Community: Joys and Sorrows | Mark 14:22-34
This message was preached at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, September 20, 2026. You can watch the video in full by clicking below. This is an adaptation from the 4-week Community series from Practicing the Way.
Many times, we have had people over to our home for dinner. Many of you i this room. No matter what that day might have been like–a workday, a hard day, an ordinary day–I always find something magical happens at that table. The food is always simple. The conversation is typically ordinary. There is a good amount of laughter, the kind that doesn't solve anything but somehow still helps. Those dinners never fix a single thing I was carrying into that evening, but it always puts me back in touch with joy, with the sense that I'm not alone, and that life is good, right there in the middle of an ordinary meal with people I love.
In Dr. Robert Lustig's book The Hacking of the American Mind, he studies how our brains process pleasure and reward, and how modern life has trained us to confuse pleasure with happiness, or in the language of neuroscience, dopamine with serotonin. His conclusion is that the happiest human beings on Earth are the ones sitting around a table, sharing a meal with people they love and are loved by.
Today we're continuing our series, The Community Practice. Last week we looked at the table itself, the practice of gathering as family and sharing a regular meal with people we consider kin. Today we take the next step. Once we're at the table, what are we actually supposed to do there?
More Than Brunch
Here's the challenge we face when we come to the table: how do we keep the meal from turning into just another dinner with friends? A lot of us are shaped by what you might call brunch culture, where we gather and kind of hang out. That's fine on its own. It's just not Christian community.
The author John Eldredge writes about three layers of conversation. The shallows, which is basically chitchat. The midlands, “how was your week?” And the depths, where you actually get beneath the surface. Our culture is so superficial that you can sit at a table with a dozen people you've known for years and still feel completely alone.
So how does the table become more than another lunch get-together or lonely dinner party? How does it become a real communion, with God and with one another?
One of the simplest ways to get there is to go around the table and share the highs and lows of the week. Robert and I used to practice this with Brayden when he was growing up because when we asked him how his day was, all he’d say was, “fine” or “good”. So we wanted to know more.
This isn't a new idea. It comes straight from the life of Jesus, who regularly shared both his joys and his sorrows with his own community. Let's look at two stories from his life that show us this exact framework. Both are from Mark chapter 14.
A Meal With Jesus At the Center
The first story takes place on the last night before Jesus' death. He’s with his apprentices gathered around the table for the Passover meal. We know it today as the first Lord's Supper or the Last Supper.
Listen to some of Jesus' final words to his followers.
Mark 14:22-24 CSB “As they were eating, he took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘Take it; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.’”
There's a lot going on in that moment, but for us today is that Jesus is feasting with his community. Passover was a time of remembrance. This feast was practiced annually for centuries! What are they remembering? They are remembering when the sacrificial lamb’s blood was spread on their doorposts in Egypt and God spared their children and freed them from slavery.
Exodus 12:14 CSB “This day is to be a memorial for you, and you must celebrate it as a festival to the Lord. You are to celebrate it throughout your generations as a permanent statute.”
So was Jesus just going through an annual practice just for the sake of it? No, I think there was much more going on, although that was the catalyst for the gathering. A cultural ritual of remembrance. Luke’s gospel gives us some more context to Jesus’ words.
“Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves…And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”” Luke 22:17, 19 CSB
This was already a feast of remembrance. And Jesus is still with them, so why the importance of remembering him now? This command of Jesus is reminding them: keep doing this. Keep gathering. Keep remembering the sacrifice by which you are set free. Keep feasting together while you remember.
This is one practice Jesus left his disciples to organize their life together around. Often called the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist, or Communion, but those names make it something stifled or rigid. What we often miss in the modern church is that originally, the Lord's Supper wasn't just a symbolic wafer and sip of juice. It was a full meal, and it was done in a spirit of joy.
Many of us do not gather for a shared full meal weekly, which is why we lean into a common, communal experience when we practice communion once a month, not only to gather but to join in the remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice, of both the blood and the freedom we now have.
The early church acted upon this call to remember around a table and they called it the agape feast. This was a weekly celebration of remembering–not the ancient sacrifice of Exodus–but the new sacrifice of Jesus.
