Sunday, August 24, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The Body of Christ 1 Cor 12
I have a confession to make. I have always struggled with the idea of community, let alone Christian community. I think we’ve all shared a bit about our stories up until now, and the week before I head to seminary is as good as any to share mine. I’ve grown up in the same church and I have been surrounded by loving people. But even though we were loving, we weren’t always real with each other. Which confused me. Then some big things happened in our church and a new pastor came in bringing along his family, who tore me emotionally to shreds. They verbally abused me and sexually harassed me and finally one day I left that church and went to another. Eventually I did come back to my home church, after this pastor and his family left, however, it wasn’t without reservations. So all of that is to say that this little experience deeply impacted me. What I thought was my church home and family had become unsafe. And because we weren’t really all that honest with one another about our pain, I wasn’t able to tell anyone about how I was abused. My entire perception of community and relationships had been shattered and I retreated into a shell, avoiding getting close to anyone.
Of course a few people did get close, here and there. But I still didn’t understand community. To me it seemed more like an ideal instead of a reality. I have this really amazing friend in my life who I have grown close to over the past two and a half years. We share a lot of intimate thing with one another, but I still wasn’t able to call us a community. Not until I re-examined 1 Cor 12. Verses 21-26 describe what community is to a T. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need for you’. On the contrary, the members of the body seem that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members we treat with great respect, whereas the more respectable members don’t need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior members., that there may be no dissension amongst the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one members suffers, all suffer together, and if one member is honored, all rejoice with it.” We have been raised in a culture that tells us to be independent, self-sufficient, and non-emotional. And brothers and sisters, this is such a lie. And it’s why we have such a hard time getting our minds wrapped around this idea of community.
We cannot fathom community because we refuse to think that we need others. We’ve been told that we need to achieve everything on our own and claw our way to the top, not acknowledging the costs. But here Paul is telling us that we have no right to say to anyone that we don’t need them. No! We need one another to support each other, to help each other out. Here’s the thing, God put this huge task in front of the Church, to go and make disciples of all of the nations baptizing them in the name of the Triune God. I’m sorry, but you can’t do that alone. You need others to accomplish this. We need to work off of the generations before us and trust the generations after us to work towards the great commission, while fully being the body of Christ now with our brothers and sisters, depending upon one another.
Can I tell you one of the greatest tragedies of the church. Not sharing what we are going through with one another. Can you please explain to me how we are supposed to live out verse 26 about rejoicing and suffering together, if everyone keeps everything to themselves! We are depriving the body! You may be having a really rough day right now. Maybe you just got a diagnosis that you want to keep to yourself. But if you don’t share it how can anyone come beside you and encourage you, pray for you, be your family? Or maybe you just had a baby and are feeling completely overwhelmed! Why not ask for help from one of the wise mothers in the body? The reason we reject sharing our trials and joys is because it requires honesty and humility. The author Lauren Winner wrote in her book Real Sex, "Community doesn't come about simply by having hard, intimate conversations. Having hard, intimate conversations is part of what is possible when people are already opening up their day-to-day lives.". We need to start sharing our day to day lives! Doing life together like a true family! And this may mean asking each other the tough questions. Calling each other out on sins. One of the beauties of community is being able to know someone well enough to challenge them out of sin or complacency and into growth.
And when we share our day to day lives we see each other’s needs and can reach out and meet them. I volunteer at a women’s shelter, and a few months of go, one of our ladies gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. The mother didn’t have any family or husband to support her. In fact, the dad wasn’t even in the picture. And she didn’t have anything but a few outfits for the baby. So I decided to throw her a baby shower. People from the church, none of whom knew this women, donated so much stuff that they were able to help two women! And sadly everyone was shocked by this. Brothers and sisters, we exist as a body, to also support one another! So why aren’t we! Why do we let needs slip by as we live in our own little shell of the world?
Another reason we don’t really understand what it means to be the body of Christ, is because we don’t know where we exactly fit. Being part of a body means that we know ourselves enough to be able to give of ourselves. Have you ever really noticed that giving of yourself is really hard if you don’t know who you are? Even worse, when you don’t know who you are, you easily become jealous of other people. You find yourself wanting the gift or talent that another person has instead of rejoicing in your own gift and sharing it with others. Paul uses this obtuse image of the entire body being an eye or an ear. I don’t know about you, but if I saw a giant eye or ear, I would be pretty freaked out. Yet for some reason, we try to live in this balance between being independent and being just like everyone else. How does that work? Oh that’s right, it doesn’t. God has created you to be unique, but to fit perfectly with everyone else. To be your own bright color in the rainbow. Or to be your own puzzle piece that fits with everyone else to make the picture complete. If you were meant to be a center piece of the puzzle and you desire to become a corner, you aren’t going to fit into the puzzle anymore. What a tragedy this identity crisis that we are going through is!
And the list of dangers of not knowing where we fit grows. I don’t know how many of you have came from a traditional church background, but the church I grew up in was quite large and a lot of volunteers were needed to make everything work. Which is fine. What is not fine, is that the same people always fill the positions even if they aren’t within their gifting because no one would step up and help. There are two huge errors here. First, these people are stealing the opportunity from someone else to live out their gifting. And second, its okay if no one fills the position right away because maybe that will put the pressure on the people who have the gifting in that area to step it up. Our spiritual gifts don’t exist for ourselves, they exist for the greater good of the body.
Obviously we have a long way to go as the church at large to become a body, the family, the intimate community of the body of Christ. But we are slowly but surely getting there. It has been such an inspiration for me to watch you build this alter week after week listing your gifts and talents, what a testament to becoming the body of Christ and a willingness to use your gifts for others. I’ve also have been blessed with a thought that I’ve had since the start of Soul Café, that we are few but we are a family. We truly have become family. We have prayed together. Cried together. Rejoiced together. May we never loose that!
To close I want to share with you a prayer that my friend, prayed for us here at Soul Café,
"Jesus, they may be few and they may be faithful, but if must be you who makes them into a family. Make them into your body; the image and the vision and the actors (and actresses!) of your love in the world. Holy Spirit, be the love flowing through them to all they meet, and be the love that binds them together and draws them to You. And Father, be the one to whom they give all that they do, the one to whom they aim and to whom they strive in everything, their hope and their joy."
Amen.
