Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing

I want to invite you to open your Bibles with me to II Corinthians, and find chapter 6. Before we get to Ezra and see our passage for today, I want to establish something we see in the New Testament, and then take you to the Old Testament to show you how this is lived out with God’s people. As you’re finding the text in II Corinthians, I want to ask you something this morning that I think most of us have never been given permission to ask out loud. Have you ever felt grief and joy at the same time? Not one and then the other. Not sorrow on Monday and relief by Friday. I mean simultaneously. In the same moment. In the same chest. The thing that is wonderful and the thing that is breaking you, both present at once, neither one canceling the other out. You know what I’m describing. You’ve held a newborn and cried because someone you loved wasn’t there to see it. Gabriel was sitting in the sea of graduates, and I remember looking over to Alicia, and you can tell, on her face and in her heart, she felt pride and grief arrive at exactly the same second. You’ve had a moment where God did something unmistakably good and you wept through the whole thing because the road to get there cost so much. And if you’re in the church long enough, somebody eventually gives you the impression that this is a spiritual problem. That a mature Christian should be able to manage their grief more cleanly. That joy and sorrow shouldn’t be tangled up like that. That if your faith is strong enough, the grief will eventually get quiet and the joy will get clear. I don’t believe that to be true. Sorrow and joy aren’t different songs — they’re different notes in the same chord. Because what I actually think is happening when you feel both at once isn’t spiritual immaturity. I think it might be one of the most honest, most holy things a human being can experience.

The Why

But I don’t want to just tell you that. I want to show you why. So let me ask the question underneath the question. Why? Why can joy and sorrow live in the same body at the same time? Here’s what I think is going on. You and I are living in the middle of a story that hasn’t ended yet. The already is this: Christ has come. He has died. He has risen. The kingdom of God has broken through. Sin has been defeated. Death has lost. The foundation has been laid. That’s real. That’s done. That cannot be undone. The not yet is this: you still get the diagnosis. Your marriage still falls apart. Your kids still walk away. People you trust still betray you. You still bury the people you love. The world is still groaning. And you are still waiting, for the day when everything sad comes untrue. And you are living, right now, this morning, in the space between those two realities. That’s why you feel both. Not because something is wrong with you. But because you are correctly perceiving two things that are both true at the same time. And the grief is not a failure of faith. The grief is the Christ in you, groaning with all of creation, longing for the redemption that is coming but hasn’t come in full. Paul says that in Romans 8. The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. That’s not a defeated Spirit. That’s a Spirit who loves so deeply that the ache of the not-yet is unbearable even for God. So when you sit in your car after the funeral and you believe, you genuinely believe, that your loved one is with Jesus, and you still can’t stop crying, that’s not weak faith. That’s complete faith. That’s a faith big enough to hold the already and honest enough to feel the not yet. You cannot love deeply and grieve lightly. The grief is the proof that the love was real.

The Cultural Crisis

But here’s where it gets harder. And I think this is where we have to be honest about the world we actually live in. Because our culture has no category for this. None. We have been so deeply formed, and I use that word intentionally, formed, by a world that insists you must pick a lane. You are either winning or losing. You are either thriving or you’re in crisis. You are either grateful or you’re complaining. And we have swallowed that framework so completely that we bring it into our faith and expect God to operate the same way. You’ve felt this. You know what I’m talking about. You’re going through something genuinely hard, and someone asks how you’re doing, and you have this split-second decision: Do I give them the grief answer or the faith answer? Because you’ve been trained to think you can’t give both. You say “I’m struggling” and people get concerned. You say “God is good” and people move on. But the truest answer, the one that would actually be honest, is “both. Right now. In the same breath. And I don’t know what to do with that.” We don’t have a script for that answer. Not in our culture. And too often, not in our churches. And so what happens, and this is the part that breaks my heart as a pastor, what happens is that people start to feel like their insides don’t match what church is asking them to perform. The worship set is triumphant, but they’re dying inside. The sermon is about victory, but they just need someone to sit with them in the ruins for a minute. And eventually they start to believe that the gap between what they feel and what they’re supposed to feel is evidence that something is spiritually wrong with them. And it’s not. It’s evidence that they’re human. And that they’re paying attention. And that their faith is actually working, because it’s making them sensitive to both the beauty and the brokenness at the same time.

