read this text about Mary Magdalene from John again, I'm starting to see the question, "Woman, why are you weeping?" Not as an accusation, but as an invitation. So for those gathered who have been crying quite a lot, I invite us to the same question. Why? Why are you yourself weeping? It's a holy question. Maybe just for this moment, we choose not to bypass the real truth of our sadness and ask one another, why are you weeping? What's the thing under the thing? What's the thing under the thing? Why are you weeping?

What if we go deeper? What if we go into the why behind the why? Well, I'm weeping because I lost a loved one. Okay, why? Well, I miss them because they did this. I miss being with them because of this. Why? Well, I miss how it made me feel. And if we dig deeper, we name some things that maybe we didn't realize. It's hard. It sounds hard, and it is, and we may be worried that it leads us too deep into sadness. But remember that rhythm of lament? "As she walks to the center, she travels into sadness. As she walks out, she reminds herself that she is not imprisoned by it."

Nadia Bolz-Weber, again, in that funeral sermon, I've heard it said, "Grief is the price we pay for having loved." So yeah, I think this love soaked grief of ours is holy to God. Because while there are those who reduce the Christian faith to moralism and delusional positivity, we know that the God we worship is not a shiny tooth motivational speaker churning out cheerful memes in times of suffering, because the God we worship a crucified and risen God, which is to say we worship a God that is not unfamiliar with darkness. God works in the darkness. God works in the sadness. Let me just leave you with this poem from Cole Arthur Riley.

"Aren't your eyelids tired of keeping prisoners? Those tears are precious minerals. Lap them up like a medicine. It's called healing.”

May the rhythm of lament settle into your soul.

Transcript of a sermon preached by Pastor Shawn Coons on March 5, 2023

Good morning, friends. Here we are on week two of our Big Feelings series where we are taking a deeper look at our emotions, our emotions as gifts from God, and how we can honor that, and how we can understand our emotions in that way. We talked last week that every emotion has a story. And we like to think there are good emotions and bad emotions, but we wanted to reframe that a little bit in terms of there are challenging emotions, that are maybe emotions we welcome more, but all of our emotions they just happen. They are part of who we are as God's being and so we don't want to say that these emotions are bad, they shouldn't happen, we shouldn't feel them.

Every emotion has a story to tell, and when we feel an emotion, something important is happening, and we need to listen more carefully to that emotion. Too often we don't want to listen to the stories that our challenging emotions tell us. If we're sad, if we're angry, if we're scared, something bad is probably happening, and that's not something we want to focus on. But this morning we're talking about happiness, but I want to suggest that sometimes we don't want to listen to the stories that happiness is telling us, that happiness isn't always a welcome emotion or maybe as welcome as it should be.

I learned a new word, a new fear this morning, cherophobia, C-H-E-R-O phobia, which is an irrational fear of being happy, which made me wonder if there's a rational fear of being happy, I hope not. But it's about rejecting opportunities that could lead to positive life changes often due to the fear that something bad is going to happen. And so I want to ask you to assess yourself this morning. Are any of these statements true for you? I worry that if I feel good, something bad could happen.

Do you ever think, "I don't deserve to be happy. I'm too frightened, I'm too scared to let myself be happy." Do you often think that, "Well, disaster often follows good fortune." Or maybe you think, "I'm too old now to really be happy. When I was younger, I could feel that joy and happiness, but now just too old. Or maybe if I'm happy, if I'm in too good of mood, people are going to want things from me, they're going to expect things more from me. Or maybe everyone else around me, they're not happy so it'd be wrong for me to be happy too."

Now, maybe there's some truth to some of these statements or some cautions in there that we can listen to, but I think too often we are reluctant to be as happy as we could be. We are reluctant to be happier when we're happy. We're just worried, "Okay, everything's going right, now the other shoe's going to drop. Something bad's going to happen," and so we don't allow ourselves to really feel that happiness.

So this morning the first thing I want you to do is I want to give you permission to be happy. I want to give you permission to be really, really happy. I want you to give you permission to feel your happiness. But I'm going to say that permission actually doesn't really come for me, I'm just a messenger of that permission going to say God wants us to feel happiness. God created us to feel happiness, and maybe that doesn't sound like a very radical message, but I want to explore it a little bit, but we're going to do that through a particular passage in John chapter five starting with verse one. And this is a healing of Jesus as He comes up to Jerusalem.

