Bob Kaylor

Faith in the Storm

Mark 4:35-41

One of the great highlights of a trip to Israel is taking a boat across the Sea of Galilee, which is the location of many of the events of Jesus' ministry in the Gospels. It's a beautiful place and on a sunny day when the wind is calm the surface of the lake is like glass. The boat operators like to take you to the middle of the lake and then shut off the engines so that you can experience the silence.

Of course, those same boat operators will tell you that it isn't always this way. The signs on the western shore near the hotel in the town of Tiberias tell you not to park your car too close to the water, since the Sea of Galilee is known for some horrific storms. One storm in 1992, for example, caused ten-foot waves that crashed into the town, causing a lot of damage.

The boatmen say that the winds come from a deep valley to the west of the lake, which is called the Valley of the Doves or the Valley of the Winds. This valley contained the main trail from Nazareth to Galilee, and Jesus likely walked the 40 mile road many times. When the wind blows off the Mediterranean Sea to the west, especially in the winter, it can get funneled into this valley and becomes like an out-of-control freight train, turning the Galilean lake into a raging maelstrom.

Fishermen on the Sea of Galilee in Jesus' day would have certainly known about these instant storms, which is why they spent most of their time keeping their boats closer to shore. Unlike the tour boat we take in the 21st century, the boats that Peter, James, and John used were a lot smaller and a lot more rickety. On the western shore of the Sea of Galilee there is a museum at Kibbutz Nof Ginnosar where you can see an actual first century boat that was excavated out of the mud several years ago. It's about 15 feet long and 6 feet wide and was clearly patched up many times--some 14 different kinds of wood were used in it--indicating the kind of boat that a poor first century fisherman might have tried to keep afloat.

As you look at that boat you can't help but think about this story that Mark relates to us. Jesus and his disciples, in a boat just like this, out in the middle of the lake on the way across, when the wind comes screaming out of the valley with no warning. The placid, beautiful lake becomes the place of chaos.

In fact, in much of Scripture the sea represents chaos, evil, and death. The Israelites weren't really a seafaring people, so the vast Mediterranean Sea to the west, and even the smaller seas like Galilee, represented the unknown, the dark deep, the place where the terrible sea monsters waited to devour. The sea was the place from which some people never returned--a place of fear and death. It was the place of chaos, evil, and death.

All we have to do is turn back to the first verses of Genesis to see that the sea represents chaos. When God created the heavens and the earth, "the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2-3). Darkness, wind, deep--the image of a churning storm. And yet, in the midst of the stormy chaos, God begins to separate things out--he brings light to pierce the darkness, he separates the waters and the waters from the land. The creation story is how God begins to bring order out of chaos, which becomes a metaphor for the whole biblical story--the story of how God deals with evil.

It’s no coincidence that the first major story after creation is another boat story—Noah is a righteous man who obeys God, builds an ark, and prepares for God’s judgment on a world where the wickedness of humanity was so great that “every inclination of their hearts was only evil continually.” And then one of the most heart-breaking statements in Scripture, “And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart” (Genesis 6:5-6). And so God removes the separation and allows the chaos of the waters to break loose in a horrific flood, reverting back to the watery void of Genesis 1. And yet, while the waters rage, God saves Noah and his family and the creatures of the earth on an ark tossed by stormy seas: God’s judgment, God’s grace, and God’s rescue come together on a boat.

Noah steps out of the ark and into a new creation washed clean by the flood—chaos is pushed back again. Indeed, this is how God is going to deal with evil going forward: not by unleashing the chaos, but by working toward a new creation. The story of the Bible is the story of how God does that through the story of Israel—a story that reaches its climax in Jesus.

It’s the story of God parting the waters of the Red Sea to save Israel from the evil of slavery in Egypt. It’s the story of Job railing at God in the midst of evil and suffering and God showing him the great sea monsters under his control – a sign that chaos doesn’t have the last word. It’s the story of Isaiah looking forward to a day when all can come to the waters and drink without fear. It’s the story of Jonah tossed into the raging sea but saved by the belly of a whale. It’s the story of Jesus, going through the waters of baptism and into the desert to do battle with the forces of evil. The story of Scripture is the story of how God brings his people through the waters of evil and into a new creation.

It’s no accident, then, that Mark preserves this story of Jesus and his disciples on a boat being tossed by an unexpected and violent storm. The chaos rages once again, the rickety boats are being swamped by the ten foot waves and are starting to sink. Fear, panic, and desperation come over these fishermen who have never experienced this type of chaos before.

And Mark tells that in the midst of all the chaos of the storm, Jesus is asleep in the stern of the boat—napping quietly on a cushion. The disciples, meanwhile, are in a panic. Jesus apparently doesn’t see the chaos, the evil that surrounds them, and so they are furious. “Wake up!” they yell over the howling wind. “Don’t you see that we’re dying here? Don’t you care?”

Jesus wakes up, maybe looks at them for a long moment with one eye open. He doesn’t answer their question. Instead he stands and addresses the wind and the waves. Mark says that he “rebuked” the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Interestingly, these are the same words that Jesus uses to cast out demons—he rebukes them and tells them to be quiet. It’s no coincidence that the next scene in Mark is Jesus casting out a demon on the other side of the lake. Mark and the other gospel writers make it clear: Jesus has command over the wind and waves, command over chaos, command over evil.

Indeed, the wind and waves obey his commands, just like the demons do—they cease and desist. The disciples had seen Jesus’ miracles, but they hadn’t seen this. Mouths agape, they look at Jesus.

Now we, along with Mark’s first readers, might expect Jesus to give them an explanation of how he had the power and authority to still the storm. We might expect a presentation outlining Jesus’ humanity and divinity. We might even expect Jesus to smile and go back to sleep, leaving the disciples to wonder about what they had just seen.

But rather than riff on this display of power, Jesus instead turns and asks them a question: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

Mark doesn’t tell us, but I wonder if the disciples were thinking something like, “Well, duh, of course we’re afraid! There’s the storm and the almost dying and then this incredible display of power…who wouldn’t be afraid?” I don’t know about you, but I certainly would!

In their fear, however, the disciples had forgotten one important fact: Jesus was in the boat with them. They woke Jesus up so that he could share in their panic. Jesus, on the other hand, wants them to share in his faith, his power, his ability to deal with the evil. “Always remember, I’m in the boat with you,” Jesus says in effect, “and I’ve got this.”

