The Importance of Celebration (Episode 80)

As we go through this Christmas season, which is more than just a day, Brent and his son, Father Preston Sharpe, share about how being purposeful in our celebrations can be healthy and life giving throughout the year.  

Transcript:

Welcome to Life and Love Nuggets, where licensed therapists Brent and Janice Sharpe share how you can thrive in your life, your love, and your relationships. Hello, welcome to Life and Love Nuggets. We're glad that you're with us today. Just always a joy for me to have my son join us from periodically. We get you when you're for the holidays, and so it's around the Christmas season here, and my son, Father Preston, it's always kind of weird to say, Father Preston Sharpe is pastor or rector of Sacrament Church in Nashville, and went there 10 years ago, if so.

Yeah, actually like 11. 11 years ago to plant the and so we're excited to watch what's happening there in Nashville, and so we're glad that you're here. And so today we wanted to talk a little bit about, first of all, celebration. The idea of celebration is, you know, we have Christmas, we follow it up with New Year's here in our world, and it's one of the biggest things that happens in the world. It's this kind of focus on this idea of we're celebrating something, and so just that thing in and of itself, just celebration, is, I think, key in our lives. And now we're going to talk a little bit about what we're celebrating here, and so this is, you know, from our perspective, kind of the most significant thing that's ever happened in the world. God choosing to come and be with us, which is just kind of mind-boggling in and of itself.

But this orientation of what we do every year, you know, when we were, when you guys were little, we would go around, look at Christmas lights, and would say, Christmas light alert. Yeah, right, right. That meant we would see some Christmas lights. Yeah. Again, it just seems like, kind of regardless of people's faith even, the whole world seems to orient themselves towards this moment in time, and it all is, you know, has an essence or an element of celebration to it. So maybe just speak to that from your own experience, from a pastor's perspective even, and why would this be in our life?

Why is this so critical that this happens? Yeah, well, I think it's true that we all want to celebrate something. We all really want to be celebrating people. We have things that we mark. You know, you meet people that mark, you know, they've been dating three weeks, and they mark their three-week dating anniversary, and they celebrate that, and people mark all kinds of anniversaries and all different kinds of things. I even think about how we celebrate our teams. You know, it's pretty amazing what people do and the lengths they go to to celebrate their sports teams.

They're crazy people. So I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and we have all different variety of football teams surrounding there. So we have the University of Tennessee football, we have Alabama football, you know, all these people that just are nuts, you know, crazy fans for all this stuff, and then we have the Tennessee Titans, which is our NFL football team. And people are like, this is our team, it's Nashville's team. But if you look at the team, like, nobody on the team's from Nashville. And so Jerry Seinfeld calls it rooting for laundry at some point.

Rooting for laundry? For laundry, because it's just whatever shirts they're wearing, you know, that's who you root for. Anyway, we all desire celebration. We want to celebrate something that comes out in our lives in so many different ways. From the church world, we have in the church calendar, these rhythms of historical traditions that are passed down, this rhythm of fasting and feasting. So it goes back and forth, seasons of fasting and feasting. And there's more feasting in the church calendar than there is fasting.

And so when we look at this season of Christmas in our world, usually how we celebrate things is Christmas is coming. And so we work really, really hard and we buy all the gifts and we kind of go crazy and we go out and, you know, the diamond companies are trying to sell us every kiss begins with K and the Lexus companies have big blue ribbons or big red ribbons on the Lexuses and all this stuff. And they're going, all right, everything is headed towards this one day of Christmas. But in the historic calendar, the season of Advent was a way more kind of slow anticipatory season. Which is leading up to Advent is the weeks leading up to Christmas. This year was just all December. And we look towards that day with kind of hopeful anticipation, but also recognizing that there's brokenness in our lives.

We need something. We long for that.

And so in the earlier, I mean, in the earlier traditions, when they celebrated Christmas, they didn't even really set up their Christmas decorations till really close to Christmas day. They were longing and waiting, but this is what's so cool. Once Christmas day happened, it was just the beginning. So Christmas, the season of Christmas in the church is actually 12 days beginning with Christmas day. And it's a season of feasting. So I think what happens in our world sometimes is we work really hard for that one day and we buy and buy and buy and we give and give and give everybody's super exhausted. Christmas day happens. It's magical. It's wonderful.

