Tyndale Chapel Podcast

George Sweetman
Good morning everyone, welcome to community chapel. Glad that you're with us again this morning. It's been a good semester. Week after week, we gather together with brothers and sisters, friends, shoulder to shoulder to praise our God. There's not a lot of schools that do this, and we are privileged to be able to do it week after week, in fact, more than once a week, oftentimes. Through the course of this semester, we've been looking at this idea of hope anticipated, that the light has come, the light is coming, the light will come. And we are only days away now from the Christmas season, or Advent season. Next Sunday, the 30th of November, begins Advent one and then progresses for four weeks to Christmas, and Christmas tied to the Epiphany. These are moments in our lives, our collective lives, our family lives, that we can celebrate together. The reason for who we are, the reason for what Tyndale is, the Incarnation, the reality that God has come to be with us in the form of Jesus Christ. This morning, we are happy to have Dr. Lyndsay Thompson with us. Dr Thompson is currently a Lecturer in Counseling and Thanatology at our seminary, a recent graduate of the Doctor of Ministry program where she concentrated on the idea of how desire shapes and forms our spiritual practices and formation. We're really eager and excited to have Lyndsay speak to us this morning. She has done a number of other sorts of chapels with us, and for those of you who haven't had an opportunity to hear Lyndsay speak, you're in for a treat. One thing that's so significant about the Tyndale chapel experience is that, I mean, we know, if you look around, there's a speckling of about 100, 110, people in the chapel, but the reality is that week after week, there's probably close to 200 to 250 people that participate in some way, many of them online, those of you in person. And what marks these times together is that we have been embedded within a story, the story that Jesus Christ has given to us. And that there's this shared and common idea that we are in this together because Christ has invited us into this beautiful new reality in which He is making all things new. And this morning, I thought it would be appropriate to begin our service with this psalm taken from Peterson's paraphrase. "On your feet now- applaud God! Bring a gift of laughter, sing yourselves into his presence. Know this: God is God, and God, God. He made us; we didn't make him. We're his people, his well-tended sheep. Enter with the password: 'Thank you!' Make yourselves at home, talking praise. Thank him. Worship him. For God is sheer beauty, all- generous in love, loyal always and forever."

George Sweetman
Let's pray together. God, as we prepare ourselves for the coming Christmas season, we would also prepare our hearts for the returning Christ. You came once for Your people, O Lord, You will come again for us. Though there was no room at the inn to receive You upon Your first arrival, we would prepare You room now in our hearts and here in this community, Lord Jesus. And as we decorate and celebrate, we do so to mark the memory of Your redemptive movement within this broken world, O God. Our glittering ornaments and Christmas trees, our festive carols, our sumptuous feasts, by these small tokens, we affirm that something amazing has happened in time and space: the Incarnation. That God on a particular night in a particular place, so many years ago, was born to us an infant King, our Prince of Peace. Our wreaths and ribbons, and colored lights, our giving of gifts, our parties with friends, these that have never ends in themselves, but they are small ways in which we repeat the sounding joy first proclaimed by the angels in the skies near Bethlehem. In view of such great tidings of love announced to us, to all people, how can we not be moved to praise and celebration this upcoming Advent in Christmas? As we decorate our trees and as we feast and laugh and sing together. We are rehearsing the coming joy. We are making ready to receive the one who has already, with open arms, received us. So God, we would prepare You room here in our hearts and here in our community today, Lord Jesus. Now we celebrate Your first coming, Emmanuel, even as we long for Your return, O Prince of Peace, our Elder Brother, return soon, and may we know now that the light still shines in the darkness. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's sing together.