Of course a few people did get close, here and there. But I still didn’t understand community. To me it seemed more like an ideal instead of a reality. I have this really amazing friend in my life who I have grown close to over the past two and a half years. We share a lot of intimate thing with one another, but I still wasn’t able to call us a community. Not until I re-examined 1 Cor 12. Verses 21-26 describe what community is to a T. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need for you’. On the contrary, the members of the body seem that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members we treat with great respect, whereas the more respectable members don’t need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior members., that there may be no dissension amongst the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one members suffers, all suffer together, and if one member is honored, all rejoice with it.” We have been raised in a culture that tells us to be independent, self-sufficient, and non-emotional. And brothers and sisters, this is such a lie. And it’s why we have such a hard time getting our minds wrapped around this idea of community.
We cannot fathom community because we refuse to think that we need others. We’ve been told that we need to achieve everything on our own and claw our way to the top, not acknowledging the costs. But here Paul is telling us that we have no right to say to anyone that we don’t need them. No! We need one another to support each other, to help each other out. Here’s the thing, God put this huge task in front of the Church, to go and make disciples of all of the nations baptizing them in the name of the Triune God. I’m sorry, but you can’t do that alone. You need others to accomplish this. We need to work off of the generations before us and trust the generations after us to work towards the great commission, while fully being the body of Christ now with our brothers and sisters, depending upon one another.
Can I tell you one of the greatest tragedies of the church. Not sharing what we are going through with one another. Can you please explain to me how we are supposed to live out verse 26 about rejoicing and suffering together, if everyone keeps everything to themselves! We are depriving the body! You may be having a really rough day right now. Maybe you just got a diagnosis that you want to keep to yourself. But if you don’t share it how can anyone come beside you and encourage you, pray for you, be your family? Or maybe you just had a baby and are feeling completely overwhelmed! Why not ask for help from one of the wise mothers in the body? The reason we reject sharing our trials and joys is because it requires honesty and humility. The author Lauren Winner wrote in her book Real Sex, "Community doesn't come about simply by having hard, intimate conversations. Having hard, intimate conversations is part of what is possible when people are already opening up their day-to-day lives.". We need to start sharing our day to day lives! Doing life together like a true family! And this may mean asking each other the tough questions. Calling each other out on sins. One of the beauties of community is being able to know someone well enough to challenge them out of sin or complacency and into growth.
And when we share our day to day lives we see each other’s needs and can reach out and meet them. I volunteer at a women’s shelter, and a few months of go, one of our ladies gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. The mother didn’t have any family or husband to support her. In fact, the dad wasn’t even in the picture. And she didn’t have anything but a few outfits for the baby. So I decided to throw her a baby shower. People from the church, none of whom knew this women, donated so much stuff that they were able to help two women! And sadly everyone was shocked by this. Brothers and sisters, we exist as a body, to also support one another! So why aren’t we! Why do we let needs slip by as we live in our own little shell of the world?
Another reason we don’t really understand what it means to be the body of Christ, is because we don’t know where we exactly fit. Being part of a body means that we know ourselves enough to be able to give of ourselves. Have you ever really noticed that giving of yourself is really hard if you don’t know who you are? Even worse, when you don’t know who you are, you easily become jealous of other people. You find yourself wanting the gift or talent that another person has instead of rejoicing in your own gift and sharing it with others. Paul uses this obtuse image of the entire body being an eye or an ear. I don’t know about you, but if I saw a giant eye or ear, I would be pretty freaked out. Yet for some reason, we try to live in this balance between being independent and being just like everyone else. How does that work? Oh that’s right, it doesn’t. God has created you to be unique, but to fit perfectly with everyone else. To be your own bright color in the rainbow. Or to be your own puzzle piece that fits with everyone else to make the picture complete. If you were meant to be a center piece of the puzzle and you desire to become a corner, you aren’t going to fit into the puzzle anymore. What a tragedy this identity crisis that we are going through is!
And the list of dangers of not knowing where we fit grows. I don’t know how many of you have came from a traditional church background, but the church I grew up in was quite large and a lot of volunteers were needed to make everything work. Which is fine. What is not fine, is that the same people always fill the positions even if they aren’t within their gifting because no one would step up and help. There are two huge errors here. First, these people are stealing the opportunity from someone else to live out their gifting. And second, its okay if no one fills the position right away because maybe that will put the pressure on the people who have the gifting in that area to step it up. Our spiritual gifts don’t exist for ourselves, they exist for the greater good of the body.
Obviously we have a long way to go as the church at large to become a body, the family, the intimate community of the body of Christ. But we are slowly but surely getting there. It has been such an inspiration for me to watch you build this alter week after week listing your gifts and talents, what a testament to becoming the body of Christ and a willingness to use your gifts for others. I’ve also have been blessed with a thought that I’ve had since the start of Soul Café, that we are few but we are a family. We truly have become family. We have prayed together. Cried together. Rejoiced together. May we never loose that!
To close I want to share with you a prayer that my friend, prayed for us here at Soul Café,
"Jesus, they may be few and they may be faithful, but if must be you who makes them into a family. Make them into your body; the image and the vision and the actors (and actresses!) of your love in the world. Holy Spirit, be the love flowing through them to all they meet, and be the love that binds them together and draws them to You. And Father, be the one to whom they give all that they do, the one to whom they aim and to whom they strive in everything, their hope and their joy."
Amen.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Everybody's wounded
Romans 8:12-25 (The Message)
The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson
12-14So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
15-17This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!
18-21That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
22-25All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
Invocation:
We gratefully acknowledge that You are the Lord our God and God of our people, the God of all generations. You are the Rock of our life, the Power that shields us in every age. We thank You and sing Your praises: for our lives, which are in Your hand; for our souls, which are in Your keeping; for the signs of Your presence we encounter every day; and for Your wondrous gifts at all times, morning, noon, and night. You are Goodness: Your mercies never end; You are Compassion: Your love will never fail. You have always been our hope. For all these things, O Sovereign God, let Your name be forever exalted and blessed. Amen
Peggy Noonan, writing for The Wall Street Journal, comments on a scene in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. The movie is about the Battle of the Bakara Market in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. In this particular scene, the actor Tom Sizemore, in the role of a hard-bitten, hard-core U.S. Army Ranger colonel, is in command of a small convoy of Humvees trying to get back to base with mortar and rocket fire exploding all round. In this violent vortex, the colonel stops the convoy, brings some wounded on board, throws a dead driver out of the driver’s seat and yells at a bleeding sergeant who’s standing in shock nearby:
Colonel: Get into that truck and drive.
Sergeant: But I’m shot, Colonel.
Colonel: Everybody’s shot, get in and drive.
Noonan is struck by those words: “Everybody’s shot.” They suggest a metaphor for life. Everyone has taken a hit, everyone’s been hurt. We’re all walking wounded.
The apostle Paul affirms the same truth. Everyone suffers, but, he adds, of the sufferings “I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times ” (8:18). He even argues “The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs” (8:22) awaiting that day of future redemption.