The storms hit us, too, often with great fury. We began this series by talking about a devastating wave—the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755—an incredible event that shook the foundations of the post-Enlightenment world and caused both great thinkers and common people to begin thinking about evil as a logical problem to be solved. Where is God in the midst of the storm? Where is God when the typhoon of devastating illness hits? Where is God when the lightning strike of a loved one’s death leaves us in shock? Where is God when the waves of death, destruction, and doubt threaten to sink us?

Where is God? In the boat, with us, and there he invites us to turn from fear to faith. What kind of faith? The kind of faith that Jesus himself had.

The Gospel of Mark is built around three predictions Jesus makes about his own death—the storm of conflict and opposition that is building throughout his ministry will culminate in one giant wave of evil and death that will break over him on the cross. Jesus knows where his life is leading and yet the Gospels tell us that he continued be calm in the midst of that gathering storm—calm because of the faith that he, the human Jesus, had in God. In fact, Jesus’ whole life was an act of faith.

Read the Gospels carefully and you’ll see this: Jesus is tempted in the wilderness by Satan. As Joe said last week in his excellent sermon on the cross, it was Jesus’ faith in God’s mission and God’s way that allowed him to refuse Satan’s offer to be the Messiah the people wanted. It’s easy for us to think that Jesus’ temptations were merely symbolic—that they were a show put on for our benefit because Jesus wasn’t really tempted. He’s God, after all. But that’s not how the Scriptures read—the human Jesus was “tempted in every way like we are” (Hebrews 4:15). He had to face fear, hunger, danger, and death—just like us—and had to do so with faith all through his ministry. He maintained faith when his disciples were clueless, he maintained faith when the crowds left him and the religious leaders threatened him, he maintained faith when his cousin John the Baptist was killed and when his friend Lazarus died. He maintained faith in the Garden of Gethsemane when death loomed above him behind the city walls, praying for God to do it another way but having the faith to go through the agony anyway. The one who stilled the wind and waves will allow them to crash over himself because he has faith in the purposes of God.

And so, with faith, he hangs on a cross. In the midst of pain he cries out those desperate first lines of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It’s the same cry of the disciples in the boat. “Don’t you see I’m dying? Do you not care?” And yet, even at the end, Jesus knew how the Psalm ends, “For he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him… before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him” (Psalm 22:24, 29). Even as he dies, he puts his faith in God, praying the prayer that every Jewish boy and girl prays before going to sleep, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” It is a prayer of faith, trust, and hope when there seems to be no reason for it.

This is not an easy faith that Jesus demonstrates and teaches to his disciples. It is a robust faith—faith grounded in the promises of God, faith that doesn’t run from pain and hardship, faith that confronts death with hope. Such faith doesn’t come easy—it can’t be contained in a greeting card or contained in platitudes from preachers—it’s faith that is cultivated over a lifetime of trusting God. Jesus rested in the boat because he had that kind of faith. We can ride the storms, too, because we know that he is in the boat with us.

This is the kind of faith that defeats evil, for evil cannot overcome it. Jesus faced the wave of evil crashing over the cross and broke it—his cross rebukes it, his resurrection stills it and ultimately casts it out. And it is our faith in Jesus’ that leads us to imagine a new creation, where the promise is that the storms will one day be no more.

At the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, we see a vision of the new creation made possible by Jesus’ faithfulness on the cross and the triumph of his resurrection as the completion of God’s plan. In chapter 21 we read about the new heavens and the new earth “coming down” and casting aside all the storms of evil from the old creation, making all things new. But what’s most interesting to me is that as John sees this vision, he notices that in this new creation “the sea [is] more” (Revelation 21:1). Immediately some people will protest, “But I like the sea, I like the beach.” Well, keep in mind that Revelation is an apocalyptic vision that, like our dreams, uses a lot of symbolism. The point here is that the sea, which is a symbol of chaos and evil throughout the Bible, is no more. There’s no place for evil in the new creation—no place for tears, no place for mourning or crying or pain (21:4).

What will be there? Hear the good news: “See, the home of God is among mortals,” says a loud voice. “He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will dwell with them” (Rev. 21:3). In the new creation, the sea and all the tempestuous evil will be gone—but the God revealed in Jesus will be with us—Jesus will still be in the boat!

Many of us in this room are facing storms right now—maybe even to point that we feel like we’re about to go under. We’re afraid, and rightly so. But can we put our faith in the one who himself lived and died by faith? We see the wind and the waves—can we focus our eyes on Jesus, the one whom the wind and the waves ultimately obey? When the ship is tossed, we can only think of our doom—can we instead imagine the calm and hope of a new creation?

Faith doesn’t mean that we won’t suffer. Jesus himself suffered and died while holding on to faith. Faith does mean, however, that we can trust him for our future—a future made possible by his faith in God’s new creation, made possible by an empty tomb and the defeat of death. Our baptism in water reminds us of this—what was once the sign of death, is now the sign of life!

After a few minutes of silence on the water, the boatman on the Sea of Galilee today invite all the passengers to sing a hymn. One of the hymns we sing that feels so appropriate on that occasion is Horatio Spafford’s famous hymn, “It is Well With My Soul.”

Spafford wrote this hymn after some serious storms in his own life. He and his wife lost a child at the age of 4 in 1871, just before the great Chicago fire that ruined Spafford financially. After recovering somewhat, the great economic downturn of 1873 hit hard, just about the time he and his wife and four daughters had planned to travel to Europe by steam ship. In a late change of plans, he sent his family ahead while he stayed behind to work out a business issue.

While crossing the Atlantic, the ship carrying Spafford’s wife and daughters collided with another ship and sank rapidly. All four of Spafford’s daughters died. His wife, Anna, survived and sent him a heartbreaking telegram that only said, “Saved alone.” Shortly after this, Spafford traveled by ship to meet his wife in Europe and while passing the site where his children perished, he penned these famous words:

When peace like a river attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll,

Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Later, the Spaffords had three more children and eventually went by ship to Israel, where they founded a mission to save the poor. Out of the storm, faith in Christ carried them to peace, hope, and work for God’s kingdom.

The storms will come. But may we look to the one who is still, and always, in the boat with us--forever. And knowing that, may it be well with your soul.