After this, there was a festival of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now, in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool called in Hebrew, Beth-Zatha, which has five porticoes and in these lay many invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for 38 years. And when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be made well?" And the sick man answered Him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me." Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk" and at once the man was made well. And he took up his mat and he began to walk. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

All right, so let's talk a little bit about the setting of what's going on so we can understand this passage a little bit more. It says it's at the Sheep Gate, which is a particular gate in Jerusalem, particular area that we know kind of where it is. And in this area there were pools of water, think maybe cisterns, kind of bricked up pools not naturally occurring. Maybe there was a spring there at that time.

And supposedly every now and then the water would be stirred if you will, kind of roiled a little bit. Later manuscripts actually of this portion of John add a little explanation about the Lord troubling the water. If you have ever heard that song Wade in the Water, the Lord's going to trouble the water, that song is partly an illusion to this scripture. And when the water was troubled, it was thought that the first person down there, maybe the first people down there would be healed of whatever illness they were afflicted with.

And so people would gather here, they wait for the water to be troubled, and they try and make their way down. And so we had this person who had been there for 38 years, a man who had been there for 38 years, and who was afflicted, and sounds like he wasn't very mobile, and that was probably part of his affliction. He couldn't get down to the water in time. And Jesus comes along and asks him, "Do you want to be made well?" Do you want to be made well?

Let me ask you, how would you feel if you're suffering from something and someone comes up to you and says, "Hey, do you want to be made well?" How do you hear that question? We don't know what tone of voice. We don't know the particular emphasis Jesus put on it, but I can imagine that man in this situation, I can imagine me being asked that question and hearing kind of an accusation in that question hearing kind of one unspoken word. Do you really want to be made well?

Almost feeling accused like somehow my condition is my fault, like I'm not doing enough to be better, to make myself well. I don't think that's what Jesus is doing here. I don't absolutely think that's not what Jesus is doing here. We have other points in scripture where Jesus says people's affliction, people what they're suffering it's not their own fault, they didn't do anything to deserve this. But I can see how that question could be heard in that way.

So you would think that the man would answer, "Yes, I want to be made well," but maybe he's a little defensive at this point. Maybe he hears, "Why aren't you well?" And so he offers this explanation. He doesn't say, "Yes, I want to be made well." He says, "Well, I can't be made well because I can't get down to the water fast enough. I've got no one to bring me down there, and so this is why I'm here, and I've been here for 38 years, and this is probably where I'm going to be until I die."

He didn't hear Jesus' question, do you want to be made well? He heard what keeps you from being made well, not do you want to. Jesus was asking about his desire. Jesus was asking about his wants. What do you want? It reminded me when Carrie and I first moved here, we had a realtor, his name was Roger Howard. He's the brother of our retiring handyman we have here, brother of a former associate pastor here. Roger is a bubbly, just jovial person. And I remember we were visiting a one house and looking at it, and there was a neighbor next door, and Roger called the neighbor over. He was always talking to folks, and Roger said "Here, and he held up his hand, nothing in his hand. He's like, "I'm going to give you something."

This is a magic wand and he like mimed giving it to her, and she was like, "What's going on?" He's like, "This is a magic wand and you can change anything about this neighborhood you would like. What would you change?" Yeah, and it was Roger's way kind of learning a little bit more about the neighborhood, but it was like, "Here's your magic wand. You can have anything you want," and I feel like Jesus is saying here, "What do you want? You can have it."

Jesus says, "Imagine there are no barriers. What do you want? What do you desire? Do you want to be made well?" This is a good time to mention that this word well can also be translated as whole. Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be made healthy? I'm going to suggest do you want to be made happy? What would you say if Jesus asked you this question? Do you want to be made well? Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be made happy? Would your mind immediately jump to the reasons you can't? Mine kind of mind kind of does. I would like to, but.

It would be great to be happy but. I mean, and maybe, well, you don't even answer yes. Maybe, but I can't because. Jesus is asking, "Do you want to be made well? Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be happy?" Jesus asked that of the man because he wanted the man to be whole. He wanted him to be healthy and happy. And God wants us to be whole, and healthy, and well, and happy.

There's a man in the Hindu tradition guru Paramahansa Yogananda who says, "Happiness is the greatest divine birthright. It is the buried treasure of the soul." This is a good time to mention that happiness is one of our emotions, and it happens, and we just can't choose to be happy. That would be wonderful if at any moment we could say I'm going to be happy right now, and we were. We can choose to do things that generally make us happy, but happiness, it happens. But we are all created as emotional beings. We are all created with the capacity for happiness. We are all created and there will be moments and times where we are happiness, where we are happy, and we feel happiness.

Not all the time, not to the exclusion of all the other emotions, but God has designed us to be happy. And so when happiness comes and it will and does, we need to embrace it. We need to listen to the story that happiness tells. We need to sit with happiness, and part of that is to embrace it, and not stop ourselves. Not say, "Okay, I'm feeling happiness, but I'm not sure I should or what." Just feel happy. Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up and while I'm making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.

