Preaching Joy

Excellent, I'm keeping up with the blog. My wife will be happy.

I'm on to preach tomorrow. I spent much of today (after celebrating Mass and having breakfast with the SMM Saturday crew) thinking about my sermon for tomorrow. Right now I'm trying to link up the spirit of the Church as depicted in Acts, the enthusiasm and vision of Synod, and Holy Joy. Holy Joy has something to do with eschatology.

Searching around the web I came across some references to Hymn of the Universe by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Some deep wisdom there, but not quite on the mark for my preaching tomorrow. That's the sort of thing that you have to prepare people to hear, if you want to take them down that road.

In my sermon at Mass this morning I explored the notion to Springtime and the Springtime of the church as revealed in the readings from Acts that we heard. I tied that to Springtime emerging on all levels of our religious consciousness--from Synod on down to our subjective spiritual experiences. In retrospect I could have gone a bit higher to the Universal Church. Alas.

I usually preach by thinking of organizing concepts. So far I've got the concepts of springtime, joy, and way both tie into evangelism and mission. But as usual, the hard thing is the "take." What do I want people to take with them besides the obvious insight that joy is a good thing. I can make them feel joyful... sure. But the would see Jesus.... Is Jesus the God's joy and delight? That sounds promising...

As usual, I'll leave it be for awhile and go watch hockey instead. I'll finish tying these things together tomorrow...

-t