Jesus designed our life to be built around the table together in remembrance of how our freedom was attained. That freedom which brings us joy.
Joys
In the story Scripture tells, God himself is the most joyful being in all the universe. The writer of Hebrews says Jesus was anointed with joy above his companions.
Hebrews 1:9 CSB “You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; this is why God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy beyond your companions.”
And Jesus himself said this was his will for his followers.
John 15:11 CSB “I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”
In Paul's list of the fruit of the Spirit, right after love comes joy.
Your brain even has something like a joy center, in the right orbital prefrontal cortex, and it's one of the few parts of the brain that never loses its capacity to grow, which is one reason many elderly people are some of the happiest people you'll ever meet. They've spent decades growing that part of their brain.
The problem is our brains, though made to run on joy, are damaged by sin—both in us and in the world—which means they're bent toward the negative. Psychologists describe a real negativity bias built into how we process experience, and the neuropsychologist Rick Hanson has a memorable way of putting it: our brains are something like Velcro for negative experiences, and Teflon for positive ones.¹
Joy is not our default state. And this matters, because “the joy of the Lord is your strength,”2 as Nehemiah told the people. The joy of Jesus is what is supposed to fill our inner being with the strength to actually live the way of Jesus.
Rick Howe put it this way: the pursuit of joy is a moral obligation.⁴ Because without joy, we're vulnerable to evil in at least three ways. Low-joy people are prone to sin, since one of Satan's oldest strategies is convincing us that sin will make us happy. Low-joy relationships are prone to fracture. And low-joy communities are prone to fall apart. They rarely last.
Joy binds us to each other and to God. There's an old saying that the family that plays together stays together, and the same is true of any community. By cultivating joyful attachment, we bind our hearts together in God. But there's a discipline to it. The Catholic spiritual writer Henri Nouwen said joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose it, and keep choosing it, every day.⁵
One of our very own Friends professors, and former pastor of Newberg Friends Church, Richard Foster called this the discipline of celebration.
Many of us think of the spiritual disciplines as somber and serious, so it may come as a pleasant surprise that celebration is itself a discipline, one that can make you more joyful, and in doing so, more like Jesus.
In our culture of authenticity, it can feel almost wrong to celebrate when we don't feel happy. Like it’s inauthentic. But that's because we misunderstand how God wired our brains. We can't flip a switch and feel joy on command, but we can share highlights from the week, practice gratitude, cook a meal, throw a birthday party, send an encouraging text, and affirm someone.
Like much of humanity, I don’t have a bend to gratitude or joy! But a practice I’ve implemented for myself is to write down 1 sentence at the end of each day about something good that happened. And you know what? The practice is easier now than it was when I started. And it’s easier throughout the day to spot the good now. And when I gather around the table on Monday nights with our women’s group I have more praises than struggle that I bring to the table.
What if we looked for excuses to celebrate? As we discipline ourselves toward celebration, God uses those acts to grow our brain's capacity for joy, to make us more like Jesus.
Joy Is Relational
The good news is that joy is not something that we have to muster up in our own strength.
This is best done together, for two reasons. First, because joy is a relational experience. The UCLA neuropsychologist Dr. Allan Schore argues that joy is what happens in your brain when you're happy to be with someone who is happy to be with you. Joy is connection.⁶ Think of that feeling when you see someone you love, you make eye contact, and their face lights up. I’m sure yours does too. That feeling in your body is close to the purest form of joy there is.
Second, our wider society is increasingly designing material to make us terrified, outraged, and despairing, no matter your source of information. There are plenty of real things to be angry about, but there's also a multi-billion dollar industry built on stoking our anger and fear, because a brain wired toward negativity is a brain that's easy to keep hooked. We need each other to keep us grounded in joy instead of despair. Communal Joy is an act of defiance.
Just like other recent psychological breakthroughs and discoveries, the Bible has clued us into the solution long before today. Paul writes this to the Philippian church.
“If, then, there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.” Philippians 2:1-2, CSB
Paul’s joy is incomplete and dependent on the followthrough of the Phillippians’ action to live in love, unity, and intent on one purpose. We, together have to actively and intentionally build little outposts of celebration and gratitude and laughter right in the middle of the noise, or we together won't have the strength to live and love like Jesus.
