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Boker tov, Shabat Shalom my friends!  Or as the Muslims would say, “Salaam alicoum.” Hahaha.  Well, I successfully made it back to America it would seem.  I had no cavity searches; there were no wars that broke out as a result of any of my actions, I did get deathly ill in Egypt –thought I was going to die –, and I almost fell into the Sea of Galilee because I was horsing around on some big rocks next to it.  Haha, but other than all of that, it was a great experience yet again.

You know, sometimes people ask my why I travel and why I go to the Middle East.  My own parents support me in it, but I don’t know that they truly understand it.  The Middle East amazes me; it continues to amaze me every time I go there.  The culture, the food, the dress, the buildings…it’s a whole different world and way of living; but Israel is really what draws me there.  Israel blows me away more than any other place in the Middle East

It seems that every place you go in Israel, you can find a Biblical reference that talks about something historic that happened there.  I mean, you can just be driving down the road and drive over a beautiful little stream and someone says, “Oh this is the stream that God reduced Gideon’s army from thousands to a mere three hundred so the Israelites would realize that it’s God who fights for them and wins for them.”  Or you drive along a valley road and someone says, “Oh by the way, that’s Mount Carmel over there, where Elijah called down fire from heaven and blew an altar apart to show up the priests and prophets of the pagan God Baal.”  One day we were driving down the road and someone goes, “And on your right is the City of Capernaum, the city Jesus lived in for the three years he did ministry.”  Everywhere you go, you have an opportunity to experience the history of salvation and of God’s work in our world.

Dr. Tuttle, a professor at Asbury seminary in Orlando, a close friend of mine, and mentor, always talks about what he refers to as “thin spots” when I go there with him.  A thin spot is a place where, for whatever reason –perhaps your attitude at the time, or your personal walk with Christ, or the people with you, or perhaps it’s just how God orchestrated things –the distance between you and God, the separation between your heart and his heart seems to dissolve and disappear.  You find yourself free to mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically feel the presence of God come over you.

The Jews, when you read the Torah, or pray, say that it is an “Aliah” or “ascension.”  They believe going to Jerusalem –the Holy City of God –is an and Aliah.  These thing spots are an Aliah, a time where conditions are right and God’s will is such that you seem to ascend to the throne room of grace and feel the very presence of the King.

It’s tough predict where these thin spots or Aliah’s will occur when you are in the Holy Land or over here for matter.  Last year my thin spots, probably due to where I was and what I was dealing with, revolved around the death of Christ and His Humanity.  I felt closest to God when I was in a place where Christ suffered most like I did –the mountain of Temptation, Golgotha –where he was murdered, place the Sermon on the Mount was –where he spoke plainly and frankly to us in our own language, and in His tomb where he was buried and resurrected.

This year, however, my thin spots were much different…which probably points to where I am now in life and with God.  We had the opportunity to go on a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee.  There were 41 Americans, 1 Ethiopian, 3 Jamaicans, 4 Argentineans, 2 Arab Israeli’s, and 1 Jewish Israeli.  We sailed out into the middle of the Sea and…had a church service.  We read scripture about the Sea of Galilee, and then they put worship music on and we together, this multinational multi-ethnical group began to worship together.  We had an Aliah, our boat took flight and ascended into heaven it seemed.

I sat for some time and observed what was taking place before me, I wrote in my journal and found myself in awe of the worship, the spontaneous in-breaking of deep joy that was occurring.  I watched people who had only known each other for a week, fall to their knees and confess deep deep darkness within their own hearts; and then I watched people listening to their confession, holding their hands and weeping with them as if they hurt for and with the people.  Then they stood up and both raised their hands to God and wept tears of joy and smiled the brightest smiles you’ll ever find.  There was deeply intimate but deeply public and corporate worship taking place there; and there was this feeling of deep deep over powering almost magical joy.

I’ve thought about that moment a lot over the past week or so, and how different that church service on that boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee was than anything your average church goer experiences on Sunday morning.  I thought perhaps it was the music that caused it, but let me tell you, the music they played over the radio just wasn’t very good at all.  And then I thought, Perhaps it was the setting, being in Israel, having suffered through the wilderness of Egypt and Jordan, and literally coming into the promise land of the Jews.  Maybe it was beauty of the place we were in. But as I prayed and sat there worshipping and observing people worshipping it dawned on me that it was something far greater and for more profound than a simple geographical or musical coincidence.

David speaks of this joy in Psalm 16:11 when he wrote,

Psalm 16:9-11 my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure.  ¹⁰ For you do not give me up to Hell, or let your faithful one see death.  ¹¹ You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy.

