Rejoicing: Temporary and Eternal, Emotional and Volitional
Preachers face at least two problems when they step into the pulpit: first, how will they help the congregation redefine how they understand God, the world, and themselves? The Gospel changes everything! Second, how will they help create a redefining experience? The Gospel is not just the idea of transformation, it is transformation.
These challenges are spectacularly and awkwardly on display with the word “rejoice” in the season of Christmas. Preachers want congregations to experience gladness and joy at Christ’s birth. However, the path to this goal is complicated. To some, “rejoicing” at Christmas may mean parties and gatherings of family and friends. To others, it may mean the rituals of decorations, shopping, or nostalgia that give a sense of stability in a changing world. To others, “rejoicing” is a hollow word during a time of heightened grief, lost resources or abilities, or memories of Christmases past. Christmas is a time of mixed emotions, and the preacher must consider the audience’s emotional landscape when using the word “rejoice,” even when redefining it.
The emotional landscape is further complicated by the tragedies of 2017 that we carry into 2018. No matter where you may be preaching, hurricanes from Texas to Florida to Bangladesh have brought destruction of lives and livelihoods even as they have brought out the best of neighbors loving one another. Fires have ravaged homes and landscapes in the Western United States. Massive earthquakes have killed scores in Mexico. Political polarization makes it difficult for neighbors to hear each other. And there are ongoing tragedies to which many have become numb or simply forgotten. The Syrian civil war enters its 8th year. South Sudan continues to decline into chaos and death from the heights of its independence in 2011. In Yemen’s civil war, a child dies on average every 10 minutes. What is there to rejoice about?
We follow Jesus’ lead. Jesus redefines “rejoicing” as the seventy return elated with the experience of casting out demons and healing the sick (Luke 10:1-17). Two by two, Jesus sends the seventy out to bring God’s rule not only with words but also with deeds of power. It is a heady feeling when God works through us to change lives! There is a tingle to the skin, a sense that anything is possible, and certainty that it is not our strength but God’s strength at work.
The disciples come back with joy. We can imagine their excited voices and see the glow on their faces as they talk over each other to tell Jesus about their experiences. “Lord, in your name, even the demons submit to us!” (Luke 10:17). Perhaps Jesus smiled, sharing their joy for a moment while he affirmed what had been done (Luke 10:18-19).
Quickly, Jesus turns to redefine what “rejoice” means with the word “nevertheless”, a transitional word that minimizes, even dismisses. “Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you,” he says in Luke 10:20. In my imagination, the disciples are looking at Jesus, puzzled. “Huh? Why Lord? Why shouldn’t we rejoice? Isn’t it great that some people have been freed from spiritual oppression? They can love, live, and serve like they couldn’t before. Why shouldn’t we rejoice?”
Would Jesus have told the people of South Sudan not to rejoice at their independence? Independence had been a long time coming. Sudan as a whole was freed from colonial rule in 1956 but immediately began a series of civil wars between rebels in the South against the rulers in Khartoum in the north. A peace treaty signed in 2005 led to independence for South Sudan in 2011. Celebrations filled the streets of the new capital Juba. Even in the countryside, people gathered to wave the new flag, make music, and rejoice that the civil wars with the north had finally ended. Shouldn’t they rejoice? Of course they should!
But peace didn’t last. In 2013, the president Salva Kiir Mayardiit of the majority Dinka tribe sacked the cabinet and accused the Vice President Riek Machar from the Nuer tribe of planning a coup. Civil war broke out again. Over 2.2 million people fled from their homes. In December 2016, a UN commissison accused the Sudanese government of ethnic cleansing. By February of 2017, a famine was officially recognized as 100,000 people were on the verge of starvation and 4.9 million in need of urgent help. The rejoicing of independence became a vague memory lost in the harsh reality of war and starvation.
When Jesus says, “do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20), Jesus compares rejoicing at temporary things to rejoicing at eternal things. Jesus acknowledges the temporary victory over the spiritual forces of death and despair. Such victories are important in the moment: they give relief to the oppressed, encouragement to God’s servants, and signs of hope. But these moments of “the spirits submitting to you” are fleeting. We try to hold on to the emotions by celebrating the anniversary of the moment. We put up the Christmas tree and hang the ornaments that we received from our mother with the memories of happy days under the tree. However, the memories are of a fleeting moment lost in the tides of time and loss.
Perhaps Jesus is saying something like, “rejoice in the glimpse of God’s healing and salvation, but it is like morning dew.” The sick who were cured by the seventy will get sick from another disease. Those freed from demons may be captured by another. All of them will die. The rejoicing is there and gone.
“But rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” The source of ongoing, lasting rejoicing is the status of the disciples as citizens in God’s eternal city. Citizenship lists were common in Roman cities. Having your name on the list of citizens allowed one to own property, be protected by Roman laws, and to participate in decision making. Jesus is saying: to have your name written in heaven, to be a citizen of God’s eternal kingdom of justice and peace, is the real cause of rejoicing. “Heaven” is where God completely rules and demonic forces are fully defeated. There are no temporary victories, no new diseases or demons, no oppressive human governments that take away the protection of laws or turns citizen against citizen. To have one’s name in the citizenship list of heaven is to have an eternal reason to rejoice.
Maybe this is why Jesus says, “rejoice,” in the imperative. To command someone to “rejoice” may seem odd. How do you command someone to “rejoice” any more than “be sad” or “feel envy”? Isn’t it a feeling and not an action?
Rejoicing is both a feeling and an action. We have already redefined the reason for rejoicing as either temporary or eternal, but here we see the emotional as well as the volitional (think “will-power”) aspects of rejoicing. Temporary reasons for rejoicing almost always are emotional moments. Eternal reasons for rejoicing involve an act of will, and Holy Spirit-assisted-will at that. With the Holy Spirit, an act of will to focus on God’s eternal work is rejoicing. The Holy Spirit leads us to trust in the eternal promises of God.
This is what the imperative “rejoice” means: to choose to focus on the eternal reason for joy – God’s work of salvation and victory in Jesus. Paul writes to the Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice” (Phil 4:4). He commands them to rejoice always, that is, focus on Christ’s death and resurrection as the source of joy at all times, especially when there’s no cause for temporary rejoicing. He makes it clear this is a choice, an act of will with a reiteration, “And again I say, rejoice.”
In the context of Philippians, the temporary experience of joy may come from peace between leaders who are fighting with each other. Paul urges Euodia and Syntyche to be of the same mind (4:2; see 2:5-11 for how this ties into Christ’s death and resurrection). He confidently announces that “the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (4:7). There is an experience of joy that comes from choosing to rejoice in God’s eternal promise. The experience inspires the true love of neighbor.
In the face of tragedies and grief, there is little reason to feel holiday joy. Our task as preachers is to help our hearers experience that such a feeling is good but temporary. Rather than trying to hold onto that emotion by decorating with handed down ornaments or recreate it with the latest gifts(which leave us empty and deeper in grief), we can lead our hearers into an experience of lasting joy that comes from sharing God’s victory over sin, death, and the devil—the forces behind the oppressions of our time and every time. Rather than becoming numb or hopeless at human failures to end tragedy, we can motivate our hearers to the temporary love of neighbor that points to the eternal love of God.