THE WORD: SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING Now. With all of that in your mind, I want to show you what Paul does with this reality. Because he doesn’t just describe it. He stakes his entire ministry on it. Look at II Corinthians 6, verse 8. Paul is defending his ministry, not because he’s insecure, but because the Corinthians need to understand what authentic Christian life actually looks like. And he gives them a series of paradoxes. “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” (2 Corinthians 6:8–10) A life that looks like one thing from the outside and is something completely different on the inside. And right in the middle of that list, the one that holds them all together: Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Now, I think as normal Bible readers, we see two words that stand out. Sorrowful and rejoicing. Those are the big words. We feel those words. We have lived inside both of them. But I want to suggest that we have been reading right past the most important word in that sentence. It’s not sorrowful. It’s not rejoicing. It’s the word sitting right between them. Yet. Say that with me. Yet. When I come across the word yet in Scripture, I’ve learned to stop. Because yet is never a throwaway word. Yet is always holding something together. It’s like two arms stretched wide, one hand holding grief, the other hand holding joy, and the word itself is the body that refuses to let either one go. It won’t drop the sorrow to make room for the joy. And it won’t release the joy just because the sorrow is heavy. Not sorrowful and then rejoicing. Not sorrowful but eventually the feelings will catch up. Yet. Right now. Both. At the same time. And then there’s the word sitting right next to it. And this one might be even more confrontational. Always. Say that with me. Always. Not sometimes rejoicing. Not rejoicing when the circumstances cooperate. Always. While sorrowful. In the middle of it. Right now. I know that word just landed on somebody in this room. Because you have been sorrowful for a long time. And always feels like a word that belongs to someone else’s life. And I can feel some of you pushing back. Because “always” sounds impossible. It sounds like one more thing the Bible is asking you to do that you don’t have the strength to pull off. But look at what Paul actually says. He doesn’t say “rejoice always.” He says “Rejoice in the Lord always.” And that matters. Because “always” is not attached to you. It’s attached to Him. The question is not “can you always feel joy?” No. You can’t. Paul couldn’t. He just told you — unceasing anguish. The question is: is there ever a moment when the grounds for your joy have been removed? Is there ever a moment when Christ is not risen? When the steadfast love has run out? When the Spirit has stopped interceding for you? No. There is not. There never has been. There never will be. “Always” is not a demand on your feelings. “Always” is a statement about His faithfulness. The joy is always there. Sometimes you feel it like the sun on your face. And sometimes you feel nothing but the overcast. But the sun has never gone out. Not once. And what the Spirit does over time — and we’ll get to this — is not make you someone who never sees the clouds. He makes you someone who never forgets the sun. And Paul doesn’t just say this. He lives it. Look with me in Romans chapter 9, verse 2. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” (Romans 9:2) Unceasing. Not occasional sadness. Not a rough season. Unceasing anguish. This is Paul’s baseline. This is the emotional weather he woke up in every morning. But then you flip the page to Philippians 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice.” (Philippians 4:4) Same man. Same life. Same letters. Unceasing anguish. And rejoice always. Both true. At the same time. So how does that work? How is it possible for you? Because you are not an apostle. You are a person who has to get up tomorrow and go to work and pay your bills and raise your kids and somehow hold your life together while carrying things that feel like they should have crushed you by now. How do you live in the yet? I’m not going to answer that question yet. Not fully. Because I think the answer to that question is a Person, not a technique. And we’re going to get to Him before this morning is over. But I will tell you this. The Christian who learns to live in the yet, who stops trying to resolve the tension and starts letting Christ hold it, that person becomes something the world doesn’t have a category for. They become steady. Not because they’ve figured it out. But because they’ve stopped pretending the grief isn’t there, and they’ve stopped letting the grief have the final word. They’re the person at the hospital who cries with you and prays with you, and neither one feels forced. They’re the friend who can say “this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me” and “God has not left me” in the same sentence and mean both completely. That’s not a technique. That’s a life so saturated by the presence of Christ that it can hold what the world cannot hold. And I think the church that learns to hold both sounds at the same time, without managing one or manufacturing the other, becomes the thing the world around it is desperately hungry for and doesn’t know how to find. Now. Let me show you what that looks like when it actually happens.