 

 

 

"An Enemy Has Done This:" The Power of God and the Presence of Evil

An Enemy Has Done This

Matthew 13:24-30

When I was a kid, I used to love going to my grandpap’s little farm rural western Pennsylvania, where he kept a huge garden filled with marvelous things. I remember working with him on a weekend in the spring, watering young plants in the hot bed, and then planting them out in the garden. In the summer, while we waited for the garden to start producing, my grandpap would often pay me to go out in the garden to do the weeding—I thought this was a great privilege because it gave him so much joy to let me do it. Little did I know…

I spent most of my time at home in a small town, so I wasn’t around gardens every day. When pap would send me out there on those weekends at the farm, especially early in the season, my unpracticed eye often had a hard time figuring out which plants were the weeds and which were the ones we had planted. It seemed like the weeds disguised themselves to look like the real thing.

But I was going to pick weeds, dagnabbit, and so, when in doubt, I pulled it up. At the end of each row I dropped a pile of weeds, thinking I was a real farmer like pap. When I saw him coming back from the barn I was excited to show him my work. But rather than praise me, as he was wont to do as a doting grandpa, he simply looked at my piles of “weeds” for a long moment—pushing back his railroad cap and scratching his head. He said quietly, “Looks like some of them weeds are beans.”

My pap was the most patient man I’ve ever known, so instead of chastising me about my overly aggressive weeding, he took me back through the garden and pointed out some of the subtle differences between desirable crops and noxious weeds. Eventually, I got the hang of keeping them separate, tempting though it was to pull up all the green beans that my grandma so desperately wanted me to eat (I don’t like them to this day!). But then I began to notice something else—the more I weeded, the more the weeds kept coming back. It was like some alien force was causing them to grow up every night. This was going to be a never-ending battle that my hoe and I would never win.

When Jesus wanted to teach his disciples about evil, he didn’t craft a theory as many post-Enlightenment scholars have done. Nor did he offer platitudes and advice like Job’s friends, whom we met last week. No, when Jesus wanted to discuss the problem of evil, he invited his disciples to turn their imagination to the field—to consider the weeds.

A farmer named Jesus tugs on his railroad cap and drives his old pickup down to the Agway and spends a little extra to buy the good seed for his carefully prepared fields. His farmhands know that the boss knows what he’s doing, that he knows just what to do to yield a bumper crop.

When the farmhands go out into the fields, however, they notice that there are weeds mixed in with the good crops. Did the boss get the cheap seed this time? Is he slipping? Does he not know what’s going on? There are lots of weeds out here. What gives? More weeds makes more work and so they protest.

What gives? This is the question we’ve been wrestling with—the question theodicy—why, God, are there weeds in the midst of your good creation? Why does evil and suffering pop up everywhere like a noxious weed? We thought you knew what you were doing when you put this garden together, but now it seems to be going bad. Why the weeds? These are Job’s questions, the questions of philosophers and theologians, the questions of the man who stands on the shore and sees his family swept out to sea by a tsunami, the questions of the mother who holds a vigil over a desperately ill child in the hospital ICU, the questions of the widowed spouse who comes home to an empty house. Why, if you are good and know what you’re doing, are these weeds here, choking out the light and causing the death of the innocent shoots before they can even begin to grow? Why does this evil exist in the first place?

Like the farmhands, we want to know what gives. We want an explanation, some bulleted list of reasons why the world is full of evil weeds. What the farmer gives us, however, isn’t the answer we might have been expecting—indeed, it’s only five words: “An enemy has done this.” The weeds are here for a reason, but not the reason you might expect.

The farmer didn’t do it. God didn’t do it. “An enemy has done this.” Those five simple words blow up all the popular theodicies we hear whenever tragedy pops up like a ghastly thistle. “An enemy has done this. In this simple statement, Jesus makes it clear that evil and suffering is not God’s will, it’s not God’s plan, it’s not God’s way. The cancer that takes a young mother’s life, the child killed by madman, the traffic accident, the crippling disease—none of these are God’s. Did you plant these evil weeds, God? The answer is no, a thousand times, no. “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all,” says the writer of I John. “For I know the plans I have for you,” says God in Jeremiah, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”

Yes, we believe that good can come out of evil. But we go horribly wrong when we believe that God gives us evil so that there will be good. Evil is God’s enemy—it has been from the beginning. Evil, sin, suffering, death—these don’t belong in the field and God didn’t put them there.

So, we might ask with the farmhands, who did? Who is this enemy and why has he done this? Well, in his explanation of the parable, Jesus explains that the enemy is the devil. We met “the Satan” last week in the story of Job. In that story, as in much of the Old Testament, the Satan is a prosecuting attorney. Indeed, that’s what his name means, “the accuser.” In the New Testament, the Satan shows up in the desert to tempt Jesus, enters into Judas the betrayer, and does, or attempts to do, a lot of other damage.

We tend to think of the devil as a character with horns and a pitchfork, a kind of caricature and personification of evil. But putting him in that form (which is more an image from Dante than the Bible), we might miss the more insidious truth about Satan. Indeed, the Bible seems to use the Satan as a kind of avatar for a much deeper theological truth—that the evil we experience doesn’t always have a logical explanation.

As Tom Long puts it, “The horrors of the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, the massacre at My Lai, the cruelties of those who prey upon children…--none of these forms of evil, or others, can be fully accounted for by political, anthropological, or psychological explanations. There is a dark spiritual force in evil as we experience it.”

I’ve told you before about my seminary roommate, Mike. Mike was a good guy, a great friend. We had great times together. But one day a few years ago, Mike brutally beat his wife to death with the leg of a table in the church parsonage while his toddler and infant sons sat in the next room—a horrific crime. What happened? I corresponded with him in prison for a while. Even he does not know what happened. How many times a day do we read about senseless tragedies that have no reason to explain them? The only answer is that there is such a thing as evil, and we don’t often think about it until it hits us in the face.

The soldiers at My Lai were ordinary American kids when they massacred people in cold blood. The people of Germany were most Christian and the vast majority of them were not Nazis, yet they allowed 6 million Jews to go to the gas chambers. Many of the Hutus who hacked more than half a million Tutsis to death in Rwanda were Christians who went to church and then picked up machetes to kills their neighbors. How do you explain that?

Evil is a force in the world—a mystery, a problem that cannot be solved logically. We know this because despite our best human efforts we have not been able to legislate, incarcerate, or bomb it out of existence. Like a bad weed, it keeps resurfacing.

So, we might ask, where does this evil come from? How did it come to be? There are lots of theories about the introduction of evil into God’s good creation. Some believe that God created it, others think that it was already here before God started creating. Some have even posited the presence of two gods—kind of like the Force in Star Wars—a good force and a dark force.

