Apparatus of Joy

Sermon manuscript (preliminary) for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

For Sabbath, November 28, 2014.

KitchenAid Mixer

My daughter, Bonnie, moved to Wyoming this past fall. It was a bit traumatic. How were we going to manage without her? She attempted to mitigate my grief by leaving her KitchenAid mixer.

A KitchenAid mixer is an apparatus of joy. When Bonnie was home, it produced all kinds of amazing stuff: challah and sourdough bread, pumpkin bread.

Now Bonnie is gone. The machine no longer produces the same astonishing array of tantalizing goodies. But it still produces cookies. You dump in eggs and butter and sugar and oatmeal and chocolate chips and a little later you have the world finest chocolate chip cookies. And these cookies are not merely delicious. They are emergency sustenance. When you've gone all day without eating and you have to have something RIGHT NOW, before the rice can cook, before the broccoli gets tender, you can grab one of these cookies and boom, just like that you're able to keep functioning.

I've enjoyed enough goodies from this machine, that merely glancing at it sitting in its corner on the counter, gives me warm feelings. But if all I did was keep it clean off, if I kept the dust off, this apparatus would fail to provide the rich joy it was designed for. For this mixer to function to its full capacity as an apparatus of joy. I have to put it to work. I have to use it to make some tasty food.

Our scripture describes an apparatus of joy.

It was Jesus' final evening with his disciples. Jesus and his associates arrived at a room in Jerusalem, planning to share supper together. When they walked in everything was ready. They found their places around a table. Then curiously, instead of pronouncing the blessing and beginning the meal, Jesus gets up, walks over to a side table, picks up a basin and towel and moves to wash the disciples' feet.

It messed with the disciples' head. Washing feet was common courtesy in a society that wore sandals on dusty roads. But it was done only by women and servants. There were rules governing the relationships between rabbis and their disciples. One of those rules was that a disciple could not be required to wash the rabbi's feet.

Still, Jesus gets up, and begins washing the disciples' feet.

When he got to Peter, Peter protested. “I can't let you wash my feet!”

“You don't understand now, but you will,” Jesus said.

“No way. I will never let you wash my feet.” Peter was intending to honor Jesus in this protest. Peter was intending to express his profound regard for Jesus. Peter had put Jesus on far too high a pedestal for him to imagine ti would be appropriate for Jesus to stoop to washing his feet.

Okay, Jesus said. But if I don't wash your feet, you have no place in my kingdom.”

“Well, why didn't you say so? If that's how it is, don't was just my feet. Wash my head and hands, too.”

Jesus laughed. “No, Peter. It's enough to do your feet. If someone has had a bath, all they need is to get the dust off their feet, and they'll be all clean.”

After Jesus finished was all the disciples' feet, including the feet of Judas, Jesus sat back down and asked, “Do you understand what I've done?”

“I'm your master. If I have washed your feet, you should practice the same among yourselves.”

Then he added this, “If you do this, if you do for each other what I have done for you, you will be happy.”

Washing feet was an apparatus of joy.

If the disciples treasured the memory of Jesus washing their feet, that would add joy to their lives. It would be a sweet, reassuring memory. But this would be the merest taste of joy. It would be like the smell I experienced when I walked into our house Thanksgiving after being outside for a hour. Shelley and Karin were baking. The scent when I walked in was heavenly.

But I would consider myself terribly impoverished if the closet I could get to their cooking was the aroma. Food is meant to be eaten, savored, felt in the stomach.

In the same way the gift Jesus gave that evening with the disciples was meant to be experienced deeply. And the key to the deepest experience of joy is to put the gift to work. We know most of grace, of divine generosity, when we begin practicing sharing it with others.

The great passage in Micah summarizing God's dream for his people is actually a recipe for joy. It is a discription of the apparatus of joy.

He has shown you what is good and what the Lord requires of you. It is this: to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. This is a weighty obligation. Sometimes this vision will contradict the allure of a higher income. It may interrupt more convenient plans. But when we order our lives in harmony with this wisdom, when we devote our selves to serving, we will discover it is an apparatus of joy. We will find deep satisfation.

God calls us to be holy, to serve, to ameliorate suffering, to order our world so that the lowly ones have a good chance at doing better and prospering. This is our duty. It is also the path to happiness. It is the apparatus of joy.