And then we go now clean it all put it all away. But the church says, Hey, linger with this for a little bit. And there's a reason for it. It's if we really think the world changed because God has come into our world, then we ought to sit with this for a bit. We ought to sit with the implications. So the song has it, right? Yes. The 12 days is Christmas. Yes. And the 12 days of Christmas are not the 12 days before Christmas day.

I remember seeing some specials growing up, like on TV where they'd have like 12 days of Christmas, the 12 days before Christmas, they'd show movies and stuff. But no, it's the 12 days beginning Christmas day. And that's why the gifts are multitude in that song, because it keeps growing and growing. Yeah. That's so good. We talked about the kind of seasons of the church. And so for some, that's a little unusual.

I was talking to a friend the other day. It's my age and been Christian all his life. And he had never heard the word Advent. I'm like, really? Of course, maybe earlier in my spiritual training, I don't know that I talked a lot about the seasons. There are certain church traditions that talk more about this and some don't at all. And so can you speak to that a little bit about this whole idea of what the church calendar is? Yeah. So the church calendar goes back to some of the earliest days of the church.

It's a bit more complicated with that, just as everything is. But the idea is that the Christian life is marked by rhythms and by seasons, that we don't just have a life that's based on our certain feelings or experiences, even though feelings and experiences are wonderful, but that we journey with a community and not just a community like your local church or small group or whatever it is, but also the church throughout history and throughout time where we mark these seasons. So the church calendar actually starts with Advent, which is kind of crazy. It begins in December, like that's the beginning of a new church year. And then we have Christmas, which is 12 days. Then we have the Epiphany, which is this idea of the light of God going out into the world. And it's the season of God's graces for everybody and for all people that eventually leads us to Lent, the season of Lent, which is reflection and repentance, acknowledging our dependence on God.

Then we have what a lot of Christians celebrate, which is Holy Week. You might hear terms like Maundy Thursday or Good Friday or Holy Saturday, and then Easter Sunday, which is really the center of the Christian faith. So Lent is 40 days long, which is fasting and repentance. And then the season of Easter is 50 days long. So it's like we have more feasting than we do fasting. Then we have Pentecost, which is the giving of the Holy Spirit. And we celebrate the Spirit's work in our lives in everyday stuff.

So the longest season of the church calendar is called ordinary time because we can know God's with us in ordinary time. And then it all kind of circles back around again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah. So one of the things when I was still pastoring, you know, we, you know, I don't know, 15 years ago or so, 20 years ago, we stepped into this idea of the rhythms of the church. And we kind of followed then certain preaching calendar even along with those. And I just remember it was like, okay, I don't just get to do my favorite scriptures. The things that I'm most comfortable with, I have to kind of deal with some of the more difficult parts of the text as well.

And the idea is that over a few years that you kind of connect with the whole biblical story, you know, in that idea. And so again, we're back to the idea there's more feasting than there is fasting. The idea is that there's something about this orientation. I always look at these practices that we develop as humans and even the direction that we're giving from scripture. It's always fascinating to me when we look at how that actually makes sense to us, how it connects with our real human, even biology and our experiences. And I remember recently I was just studying about Sabbath rest and then learning about how our bodies are designed physiologically. And if we don't have a certain amount of rest, it's like, well, no wonder God said do that.

He's the creator. He's like, I made you. There's a certain way that you're going to thrive. And if you don't really kind of pay attention to that, you're going to struggle. And I think that about celebration. I think that we're oriented to this idea of celebration, that there's something in that that has to be good for us. And so it's, you know, from a mental health perspective, we recognize the need for what we focus on and being thankful and celebrating the good that is and the life that we have and the blessings that we have and throwing a party for that.

There's something about that that is life giving to us. And, you know, we recognize that whatever we focus on determines our attitude towards the thing, you know? And so if all we focus on is just the problems, you know, the difficulties that we have, which there will be, they will be there. But if that's all we focus on, then our attitude is going to be pretty negative and down. And so this that we've been nudged and encouraged to reorient our focus towards celebration. Yes, totally. And I think about what the Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Philippians.