THE EXPLOSION: THEY MADE A BEGINNING, TOGETHER Turn with me to Ezra chapter 3. Let me set the stage. The people of God have been gone. Not for a rough season. For seventy years. An entire generation was born, grew up, and died in Babylon. They never saw the temple. They never stood in Jerusalem. Everything they know about God’s faithfulness, they learned secondhand, from their parents, their grandparents, the songs that got passed down like family recipes in a foreign kitchen. And then there are the old ones. The ones who remember. They saw the first temple. They remember the gold, the incense, the sound of the Levites singing. And they also remember the day it was torn down. They remember the fire. They remember being dragged away. That memory isn’t a story for them. It’s a scar. Both groups are now standing in the same place. Look at verses 8 and 9 with me. “Now in the second year after their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak made a beginning, together with the rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity.” (Ezra 3:8–9) They made a beginning. That’s what the Hebrew word means. It is not gentle. It is not soft. The word carries this image of splitting, of breaking open, like an axe coming down on a piece of wood. A beginning, in the Hebrew imagination, is not a gentle unfolding. It’s a violent act of opening. Something has to be split before anything new can come through. Beginnings hurt. Because something always has to die for something new to be born. And you can’t put the dough back in. Once it pops, it pops. The beginning is irreversible. God is saying: we’re moving forward now. It’s going to be messy. But we are not staying in the can. But notice what happens when the dough comes out. It’s not ready yet. It’s raw. Soft. Shapeless. You wouldn’t eat it. It needs a foundation, a surface, a place to rest and begin to take form. And then it has to go through the oven. Heat. Time. Pressure from the inside out. The pop is just the beginning. The real transformation happens in the fire. I say that to somebody who is in the middle of something that feels like it should be further along by now. You had the breakthrough. God did the thing. But now you’re in the raw-dough season. And you’re wondering why it still hurts and why the heat won’t let up. It’s because God isn’t done with you. The pop was real. But the oven is where the transformation happens. Now. Go back to the text. Because I skipped something and I need you to see it. It doesn’t just say they made a beginning. It says they made a beginning together. Together. Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the priests and the Levites and all who had come from the captivity. The ones who remembered the first temple and the ones who had never seen it. The ones carrying scars and the ones carrying dreams. Every major move of God in Scripture follows this pattern. In the upper room before Pentecost, the disciples were together. They were praying together, waiting together, consecrating themselves together. And it was while they were together that the Spirit fell. Not on one of them privately. On all of them. At once. The Spirit doesn’t seem to be interested in falling on scattered people. He falls on gathered people. He falls on people who have made the inconvenient, uncomfortable, sometimes painful choice to stay in the room with each other. What if the beginning He’s initiating in your life, in our life, requires the same thing? What if the sealed-up thing can’t be broken open alone? What if the axe only falls when we’re standing in the same place? Together. Now look at what happens when the foundation is laid. Verse 10. “And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests stood in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the LORD, according to the directions of King David of Israel. And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the LORD, ‘For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.’ And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid.” (Ezra 3:10–11) This is worship. Priests in their garments. Levites with instruments. Responsive singing. And the refrain is the oldest chorus in Israel’s songbook: “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” They sang that before the Red Sea. They sang it when the first temple was dedicated. And now, exiles, survivors, the children of captives, they’re singing it again. Over a foundation. Over a beginning that they made together. And then verse 12. “But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.” (Ezra 3:12–13)