He wouldn’t have been surprised by news that people were being pummeled, because he himself was forced to endure imprisonments and floggings, beatings and a stoning. “I've been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death's door time after time. I've been flogged five times with the Jews' thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I've been shipwrecked three times” he reports to his fellow Christians; “and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I've had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I've been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I've known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather. ” (2 Corinthians 11:23-27). (The Message)
When it comes to enduring extreme hardship, Paul is hard-core: He talked the talk and walked the walk.
But, in his letter to the Romans, Paul isn't so much whining about present sufferings as focus on the glory yet to come. Paul isn't interested in complaining about todays pains -instead he's setting his sights on the heavenly kingdom of God.
The key for Paul is that God is at work in the middle of all this suffering, working to bring us to our true destiny, and to free the world itself from its bondage to decay. The whole process is like a birth, one that involves intense pain and moaning and “groaning in labor pains” as a baby is being delivered, but one that has a truly glorious outcome. Sure, “We”re also feeling the birth pangs” he concludes, but it is in hope that we are saved (vv. 22-24).
Our hope is that God is working actively and intensely against the powers of death, even as we get pounded by a variety of forces. God is constantly undermining the ability of evil to separate, alienate, discourage and destroy us, and we hitch our hope to God’s promise of a new heaven and a new earth, where “Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone."(Revelation 21:4)
Theologian Amy Plantinga Pauw invites us to practice resistance to the powers of death and destruction as we hope for this new kingdom. She urges resistance, active resistance, as a sign of our Christian hope. She tells the story of worship services in Latin America, in which protests against unjust deaths often form a part of the liturgy. In worship, the names of the deceased are read off one by one, names of persons who have often died brutally and tragically. At the reading of each name, the congregation exclaims, “Presente!”
These loved ones are not gone, they are “Presente!” Present and accounted for! Their fellow Christians refuse to accept violent death as the last word on them. As part of what Scripture describes as “so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1), these persons are declared present to the living community of faith.
How is this possible? Only through God’s gift of life, a gift that triumphs over war, abduction, rape, abandonment and even that last and most horrifying enemy — death.
We perform an act of true conviction and endurance and hope whenever we climb to our feet after we have been beaten down. It is an act of true faith to get up and shout, “Presente!” — to make a bold statement of our belief that suffering is never the final word when God is at work in the world.
Let's join together in a Litany of Hope. I will read “The One” and you respond with the bold print.
The One: In our work lives, we’ve been downsized and fired, unappreciated and underpaid, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our relationships, we’ve been hurt and betrayed, neglected and abandoned, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our personal efforts and initiatives, we’ve met with disappointment and failure, rejection and resistance, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our family lives, we’ve experienced disagreement and distance, illness and death, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our own bodies and minds, we’ve been nailed by sickness and disability and deterioration, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our experience of the faith, we’ve suffered doubt and disillusionment and disappointment, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In spite of all these poundings, we stand here this evening, present and accounted for. Together, we are ... say it again
The Many: Presente!
As people who are in community with each other, and in community with the goodness of God, we can count ourselves as children of God and joint heirs of God’s promises, along with Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul points out that we suffer along with Christ “we're certainly going to go through the good times with Him!” (v. 17). Our pains are never completely pointless if they bring us closer to the one who suffered on the cross for the salvation of the world.
Don’t misunderstand. This is not to say that God desires our suffering, or that God somehow enjoys watching us get pummeled and pounded. No, the Lord invites us to join him in working to free the world from its bondage to decay, and to do whatever we can to overcome those forces that can separate, alienate, discourage or destroy us. We may suffer as we do God’s work of justice and reconciliation in this world, but suffering is not going to be the final word when we make it to the Lord’s eternal Eden.
As we do this heavenly work, we are never forced to work alone. The Spirit of God “is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. ” (vv. 26-27). This holy power leads us and guides us, comforts us and abides with us. In fact, it is nothing less than the Spirit of God that constantly reminds us that we are children of God, “We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! ” (v. 17).
We’re heirs — heirs with Christ. Heirs of a world that is constantly being pummeled by the asteroids of economic instability, terrorism, warfare, domestic violence, hunger and disease. Heirs of a world so in need of acts of generosity, love, peace, protection, nourishment and healing.
But that’s not all. We’re also heirs of everlasting life in a kingdom that is out of this world, a heavenly home that God is preparing for us and for all who believe. We may still get pounded here on Earth, but as we’re pelted by hardship we know we can survive, and even thrive, trusting that anything we suffer now is going to be wiped away by the glory to come.
We can work and pray for the healing of this hurting world, always inspired by our vision of the world that is to come.
The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson
12-14So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
15-17This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!
18-21That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
22-25All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
Invocation:
We gratefully acknowledge that You are the Lord our God and God of our people, the God of all generations. You are the Rock of our life, the Power that shields us in every age. We thank You and sing Your praises: for our lives, which are in Your hand; for our souls, which are in Your keeping; for the signs of Your presence we encounter every day; and for Your wondrous gifts at all times, morning, noon, and night. You are Goodness: Your mercies never end; You are Compassion: Your love will never fail. You have always been our hope. For all these things, O Sovereign God, let Your name be forever exalted and blessed. Amen
Peggy Noonan, writing for The Wall Street Journal, comments on a scene in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. The movie is about the Battle of the Bakara Market in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. In this particular scene, the actor Tom Sizemore, in the role of a hard-bitten, hard-core U.S. Army Ranger colonel, is in command of a small convoy of Humvees trying to get back to base with mortar and rocket fire exploding all round. In this violent vortex, the colonel stops the convoy, brings some wounded on board, throws a dead driver out of the driver’s seat and yells at a bleeding sergeant who’s standing in shock nearby:
Colonel: Get into that truck and drive.
Sergeant: But I’m shot, Colonel.
Colonel: Everybody’s shot, get in and drive.
Noonan is struck by those words: “Everybody’s shot.” They suggest a metaphor for life. Everyone has taken a hit, everyone’s been hurt. We’re all walking wounded.
The apostle Paul affirms the same truth. Everyone suffers, but, he adds, of the sufferings “I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times ” (8:18). He even argues “The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs” (8:22) awaiting that day of future redemption.
He wouldn’t have been surprised by news that people were being pummeled, because he himself was forced to endure imprisonments and floggings, beatings and a stoning. “I've been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death's door time after time. I've been flogged five times with the Jews' thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I've been shipwrecked three times” he reports to his fellow Christians; “and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I've had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I've been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I've known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather. ” (2 Corinthians 11:23-27). (The Message)
When it comes to enduring extreme hardship, Paul is hard-core: He talked the talk and walked the walk.