He says, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. Now, sometimes when we read that, we can think, Paul's saying, be happy, you know, be at least act like you're happy. You may not be, but just, you know, you're supposed to look like you're happy. We think that's what he's saying. And notice he, the Bible never tells us that we must feel certain things.

It gives space for feelings. It tells us what we can do in the midst of certain feelings. It gives room for expression of feelings, which are really important. Feelings matter. They're really important. But what it says is rejoice in the midst. That word rejoice actually means publicly celebrate.

So again, it's not feel happy. It's do a celebration, do it together with the community, do it in public. Those things I think really, really matter because celebration changes us. The next phrase that it says, which is so interesting is let your gentleness be evident to all. And I think those two are connected because what it's saying is don't let your rejoicing like dominate other people's rejoicing. Like you're not like trying to take all the oxygen in the room for yourself. Christians are not supposed to see other people celebrating other things and go, well, ours is better.

We're going to be louder and bigger, you know, and all this. But we're, we're celebrating. We celebrate in a way that's giving, giving and loving to our neighbors.

That's so good. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's getting used to our life is going to be, we're going to have some things that are not so good. We're going to have some challenges. The scripture says in this life, we will have trouble.

It's kind of part of our experience. Um, but then, but to rejoice even in the midst of that and, and to purposely do that, to publicly do that. And, and so it's recognizing, I always tell folks, it's getting comfortable with holding both of those things that we're going to have things that are challenging and difficult at times. Um, but we're also going to have things that, that are good and wonderful and that are great blessing. You know, I say in our family, we have 16 with you kids and spouses and grandkids and everything. And there's always like one or two of you all going through something that I'm like, yeah, I wish that's, I hate that for them or that's sad or that's difficult or whatever. Um, now again, we could just focus on that, you know, and with my personality trying to, you know, get the world perfect.

I could not be at peace or satisfied or joyful unless all 16, everything's going perfectly in all their lives, which is just flat impossible. Um, so it's recognizing that. And even the feeling that comes from that, it might be sorrow or sadness or, um, or anxious, a little worried or whatever. Um, but also in the middle, there's so much to celebrate, you know? Um, and this is again, why we have birthdays where we celebrate them on that day, regardless of what's going on in our circumstances. And so Christmas is one of those, we celebrate this regardless of what's going on in our circumstances. And we're aware that for many as a counselor, I'm even thinking of a list of people in my mind that this Christmas is going to be difficult for them because they've had a loss this year.

They've gone through a difficulty of some kind and, or at, you know, have one that lost their apparent, like right at Christmas, you know? And so, so it's how do we recognize that that's a real thing and also then stop and realize there's yet there's still so much goodness. There's so much we're thankful that we've been given life and breath and, and, and what are all those blessings are that we experience and really getting comfortable with doing that together. And I think that's, I think that's a hard thing for us to do. I, you know, as humans, I, you know, we can kind of slip into one or the other and it's just holding both of those and allowing these times of celebration to really perk our ears up and focus on, uh, okay, this is a time again, regardless of what's going on here, this is a time let's celebrate, let's rejoice.

Let's do that publicly. I think what you're saying is so good. And I would add to that the church calendar, if you really dig into it, the 12 days of Christmas, two or three of the major things that happen in the 12 days of Christmas, if you get this detailed about it, which not, you don't have to, but if you get this detail, our feast days for first martyrs of the church, which is like really dark because you go, we have these 12 days of celebration. And then we go, Oh, these people were martyred. They were killed. But we're still, we're honoring their life. We're celebrating their life.

We're celebrating God's presence with them and who they are and the role that they've played in our lives. And so you're exactly right. It's celebration and recognizing the world is broken. And we hold both of those together. Yeah. So as we, as we go into even a new year then, because new year's follows, it's another celebration, you know? And so as we're kind of turning the page, it's, you know, celebrating out now, some, you know, I've heard some this year ago, I'm, I just really want to turn the page.

