Let’s Celebrate

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

 Tidings of comfort and joy. You know, Jesus should free us to celebrate, but if we're honest, celebrating in the midst of life can often be hard, hard because of things that are just annoying, hard because of things that are really sad, hard because things are filled with injustice. And so we're angry. And so celebrating isn't always the thing that we desire to do.

This week, for example, I was making eggs for myself and as I reached into the cupboard to get a little bit of oil for the pan, I grabbed it by its top. Now the problem is, is whoever put it away last didn't completely screw the top, so as I pulled it out, it fell to the floor. Now to be clear, the person who put it away last was me, so this was me doing damage to myself but then this glass bottle met the tile floor and it shattered and oil was everywhere and glass was everywhere and my dog's trying to lick it up and lick glass.

It's a disaster, hard to celebrate when you're feeling that way. But what we learn is that celebration is really a spiritual discipline of the Christian life. We are called to celebrate and rejoice. I want to look at Jesus first recorded miracle in the book of John in which Jesus takes water and turns it into wine so that it can teach us why we should make celebration a regular practice in our life.

The first is that what we see is that God is in the business of human business. God cares about the business of humans Jesus is invited to a wedding. Weddings are a good time. I get to go to a bunch as a pastor, and they're always fun and celebration. So Jesus and his disciples and the mother all show up to this wedding, and there's a problem. The wine is out. So what happens? Mary goes to Jesus and says, Hey, can you do something about this? At first he's like, no. And then he's like, okay, fine. I'll take care of it.

And what we're reminded there. It is that the everyday business of being a human is something that God cares about. God keeps this wedding party going by creating incredible wine. And so it's this reminder to us that the good things in our life the weddings, the birthday parties, the princess parties, celebrating the win of your team, laughing around the dinner table, all these things are different forms of celebration.

And God cares about our day to day life, and believes it matters, and so we are empowered and set free to celebrate the good in the midst of it as well. Because when we're doing that, we are connecting with the God of the universe. And so what does it look like for you to be aware that God cares about your daily business.

Well, I think it fills us with a sense of hope. This belief that what we do at work and at school and in our home matters. And so we pay attention to it and we get to celebrate.

The second thing we see in this miracle is just abundant grace. The story tells us that there's six jars filled with about 30 gallons of water that are used for purification. So think washing hands and feet in order for things to be clean. And Jesus takes that and turns it into the most glorious wine that anyone has ever tasted. So that amount of liquid equates to three barrels. Three hundred bottles of wine. That's what Jesus pulls out. And it's this reminder to us that grace is extravagant and it's abundant. And that's what God brings and offers to us.

Now within the story, what we learn is that the disciples and the servants see the miracle that happens, but everybody around them doesn't. Everyone isn't paying close enough attention to see the abundant grace. The abundant, extravagant grace that gets played out.

I think that's a lesson to you and I. You know, often, there is abundant grace all around us, and we just miss it. We don't see it. We don't tune in. We don't experience it. And then, even maybe when we do see it, because of the weariness that we feel, the toil of life. Where we do a bad job of celebrating. You know, often when something doesn't happen, we have a tendency to think that it's because people don't want it to happen, but actually it's more likely that they don't know exactly how to go about it.

And so in this way, it's good for us to take a lesson from kids. Kids do a great job of celebrating. They can celebrate all kinds of things. And they jump up and down and they rejoice. And so you and I should do the same thing. We should practice rejoicing. We should build that skill of celebrating. And so what are you going to celebrate this week?

Think about it. And then ask yourself this question, am I better at complaining or am I better at celebrating. You know, I wish it wasn't actually a good question because most of us are great at complaining. We can complain about all kinds of things. We can complain there's not enough snow or too much snow.

We complain it's too cold or too hot. We can complain just about anything. And so maybe what we want to do is we want to put that kind of energy and effort into celebrating as we do complaining.

The last thing, and this is how Jesus frees us to rejoice. And to celebrate is that every time we do celebrate, we are rejoicing in the resurrection. So Jesus glory is revealed, John tells us by this miracle and ultimately Jesus glory is fully revealed in his death and resurrection and in the death and resurrection it does this it gives meaning and purpose to the world if this world is just physical and our existence is because of some sort of coincidental chemical and mechanical reaction then our life is it doesn't have a lot of meaning, and yet you and I as human beings, we get angry at injustice, we weep and have sadness over loss, and we celebrate and rejoice over good.

Those emotions only really make sense if each of them are tied to a greater good, to a loving God who has created what we experience and that what we experience is turned away from God and is broken. And so we're waiting for it to be restored. We're waiting for resurrection and restoration. And so in that way, celebrating becomes a bit of a spiritual discipline.

It becomes us subverting death, evil, and sin. Because despite that those things exist in this world, we believe that they're not the final thing. They're not the thing that's going to last forever. That God is going to set straight and set right the world. And so instead, we're going to be people who celebrate and rejoice the good. Because then we're connecting ourselves to the glory of water made into wine. and the coming of God and the restoration of the world. So how does God bring tidings of comfort and joy? Well, God brings tidings of comfort and joy by freeing us to be a people who celebrate. I hope you're able to celebrate some things this week.

Always great to be with you. Take care.