I think there's something key here. I have no one else to help me. Happiness so many times, if you think about it, the moments when we've been really happy, the moments when we are happy, how many of them involve other people? I'm willing to bet a whole lot of them. There was a study that was done, kind of a depressing study. It was people who had completed suicide and they looked at the writings, the notes they had left behind, and so much of their writing was that first person singular I, me. This is how I feel. This is my life. This is what's going on. And they didn't use a lot of we, they didn't use a lot of us.

Being with other people, sharing your happiness with other people, putting yourself in relationship and community. It allows us to be more happy. It allows us to sit with our happiness. Sometimes we also want to delay our happiness, I think. I ain't got time to be happy. Too much to do. Notice that Jesus asked, "Do you want to be made well?" And the man put Jesus off, didn't he? Jesus didn't wait though, did he? And the man said, "Well, I can't be well. I can't be whole ..." and Jesus said, "Not listening," and He made him well right then and there. He did not wait. Now was the time for that man to be whole. Now was the time for that man to be happy.

There were some Jewish leaders if we read on in this passage who were there. They didn't think now was the time for that man to be whole and healthy, and they didn't like what Jesus did. This was the sabbath. Not only did Jesus heal on the sabbath, which was seen as a form of work, which you weren't supposed to do. Then he says to this man, "Take your mat, stand up, walk away." And in some interpretations of what you could do on the sabbath, that was work. That act of picking up the mat and carrying somewhere was work.

Jeremiah 17 says, "Thus says the Lord for the sake of your lives, take care that you do not bear a burden on the sabbath day." Do not carry a burden out of your house on the sabbath. There are still some Orthodox Jews today who follow these strict rules I don't want to say strict rules, that makes it sounds bad. Who follow these laws, these gifts as they see it from God for honoring the sabbath. I was looking on TikTok the other day, and there was this TikTok about what does a Jew do if they're riding in an Uber and the sabbath begins?

And then in this tradition of Judaism, the rabbi said, "Well, here's what you do. You need to ask your Uber driver to carry your phone and your keys in your house for you because you're not supposed to carry that burden." That's what they're getting from Jeremiah. That's what these folks thought Jesus was telling this man to do to break the commandments of the sabbath. Like Jesus, you should have waited. You could have waited until the sabbath was over for this man to be happy, for this man to be whole. Jesus said no. He said the right time to be happy is now.

There's no reason to delay our wholeness, our healthiness, our happiness. Jesus did not wait for that man's happiness. Why do we sometimes want to put our happiness off? Finally, we tell ourselves, "Well, I can't feel happy right now because I'm still sad about this. Can't feel happy because I'm grieving the loss of a loved one." We tell ourselves we can't feel two emotions at the same time. We view happiness and sadness on a spectrum and we can be only at one point of the spectrum, like happiness is over here, here's the happy side, and sadness is over here.

Okay, well, I've recently lost a loved one, I am sad so I'm going to be sad, and there's no way I can be over there until I am done respecting this loss. And so when we are over here, we're like, "Oh my gosh, that means I don't feel sad anymore. I'm not grieving this person and that feels wrong, and that pulls us back." It's not a spectrum. You can feel two emotions at the same time. You can feel lots of emotions at the same time.

If you ever gathered for a funeral and enjoyed the time with family as they get together, you can grieve, and feel sad, and be happy at the same time. Allowing ourselves moments of happiness in times of profound or not so profound sadness, it doesn't lessen our loss. If you ever seen the movie Inside Out, that's one of the wonderful important lessons from that movie, and we're going to talk about that next week when we talk about sadness a little bit more.

So we've talked about, last week especially, sitting with our emotions, attending to our emotions, attending to our inner lives by naming them, and naming how they make us feel physically. And so I invite you to do that with happiness. The next time you're happy say I'm happy. Think it, articulating it and then say, "How does this make me feel? Oh wow, my jaw is unclenched for the first time in I don't know how long. My muscles, they're not tight. I'm bouncing a little bit. This is nice." Recognize that, embrace it.

It's easy to think when we say listen to our emotions, that we mean just the challenging ones, but we mean the welcome emotions as well. God's invitation to us is for us to sit with our happiness, name it, name it how it makes our body feel. And if you want to go a step further say, "Why am I happy? Maybe I should do that again" if it was something that caused you to be happy.

So let me just leave you with this simple once again message, God wants you to be whole. God wants you to be well and healthy, most of all, God wants you to be happy.