I really want to look back so much. But I would say probably in all of our lives, there's some. Something to rejoice and something to be thankful for of what was not perfect, of course. And then as we turn a page, realizing that we get to kind of write a new story and that we get to participate in that. And so I think what can we gain from even an understanding of what we're talking about here of celebration is, is how do we look for those opportunities, making sure that we have those built into our life in the new year and that we pay attention to those and that we proactively put energy into that. And so, you know, I look at just to get back to mental health kind of issues of realizing that all of us, you know, whether it's a young mom out there, is that just, I have one young mom right now, the baby's just not sleeping, colicky, you know, just like, you know, every time I talk to her, she's just absolutely spent, you know, and I have a few families like that. And, and even though they've been longing for a child and they're rejoicing in that, they're just so exhausted. Yes, yes.

And so we have to look at, okay, there's so much going out of your life right now that how do we put something back in? And part of that is celebration. Part of that is making sure that I have some time that I orient myself again, regardless of how I'm feeling to being thankful and what I appreciate about this. And we're throwing a party for the fact that we have this new baby and we've been hoping for and, and what that life of that child will look like. They will sleep through the night. One of these days. That's right. That's right. Right. Right. And, and what blessing is their life going to be in the world?

And so there's, you know, it's just sometimes we have to, I keep using the word proactive. We have to put some energy into that of, but trusting that in that celebration, that's doing something for us. Yes. Yeah. That's so good. And I think we can do this in micro ways. We can do it in ways that are, we celebrate small things in our lives.

You know, if you pick up your student from school and, and they go, Hey, I did great on this test. It's like, you know what? We need to have a dance party because of this, you know, let's go home and just dang. I mean, sometimes we can do it in ways of good ways. Like let's go get ice cream. All that stuff's great. But sometimes if that becomes a, it's just all about sugar all the time, then that may not be the most helpful for us.

What are some ways we can publicly celebrate that are just really intentional? I think all of that can be really good. And, and then marking, like even when we sit down for dinner, if it's two of us, if it's a whole family, what is it we can celebrate about today? Some of that's the old cheesy that a lot of us do of what are you thankful for? You know, when we talk about that with Thanksgiving and that's true, but also like what are the things we can celebrate? I think that can be good even in times where we're overwhelmed, overwhelmed. You know, I talk about sometimes how we can get these feelings of where we almost feel like we're drowning.

Like, it's like, okay, there's too many things going on. We're overwhelmed. But in the midst of those moments, is there something you can grasp and go, but I do celebrate this. Like I celebrate this moment and I mark it. And then you talk about the passage of time, the passage of time is difficult for all of us in different ways. I turn, you know, last time I think we did a podcast, I turned 40, you know, it was my 40th birthday.

This year is 41. And just adding, right? I know they go up every time they never go down. And I'm kind of like find it kind of finally at that age where I'm going, Hey, I'm not loving that that number is going up every year. And it's kind of annoying. But thinking back on the past year and going, there really is a lot to celebrate here. So how do we celebrate what God has done?

Even in those small ways, I think, I think it actually changes us when we do that. It changes us in a profound way and it shapes us. And then the other element of that church calendar I was talking about is if we can find ways to do it together. Personal celebrations are great, but if you can find ways to do it with other people, that can be really beautiful. Yeah. Well, listen to us in this podcast for a minute. You know, we talk a lot about our habits, the rhythms of our life or what forms us. That's right.

Forms us into being a certain kind of people. So if we want to be a people of celebration, of life, of appreciation, of value, then we're going to have to develop habits of doing that. This has been one of the blessings of being married to your, to your mother over the last many years. Yeah. She's good at this.

Oh my gosh. This whole Christmas season has just been, it's so fun. I mean, she's such a gift giver and loves it. And I was telling somebody the other day that, that, I mean, we have packages like on our porch like every day, because she's ordered something and these are all packages for other people that she's ordered. But every time we pull in the driveway and she sees a package, it's her eyes light up. It's like, Oh, I wonder what it is. It's like, these are packages for other people, but she gets so much life out of that. Right. And I have to tell on her.

So you know, we haven't been like to a store to buy Christmas presents in like forever, you know? And so the, the one button push on your phone, and so one day we, I got home and there was a U-Haul truck in the, like actually blocking our drive, our driveway. I don't know this story. I don't know this story. And, uh, you know, because Amazon, everybody's overwhelmed. And so I think some people are actually renting U-Haul trucks and, and working contracts with Amazon or, you know, and the guy has a dolly, like a pull cart. And he's coming back from our front porch with a dolly.