THE UNITY: ONE SOUND FROM TWO GENERATIONS Now I need you to see what’s happening. This is not just an emotional moment. This is a theological event. The young ones are shouting. They’ve never had a temple. They’ve only heard about one. And now they’re watching the foundation go down, and they are looking at a future. Joy is the only response that makes any sense. The old ones are weeping. And not quietly. The text says with a loud voice. This is wailing. Because they remember the glory. And this new thing, it’s not that. It’s smaller. The very act of building reminds them of what was destroyed. And do you see what’s happening? Do you see the thread? The same people who split the thing open together are now standing at the foundation together. They didn’t separate into groups for the breaking open, and they didn’t separate into groups for the worship. They stayed. And I want to ask something that I think matters more than we realize. Why? Why did they stay together? The old men could have walked away. They could have said, this isn’t what it used to be. I don’t belong here anymore. And the young could have said, why are you crying? God is moving. Get on board or get out of the way. But they didn’t. Neither group left. Neither group silenced the other. And I want to stop here and say something to us. Not just as a congregation. As a family. Because the temptation, and I’ve seen it in churches my whole ministry, is for one generation to silence the other. For the young to say: Why can’t you just be excited about what God is doing? And for the old to say: You have no idea what it cost to get here. Sound familiar? That tension is alive in almost every church in America right now. The style of worship. The way we do ministry. The things we prioritize. The things we grieve losing. And what usually happens is one group wins and the other group leaves. Or worse, one group performs agreement while dying inside. And we call that unity, but it’s not. It’s just silence. I want to be tender here, because I’m not pointing fingers. I’m talking about us. I’m talking about what it means to be a church where people who remember what was and people who are dreaming about what’s coming can stand in the same place and not need the other group to feel the way they feel in order to stay. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35) We’ve heard that a thousand times. But listen to what He’s actually claiming. The primary evidence that we belong to Him is not our theology, not our worship style, not our missional strategy, not the quality of our preaching. It’s how we love each other. A church can have a brilliant communicator in the pulpit. A church can have the most vibrant student ministry in the region. A church can be sending teams across the globe. And all of that matters. We should pursue all of it. But the Bible is painfully clear: none of that is the thing that tells the world who we are. The thing that tells the world who we are is whether the people who see the same God differently can still love each other deeply. Whether the old and the young can stand in the same room and say: you are my family. I’m not going anywhere. The world can produce great speakers. The world can organize impressive events. But the world cannot produce a community where people with fundamentally different experiences of the same reality refuse to abandon each other. Only the Spirit of God can do that. And because they stayed, because neither group left, something happened that had never happened before. The people could not distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of weeping. The sounds could not be separated. They were fused. One sound. And that sound, that raw, unsortable, honest sound, it didn’t stay in the building. It traveled. It reached people who were nowhere near the temple. They heard it from far away. What do you think they heard? They didn’t hear a performance. They heard something they couldn’t categorize. And that’s why it stopped them. Because the world knows what manufactured praise sounds like. And the world knows what despair sounds like. But a sound that is somehow both? The world has no grid for that. And it makes them ask: What kind of people make a sound like that? That’s the sound that carries. Not volume. Not production. Not agreement. Togetherness. The kind that doesn’t erase difference but refuses to let difference become an excuse to walk away. Now I want to speak to somebody in this room. The grief has been building. And the hope has been building too, even though you’re almost afraid to admit it, because the last time you let yourself hope, it cost you everything. And you keep trying to sort it. Praise here. Pain there. Faith face on. Real face off. But what if the new beginning isn’t supposed to be clean? What if it’s supposed to be loud, and messy, and full of both things at once, and what if that is the most honest worship you’ve ever offered? And what if you’re not supposed to do it alone?

THE GARDEN: CHRIST ISOURYET Now. I want to take you to one more place. And I need you to come with me carefully, because this is where everything finds its home. Turn with me to Matthew 26. Verse 36. “Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I go over there and pray.’ And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’” (Matthew 26:36–38) My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. This is Jesus. And He is not managing His grief. He is telling the people closest to Him: I am being crushed. And what does He do next? He prays. Verse 39. “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’” (Matthew 26:39) Did you catch it? There’s our word again. Right there in the mouth of Jesus. In the darkest moment of human history. Yet. “May this cup be taken from me” — that’s the grief. The honest, anguished, face-in-the-dirt cry of a man who does not want what is coming. “Yet not as I will, but as yours” — that’s the joy set before Him. The love of the Father. The hope of redemption. The always rejoicing even when the sorrow is unto death. And He doesn’t choose between them. He holds both. In the same breath. In the same prayer. In the same body. Because in Gethsemane, Jesus is not just experiencing the tension between joy and sorrow. He is becoming the tension. He is becoming the Yet. In a few hours, He will stretch His arms wide on a cross. On one side, the full weight of human grief. Every sin. Every sorrow. Every funeral. Every betrayal. Every exile. Every seventy-year wait. On the other side, the indomitable, unquenchable, death-defeating joy of the Father’s love. The resurrection that is coming. The steadfast love that endures forever. And Jesus, in the middle, holding both. Refusing to let go of either one. That’s yet. That’s what the word looks like in flesh and blood. And here’s why that matters for you. Because you are not being asked to manufacture your own yet. You are not being asked to hold the tension by the strength of your own arms. You are being invited to bring your sorrow and your joy, both of them, unsorted, tangled up, the whole mess, and hand them to the One who is already holding them. Christ is your Yet. He is the body between the arms. He holds your grief in one hand and your joy in the other and refuses to let go of either one. Not because you’re strong enough to carry both, but because He is. This is what Paul discovered. This is how a man can have unceasing anguish and write “rejoice always” in the same lifetime. Not because he resolved the tension. But because he found the Person who holds it. And now I want to ask you something. Simply. Have you reached your yet, yet? Because there is a moment — and some of you know exactly what I’m talking about — there is a moment where yet stops being a word you read in the Bible and becomes the prayer your life is built on. Where “not my will, but yours” moves from something you believe to something you are. Where you stop just following Jesus and you start being made into His likeness. That’s the yet. That’s what it sounds like when a human heart is made holy. And maybe you’re here this morning and you’ve been carrying the sorrow and the joy and you’ve been trying so hard to hold it all together on your own. And Jesus is kneeling in the dirt of Gethsemane, face down, and He’s saying: You don’t have to hold it. I’m holding it. But I need you to let go. Not my will, but yours. Have you reached your yet, yet? What does it look like, practically, to stop trying to be your own yet and to let Christ be that for you? I think most of us are exhausted. And the reason is not that we’re feeling too much. It’s that we’re trying to manage what we feel. What if, tomorrow morning, when the grief hits you before your feet even touch the floor, you didn’t try to fix it? You didn’t reach for the phone to numb it. You didn’t slap a verse on it like a bumper sticker. You just held it. And you said, “Lord, this is real. And I’m not going to pretend it’s not.” And then, in the same breath, “And You are real. And I’m not going to pretend You’re not, either.” That’s the yet. Not as a performance. Not as an achievement. As a prayer. This is what it looks like on a Tuesday. In the carpool line and the hospital waiting room and the kitchen at midnight when you can’t sleep. A person who has stopped sorting and started surrendering. Not surrendering to despair. Not surrendering to false happiness. Surrendering to Christ, the one who holds both, and holds you in the middle of both.