But the Bible tells us from the beginning that God is the one and only creator; that God’s creation was made “very good.” But something happened after God’s creative act that introduced evil and death into creation. As we talked about in my Sunday night class last week, “How did the talking snake get in the Garden in the first place?” Unfortunately, we don’t get a clear answer about that. The Bible doesn’t tell us how evil got here, only that it didn’t come from the hand of God and that it is an intruder upon the goodness of God’s creation. Humans have become entangled in it, and humans cannot eradicate it completely. We don’t understand where it came from; all we know is that it’s here.

So, what do we do about it? This is the question the farmhands now present to the farmer. “Do you want us to go out and pick all the weeds?” Should we take a hoe, a gun, a constitutional amendment, or a bomber and get rid of them?

“No,” says the farmer Jesus, “for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the good crop along with them. Some of them weeds could be beans.” Jesus here expresses a truth that is often hard for us to grasp: we can’t get rid ourselves of every evil. Indeed, in trying to do so, we’re likely to destroy what is good as well. Evil and good often share a common root system—we know that from history, and we know it in ourselves. We don’t always know at first glance what is a weed and what is not.

OK, so maybe we don’t always know which is a weed and which isn’t, but surely God does. Why doesn’t God sweep into the world with a scythe and root out all the evil himself? Well, here’s the same dilemma—if God came with a mission to cut down and destroy all evil, which one of us would be left standing when he was finished? Every one of us carries in us the seeds of evil, the germination of sin, the disease of death. We can’t fully root evil out of the world because we can’t even fully root it out of ourselves.

Does that mean we do nothing about evil? Not at all. Our own membership vows remind us of this: “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever form they present themselves?” Yes, we resist evil, we identify the weeds, but the way that we deal with evil isn’t by cutting it out, it’s by growing stronger roots ourselves.

Earlier in Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of another farmer, who goes out and sows seeds lavishly. Some of the seed falls on a path and get eaten by birds, some of it springs up in shallow soil but quickly dies, some gets choked out by the weeds. But there was some that fell on receptive, nutrient-rich, prepared soil, from which it produced a bumper crop. The weeds couldn’t choke it out because it was rooted deeply.

I was talking to my lawn guy once, and I asked him about controlling weeds like dandelions in the yard. What kind of herbicide do you need for that? “Well, we spread some of that,” he said, “but the best way to control weeds in the yard is to make sure the rest of the grass is healthy and strong. A thick lawn has no room for weeds.”

I think that’s true for us as well. Our best defense against evil isn’t found in guns, bombs, or legislation—it’s found in being rooted in Christ—the one who urged us to not repay evil for evil, but to combat evil with good.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow, put it this way: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” The weeds will spring up, the tragedy will happen, the diagnosis will be given, the newspaper will give us bad news. We cannot control the evil, try as we might. But we can control how we respond to it—to offer our lives as a fertile ground for faith—faith that saves us; faith that makes us strong; faith that does good;  faith that sees the big picture of what God is up to in the world.

And what is God up to? The farmer tells the farmhands to let the wheat and the weeds grow up together. His focus is on the harvest, which is the reason for planting in the first place. Ultimately, the weeds will not matter then—they are bundled up separately and thrown into the fire. It’s the wheat that gets gathered into the barn.

The message of the parable is that while good and evil grow up together in the present, it won’t always be that way. A harvest is coming. Evil will be defeated and death along with it. The enemy and all the evil this world has seen will be piled up and set ablaze. This is the promise of God’s kingdom, God’s reign and rule on the earth. God will deal with evil decisively—a mission that has already begun.

It’s interesting that Jesus goes on immediately to tell another parable about a mustard seed—a plant that is simultaneously a weed and a valuable plant. No wonder Jesus told us not to try and pull up the weeds—it’s sometimes hard to tell what is a weed and what is the kingdom of God. God’s kingdom does not look very potent or large. Indeed, God’s approach to evil, letting the weeds go for now, may seem weak and ineffectual to many. It’s the kind of thing a tiny, insignificant god would do—like a mustard seed. But that mustard seed has the potential, and indeed will become the “greatest of plants—a tree big enough for birds to land in.” It’s not what we expect when we look at something so weak and small, but it’s the truth of the gospel: God’s kingdom is coming, and it’s not like anything the world expects.

Jesus then follows that up with the parable of the yeast. We think of yeast as a good thing, but in Jesus’ day it was not. In Jewish ritual, it was a corrupting agent. Kosher Jews still remove all the yeast from the house prior to Passover. But in the parable, the woman in the farmhouse, who reminds me of my grandma, mixes the yeast with a huge amount of flour. In fact, “mix” isn’t the right word here. The Greek word means something more like “encrypt.” In other words, she smuggles in the yeast that isn’t supposed to be there, and the yeast invades everything. It’s hidden, undercover, and yet changing everything.

That’s the way of the kingdom, Jesus tells us. God’s power is subversive, stealthy, hidden, but in the present it is beginning to permeate the world. One day, when it has worked all the way through the dough, it will make it rise.

The promise of the kingdom is that, one day, we too will rise! God’s kingdom will permeate everything.

For now, however, where are the weeds in your life? Have you been trying to pull them up, only to see more take their place? How will you strengthen your roots instead?

I miss my grandpa, who died of heart attack one morning while getting ready to go out to the garden. But I will never forget what he taught me – the weeds will always be there, but the harvest is what’s most important.

Jesus calls us to turn our focus from the weeds to the promise of the harvest, and we work and live with that future in mind. Our greatest sign of that promise? The cross and resurrection of Jesus, which will talk about over the next couple of weeks – a sign that, one day, there will be no more weeds with them beans.

Source:

Long, Thomas G. What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith. Eerdman's, 2012.  

 

 

Job: Searching for Answers

The lines at the box office stretch all the way around the block. It is opening night at a play that has left all the critics buzzing. The audience is curious as they begin to settle in their seats, curiously checking their Playbills for a hint of what is to come, a look at the cast of characters, a nervous anticipation of a drama that no review has really been able to fully describe.

The lights dim and the curtain opens, revealing a man immaculately dressed in a top hat and tuxedo. He is obviously wealthy, but he does not carry any of the arrogance the audience might expect in the rich. He is standing in the midst of a lavish dinner party, surrounded by what appear to be his many children and grandchildren. He smiles, even as he watches carefully what is going on around him. The next scene shows him going to church to pray for his family, just in case they had overindulged or violated their religious obligations during all that celebration.