But, in his letter to the Romans, Paul isn't so much whining about present sufferings as focus on the glory yet to come. Paul isn't interested in complaining about todays pains -instead he's setting his sights on the heavenly kingdom of God.
The key for Paul is that God is at work in the middle of all this suffering, working to bring us to our true destiny, and to free the world itself from its bondage to decay. The whole process is like a birth, one that involves intense pain and moaning and “groaning in labor pains” as a baby is being delivered, but one that has a truly glorious outcome. Sure, “We”re also feeling the birth pangs” he concludes, but it is in hope that we are saved (vv. 22-24).
Our hope is that God is working actively and intensely against the powers of death, even as we get pounded by a variety of forces. God is constantly undermining the ability of evil to separate, alienate, discourage and destroy us, and we hitch our hope to God’s promise of a new heaven and a new earth, where “Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone."(Revelation 21:4)
Theologian Amy Plantinga Pauw invites us to practice resistance to the powers of death and destruction as we hope for this new kingdom. She urges resistance, active resistance, as a sign of our Christian hope. She tells the story of worship services in Latin America, in which protests against unjust deaths often form a part of the liturgy. In worship, the names of the deceased are read off one by one, names of persons who have often died brutally and tragically. At the reading of each name, the congregation exclaims, “Presente!”
These loved ones are not gone, they are “Presente!” Present and accounted for! Their fellow Christians refuse to accept violent death as the last word on them. As part of what Scripture describes as “so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1), these persons are declared present to the living community of faith.
How is this possible? Only through God’s gift of life, a gift that triumphs over war, abduction, rape, abandonment and even that last and most horrifying enemy — death.
We perform an act of true conviction and endurance and hope whenever we climb to our feet after we have been beaten down. It is an act of true faith to get up and shout, “Presente!” — to make a bold statement of our belief that suffering is never the final word when God is at work in the world.
Let's join together in a Litany of Hope. I will read “The One” and you respond with the bold print.
The One: In our work lives, we’ve been downsized and fired, unappreciated and underpaid, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our relationships, we’ve been hurt and betrayed, neglected and abandoned, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our personal efforts and initiatives, we’ve met with disappointment and failure, rejection and resistance, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our family lives, we’ve experienced disagreement and distance, illness and death, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our own bodies and minds, we’ve been nailed by sickness and disability and deterioration, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In our experience of the faith, we’ve suffered doubt and disillusionment and disappointment, but this evening we are
The Many: Presente!
The One: In spite of all these poundings, we stand here this evening, present and accounted for. Together, we are ... say it again
The Many: Presente!
As people who are in community with each other, and in community with the goodness of God, we can count ourselves as children of God and joint heirs of God’s promises, along with Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul points out that we suffer along with Christ “we're certainly going to go through the good times with Him!” (v. 17). Our pains are never completely pointless if they bring us closer to the one who suffered on the cross for the salvation of the world.
Don’t misunderstand. This is not to say that God desires our suffering, or that God somehow enjoys watching us get pummeled and pounded. No, the Lord invites us to join him in working to free the world from its bondage to decay, and to do whatever we can to overcome those forces that can separate, alienate, discourage or destroy us. We may suffer as we do God’s work of justice and reconciliation in this world, but suffering is not going to be the final word when we make it to the Lord’s eternal Eden.
As we do this heavenly work, we are never forced to work alone. The Spirit of God “is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. ” (vv. 26-27). This holy power leads us and guides us, comforts us and abides with us. In fact, it is nothing less than the Spirit of God that constantly reminds us that we are children of God, “We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! ” (v. 17).
We’re heirs — heirs with Christ. Heirs of a world that is constantly being pummeled by the asteroids of economic instability, terrorism, warfare, domestic violence, hunger and disease. Heirs of a world so in need of acts of generosity, love, peace, protection, nourishment and healing.
But that’s not all. We’re also heirs of everlasting life in a kingdom that is out of this world, a heavenly home that God is preparing for us and for all who believe. We may still get pounded here on Earth, but as we’re pelted by hardship we know we can survive, and even thrive, trusting that anything we suffer now is going to be wiped away by the glory to come.
We can work and pray for the healing of this hurting world, always inspired by our vision of the world that is to come.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Life of Prayer- Matthew 6: 5-13
At the center of our life of devotion to God is prayer. It’s our chief way of communicating with the Holy One. The key word being communication. Sadly, most of our prayer lives don’t look anything like a healthy living relationship. Take a moment to think about your prayer life in terms of how you talk with your friends. Does it mortify you? Because it most certainly mortified me. When I talk with my friends there is a lot of talking back and forth. I feel like I need to apologize with God for my prayer life, because up until recently it didn’t look anything like a healthy conversation. It was me. Talking. A lot. I was like the energizer bunny, talking really fast, but not listening. Prayer is defined as a relationship with God, and folks, if I had to self-score any relationship that was as one-sided as my relationship with God, I would give it a ‘F’.
For some reason so many of us refuse to listen to God. We either quickly run through our list of requests just to throw them out there and make sure God knows what they are because, well, we’re just too busy for anything else. Or we take prayer and reduce it to a model, such as the ACTS method – making sure to have adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication (or requests) in our daily prayers. Once again pause and think about that in comparassion with your other relationships throughout the day. Are your friends and family feeling cared about if you don’t listen to them? Or don’t follow the line of the present conversation because you have a set method you want to follow or are afraid that what you deem needs to be said will be forgotten.
But even not listening, as detrimental as this is, isn’t as overwhelming among Christians today as not believing God will answer prayers. Beth Moore, a noted author, describes what she heard God saying about her prayer life one day when she wrote, “I sensed God saying, ‘My child, you believe me for so little. Who are you trying to keep from looking foolish, Me or you?;” Brothers and sisters are we believing God for so little even today? Are we putting the breaks down on our prayer life because we are afraid to ask God for big things? Do we only pray for those things that we will expect him to answer, or don’t care if he doesn’t answer. Or worse when we pray for something big do we expect God not to answer at all? And friends, that is a tragedy is the words of John Wesley are true when he said, “It seems that God is limited by our prayer life, that he can do nothing for humanity unless someone asks him.”
Because if we look back at the scripture passage for today, Jesus was teaching his disciple to pray a very big prayer. “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” Is not exactly as simple a phrase as it comes off our lips being, more times then not. This is Christ telling God, the Most High King, that his Kingdom was the ultimate will of the disciplines. Not their own plans or agendas. But God’s and God’s alone. And let’s face it, if we don’t know the promises of scripture and can’t identify how God has worked for good for us in the past, saying “Your will be done.” Could be very frightening.
