Good, because that’s pretty much it. Every single sermon that I have preached or ever will preach, and I strongly suspect every single sermon ever written, is really just a gloss on that message.

Oh, we try and package it up differently every week, hoping nobody catches on. And, in truth, it makes sense to do that, since not everyone listens every week, and different people learn things differently. We’re all wired a little differently. But in word or in image or in song... it’s still the same message. Week after week, year after year, millennia after millennia. And it comes to us in many scriptures, and many ways. It comes to us in the teachings of Jesus, and in the letters of the early church. It comes to us in the care God showed God’s people all throughout the Hebrew scriptures, and it comes to us in the cries of the prophets, and in the Psalms of David. So what to choose? What’s the good news for us, today, as we gather together to look toward changes, and toward a new future?

Well, I want to focus on what Judi read from the prophet Isaiah, and from the Gospel according to John. Mainly this: "Jesus said: I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete."

Now, does this make any sense? It may not be totally clear because Judi only read a few verses and not the previous two chapters, but this dialogue takes place at the last supper. The night before Jesus dies, and he knows where he’s headed. So here's Jesus rhapsodizing about complete joy at a time when he knows perfectly well he's about to be crucified. And he didn’t need to see Mel Gibson’s movie to know what it was going to be like. He knew. And he wanted to talk about joy anyway. It's a little disconcerting. It kinda makes you wonder what on earth he was thinking.

But yes, it does make a weird kind of sense. This is his farewell conversation with his friends. And at a time like that, it's a time to focus on the most important things and fix those things in their minds and memories. Therefore it's a time for Jesus to remind them that the whole point of God's creation is love and joy. So they won't forget what the whole point is.

We do sometimes have a tendency to forget what the whole point is. In fact, the tribulations of this life and the frailties of the human spirit combine to make it more or less inevitable that we’ll occasionally forget that life in this world is supposed to be a joy. Sometimes it seems like there's so much to be disappointed and angry and anxious about. You'd have to be in denial, you'd have to be a pathological Pollyanna, to say love and joy are what life is all about, wouldn't you?

Well, I've given that a lot of thought, and I don't think joy requires pathological denial, but I have decided it demands a certain persistence, a certain stubbornness. Such as the stubbornness that I think I perceive in what God said according to the prophet Isaiah that Judi read a few minutes ago, which I would paraphrase something like this: "Don't you dare second-guess me about the world and the people that I made with my own hands! I'm the one who made the earth and put you on it. I'm the one who put the heavens over your head, and all the stars. I didn't put you here to be forever shamed and confounded! I didn't create the whole thing to be a mess! I made it to be your home! And I did a darned good job of it, if I do say so myself. And I made no secret of what I was up to. I told you how it is and who I am. Here it is. Take it or leave it!"

When I hear that, I think to myself, "This is a God who is feeling under-appreciated." Under-appreciated because God did this wonderful thing, made this wonderful world and these marvellous creatures (um, that would be us), and they (or rather, we) are always mucking it up and whining about it and looking for somebody else to blame. This s a God who is defiant.