And I'm like, what did we order that's so heavy that he needed a dolly? And so I, and he was kind of blocking the driveway.

So I just waited on him. And then he came back, put the dolly in and took off. And I got up to the front porch and there were 15 packages on the front porch. And none of them were heavy, but he just needed to stack them all on top of each other. And oh my, she was beyond happy that day. And so they're not always, there's not quite that many all the time, but when you put all of our family together and extended family and stuff, it's a lot of people and she loves that, you know? But it's been a blessing to me to live with somebody that's always looking for, you know, she's an Enneagram seven looking for the next shiny coin, you know, the next fun adventure.

Cause that's just not my personality. And so I would say, rub up against somebody, you know, get close to somebody. That's why it's sometimes helpful to do it in community that even if you're not feeling it, get with people that are good celebrators. I have a few friends that I love having parties with them cause they're just fun and I'm just not that fun. And so, but I just, I love it being around them. And so recognizing that it's good for us, it's, it's something that God designed for us to be able to thrive. It orients us towards healthy living and healthy thinking.

And it's to your point, it's forming us. It's doing something in us. We become a people then or we're celebrating the good, celebrating the wonder of life. And there really is so much wonder, you know? And so it's the counter of the news that has to sensationalize bad to even be news. And so that's just prevalent around us. And so, so we're going to have to have an extra dose of, you know, all those families that I say you're like a pitcher that's being poured out.

There's so much going out of you just to care for your kids and your jobs and all that kind of stuff. You're going to have to purposely put something back in. That's right. Part of that celebration is we have to stop, how do we add more celebrations and, and into our life. Yeah. That's good. So I hope that during this season, I don't know when you're actually going to hear this.

I can guarantee Christmas, the day will have already been gone, but you're in the season remember and continue to linger with it. I think that's one. Don't put your tree away yet.

Hang on to it. January 6th. Wait till January 6th. That's right. Good. There's a reason for that. Just to continue to linger with that.

Well, before we go, I know we're excited you're finishing up a book. Oh yeah. So tell us what you're doing and when's it going to be out and what's it about? Yes. I'm excited. I'm working. Speaking of the church calendar, I'm working on a book on the season of Easter.

So Easter of course is a central part of the Christian story. It's the central event, the resurrection of Jesus, but one of the things that we think about is like Christmas, we often think of Easter as just an event that happens and then we move on. But Easter actually changes who Christians are. It changes who we are as a people. It's changed the whole world. And so because of that, we actually have the opportunity to become resurrection people. And so the book is about that.

It's about what it means to be resurrection people. We look at a variety of the different texts that talk about resurrection, the stories in scripture that talk about resurrection and who we are and how it changes us. So it's going to be coming out in the spring, hopefully well before Easter, which is a season. That's right. Easter is not a day. So it's a journey from Easter to Pentecost. And so we're looking all through each week by week, some of the readings of the church for that week and some of the ways that that speaks to us.

And so I'm excited about it. So I hope that it'll be out this spring and it's called Resurrection People. And yeah, thanks for asking me about it. So if they want to contact you, find out about this. I mean, I know I have your cell phone, but I'm not going to give that out to everybody. No, I'm on all the social medias. So if you find me, Preston Sharp, of course, Sharp has an E at the end, as you guys know.

And then also I write at The Art of Preaching. So it's theartofpreaching.substack.com. And you'll see a lot of my materials there. And I talk about the book a lot on there too. And so that's something, it could be like a devotional guide for lay folks to follow through that season. I know there's many pastors and clergy that follow you, and they look to you for some of the research for things and so forth. And if you'd like to, if you are a pastor or you lead a group and you would like to talk about what it means to be resurrection people, I would love to come to you anywhere in the country and we could do a book signing, we could talk about the book and all that stuff. Yeah. All right.

So the point is, keep celebrating. Just keep it in your heart. Make sure you move through the whole season of Christmas and continue A Heart of Celebration and look into the new year of what are ways that we can up our game of celebration. So for today, go in peace, blessings as you go.