Sorrows
Sharing our joys is only half of it. if we always came to the table with only joy and happiness, that wouldn’t feel very real would it? We also have to share our sorrows.
Right after the first Lord's Supper, Jesus and his disciples leave the upper room and walk to the Garden of Gethsemane. They end the meal singing a hymn. This is the only time we read Jesus sings in the Gospels, an enactment of the discipline of celebration even as he walks toward the cross. Then he goes to the Mount of Olives, and we read this.
Mark 14:32-34 CSB “He told his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ He took Peter, James, and John with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. He said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and stay awake.’”
Notice, Jesus doesn't call for the whole community here. Not even the Twelve. The pain he's about to feel is too intimate even for that slightly larger circle. He asks his three closest friends to simply be with him through one of the hardest hours of his life. If Jesus needed a few friends to help him bear the weight of the cross, how much more do we need each other to bear our own crosses?
We're not built to carry the weight of life and our sin-damaged minds alone. One of the first lines about humans in the Bible is spoken before sin even entered the picture.
Genesis 2:18 CSB “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him.’”
We're made not only to be together, but to actually carry each other's weight. Apostle Paul wrote,
Galatians 6:2 CSB “Carry one another's burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
We can't escape pain in this life. Jesus said as much himself.
John 16:33 CSB “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”
Our suffering is exponentially more bearable when it's shared. One of the most significant lines about how we are to function as the church in the New Testament comes from the book of Hebrews.
Hebrews 10:24-25 CSB “And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.”
People often notice the command not to give up meeting together, and that's good to hear, but what we often miss is what we're supposed to do once we're together. The author doesn't say to sing, or listen to a sermon, or study the Bible, which are all good things and they did all those things. He says, “encourage one another.” If you recall, this was a takeaway message of our Annual Sessions Sunday–encouragement. We build up the church as a whole by encouraging one another individually
Encouragement.
This is the word in Greek: παρακαλέω
It looks a lot like this word, doesn’t it: παράκλητος. This is the word we find in John 14:16:
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever.
Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Comforter, that Greek word parakletos, which means one who comes alongside.
Our role in community is similar to the Spirit's. We come alongside our brothers and sisters in their pain, comfort them, encourage them, direct them. Sometimes it's as simple as noticing who at the table had a hard week and taking a few minutes to affirm the good you see in them, and bless them. Very simple. Very needed.
What's Underneath
For any of this to happen, we have to share what's actually going on underneath the surface. If we fake it, “How are you?” “Good!” we'll suffer alone. You can be around a table with a dozen people you know well and still feel profoundly alone if you never actually share your heart. This is what we see in the life of Jesus.
Isaiah 53:3 CSB “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn't value him.”
As joyful as he was, Jesus was also no stranger to suffering. And look at what he did in his darkest hour: he called for his friends.
Come, stay here with me while I pray.
When studying trauma, we see that all of us carry some form of it, to differing degrees, and that trauma isn't really about what happens to you. It's about how your body processes what happens to you. That's why two people can go through the same experience, and one is shattered while the other seems strengthened by it.
One of the landmark studies on this was done by the social psychologist James Pennebaker and his team at the University of Texas. They wanted to know why some people went through a traumatic experience and never really recovered, while others seemed to grow through it, a phenomenon researchers call post-traumatic growth. Their hypothesis going in was that trauma carrying a social stigma, like sexual assault or the suicide of a spouse, would be harder to heal from than trauma that naturally elicits empathy.
After years of research, they found their hypothesis was wrong. There was almost no correlation between the nature of the trauma and a person's ability to heal from it. What mattered, over and over, was whether the person had a close friend or community to walk with them through it.
As scary as it can feel, we have to share our hearts with each other, share what's really going on, in order to actually heal.
Robert and I have been very open about our story and early marriage difficulties. You know when it really started to shift? When we became connected into our church family. When we opened up to share about our struggles. When we gave permission for others to speak into our lives and encourage us.