The man’s name is Job, and we are left with the impression that he is as good a man as any of us will ever meet—perhaps event the best. His life is perfect, seemingly because he has been so good. He was always doing the right thing and, as conventional wisdom dictates, he was living the life that he so richly deserved—a life that reflects one who has been completely faithful to God.

Meanwhile, the curtain closes and the scene changes. When the curtain opens again we are in the midst of a royal throne room. The king sits on his throne while members of the court vie for his attention. The king, of course, is God, and one of the members of the court approaches the throne. He is dressed like a lawyer, a prosecuting attorney. Indeed, that’s what his name, the Satan, means—he is the accuser, the one who seeks out people who might be disloyal to the king. He is not red or carrying a pitchfork as later plays will characterize him. Here he is simply a pragmatic figure who attempts to remind the king that people aren’t as loyal and righteous as he thinks.

But this time, God seems to have set him up. “Have you seen Job?” asks God. “There’s no one like him on the earth. He does everything right, he is loyal to me and turns away from anything wrong.” The lawyer laughs: “Really? I’m thinking that Job is only like this because you have blessed him and made him wealthy. You’re his sugar daddy God. You know, I’ll bet that if you took back everything you’ve given him he would curse you to your face.”

“You’re on,” says God. There’s another scene change, and we see Job in his study at home reading the Bible. Suddenly, his iPhone rings. It’s one of his servants. “Sir, I have terrible news,” says the servant with a quivering voice. “All of your classic car collection has been carried off by burglars, and they killed all the guys in the garage. I’m the only one left.” Job clicks the phone off, stunned. As he stares at the phone, suddenly a text comes in, “This is Dale from the ranch,” says the text. “We just had a major lightning strike here and all your prized sheep and those attending them were killed instantly. I’m sorry. I’m the only one left to tell you.” He begins to click a short reply, but he even before he finishes, he gets another one from his accountant—“Bad news. The stock market just tanked and you’re now completely bankrupt. I hate to be the one to tell you. Call me.” Job is now reaching for the Advil when the doorbell rings.

A police officer stands on the front porch. “Sir, he says, I have terrible news. All ten of your kids were having dinner together when a tornado came up suddenly and destroyed the house. There were no survivors. I’m so sorry.” Job collapses in grief, tearing his expensive clothes and messing up his neatly groomed hair. Through his tears, however, Job doesn’t blame God for his night of terror. He understands the nature of his life. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and Lord has taken away. Blessed by the name of the Lord.” The scene ends with a weeping Job returning to his study, and getting on his knees in prayer.

The next scene puts us back in the throne room, where the lawyer again comes before God. “See, I told you,” said God. “He is still a man of faith even though you wanted me to destroy him for no reason.” The Satan was non-plussed. “Well sure,” he says, “but what if you took away his health? You give him pain and then, on top of everything else, he will curse you to your face.” “You’re on,” God says again.

When the curtain opens again we see Job no longer dressed in a suit, but in a hospital gown. He sits on a hospital bed covered in sores and hooked up to a bunch of wires and tubes. He has a now useless credit card in his hand that he is using to scratch his many sores. His wife comes into the room and looks at him for a long time. “Do you still persist in your faith now,” she says sarcastically. “Curse God and die.” But through his pain, Job won’t have it. “You speak as a foolish woman,” he says. “Shall we not receive the good at the hands of God and not receive the bad?” Instead of cursing God, Job continues to have faith. Not even his desperate circumstances can make him believe otherwise. In one of the great lines of the play, Job cries out to no one in particular, “Though he slay me, yet shall I trust him.” The prosecutor has no more case. Curtain, applause, end of inspirational story. Well, at least that’s what the audience expects. But the Playbill says “Intermission,” so we are left to ponder what is left for the rest of the story.

In the lobby during the intermission, the audience members discuss what they’ve seen so far. Why does this seemingly perfect man suffer so much? Nothing in this play seems fair. Why did this God and his lawyer seem to play games with his life? Perhaps the rest of the play will reveal the answer.

The lights flicker and go dark, the curtain opens, and we are back in Job’s hospital room, except now he is surrounded by three friends. There is a long silence of perhaps seven minutes or more, during which we observe how the three visitors are dressed.

One is in a cheap polyester suit and carries a thick Bible. The second is dressed in Armani and has the look of a TV preacher about him, complete with slicked-back hair and a smirking air of moral superiority. The third is dressed in a tweed jacket with arm patches and sucks on an unlit pipe—the epitome of intellectual sophistication.

Suddenly, the first man shatters the silence. “Job, will it bother you if I speak?” he asks in a pious way. His name is Eliphaz, and we get the sense that he is one of those people who slithers up to someone in pain, whispering well-rehearsed and cliched prayers in a practiced voice, and then reaching into his massive Bible to produce a tract spelling out the “spiritual laws” that will prove Job’s problem. See, Eliphaz believes that Job’s problem is that he’s a sinner and deserves whatever happened to him. And yet, God loves him and has a wonderful plan for his life. You just need to pray the sinner’s prayer and confess your sins and make peace with God and then, as he puts it,  “everything you do will succeed and light will shine on your path.” God will make it all better. Eliphaz has the formula all figured out. But we know something that Eliphaz does not. Job is “blameless” before God. Job’s situation isn’t so easy to explain. It doesn’t fit the formula.

How many times have we heard pious people say that becoming a Christian will make your life all better, and that nothing bad will happen to you? And yet, we know that’s not really true is it? We don’t always get what we deserve. Life isn’t fair. The wicked prosper and the good suffer. There’s nothing in Eliphaz’s tracts that can explain that reality.

As Eliphaz quietly leaves a tract on the hospital tray, a man in an Armani suit pushes him out of the way. He knows what Job’s problem really is—it’s human nature. While he has never been there, Bildad can confidently tell us what goes on in bedrooms and dorm rooms and anywhere else the cesspool of humanity engages in sin. Bildad is convinced that every disaster, from earthquakes to diseases, are all well-deserved punishments from God for human iniquity. Indeed, every time some disaster happens, Bildad goes on his daily religious TV show and proclaims that the people who are suffering deserve it because there are sinners in their midst or their ancestors made a pact with the devil. He often stands with members of his “church” holding a protest sign at the funerals of fallen soldiers. This is what happens to people in a godless culture. They deserve to die. So Bildad has an answer for Job—your kids must have been great sinners, with all that partying they did, so God gave them what they deserved. Bildad stands there in his spit-shined shoes and coiffed hair, “insisting that it never rains on the righteous, even while his neatly pressed suit is getting drenched by the downpour.”