Dr. Lyndsay Thompson
Good morning, everbody, can you hear me here? Didn't think that was going to be an issue. Much better. Thank you so good to be with you this morning. It's such an honor to be here. So as Dean Sweetman said, the theme for chapel this academic year has been "Hope in Chaotic Times". The focus for the fall semester, which lands in Ordinary Time leading to Advent, has been "Hope in Waiting", with John 1:5 being the anchor verse, "The light that shines in the darkness, but darkness has not understood it." The last three months, I have been on a deep dive into the idea of happiness. The poor students in the classes that I teach have been subjected to this recent obsession. They are now all on my journey of placing happiness gurus, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as Augustine and Jesus, in a historical timeline. I have subjected my sweet, sweet captive audience to homework based on positive psychology to see if specific exercises, when applied in life and clinical practice, impact happiness and gratitude. And of course, in addition to all that, simply pestering them with, "What is happiness?" and, "How do you define happiness?" This unexpected fascination with happiness came out of some recent realizations from my doctoral research on the role of desire in our spiritual formation. Here is a very short synopsis of my work. Through the qualitative method of auto ethnography, I identified a deep rooted confusion in my life, "What do I do with what I want, with what I desire?" My life is being filled with wanting to do so much and be so much and pursue so many things. However, I was never really sure what to do with that. How do I know what to do with what I want? Is it even okay to want? How do I know if what I want is what God wants? I landed on the conclusion that desiring is actually a part of who God created us to be. Since He desires us, if we are made in His image, we too desire however sin deeply distorts what we desire and how we manage it. I analyzed how desire does play a role in our spiritual formation, but needs careful, ongoing and very special attention and a whole lot of God's grace. I thought that after graduation, when the school work was done, the agony of writing was over, everything was going to be a nice, tidy conclusion. All the ideas that had been swimming around in my brain for so long would be gone. I could carry on with life. I'd be free and fixed of all the existential crises I had had over the years. But that was not the case. This summer, just a few months after graduation, suffering from what I have been told that can affectionately be called post project depression, or PPD, a number of things in my life came to a head so between PPD, confronting those few but very major issues, as well as my ongoing struggle with lifelong depression. I was so frustrated that after all I had done and learned and gone through, I was still miserable. If a doctorate in spiritual formation and a career in studying and practicing psychotherapy couldn't fix me, nothing was going to. I journaled and journaled and journaled until the sentence came out. "I'm sick of never being happy. Is it ever okay to be happy?" I know I had written similar sentences like 1000s of times before, so I'm not sure why it stood out this time, but it did. So back to my research. I went because the question sounded eerily similar to the questions I had been asking about desire. Is it okay to want? Is it okay to be happy? How do I know if the desires of my heart are actually from God as Psalm 37:4 curiously asks? How do I know if my happiness is okay with God? Is it bad if maybe I'm happy but not joyful, or joyful and not happy, or what's the difference between the two? I will spare you the ugly details of the tear filled psychoanalysis that happened next. But all that to say, this is what brought me to my current infatuation with understanding what happiness is. I. As I continue to investigate happiness, I am definitely having more questions than answers. However, I am discovering a few things that I do want to share with you as we enter with great expectation this season of Advent. Before I continue, please know that I am learning as I go, and so I humbly am aware of the many nuances to understanding the phenomenon of happiness, and perhaps an audience of theologian and theologians and philosophers isn't the best place to let my outside voice come out, inside voice come out. So I want you to know that I acknowledge my ignorance and very much welcome feedback. But what I want to share is my curiosity about the place and role of joy and happiness. While distinctly different, I'm wondering if they both matter in our lives as followers of Jesus and can be reflected specifically during this upcoming season of Advent. Aristotle has been my go to for 101, in the history and philosophy of happiness. He was not likely monotheistic. However, I'm gathering he was interested in considering that there must be something way bigger than us in this life that gives meaning, hope and purpose. Aristotle is pretty clear that we really need to understand that true happiness is a big deal. It is not simply self gratification. He definitely uses different terms to identify nuances between forms or experiences of happiness, some healthy, some unhealthy. And for the Aristotle scholars out there, please know I have taken into consideration, as I try to explain this, that he's got many different definitions, and I'm reading nakomikian, nakomikian, Nicomachean, that word, his textbook on happiness, with like my finger in the glossary, so I am trying to keep that in perspective. But he says that happiness is governed by three things, logos, or reason, virtue and activity. To me, this means that if happiness does exist and is something that can contribute to a meaningful life. It actually has to be taken pretty seriously. It is not simply a passive comfort and success, substances, salaries or social status. It is it cannot be permanently found when pursued. And I'm gathering in a nutshell that Aristotle does believe that a healthy happiness may contribute to human flourishing, and here's where I think joy comes in. While happiness may be experienced in good and true and virtuous activity, those don't last. They are beautiful, but momentary. Joy, on the