Fears
You can put nearly all emotional pain into two categories: grief and fear. Grief is over what happened in the past. Fear is the anticipation of what might happen in the future, and it's often harder to carry because it's unknown. You don't yet know what the pain will be, and living with that uncertainty can wear a person down.
From my experience there are 3 ways to deal with anxiety, fear, and grief. Bible reading & meditation, prayer, and community. Often we need another person to help us sort through all the voices in our own heads.
Scary and Slow
So, sharing our joys. And sharing our sorrows. Is that what your table conversation is like, or is it superficial? Doing this is how we become a community of love and depth in a culture built on individualism and surface-level connection.
But this is scary for a lot of us, especially if you've been wounded in community before, or if your early years taught your body that people aren't to be trusted, that intimacy is dangerous, that your heart has to stay walled off to stay safe. Many of us weren't raised with the tools to even notice our own emotions, much less share them with others in a healthy way. That's simply not a skill our families or early church experiences handed us.
If the first step for you is small, admitting you had a rough day without giving any details, take it one step at a time. Maybe you can't bare it all yet. That’s okay. What can you share? Maybe it’s dropping a text to one or two friends and say Please pray for me today.
The more you share your heart as you live in community, the more it unblocks your wounding and opens you up to healing. Of course, this doesn't happen overnight. It takes time, maybe years, to build the kind of trust where you feel safe enough to share fully your heart with people. And yes it’s risky… but Jesus and the early church shows us that it’s worth it.
Jesus Left Us the Table
I think the best way to build that trust is simply to do life together around the table. Jesus didn't leave us an architectural blueprint for a building to worship in. He left us the table. He sat around so many tables and he showed us how to do the same.
Professor Joseph Hellerman, writing about how unlikely it was that the early church survived the Roman Empire, put it this way: the first Christians had no temples, no sacrifices, no priesthoods, no formal liturgy, just an informal weekly meeting in someone's home where they broke bread and sang a hymn, hardly the stuff of a major world religion.7
And yet that weekly meal changed the world, because it was so much more than dinner with friends. The bread was more than bread, and the wine was more than wine. It was a meal with friends, with family, remembering and celebrating Jesus.
Are you hearing how simple this actually is?
Share a regular with a set group of brothers and sisters.
Put Jesus at the center of it.
Share honestly in both the joys and the sorrows of life.
If you do these three things, you'll be ninety percent of the way there.
This coming week, may you share more than a meal. May you open your hearts to each other, and share your joys and your sorrows, as you share in the love and practice of living the way of Jesus. Pick someone in this room today and decide that you are going to share a meal with them. Meal feel too intimidating? Start with coffee. Decide who you are going to connect with, then do it. Put it on the calendar and commit.
And if you're not yet part of one of our Friends Groups, this is a good week to visit one. That's where this practice actually gets lived out, in a small enough circle to really share your heart and hear others do the same. You can find when each group meets on our church website: https://sherwoodfriends.church/friendsgroups.
Pray with me.
Jesus Christ, you have shared your joy with us,
and you have carried our sorrows too.
Teach us to bring our whole hearts to your table,
the laughter and the grief alike,
and to become the kind of family that carries what's heavy
and celebrates what's good, together.
Amen.
_____________
Footnotes
1. Rick Hanson, Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence (2013)
2. Nehemiah 8:10
3. Rick Howe, River of Delights
4. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now
5. Allan Schore, The Development of the Unconscious Mind
6. Robert Stolorow, Trauma and Human Existence
7. Joseph Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family
____________
Primary Statistics and Sources Cited
Negativity bias and the brain's asymmetric weighting of negative experience
APA: Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323
“Velcro for negative experiences, Teflon for positive ones”
APA: Hanson, R. (2013). Hardwiring happiness: The new brain science of contentment, calm, and confidence. Harmony Books.
“Psychic entropy” and the mind's tendency toward negative rumination
APA: Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
Community as the primary factor in recovery from trauma (post-traumatic growth research)
APA: Pennebaker, J. W., & Susman, J. R. (1988). Disclosure of traumas and psychosomatic processes. Social Science & Medicine, 26(3), 327–332. https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(88)90397-8