THE TABLE: COMMUNION ASTHEYET MADE PHYSICAL And now I want to bring this home. Because we are about to do something together that embodies everything we’ve been talking about. We’re going to come to the Lord’s Table. Communion is not a celebration. And communion is not a funeral. Communion is the yet. Bread, broken. Cup, poured out. This is a meal that remembers death. There is real grief on this table. Real cost. Real sorrow. And yet. Yet this is also the meal that announces life. “Do this in remembrance of me,” not as a memorial for someone who stayed dead, but as a proclamation that the One who died is alive and is coming back. There is real joy on this table. Real hope. Real future. Sorrow and joy. On the same table. In the same bread. In the same cup. Look around this room for a second. Some of you are the old ones weeping. You’ve seen the first temple. You know what was lost. Some of you are the young ones shouting. God is doing something new, and you can barely contain the joy. And some of you are both. At the same time. In the same chest. Now, in a moment, I’m going to ask us to do something that might feel unfamiliar. But I want you to trust me. I’m going to ask those of you who have been part of this church family for a long time, those who have been here before I came, those who remember what was, those who carry the scars and the faithfulness of years, I want you to stand and move to one side of this room. And those of you who are newer, those who have come in this season, those who are looking at what God is building and seeing the future, I want you to stand on the other side. And the bread and the cup will be in the middle. Between you. And then I want you to come to the middle, and I want you to serve each other. The old serving the young. The young serving the old. The ones who remember what was lost placing the bread in the hands of the ones who are just arriving. The ones who see the future lifting the cup to the lips of the ones who have carried the weight for decades. Because that is Ezra 3. That is the one sound. That is the church. Not one group winning and the other leaving. Two groups, with completely different experiences, standing across from each other, and choosing to serve each other the body and blood of the One who holds them both. When we do this, we are not just remembering what Christ did. We are showing the world what He is still doing. Don’t sort yourself first. Don’t clean it up. Bring the grief. Bring the joy. Bring the whole tangled, unsortable mess of being a human being who loves God and still lives in a broken world. And serve each other. Look across this room at someone whose experience is different from yours, and hand them the bread. Lift the cup to them. And in doing so, say with your hands what your mouth might not have the words for: You are my family. I see your grief. I see your joy. And I am not going anywhere. Sorrow and joy. Death and life. Cost and gift. Old and young. In your hands. In your mouth. In your body. In your church. And when we eat and drink together, the weeping and the shouting, all of us, all of it, we make the sound. The one sound. The one the world is starving for. For He is good. His steadfast love endures forever. Let’s come to the table together.