I want to just take some time and break down the Lord’s prayer, line by line. Revealing the relevance and power that it holds. The credit that we all so often don’t give it once the words are memorized.
“Our Father, who are it Heaven, Hallowed be your name.” Even in teaching his disciples how to pray Jesus is being controversial as well as teaching a radical lesson. Jewish culture lesson, God’s name was considered to be so holy that it wasn’t even to be spoken out loud, yet here Jesus is taking the name that wasn’t to be spoken and adding this intimate twist to it, by addressing the Most High God as Father. He made God approachable.
When I think of this statement I immediately think back to the book of Exodus. In Exodus 3:5 God told Moses to take off his sandals because he is standing on Holy Ground. As Moses goes on in verse 13 to ask what God’s name is, God responeds, “I am who I am. That is what you are to tell the Israelites, I AM has sent me.” Here God’s holiness was precieved as a boundary between himself and the Israelites. He was so Holy that he didn’t even have a recognizable name. Yet, in the Lord’s prayer, we find that we can have a deep, close relationship with God, and it doesn’t diminish his holiness as the Israelites had feared for so many years.
“Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” When you read the Gospels you see that there is a tension in Jesus’ talk about the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is present and not yet. All too often we get caught up in the future, and just passively wait for Christ’s return and for him to fix everything. But if are agents of God’s will, we recognize that we have a place in his present kingdom. In the book of Jeremiah, God speaks through the prophet saying “I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness, in the earth for the things I delight in.” If this is the way God loves and if this is what brings him honor, then we should act as he does, pursing justice, righteousness, and mercy fervently. The Church, as the bride of Christ, exists to bring honor to God both now and in the future.
This verse also gives me pause when Christ prays that “Your will be done.” I think very few people pray this and mean it. We pray this, because well we think we should, but really our heart isn’t behind it and we still get upset when things don’t turn out our way. But here’s the thing. God will never do anything that isn’t in our best interest. We need to trust in this. When we let our own will supercede God’s will we are settling for second best. And we shouldn’t want to settle.
Personally in my life, I have been challenged by my prayer partner over the past year to commit my prayer time to God and set aside any agenda I have for prayer. Asking the Spirit to lead me to pray what is on His heart. And some really crazy things have happened quite frequently. I’ll be led to pray for people who I have become disconnected from. I have been led to repent of attitudes that were so hidden in my heart that I would never be able to see them on my own. And I’ve been led to pray for circumstances in the lives of those close to me that I didn’t even know were happening. God’s will has superceded my will and I’m being led by him. It is a beautiful time when my heart meshes with the heart of God.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” God has created us with basic needs. We need food, water, and oxygen. And he sustains us by giving us these things. And this little line should take us back, once again to Exodus, causing us to remember God’s pervision as the Israelites wondered in the wilderness for 40 years. He reigned down Mana, a bread like substance, from Heaven and the Isralites were to collect what they communally needed to sustain them for one day. We’ve become such a glutoness, self-centered society. We hoard food and don’t think about the needs of our neighbors. But notice that the word “our” is used in this phrase instead of “my”, therefore, we should be praying for the provision and sustaining of our neighbors as a way to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
“And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The power behind this statement is two fold. First it serves as a reminder that we must daily ask God to help us examine our hearts and point out our sins. And we must trust in his forgiveness. For some reasons we tend to cling to guilt of stains that Christ’s blood has long washed away. This examination of our heart also lets us fully give our sins over to Christ and be absolved of them.
The second, and seemingly harder part, of this phrase is probably best explained by Luke in Chapter 6 of his gospel when he says, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged, do not condemn, and you will not be condemened. Fortive and you will be forgiven, give, and it will be given to you.” And he goes on to ask “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will they both not fall into the pit? A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. Why do you see the speck in your neighor’s eye but do not notice the plank in your own.” Human nature after the fall is to write off our sins, by pointing out the bigger sins of others. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpant. God is reminding us that we are not to judge others for their wrongs, but to forgive them time and time again. This takes the humility of being able to identitfy that we are fallen and screw up just like the person who has hurt us. We are all in need of forgiveness, because none of us is more holy then another.
“And lead us not to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.” Life is not easy. No where, and I really mean no where in the Bible does it say that the life of the Christian will be smooth and free of temptations and struggles. But it does promise that God will protect us. I think this is what it boils down to when Christ tells us that we need to have childlike faith. When I am a child, my life is in the hands of my parents and I trust them fully. I trust them not to lead me across the street when traffic is flowing and there is a “Don’t Walk Sign”. And I trust them to recuse me if I do become in danger. But when I become an adult I become independent, thinking that I can do everything on my own, even if this is not the case. I don’t ask for help and in my stubbornness I try to defeat the things that far too grand for me. I trust no one but myself. Childlike faith calls us to dependance, and we must certinaly depend on God to help us avoid the traps of Satan.
So may we have our eyes opened to a new way of praying. May we talk less and listen more. May we give our relationship with God the attention and honor it deserves. And may we pray big prayers, showing our trust and dependance on God. For our teacher in Christ showed us that God can handle big prayers when he gave us the example of the Lord’s prayer. May we never see the familiar the same again.
- Michelle
For some reason so many of us refuse to listen to God. We either quickly run through our list of requests just to throw them out there and make sure God knows what they are because, well, we’re just too busy for anything else. Or we take prayer and reduce it to a model, such as the ACTS method – making sure to have adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication (or requests) in our daily prayers. Once again pause and think about that in comparassion with your other relationships throughout the day. Are your friends and family feeling cared about if you don’t listen to them? Or don’t follow the line of the present conversation because you have a set method you want to follow or are afraid that what you deem needs to be said will be forgotten.
But even not listening, as detrimental as this is, isn’t as overwhelming among Christians today as not believing God will answer prayers. Beth Moore, a noted author, describes what she heard God saying about her prayer life one day when she wrote, “I sensed God saying, ‘My child, you believe me for so little. Who are you trying to keep from looking foolish, Me or you?;” Brothers and sisters are we believing God for so little even today? Are we putting the breaks down on our prayer life because we are afraid to ask God for big things? Do we only pray for those things that we will expect him to answer, or don’t care if he doesn’t answer. Or worse when we pray for something big do we expect God not to answer at all? And friends, that is a tragedy is the words of John Wesley are true when he said, “It seems that God is limited by our prayer life, that he can do nothing for humanity unless someone asks him.”
Because if we look back at the scripture passage for today, Jesus was teaching his disciple to pray a very big prayer. “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” Is not exactly as simple a phrase as it comes off our lips being, more times then not. This is Christ telling God, the Most High King, that his Kingdom was the ultimate will of the disciplines. Not their own plans or agendas. But God’s and God’s alone. And let’s face it, if we don’t know the promises of scripture and can’t identify how God has worked for good for us in the past, saying “Your will be done.” Could be very frightening.
