Title: Joy that can't be taken away
joy that cannot be taken away
2 Corinthians 6:10
*This sermon is
After floating the two children in the water, they wandered the river for several days.
meet the parents and pastors,
What can we do when we are in the same pain and loss as me?
It comes from a question asked.
I was trying to find the answer in Paul's life.
After entering the seminary, I took a leave of absence. It was because the seminary didn't seem like much. Then I went to Insa-dong, where I was fascinated by old texts and reading Confucian scriptures. Yu Jeong-gi, who was then the dean of the Chungnam Graduate School, gathered several people who visit Insa-dong one day a week and went to a meeting where they read and unravel classics. Then he read Confucius' Analects, and the phrase, "The heart of a gentleman is always at peace, but the heart of a small man is always full of worries." Maybe it was because I was trying to hide my inferiority complex by taking a leave of absence from seminary and rolling into Insa-dong. So I decided not to do that, but to have the heart of a gentleman. But within a day, the effort was useless, and again my heart was filled with a sense of inferiority.
[If you study the history of human evolution and the development of consciousness, you find that only the part of the brain that has reasoning abilities is capable of worrying unnecessarily. To reason is to recall. Humans are the only animals that can make associations. Therefore, only humans have the ability to worry about unnecessary things. The better we associate, the better we are at worrying about unnecessary things. The stronger the personality, the more persistent and useless worrying you are. We can use our reasoning powers constructively or destructively. Being able to worry about unnecessary things means that you have the ability to do things that well. To have such a luminous concentration that can make us worry about getting sick is something to be grateful for when we think about it, and it is proof that we have amazing power] (Dan Caster, 『The Miracle of the Spirit』, Literary Publishing House, 288f).
With this one word, I was able to free myself from the agony of inferiority that plagued me. I am not a small person who can't be helped, but rather a person with great abilities, and I am proud to say that if I use it right away, I will be able to do great things in the future. At this time, I realized deeply that even the same person can be evaluated differently depending on the point of view, and that it is desirable to give encouragement by looking at the possibilities rather than making a moral evaluation based on the status quo. Still, I continued to read Dr. Dan Caster's books, and the more I read, the more I wondered where his thoughts came from. And then I forgot about it, but it wasn't until recently that I found out that Dan Caster's thoughts were from Jesus Christ.
When it comes to a sad person, people in the world say that he is unlucky or guilty of many things, but Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn. They will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). In the Greek Bible, after the phrase ‘blessed are those who mourn’, ‘hoti’ (because) appears, not because they are blessed, but because they will be comforted. The fresh perspective of Jesus that sees sorrow as the cause of being comforted rather than ascribed to happiness or unhappiness is also revealed here. Sometimes people who read my books greet me and say, 'Your point of view is unique'. But my trained eyes came from Jesus Christ.
Even in the face of suffering and death, Jesus does not despair or lament, nor does he say anything that discourages his disciples, but rather comforts his disciples that they may be sad for a while, but that their sorrow will change into joy after a while. Then Jesus tells a parable to reassure his disciples.
“When a woman gives birth, it is sad. Because the time has come. But when a child is born, the pain is forgotten because of the joy of being born into the world” (John 16:21).
Anyone can sympathize with?
People feel sadness as pain because they imagine the absence of sadness as the most ideal state of happiness. It is even more painful to think that only you are suffering such sorrow when others are not. But Jesus does not assume or set as our goal any ideal state in which sorrow is gone. You have to be very mindful of this. Rather, he admits the sadness as it is. And then I try to change it so that it is rather a cause of comfort and joy.
Seeing the absence of sadness or worry as a complete personality or a goal in life is like seeing a calm sea or a straight horizon as ideal. But that's just a world in an idea. The sea in an idea can be calm, and the horizon in an idea is clearly a thin line. But the real ocean is always in motion, and the horizon is just the surface of the waves that always roll over. If you believe in this and jump into the sea, a new fear and fear will come to you. The waves crashing in front of you are no joke. Life always has waves like this, so it's fun and worth living, and there's also sadness and joy. A person who seeks a calm sea or a straight horizon that does not exist in reality is always unhappy because it is something that cannot be found in the real world. However, those who acknowledge early that there is no such thing and accept the waves as a reality are not afraid of the sea and riding the waves can be exciting and fun.
Jesus knows the anguish and pain of the woman in childbirth. He knows the sorrows and sorrows his disciples will experience after he suffers. I don't deny it. But he was sure that his sorrow would turn into joy, so he said to his disciples, "Now you are shrouded in sorrow, but when I see you again, your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take that joy away from you." It was said (John 16:22).
In the phrase ‘no one will take it away’, you can read the anxiety of people living with something being taken away. The people of the early church were deprived of everything. The country was deprived of the Roman colonial rule, almost everything was taken from the taxes paid to Rome, Jerusalem, and the temple system, and the freedom of belief was also taken away from persecution. But even in such circumstances, they had something no one could take away. No one could take away the joy of the resurrected Christ. This is faith in Jesus.
Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, suffered from hunger, disease, and the brutal violence that executed prisoners at will, but he realized that there was something more terrifying than that. It was the fear that he would die there meaninglessly and be gone forever. At that time, there was a verse that held him up and gave him strength, and this is it.
“What you have experienced, no one in power in this world will be able to take it away from you.”
What he experienced is similar to what the people of the Early Church experienced during persecution 2,000 years ago, and it is similar to what Jesus promised his disciples before his Passion. Jesus did not promise his disciples temporary pleasures or pleasures in the absence of sorrow or a temporary forgetfulness of sorrow. It is a promise of joy that comes from within, which is enough to overcome the sadness no matter how great it is. Just as a woman in childbirth forgets the pain because of the joy of being born into the world, so Jesus prepares to suffer while thinking of the joy that his followers will receive. In giving himself to the last moment, Jesus was not trying to guarantee people a secure life, wealth, or status, but a joy that no one could take away. You should know this.
It is true that the joy we have is so easily destroyed and taken away. right? In the past week, are there some of you who have lost or lost joy, big or small? This is life. The joy of life is like this in the morning, but in the afternoon when you lose some money, you become depressed. Even when stocks fall, it makes me depressed. There is no end to excuses such as studies not going the way you want, because there is a problem at work, because there are problems in relationships, because love doesn't go as you want, and so on. Without a day off, such excuses can continue. The joy that money gives is taken away when money is gone, and so is the joy of achievement. The joy of success also disappears when you step down from that position.
But it is said that no one can take away the joy that Jesus gives. Why? This is because it is not given or taken away by external conditions, but comes from the love of Jesus, who even gave himself up on the cross. Because it was guaranteed to people in his death and resurrection.
We want to be that person too. The goal is to become a church that nurtures such people.