In the corner, Zophar, the professor, uncrosses his legs and carefully places his pipe in the pocket of his tweed jacket. He agrees in some sense with Bildad, but he finds the TV preacher’s way of putting the problem to be intellectually unsophisticated. Zophar places his hand under his chin and theorizes that this matter is very complex and that “there are many sides to wisdom.” The real problem here is that Job doesn’t understand the theological premise that he is a sinner. He lectures Job on the doctrine of evil, but he is pretty sure that Job isn’t smart enough to get it. “A stupid man will be wise,” he scoffs, “when a cow gives birth to a zebra.” He quotes a lot of books to Job that prove that sin is an ontological problem, and even offers to allow Job to read his recent paper on the subject. But for all his degrees, Zophar still doesn’t know what we know: that Job’s situation isn’t a result of his sin..

So, Job argues with his friends, sometimes thundering at them, sometimes using sarcasm. “Yes, you are the voice of the people,” he says to Zophar. “When you die, wisdom will die with you.” Job admits that he often thought the same thoughts and believed the same things as his friends. But now his belief system is broken lying there on a hospital bed with nothing to his name and no one who really cares.

The last, lengthy scene of the play is a long one, with Job alone in his room crying out a long soliloquy of questioning to God, who stands off stage. He presents his case to God because he is desperate to know. “I am ready to risk my life,” he howls, “So what if God kills me? I am going to state my case to him. It many even be that my boldness saves me.”

As Job thunders away at God, a thought begins to dawn on the audience. What separates Job from his friends is this: despite all that has happened, Job still loves God. Unlike his theologizing friends, Job is willing to give up his long-held theological assumptions. But he is not willing to give up his God. As Job goes on, everything fades into the background: his friends have departed, the prosecutor has gone on to other cases. A young hospital chaplain named Elihu steps briefly into the room, but his answers are no different than the others and he is quickly dismissed. In the end, Job only wants to hear from God.

And then, almost as if on cue, God himself steps on to the stage—a voice speaking out of a whirlwind. God answers Job in a way that first seems harsh to the audience: “Where were you when I planned the earth?” God thunders at Job for page after page of the script. Job listens, humbled, but God’s speech to Job is not designed to cow him and make him feel small. Rather, what God is doing is deconstructing what Job and, indeed what everyone in the audience, believes about the world. Before his tragic story, Job believed, as his friends believe, that the world is essentially fair, that people receive what they deserve, that righteous is a panacea against evil, that categories of right and wrong are clear cut, that human ideas of justice are always equal to God’s. But God reveals another way to Job—the way the world really is.

As if to illustrate this, two hideous creatures float across the stage: the behemoth and the leviathan, two fearsome creatures who represent the sea monsters of chaos—the symbols of ultimate disorder in the ancient world. These were the monsters of evil that everyone feared and wanted destroyed, but God presents them before Job and says, “See, I created these just like I created you. Evil exists, but I will have it under control.

This realization finally drives Job to his knees. With all the stock answers swept away with the whirlwind, Job begins to see things differently. He knows that his hope is not found in answers, but in God himself. And so Job utters the only response he can offer, “I have heard of you with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust.” And yet, for Job, being dust does not mean being reduced to nothing. He had instead become what he truly is, a human being, a creature made of dust, living before God in the real world—a world where evil and suffering exists and where life isn’t always fair. And yet, Job knows, God is with him. And that’s enough.

The last scene of the play shows Job in a very different place—almost a new world. Job’s friends are chastised by God for their bad theology, but they are forgiven because Job prays for them. Job’s fortunes are restored, but things are different somehow. In the beginning of the story, Job’s sons are featured as the ones who hold the feasts and invite their sisters along. At the end it is the new daughters who take center stage—the most beautiful women in the world, says the narrator. Their names are Dove, Cinnamon, and Eye Shadow, and they receive the inheritance from their father. The audience whispers approval. Could it be that the playwright is making a statement that Job has learned to surrender to the male compulsion to control and has instead given himself over to searching for beauty rather than answers?

The curtain closes with Job showing a look of calm assurance on his face. Job has learned to trust the God he loves and love the God he trusts. He has learned to see who he is before God, and even though he never fully understands what has happened to him, he is still, and always, a man of faith.

We leave this play not fully satisfied with it. It doesn’t wrap up by telling us everything in a great denoument, explaining everything in the last ten minutes like we’re used to in the movies. While Job may be the greatest theodicy text in the Bible, it is really not about that. Job doesn’t explain the problem of why innocent people suffer, and we must not take the bet between God and Satan as a paradigm for how bad things happen to us. The rest of Scripture reveals that God doesn’t actually work this way, making bets with Satan over our lives. Job is really a parody of that theological worldview. We also know that we are not fully blameless like Job, but nor are we as godless as Job’s friends would have us be.

No, the point of the story is that we sometimes find ourselves in Job’s place—in the midst of suffering, the hospital room, the doorway of the house talking to a policeman, the graveside of a loved one. We want to cry out and call for justice—our sense of justice. We want the world to work according to our rules, and when it doesn’t, then what are we to do?

The answer for many people is to abandon God or, perhaps even worse, rationalize God. Job’s friends had a God they could predict and control, a God who worked according to their rules. A God who is capricious, vindictive, and vengeful. A God who has no grace. Many people in Job’s situation abandon their faith. They cannot believe in a God who acts like the God of Job’s friends.

But the story tells us that Job doesn’t believe in that God, either. Job’s answer to God is a faith that doesn’t always get it. As Tom Long puts it, “We do not get to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘OK God, when I get this problem of suffering worked out in my mind, I’ll step over the line toward you.’ Or, ‘OK God, when you begin to honor my sense of justice, then I will trust you.’ No, we have to step over the line and fall on our knees in prayer and faith. Only in the light of our trust in God is there anything to see. The promise of the Book of Job is that there is much indeed to see in that light, that awe in the presence of God is, indeed, the beginning of wisdom.”

For Job, the only answer to suffering is faith—a steady trust in the midst of all the questions. How about for us? What does this story say to you? 

Source:

Long, Thomas G. What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith. Eerdman's, 2012. Dr. Long's image of Job as a play inspired this message. 