I want to just take some time and break down the Lord’s prayer, line by line. Revealing the relevance and power that it holds. The credit that we all so often don’t give it once the words are memorized.
“Our Father, who are it Heaven, Hallowed be your name.” Even in teaching his disciples how to pray Jesus is being controversial as well as teaching a radical lesson. Jewish culture lesson, God’s name was considered to be so holy that it wasn’t even to be spoken out loud, yet here Jesus is taking the name that wasn’t to be spoken and adding this intimate twist to it, by addressing the Most High God as Father. He made God approachable.
When I think of this statement I immediately think back to the book of Exodus. In Exodus 3:5 God told Moses to take off his sandals because he is standing on Holy Ground. As Moses goes on in verse 13 to ask what God’s name is, God responeds, “I am who I am. That is what you are to tell the Israelites, I AM has sent me.” Here God’s holiness was precieved as a boundary between himself and the Israelites. He was so Holy that he didn’t even have a recognizable name. Yet, in the Lord’s prayer, we find that we can have a deep, close relationship with God, and it doesn’t diminish his holiness as the Israelites had feared for so many years.
“Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” When you read the Gospels you see that there is a tension in Jesus’ talk about the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is present and not yet. All too often we get caught up in the future, and just passively wait for Christ’s return and for him to fix everything. But if are agents of God’s will, we recognize that we have a place in his present kingdom. In the book of Jeremiah, God speaks through the prophet saying “I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness, in the earth for the things I delight in.” If this is the way God loves and if this is what brings him honor, then we should act as he does, pursing justice, righteousness, and mercy fervently. The Church, as the bride of Christ, exists to bring honor to God both now and in the future.
This verse also gives me pause when Christ prays that “Your will be done.” I think very few people pray this and mean it. We pray this, because well we think we should, but really our heart isn’t behind it and we still get upset when things don’t turn out our way. But here’s the thing. God will never do anything that isn’t in our best interest. We need to trust in this. When we let our own will supercede God’s will we are settling for second best. And we shouldn’t want to settle.
Personally in my life, I have been challenged by my prayer partner over the past year to commit my prayer time to God and set aside any agenda I have for prayer. Asking the Spirit to lead me to pray what is on His heart. And some really crazy things have happened quite frequently. I’ll be led to pray for people who I have become disconnected from. I have been led to repent of attitudes that were so hidden in my heart that I would never be able to see them on my own. And I’ve been led to pray for circumstances in the lives of those close to me that I didn’t even know were happening. God’s will has superceded my will and I’m being led by him. It is a beautiful time when my heart meshes with the heart of God.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” God has created us with basic needs. We need food, water, and oxygen. And he sustains us by giving us these things. And this little line should take us back, once again to Exodus, causing us to remember God’s pervision as the Israelites wondered in the wilderness for 40 years. He reigned down Mana, a bread like substance, from Heaven and the Isralites were to collect what they communally needed to sustain them for one day. We’ve become such a glutoness, self-centered society. We hoard food and don’t think about the needs of our neighbors. But notice that the word “our” is used in this phrase instead of “my”, therefore, we should be praying for the provision and sustaining of our neighbors as a way to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
“And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The power behind this statement is two fold. First it serves as a reminder that we must daily ask God to help us examine our hearts and point out our sins. And we must trust in his forgiveness. For some reasons we tend to cling to guilt of stains that Christ’s blood has long washed away. This examination of our heart also lets us fully give our sins over to Christ and be absolved of them.
The second, and seemingly harder part, of this phrase is probably best explained by Luke in Chapter 6 of his gospel when he says, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged, do not condemn, and you will not be condemened. Fortive and you will be forgiven, give, and it will be given to you.” And he goes on to ask “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will they both not fall into the pit? A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. Why do you see the speck in your neighor’s eye but do not notice the plank in your own.” Human nature after the fall is to write off our sins, by pointing out the bigger sins of others. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpant. God is reminding us that we are not to judge others for their wrongs, but to forgive them time and time again. This takes the humility of being able to identitfy that we are fallen and screw up just like the person who has hurt us. We are all in need of forgiveness, because none of us is more holy then another.
“And lead us not to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.” Life is not easy. No where, and I really mean no where in the Bible does it say that the life of the Christian will be smooth and free of temptations and struggles. But it does promise that God will protect us. I think this is what it boils down to when Christ tells us that we need to have childlike faith. When I am a child, my life is in the hands of my parents and I trust them fully. I trust them not to lead me across the street when traffic is flowing and there is a “Don’t Walk Sign”. And I trust them to recuse me if I do become in danger. But when I become an adult I become independent, thinking that I can do everything on my own, even if this is not the case. I don’t ask for help and in my stubbornness I try to defeat the things that far too grand for me. I trust no one but myself. Childlike faith calls us to dependance, and we must certinaly depend on God to help us avoid the traps of Satan.
So may we have our eyes opened to a new way of praying. May we talk less and listen more. May we give our relationship with God the attention and honor it deserves. And may we pray big prayers, showing our trust and dependance on God. For our teacher in Christ showed us that God can handle big prayers when he gave us the example of the Lord’s prayer. May we never see the familiar the same again.
- Michelle
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Suffering - Job 23 and Hebrews 12: 5-12
What I am going to discuss tonight isn’t an easy topic. In fact, it is bound to bring up memories of heartache and failures and trials. But I also know that it is time for us, as the Church, to have an open honest discussion about what it means to suffer.
The Book of Job, in the Old Testament, tells what seems to be the ultimate story of suffering. Some background before we look closer at chapter 23. Job was a devout servant of God’s. One day Satan decided that he wanted to prove to God that Job was only devout because of how blessed he was. In Satan’s words “Job fears God for nothing…Stretch out your hand now and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face.” (1: 9b, 11) So God permitted Satan to test Job’s faith and prove that he was righteous, but commanded him not to kill Job. Fast forward. Satan continually attacks Job. He gets sores all over his body. All of his sons and daughters die. His livestock all perish. His life quickly went from comfortable to miserable. And everyone around Job, including his wife and friends insist that Job has made God’s wrath upon him and that he needs to repent of his sins in order to restore God’s good favor. His wife even told him that his life wasn’t worth living and that he was better off to curse God and die. However, Job knew in his heart that he hadn’t sinned against God..