The word there used for “fullness” literally translates as, “saturated,” as if the Psalmist was saying that in God’s presence we are soaking wet with Joy –somebody say Amen.  This sermon is going to much longer if you make me say all of my own Amens.

There was genuine rejoicing there on that boat, genuine celebration, genuine and real happiness that poured out from one another and soaked us in the Joy of God’s presence.  We had a joy that was far deeper than the meager emotional high that many people seek after in church services.  It was a joy that, when you stopped thinking about it, didn’t go away.  It was a joy that was not weak or fleeting at the first sign of change in the air or with the ending of music.  It wasn’t dependent on the setting and it was not dependent on the quality of the music.  It was a strong unassailable joy.

However, for me, this raised the inevitable question in my mind, “Why is this different than before?  What separates the joy I observed and myself experienced on that boat from what we experience from time to time at church here in America?”  What makes this joy ever present instead of fleeting, strong and reliable instead of weak and whimsical, predictable and definite instead of fickle and elusive, and not lasting?

I asked God this.  I said, “Father, why is this different?  What is it, precisely, that is different about this?  Tell me, please, I must understand.”  God said to me very plainly and simply, “This joy is educated, not ignorant.”  I responded, “What in the world does that mean?” And God brought to mind one passage that, admittedly, confused me and shook me to my core.  Let me read it to you, but I’m going to read it in the King James Version because it just sounds better:

Psalm 23

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.  ² He maketh me lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters;^{1 3} he restores my soul.¹ He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.  ⁴ Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff — they comfort me.  ⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  ⁶ Surely¹ goodness and mercy² shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.

Someone say Amen again. Wheeeew, if that don’t curl your toes, we need to talk.  I think that Psalm turns God on, Hahaha.  I think it just lights Him up like a Roman candle –I think Jesus liked that Psalm too, I can’t him not just soaking every word of that perfect Psalm in.

For a while I wasn’t sure about that Psalm and what it had to do with what I was experiencing that day, Monday January 11, 2010 on the Sea of Galilee.  And then God showed me.  He said, “Notice what my servant, my friend, my son, my lover…David…said.  He said, ‘Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.’ He does not write a song to God that says, ‘Lord please do not lead me through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.’”  We spend too much time avoiding the death of ourselves, the death of the way WE want to do things.  This creates a joy that is shallow and weak

But….

True Deep Joy, the Joy of the Lord is not whimsical and fleeting precisely because it has been forged and galvanized in the fires of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.  We are not called to avoid the Valley of Death, but rather to walk through it hand in hand with Christ, our good shepherd, and to be delivered to the other side up the valley walls to the mountain of God.

John Wesley wrote, “The one work we have to do is to return from the gates of death to perfect soundness; to have our diseases cured, our wounds healed, and our uncleanness done away with…to re-exchange the image of Satan for the image of God, bondage for freedom, and sickness for health.”

Jesus said… “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” Christ said, “He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” And again, he said, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

There is a very clear biblical sense in which we must lose the life we have in order to gain the life that God has for us.  We must have the courage to walk out of Egypt, knowing we will be brought into the promise land.  However, we must first recognize, with a sober understanding, the true nature of our condition…that we are treading on the very dust of the valley of death, that we are dirty, wounded, diseased, sick, and in bondage.

This is hard, and a painful thing to do because it requires death to our way of life…What I experienced on that boat was a funeral, that’s why there were tears…that’s why there are tears at the alter many times…something inside of us is dying.  Funerals are always accompanied by pain because we can never again be the same.  But we cannot be hesitant to attend our own funerals, we cannot hesitate to allow God to destroy us so that we may build us up into the people who worship in spirit and in truth and who change the world.

However, the funeral is not the point.  Mourning is not the point.  Sadness and tears are not the point.  Dwelling in the Valley of the Shadow of Death is not the point.  These are simply the necessary roads we must take.  There are people, and I have lived as one of them, who truly believe that dwelling in a state of grief and suffering over our sins is the point of Christianity.  That we should have an ever present feeling of sadness over our lives and how we have betrayed God.  We cannot avoid this truths, we must face them and our brokenness head on; but they are not the POINT of Christianity.  The point of Christianity, the point of Christ’s death on the cross is joy, peace, hope…and most of God reconciliation with God.  We are to be brought back to the mountain of God and given the ability to, once again, hug His neck.  That is Christianity, healing for our sake, love for our sake, joy for our sake, and God…for our sake.  He doesn’t NEED us, we NEED Him…God is joy, God’s presence is joy…the point of Christianity is to be able to be in His unabated presence once again.  Do not let the valley of the shadow of death stop you from climbing the mountain of God on the other side.

Amen