Shaking the Foundations: An Introduction to Theodicy

Psalm 13

The morning of Saturday, November 1, 1755 dawned as another beautiful day in the seaside town of Lisbon, Portugal. It was All Saints Day, and most of the population was in church that morning, reflecting the fact that Lisbon was one of Europe’s most religious countries in the 18^th century. Of its 250,000 residents, at least 10% were priests or nuns. The church of the city’s most prominent saint, Saint Vincent, was packed to capacity, as were the other basilicas and places of worship in a city so devout that penitents were often seen in its streets whipping themselves as atonement for their sins.

At 9:30 that morning, just sixty miles out in the North Atlantic, a massive earthquake heaved up the ocean floor and sent tremors rippling toward the unsuspecting worshippers. A 9:40, the first tremors hit the city and the walls of Saint Vincent’s began to shake violently. The bell towers swayed, sending the bells clanging, candles fell to the floor, shards from stained glass windows showered the congregation. Terrified priests fled the altar while some parishioners stayed in their seats to pray as the church fell down around them, and on them. Others fled into the streets, only to experience the next wave of tremors, which some seismologists estimate at 8.5 to 9.0 on the Richter scale, that destroyed the most of the rest of the city. Amidst the rubble, fires started to rage, most likely sparked by the fallen candles in the many churches.

Panicked by the earthquake and the fires, people began to flee toward the Targus River and the harbor, which seemed like the only safe place to go. When they got there, thousands waited on the docks hoping to board ships that would take them away from the burning city. Suddenly and mysteriously, all the water in the harbor was sucked out to sea, dragging the ships with it and revealing old shipwrecks on the now waterless harbor floor. Stunned by this development, the people then looked up only to see a massive wall of water coming toward them. Before they could even run, the wall of water obliterated those standing on the shore and killed thousands more in the resulting inland surge.

Estimates are that up to 60,000 people died that morning. Bodies floated in the harbor for weeks. This event was the 18^th century’s version of the Holocaust, Nagasaki, and September 11—an event that literally and figuratively shocked the world in more ways than one.

Certainly, there had been other disasters before this one. The Black Plague had ravaged Europe for two centuries—a vicious epidemic that wiped out a third of the population, taking people from health to death in a matter of hours. But Lisbon was different somehow. As Professor Tom Long puts it, Lisbon “was a catastrophe that not only destroyed a city but also symbolized the destruction of a worldview.”

Prior to Lisbon, almost everyone in Christian Europe believed that every disaster—earthquakes, famines, floods, epidemics, accidents—came directly from the hand of God. God was the first cause of every human ill, which God used as punishment for some sin. For years before the earthquake, religious prophets had predicted that Lisbon was ripe for some kind of divine judgment. It had, after all, been the headquarters of the Inquisition and the place where many so-called heretics received their sentences to burn at the stake or lose their heads. The question of who was responsible for human suffering was never in doubt—it was always God. Doctors would prescribe acts of penitence along with leeches to try and cure a person’s disease. Can you imagine going to the doctor today and having him say, “I’m writing you a prescription, but you also need to say your prayers of confession since God is punishing you for some sin?” That’s how it was in the medieval period. Actually, our insurance companies maintain the medieval worldview, where every disaster is “an act of God.”

But the Lisbon disaster happened in the midst of a world undergoing a major cultural shift. This was the time of the Enlightenment, the period of history when science and reason were gaining traction. For the first time, human cells could be seen under the microscope, telescopes observed the movements of planets, the mercury thermometer was invented, Benjamin Franklin experimented with electricity. The early scientists were known as “natural philosophers” and what they discovered caused a radical shift in thought—that the world seemed to operate on its own steam. Rather than waiting on God to put the sun in the sky every day, the universe and nature seemed to be self-regulating according to a set of universal natural laws—like gravity, for instance, or the orbit of the planets or the behavior of human cells. Isaac Newton, who was one of the early pioneers in science, was a Christian who believed that God was the creator, the “first cause” of all things, but that God designed the universe to run according to these natural laws. For the first time in history, people began to believe that disasters like Lisbon were caused not by God’s arbitrary wrath, but by the natural shifting of tectonic plates—a law God set at the creation of the world.

We might call advancements of the Enlightenment the “disenchantment of the world.”

An enchanted world is one in which God is in everything—from a baby’s smile to the rain falling. A disenchanted world is one where everything happens according to natural law—a baby’s smile means he has gas and rain falls because of meteorological constants in the atmosphere.

Interestingly, we in the 21^st century have learned to live in both of those worlds. We pray for rain or snow, and when it happens we say, “God has blessed us with rain.” At the same time, we will also watch the Weather Channel and know the scientific reason that clouds form and move and we’ll track the radar to our particular location. We know that certain conditions are necessary for rain to form. The result of this way of thinking is that we can now choose to see the world and God as two separate realities—a worldview we call theism—or we can choose to see the natural world without God—a worldview we call atheism.

It’s this choice that confronts us whenever we encounter disaster either in the news or in our personal lives. It seems like every time we open the newspaper or turn on the TV there is another Lisbon happening: an earthquake, a flood, a tsunami, a deranged man walking into a school and shooting innocent children. We might receive that unexpected call about the death of a loved one, that diagnosis of a devastating illness. In some sense we know the scientific causes of earthquakes and floods, even the cause of mental illness that leads to heinous acts. But when these things happen we tend to first cry out to God. Why? Why did this happen, God? Why didn’t you stop it? Why were my prayers unanswered? Where were you, God?

These are not new questions, of course. The psalmist in today’s text cries out to God in anguish: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long?” Psalm 22 is even more poignant – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Scriptures are full of such laments and crying out to God for answers.

 To ask these questions, of course, means that we still believe in God—a God who is good and who is all-powerful. But we ask, if that’s the case, then why is there innocent suffering?

Nearly fifty years before Lisbon, the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz coined the term “theodicy” to describe the problem of evil and suffering and the presence of a good and powerful God. The word is a mash-up of two Greek works: theo (God) and dike (judgment). In a world where terrible tragedies happen and where people suffer in ways that are out of proportion to any sense of deserving, Leibniz believed that God had some explaining to do. The ways of God need to be justified and understood. God needed a good defense, and theodicy was the mean of coming up with one.