Chapter 23, where we find ourselves this evening, is Job’s lament to God. A lament could be described as just simply crying out to God in anguish and telling him how things in life suck at the moment. All too often we feel that we need to put on a happy face for God, a mask. But he knows what’s in our heart, so we might as well tell him. Speak to God what you are thinking. While some are going to find this crass, there is a professor who once said that if you can’t think of any other word to describe what you are feeling, then curse in your prayers to God, because at least then you are being honest. The Psalms are filled with these prayers of distress, crying out in honesty to God. And here we have Job’s anguish laid out as he cries to God. He is essentially saying to God, hey I’ve done nothing to deserve this and if I knew where you where I would come and tell you that to your face. But this is not, hear me out, not Job finding pride in himself. Verse 6 he says “Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me. There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted for ever by my judge.”
Even in Job’s absolute destitute state he still believes that God can rescue him. He might be crying out “Why God!?!” but he hasn’t lost faith that God can still redeem this situation. How many times have we been there? Totally able to identify with Job. When we’ve lost a job and a new one hasn’t come. When we get a diagnosis that alters our life. When we bury a spouse…or a child. We all have been where Job has been in one for or another, we have all been amidst suffering. When we cannot see two feet in front of us in the pitch blackness of life.
And really, Job hits the nail on the head, when in verse 8 he says, “If I go forward, he is not there; or backwards, I cannot perceive him.” We run into this problem along the path of life, where we cannot perceive him, thus we logically conclude that God has abandoned us. We cite that God obviously even abandoned Christ on the cross on Good Friday, when Jesus cries “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” before taking his last breathe. But see we have made a fatal error. We have judged God’s presence by our ability to sense him, when suffering all so often shuts down all of our senses as we retreat inside of ourselves. Our eyesight is marred, because for the most part we can only see what we want to see, and since God isn’t acting in the way we wanted him to act, we conclude he isn’t there. When really he’s been there all along. Waiting for us to come to him.
Here’s the thing, God does not cause tragedies in our life to happen and he does not cause suffering. This is not in his nature. BUT he can redeem all of our suffering. He can take the messy, horrible moments in our lives and turn them into something beautiful, if we let him. But we have to choose to let him. If we continue to retreat into the darkness in an attempt to hid from the pain, we won’t find healing. Healing doesn’t come from the darkness, but only from the light. William P. Young’s book, The Shack, is a story all about human suffering during tragedies, and how God often gets blamed for tragedies instead of clung to for healing and wholeness and comfort. In the story, God speaks to the main character Mack, whose daughter was kidnapped, raped, and ultimately killed, about suffering. He says, “Mack, just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies does not mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don’t ever assume that my using something means that I caused it or need it to accomplish my purpose. That will only lead to false notions about me. Grace doesn’t depend of suffering to exist, but where you find suffering you will find grace in many colors and facets.”
We are all going to have moments of grief in our lives. Moments when we don’t know how we are even going to get through the day because of the overwhelming sadness. Christ had those moments too. Look at the gospel story of Jesus in the Garden right before he was betrayed and abandoned by his disciples. He is on his needs before God praying “Dad, you could make what’s going to happen disappear. If it’s possible, can you make it so I don’t have to suffer and die But if this is the only way, I’ll do it.” I have a friend Jesse, who is such a source of wisdom to me. One conversation I’ve had with him, that I’ll never forget, is about these “Garden moments” as he calls them, in our lives. Those time that we are standing up at the sky yelling “Where are you GOD?” or crying “Why?” But what we don’t realize is that God is right there in the Garden with us, and our inability to perceive that is what makes everything so much more difficult. And we have a choice, to stay in the Garden, know that as we cry out to God that he will work everything out for our ultimate good because he loves us so much, or we can walk away from God because we assume that he is to blame. We forget who God is. And we forget that after the garden and the cross came the resurrection.
And there are going to be times in our lives when we ultimately blame for our own suffering. It’s a hard fact to swallow. Those times when we are so deep in sin that God has to attempt to discipline us, like a good parent, to get us back in line. He doesn’t want to punish us, but out of love he has to. But he is still not the cause of our suffering, our sin is! When I was little, around 3, I had a huge problem with biting people. And we’re not talking like playfully nibble on you, we are talking sinking baby teeth into flesh and leaving marks and making people bleed. I was out of control. So one day my dad bit me back. Not hard enough to make me bleed and not even half as nasty as I was to other people, but a bite none the less. And that, was the end of my biting. Period. Did my dad want to punish me or bring suffering to me? No. But if he didn’t do something then I was going to be out of control. And that is what the Hebrews passage is talking about:
“My child do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him. For the Lord disciplines those he loves and chastises every child whom he accepts. Endure trials for the sake of discipline….Discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit or righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Job ultimately says the same thing “When he tested me, I shall come out like Gold.” Brother and sisters God is redeeming us. As difficult as it is, take joy in that! When refiners work with Gold and Silver, they hold a piece of the precious metals over the fire and let it heat up in the middle of the fire, where the flames are the hottest. Only then can all of the impurities be burned away. And the smith has to sit in front of the fire during the entire process. And the most beautiful part of the process, is the end when the smith knows that the metal is fully refined when he can see his image in it. Sometimes we need to suffer to take away the impurities in our hearts, those things that keep us from God, so that his image can be seen in us! But like the smith, he never leaves us during the entire process.
Sometimes suffering just happens. And other times we cause it. But as I’ve been dwelling on suffering, I’m taken back to the image of the pearl. A stone formed by pain and suffering. God redeems all of our suffering because we are precious to him. And through all of our suffering we are being formed more in his image.
I’d like to close by reading a poem I wrote about suffering entitled Pearl:
I am a Pearl. Tested and tried.
Formed through suffering, pain, and joy.
Crafted by God's hand.
For His Delight.
I am a Pearl.
I have gone through some things that no one has ever went through.
And things that everyone has went through.
Broken hearts, scrapped knees, emotional wounds.
But I am for His Delight.
I am a Pearl.
I hold a unique color like no other Pearl.
I started out as something small, a piece of sand.
But I have grown so much, and now shine
For His Delight.
I am a Pearl.
God did not orchestrate my suffering.
But he has redeemed it.
I am beautiful and become even more so each day.
Because I am for His Delight.
- Michelle
The Book of Job, in the Old Testament, tells what seems to be the ultimate story of suffering. Some background before we look closer at chapter 23. Job was a devout servant of God’s. One day Satan decided that he wanted to prove to God that Job was only devout because of how blessed he was. In Satan’s words “Job fears God for nothing…Stretch out your hand now and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face.” (1: 9b, 11) So God permitted Satan to test Job’s faith and prove that he was righteous, but commanded him not to kill Job. Fast forward. Satan continually attacks Job. He gets sores all over his body. All of his sons and daughters die. His livestock all perish. His life quickly went from comfortable to miserable. And everyone around Job, including his wife and friends insist that Job has made God’s wrath upon him and that he needs to repent of his sins in order to restore God’s good favor. His wife even told him that his life wasn’t worth living and that he was better off to curse God and die. However, Job knew in his heart that he hadn’t sinned against God..
