"The Five P's" | Brendan Barnicle | November 16, 2025

Do any of you know the five Ps? I thought my St. Francis folks here would know for sure. I'm not doing my job. The five Ps stand for Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. And it is a phrase that is credited to the British Navy, but I used it so much in our household that my kids thought I invented it.

And I have to admit that I have a bit of a predilection for planning. Some might even call it an addiction. I've been known to enjoy planning a vacation sometimes more than the vacation. It's not really healthy. It's based on sort of a misguided notion that if I plan things out well enough, all will be well. And of course, that's not exactly the way it works.

And I have to even admit that, even in my best planning, I haven't really been that successful, because there's no way I could have planned this moment a year ago today. Being with you is completely unexpected. And so when I read the gospel today and hear Jesus talk about wars and insurrections and rumors of wars, and then he says, "Don't prepare," well, that's a little bit distressing. He says, "Oh, you know, don't get any words."

And I know it may seem ironic since I don't really use any notes up here, but believe me, there's lots of planning. There's lots of preparation. Spexy hears this sermon about five or six times in the basement before it all comes to pass. So, it's very unsettling when Jesus describes today this very challenging situation, and yet we are not supposed to be prepared. So how do I prepare to be unprepared?

The only conclusion that I've come to is joy. And I don't mean just the emotion of joy, the happiness of joy, that piece of it. I mean looking at life through the lens of joy.

Several years ago, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama wrote a book on joy, and they advocated looking at life through the lens of joy—looking at life through the lens of God's creation and the joy therein. And they suggested that when we look at life through the lens of joy, it is incredibly contagious. But it doesn't happen in isolation. That kind of joy happens in community. It's work that we do together. But it is the work that prepares us for times of tragedy and trial.

The Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu knew their fair share of times of trial. And yet, in the midst of it, they have been consistent sources of joy because they have looked at life with a lens of joy—the joy that God would have them, and have us, look at life.

For much of my life, I thought that joy was sort of a convenient byproduct of faith. But I've come to recognize that it is really the pinnacle of our faith. God, like any good parent, wants us to live in joy despite the challenges that the world presents. And the one solution is to use the lens of joy. It's when we offer that view with joy in mind that we can truly offer an image of hope to the world.

Again, hope not defined as optimism, but hope defined as something more—a salvation that we can believe in. A joy that persists. A joy that moves beyond the trials and tribulations of this life. And our scripture gives us some guidance on how to do that, how to have a lens of joy.

I know it might not seem that way when you hear those readings today. They all sound dismal. I mean, that very first one from Malachi about throwing people into the oven of fire—that's not a happy, joyful reading. So what's going on there?

So what Malachi was doing—he was writing to a community where there was huge disparity. The evildoers that Malachi is referring to are people who would come to the temple and bring their animal sacrifice, but they brought the lamest animal they had. They brought the dove with the broken wing. They brought the lamb with the broken leg. They didn't bring their best gifts to the temple. And so, too, they were not bringing their best gifts to their brothers and sisters in need. And so their secondary gifts were showing that they were living into the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law.

And Malachi is contrasting that in that second part of that reading with those who revere God, who enjoy the sun of righteousness and the wings of joy. If we go on to read a little further in Malachi, Malachi describes that joy more in detail and really is creating this contrast between those who were unjust and those who were joyful. It wasn't the typical dichotomy of justice and injustice. It was injustice and joy.

And he was showing that living in justice is a way that we view the lens of joy. It's living in justice that we bring that joy into the world—for ourselves and for others.

Similarly, we get a message like that that's coming from Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. And I know this has been used for all sorts of different purposes, but what's going on in that community was a deep sense of anxiety. In Thessalonica at that time, there was a big debate about the end of the world. They were worried about the apocalypse. So there was a lot of idleness because people didn't know what to do. They were wringing their hands. They were worrying. They were being busybodies about all kinds of other things, but they weren't getting on with living their lives as directed by God.

And so what he's calling them to is to break out of the cycle of anxiety and demonstrate to us that the lens of joy is one way that we break through that cycle of anxiety. As somebody who suffers from a lot of anxiety—I think that goes with planning—joy is the thing that breaks me out of it. When I can look around at creation and see the joy that God has provided to us, I can break through that cycle.

VJ alluded to this last week in his sermon about the book of Job, and how Job finally becomes aware when God shows him the breadth of God's creation. For that brief moment, Job now has the lens of joy. And in the midst of all his trial, Job is able to persist.

We're called to joy, and we're given from scripture some models of how we might live into it. One of my favorites that we have comes from Walter Wink. There are three different passages in the Sermon on the Mount that Wink looks to that show this creative joy that Jesus encourages us to lean into.

One of them is when Jesus gives the command to turn the other cheek. Now, frequently that is looked at as a call to blind pacifism. But Wink suggests that Jesus is actually offering a creative alternative. He points out that in the Roman Empire, it was completely acceptable for a Roman soldier to backhand an individual citizen. But to hit with an open palm was a much more serious offense. If a soldier were to hit a civilian with an open palm, then all of a sudden he's got to answer to his supervisor, and all sorts of trouble happens.

So when you confront that soldier with your cheek to their open palm, that victim is able to shift that aggression back towards the perpetrator. They're able to shift that conversation. It's a way of living into joy. In the midst of violence, in the midst of an oppressive regime that they could never overcome, they found a way to change that conversation.

Similarly, Jesus has a command that if you were asked to give your shirt, give your cloak as well. And Jesus says this because he knows that if you gave both your cloak and your shirt and were standing there completely naked, the soldier that had requested it would be incredibly embarrassed and ashamed. And it's that element that allowed the victim to have some autonomy in the midst of a world in which there were wars and insurrections and rumors of war—in a world that was challenging, in which they felt they had no power at all—they were able to find some joy, to see the lens of joy.

And finally, there's a passage where Jesus says, “If someone asks you to carry their bag one mile, carry it two.” Again, under the Roman Empire, a Roman soldier could ask anybody to carry their bag one mile—but only one mile. If they went a second mile, again the soldier had a problem with the supervisor. The soldier might start worrying if they're going to get their bag back. All of a sudden, that power dynamic has shifted, and the victim is able to find joy in the midst of challenging, difficult times.

This is what it starts to look like to look at the world through the lens of joy—to bring that joy into our lives and into reality. A joy that offers hope to all of God's creation.

I see this same sort of activity when I look at the frogs down at the ICE Center. They have that same sort of joyful confrontation. They know they can't take on the powers of the U.S. federal government. But when they dance around in those frog suits, it brings joy. It's not merely solving the problem, but it's bringing joy. It's showing some amount of autonomy. It's not making light of how serious the situation is down there by any means, but it is showing a way of retaliating, a way of having autonomy, a way of bringing joy in the midst of very challenging situations—a way of bringing hope at a time that seems hopeless.

That's what Jesus is calling us to. The New York Times has taken to calling that targeted frivolity. And I think that targeted frivolity is part of the joy that Jesus would have us live into.

Our psalm that we just sang called for us to sing a new song. And I would suggest that new song is a song of joy and a song of hope. Ours is a joy and a hope that exist in community. They are a joy and a hope that are contagious. They are the joy that God would have for us, and the hope that we would have for one another.

Let us sing that new song—a song of joy and a song of hope. Amen.