“Rejoice in the Lord” - November 20, 2016

Philippians 4:4-9

            Sometime in the spring or fall of 1995 or 1996 I tried out for Jeopardy.  (Okay: “What is ‘Jeopardy’?”)  I didn’t get onto the show, but I did make it to the second round of tryouts, which were held in Atlantic City at a hotel owned by a then-prominent entertainment personality with interests in casinos there and in Las Vegas.  I refer, of course, to Merv Griffin, who produced the show.  (Who did you think I meant?)  Anyway, the tryouts were divided into two sessions with a lunch break in the middle, I suppose with the idea that the potential contestants would spend that time dumping all the coins in their pockets into one-armed bandits to fund the Griffin empire.  That is not my thing, and I hope it is not yours – we can talk about that another time.  For the purpose of this story it’s enough to say that I didn’t want to stick around there watching people lose money to make a millionaire richer and I went for a walk on the boardwalk.  As I said, it was off-season, so most of the boardwalk attractions were closed and it was too chilly to walk on the beach for very long, but the municipal pier did have a sign out that advertised an exhibit of paintings done by female artists from New Jersey.

            Now, I should mention how I was feeling at that point, which was more than a little bit disappointed.  It was already clear to me that I was not going to qualify, that I would not be going to California, and that I would not be saying, “Why, thank you, Alec.  I’ll take thirteenth-century Scholastic philosophers for $500.”  If it had simply been because I didn’t know the answers to the questions, that would not have bothered me so much.  Believe it or not, I can handle the idea that I don’t know everything. 

            There are people who believe that to be a person of faith is to be someone who claims to have all the answers to everything, and here I mean the big questions, not trivia about the gross domestic product of Guatemala in 1954.  To live a life of faith means to trust the Lord despite having no quick or easy answer about the big, big, big questions.  Why does anything at all exist?  Can it be said to be good when there is so much clearly wrong with the world?  Why is life so hard for so many and seemingly easy for a handful?  Why do the evil prosper?  These are the questions about what Douglas Adams called, “Life, the Universe, and Everything”.  To have faith is to answer all of these, “God knows,” and to add to that, “and that is good enough.”

            In an essay that he wrote as an introduction to the book of Job, G.K. Chesterton considers how Job, suffering the loss of his family and his wealth and his health, demands an answer from God as to the “why” of it all.  When a whirlwind appears and God speaks from it directly to Job the answer is, essentially, “None of your business.”  But here is what Chesterton points out:

“Verbally speaking the enigmas of Jehovah seem darker and more desolate than the enigmas of Job; yet Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.”[1]

            Which brings me back to that day in Atlantic City.  So, no.  I was not upset about not having all the answers to Jeopardy questions.  What did bother me was how often I knew the answers but was just not quick enough on the buzzer.  One of my friends had actually been on the show and had won, and he had coached me to depress the button ever so slightly in order to get that tenth-of-a-second advantage over the other contestants and to figure out in advance whether I would be faster using my index finger or my thumb.  I never got the hang of it, though, and time after time somebody would buzz in before me with the answer that I knew. It was frustrating.  Frustrating and disappointing.  That’s how I felt when I wandered out into the midday sunlight and found the exhibit at the municipal pier.

            When I walked in, the paintings mirrored my frustration and disappointment.  It was as if the artists had tried to put Job’s lamentations onto canvas.  There were dark landscapes of trees without leaves.  There were paintings of storms.  There were works done entirely in black, gray, and brown.  There were models who were posed to look glumly at the ground or to stare at the onlooker with a kind of accusation in their eyes, as if to say, “You.  You are the reason I have been forced to sit still like this for the past six hours without a break.”  There were abstracts that had titles like “Melancholy Number Six” or “Shark Attack off Manasquan”. 

            Then, way down at the end of the hall, I saw this other painting.  It’s by a woman named Marilyn Brandt and it’s called, “Open House”.  A woman with a big smile is holding two pizzas and light is falling on her from what is probably an open door.  Her husband has one hand held out to shake and the other extended toward a coffee pot and a sugar bowl.  They’ve lit some candles in the background and they are glad you are there.  I bought it.  It made me happy then, and it still does.  An artist friend of mine often says, “You have to live with a painting, so you want one that you can really live with.”

            And that’s what Philippians tells us, too.  Not so much about paintings, but about what faith leads you to fill your life with.  Life in Christ means that when your insides are as bleak as the outside, for whatever reason – the serious ones that Job experienced and that are way, way too much a reality for the vast majority of human beings or just the basically unimportant but nevertheless vexing moments that amount to “having a bad day” – and when it all heaps on, we get the reminder that the weight of the world is not on our own shoulders, but was carried with the weight of the cross on Jesus’ shoulders.

“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.   And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

 [Philippians 4:6-7]

           So spend less time on looking at all that is wrong, because you won’t be able to fix it all anyway, and spend your time on the things that the Lord has done and continues to do in the midst of the troubles, the wondrous gifts of God that “surpass all understanding” and have nothing to do with easy answers to anything.

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” [Philippians 4:8]

Cherish those relationships, enjoy the stupid jokes, retell the old stories around the Thanksgiving table, realize that you will one day miss that annoying relative, go visit somebody you’ve been putting off.  Above all,

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.” [Philippians 4:4-5]

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[1] http://www.chesterton.org/introduction-to-job/