Chapter 23, where we find ourselves this evening, is Job’s lament to God. A lament could be described as just simply crying out to God in anguish and telling him how things in life suck at the moment. All too often we feel that we need to put on a happy face for God, a mask. But he knows what’s in our heart, so we might as well tell him. Speak to God what you are thinking. While some are going to find this crass, there is a professor who once said that if you can’t think of any other word to describe what you are feeling, then curse in your prayers to God, because at least then you are being honest. The Psalms are filled with these prayers of distress, crying out in honesty to God. And here we have Job’s anguish laid out as he cries to God. He is essentially saying to God, hey I’ve done nothing to deserve this and if I knew where you where I would come and tell you that to your face. But this is not, hear me out, not Job finding pride in himself. Verse 6 he says “Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me. There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted for ever by my judge.”
Even in Job’s absolute destitute state he still believes that God can rescue him. He might be crying out “Why God!?!” but he hasn’t lost faith that God can still redeem this situation. How many times have we been there? Totally able to identify with Job. When we’ve lost a job and a new one hasn’t come. When we get a diagnosis that alters our life. When we bury a spouse…or a child. We all have been where Job has been in one for or another, we have all been amidst suffering. When we cannot see two feet in front of us in the pitch blackness of life.
And really, Job hits the nail on the head, when in verse 8 he says, “If I go forward, he is not there; or backwards, I cannot perceive him.” We run into this problem along the path of life, where we cannot perceive him, thus we logically conclude that God has abandoned us. We cite that God obviously even abandoned Christ on the cross on Good Friday, when Jesus cries “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” before taking his last breathe. But see we have made a fatal error. We have judged God’s presence by our ability to sense him, when suffering all so often shuts down all of our senses as we retreat inside of ourselves. Our eyesight is marred, because for the most part we can only see what we want to see, and since God isn’t acting in the way we wanted him to act, we conclude he isn’t there. When really he’s been there all along. Waiting for us to come to him.
Here’s the thing, God does not cause tragedies in our life to happen and he does not cause suffering. This is not in his nature. BUT he can redeem all of our suffering. He can take the messy, horrible moments in our lives and turn them into something beautiful, if we let him. But we have to choose to let him. If we continue to retreat into the darkness in an attempt to hid from the pain, we won’t find healing. Healing doesn’t come from the darkness, but only from the light. William P. Young’s book, The Shack, is a story all about human suffering during tragedies, and how God often gets blamed for tragedies instead of clung to for healing and wholeness and comfort. In the story, God speaks to the main character Mack, whose daughter was kidnapped, raped, and ultimately killed, about suffering. He says, “Mack, just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies does not mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don’t ever assume that my using something means that I caused it or need it to accomplish my purpose. That will only lead to false notions about me. Grace doesn’t depend of suffering to exist, but where you find suffering you will find grace in many colors and facets.”
We are all going to have moments of grief in our lives. Moments when we don’t know how we are even going to get through the day because of the overwhelming sadness. Christ had those moments too. Look at the gospel story of Jesus in the Garden right before he was betrayed and abandoned by his disciples. He is on his needs before God praying “Dad, you could make what’s going to happen disappear. If it’s possible, can you make it so I don’t have to suffer and die But if this is the only way, I’ll do it.” I have a friend Jesse, who is such a source of wisdom to me. One conversation I’ve had with him, that I’ll never forget, is about these “Garden moments” as he calls them, in our lives. Those time that we are standing up at the sky yelling “Where are you GOD?” or crying “Why?” But what we don’t realize is that God is right there in the Garden with us, and our inability to perceive that is what makes everything so much more difficult. And we have a choice, to stay in the Garden, know that as we cry out to God that he will work everything out for our ultimate good because he loves us so much, or we can walk away from God because we assume that he is to blame. We forget who God is. And we forget that after the garden and the cross came the resurrection.
And there are going to be times in our lives when we ultimately blame for our own suffering. It’s a hard fact to swallow. Those times when we are so deep in sin that God has to attempt to discipline us, like a good parent, to get us back in line. He doesn’t want to punish us, but out of love he has to. But he is still not the cause of our suffering, our sin is! When I was little, around 3, I had a huge problem with biting people. And we’re not talking like playfully nibble on you, we are talking sinking baby teeth into flesh and leaving marks and making people bleed. I was out of control. So one day my dad bit me back. Not hard enough to make me bleed and not even half as nasty as I was to other people, but a bite none the less. And that, was the end of my biting. Period. Did my dad want to punish me or bring suffering to me? No. But if he didn’t do something then I was going to be out of control. And that is what the Hebrews passage is talking about:
“My child do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him. For the Lord disciplines those he loves and chastises every child whom he accepts. Endure trials for the sake of discipline….Discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit or righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Job ultimately says the same thing “When he tested me, I shall come out like Gold.” Brother and sisters God is redeeming us. As difficult as it is, take joy in that! When refiners work with Gold and Silver, they hold a piece of the precious metals over the fire and let it heat up in the middle of the fire, where the flames are the hottest. Only then can all of the impurities be burned away. And the smith has to sit in front of the fire during the entire process. And the most beautiful part of the process, is the end when the smith knows that the metal is fully refined when he can see his image in it. Sometimes we need to suffer to take away the impurities in our hearts, those things that keep us from God, so that his image can be seen in us! But like the smith, he never leaves us during the entire process.
Sometimes suffering just happens. And other times we cause it. But as I’ve been dwelling on suffering, I’m taken back to the image of the pearl. A stone formed by pain and suffering. God redeems all of our suffering because we are precious to him. And through all of our suffering we are being formed more in his image.
I’d like to close by reading a poem I wrote about suffering entitled Pearl:
I am a Pearl. Tested and tried.
Formed through suffering, pain, and joy.
Crafted by God's hand.
For His Delight.
I am a Pearl.
I have gone through some things that no one has ever went through.
And things that everyone has went through.
Broken hearts, scrapped knees, emotional wounds.
But I am for His Delight.
I am a Pearl.
I hold a unique color like no other Pearl.
I started out as something small, a piece of sand.
But I have grown so much, and now shine
For His Delight.
I am a Pearl.
God did not orchestrate my suffering.
But he has redeemed it.
I am beautiful and become even more so each day.
Because I am for His Delight.
- Michelle
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