other hand, is a state that is continuous, long, lasting and deep within our being, and it's unrelated to external factors. As I reflected on what was going on in my life that led me to write those sentences about being so deeply unhappy for so long, I realized that for much of my life I thought happiness was a sin. There is no way God would be okay with me enjoying momentary pleasure. As a result, I frequently denied receiving happiness in any form. I would, however, declare myself joyful because that was okay with God. The Bible tells me so. However, if I'm being honest, my use of the word joy was actually pretty prideful. I was not only denying gifts of love and beauty and perhaps moments of happiness, but actually looking for ways to stay in darkness. This long suffering would prove that even in my misery, the joy of the Lord was my strength. Well, the Lord has and will always continue to be my strength. I have to be honest when I say I think I have misused the word joy and misunderstood happiness, and neither have been helpful. So here's what I'm working on. Here's what I'm offering to myself and to you. Joy is a deep and precious gift only fully realized in a life with Jesus. Joy that is believed in and strengthened through community, that is accepted as a precious gift, is our strength. It will never run out. Maybe this is just a me issue, but declaring that the joy of the Lord is our strength is so much more than like a Christiany way of muscling through life, even when every circumstance is anything but joyful, we really do have the agency and authority to live in the reality of God's love and what that means for hope for our lives. This is something incredibly powerful and not to be used colloquially or taken lightly. And I wonder, in addition to that, what it might be like to attune to receiving moments of happiness that come from virtuous activity, the experience of being in nature, admiring the beauty of art, tasting great food, or laughing with friends. What might it like be like to receive the gift of happiness with great gratitude, knowing these moments come and go, they cannot be found, caught or maintained? Could we receive these moments as ways the Lord whispers His love to us? Ways He reminds us that His joy is happiness times like a million? Maybe the gifts of moments of happiness point to joy, point to the fact that the kingdom is here and is beautiful. But that's not it. There is so much more yet to come. Have hope. As we enter Advent and anticipate the arrival of the Light that will never cease shining in the darkness, I pray that we can know the deep, never ending joy that Jesus brings. Our wait isn't over, but may the beauty of Jesus strengthen our joy and renew our hope. And if we can, we can be ready for the little moments of happy when they come that remind us of the hope that we have. But don't hold on to those two moments too too tightly. Rather accept them as gifts from the best Gift Giver ever, the Author and Holder of our joy. I love the book, The Lives We Actually Have, by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie. It's a book of simple liturgies that speak love into the ordinary moments of our lives. It's inspired me to write a few of my own over the past year, and I've written one for us today, as we ponder happiness and joy and the coming of Jesus, as we enter Advent. The worship team is going to play one song, and then I'll offer that to us.

Dr. Lyndsay Thompson
Let me pray for you. Blessed are we who have no sweet clue what it means to be happy. We who hate to admit it, but often find ourselves on the pursuit of it on Amazon at 3am, it's a four at lunch hour, or at the gym every day after work. We who hate to admit it that sometimes all we want is to be happy and know it and clap our hands, because that one thing finally solved all the unhappiness for the rest of our lives. Blessed are we who only seem to really know what it means to not be happy. We who, for sure, know happiness is not the tears no one sees and the self medicating no one will ever hear about. Blessed are we who know that somehow joy does fit in somewhere. We who have a deep sense that there's something in our souls that smiles even when we can't and nothing will ever touch that. We who long for that to truly be our strength, even though it's often pretty confusing. Blessed are we who lean into joy and yet have to admit, we were very happy our team played so well. The playoffs were unreal. Maybe they'll go all the way again next year. But what a gift that season was. "Too soon", Jay's fans. We who lean into joy and are so happy we trained and ran that race, our bodies are truly amazing. Maybe those five pounds will come back, maybe they won't, but what a gift that experience was, and what a gift our health is. Blessed are we who lean into joy and are grateful the weather was amazing. The kids were so happy to be playing at the beach. We who lean into joy and we're so happy the cake tasted great. We suck at baking. We who lean into joy and are so happy the semester is nearly done. Blessed are we who cling not to those happy moments as lovely as they are, but cling to what they point to, a gracious Creator of all things beautiful, a loving God who is has way more in store than those moments. But don't ever doubt it, He loved watching you smile. Jesus, may we accept moments of happiness as gifts from You when You choose to give them. May we be so grateful every single time, in fact, may we put ourselves in the way of Your beauty and goodness at every opportunity, not because that sounds like a reasonable way to feel a bit happier a bit more often, but because that's where we get to know You, the source of joy, joy that is so much better than any happiness we ever experience. Thank you that You came as a baby, fully God and fully man, the only Light that could ever penetrate the darkness. I wonder was Mary happy when she finally got to meet You? Father, we are so sorry that the darkness still often doesn't recognize You. Work in our minds and our hearts, so that we see Your light everywhere. So thank you, Lord for the gift of happy and thank you for knowing we need Your joy way more. For both the happiness and joy we receive make us truly grateful, this weary world really does rejoice. Amen and amen. Bless you, friends.