Many others, of course, have taken a completely different tack. Rather than wrestling with the question of theodicy, many have taken the option of atheism—believing that there can be no God in a world that is full of suffering. The Scottish philosopher David Hume, who was around when Lisbon happened, posited a theory that is still used today by many who have examined the problem of evil and suffering and have determined as a result that there is no God. His argument goes like this:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

Indeed, we might parse this argument out into four truth claims that, taken together, have often left philosophers and theologians with the equivalent of an impossible chess match, where moving any piece leads to a stalemate:

1. There is a God
2. God is all-powerful.
3. God is good and loving.
4. There is innocent suffering.

Hume argued, for example, that claims 2-4 are incongruent, therefore number 1 must be false. A whole parade of atheists have followed him, all the way up to Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens in our own time (Hitchens wrote “God is Not Great”—a title that fits Humes’ logical problem, while Dawkins wrote the bestseller, “The God Delusion.”)

Believers like us certainly object, but parsing out the problem is still not easy. Many have tried to solve the theodicy problem by taking out one of the truth claims. Rabbi Harold Kushner, for example, wrote the mega-bestselling book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People in 1981, which brought the theodicy problem to the popular imagination. Kushner wrote the book in response to the death of his son. Kushner could not believe, as many of us do not believe, that God would visit such suffering on anyone, so the solution he found was that while God is loving and just, God is simply not powerful enough to banish all evil and suffering. Rather, there is another force called Fate that does these things to us—this is a view that is difficult to defend biblically and theologically.

Indeed, the idea of “good” and “bad” people creates its own set of issues. Some people would eliminate claim #4-that there is such a thing as innocent suffering. We’re all sinners, and we all got it coming. But it’s hard to imagine a roomful of kindergartners building up enough sinfulness to deserve a horrific death at the hands of a madman and see that as the punishing hand of God. Such a God would be capricious and loathsome—certainly not the God we see revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. Take out piece number 4 and you might as well take out number 3 as well!

No, somehow all of these claims are true even if they are in tension with one another. How do we reconcile them? More importantly, how do we deal with the specter of tragedy in our world and in our lives and do so with faith? These are the questions that we want to look at in this series, but we do so knowing that there’s no magic five-point plan, no easy explanation that we can use as a platitude. Neither are we trying to mount a legal defense for God against the atheists. What we want to do in this series is to simply offer you some new ways of thinking about and framing the questions in a way that holds true to our understanding of Scripture and our understanding of God.

I wanted to do this series because I know that many of us need to talk about these questions—indeed, I have thought about them a long time myself. Ever since my mom died, when I was just 14, I have thought about these questions. She got cancer, and we prayed. I was taught that if you prayed, God would answer your prayer. I prayed with confidence that she would be healed. She wasn’t, and she died at home on a day when my sisters and I were at school. It was a shock, a surprise. Why, God, did she not get better? Did I not have enough faith? I remember hearing people trying to do theodicy at the funeral home. “It was God’s will,” said one person. What kind of God wills the death of a woman as devout as my mom? “God needed her in heaven,” said another. You mean the all-powerful God can’t make his own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into hearts for his lunch? “She’s in a better place,” said someone else. Better than home with us, better than being with the kids she adopted and loved with her whole heart? “Everything happens for a reason,” said a few of the visitors standing around the casket. What possible reason could there be for her to lie in agonizing pain and die, leaving her beloved children without a mother?

I never found those answers satisfying, and when I grew up and went to seminary, I realized that many of them were simply distorted caricatures of the way God works and the way he deals with evil and suffering. While we don’t know all the answers, I do believe that we can begin to move toward a better and more helpful way of framing the problem of theodicy—a way that moves past the platitudes and on to a more hopeful view of God and his purposes.

Next week we will look at what is perhaps the most recognized theodicy text in the Bible, the story of Job. Job’s friends muse about his suffering and their wrong answers can help us frame where a lot of theology goes wrong when it comes to theodicy.

Then we’ll look at another text that provides an alternative way of understanding the problem: Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds. There is much here that can teach us about the presence of God and the presence of evil in the world.

We’ll then turn to the cross as God’s ultimate answer to the problem of evil—the paradoxical understanding of Christian faith in a God who suffers and dies. What does that mean for our own suffering?

Of course, we also believe that Jesus rose from the dead. In week 5 we’ll look at what that means for suffering and evil in the present and how we can begin to live with a different imagination.

Lastly, we’ll talk about how we walk in faith in the midst of suffering. In the end, we can’t fully think our way through it. We have to walk in it and through it.

So, I want to encourage you to dig in here over the next six weeks. We’re offering several classes that will provide an opportunity to learn and discuss these big questions. I invite you to join one of them, to pick up one of the books that we’re using, to start diving into the daily devotional. But most importantly, I invite you to take a journey into the pain you may be feeling in your own life because of tragedy and loss. I don’t believe God causes our pain, but I do believe that God meets us there, and it is there that we can begin walk with him, even when we don’t know all the answers.

This week will no doubt bring us another Lisbon. What shall we say when we experience it? Let’s talk about it together.

 Source:

Long, Thomas G. What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering and the Crisis of Faith. Eerdman's: 2011. (This book was tremendously helpful in framing this introduction to the series. I highly recommend it to anyone, especially pastors, who want to go deeper into understanding theodicy. 

 

 

 

 

 

New Sermon Series Begins January 6

What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Presence of God

Tsunamis, earthquakes, famines, accidents, senseless killings, diseases, wars--these and other devastating forces lead Christians to ask painful questions. Is God all-powerful? Is God good? How can God allow so much innocent human suffering? Does God cause such suffering? These questions are part of what many theologians called the problem of "theodicy"--a mash-up of two Greek words: "theo-" (God) and "dike" (judgment), and Christians throughout history have wrestled with this problem every time tragedy strikes.

This sermon series by TLUMC Pastors Bob Kaylor and Joe Iovino will take us deep into the questions, using Scripture and the witness of Christians across history to help us wrestle with evil, suffering, and the presence of God. We will look at the key texts, including the greatest theodicy text in the Bible--the Book of Job--and many others that take us into the heart of this great mystery. While there are no easy answers, we can begin to learn how to think about suffering in ways that are more redemptive than devastating, keeping in mind God's ultimate statement about suffering in the form of the cross.

Join us beginning January 6 as we wrestle with this important topic that touches every one of our lives: 

January 6 - Shaking the Foundations: And Introduction to Theodicy (Psalm 13)

January 13 - Searching for Answers: Job and His Friends (Job 2:11-13)

January 20 - An Enemy Has Done This: The Power of God and the Presence of Evil (Matthew 13:24-30)

January 27 - The Victory of God: Defeating Evil Through The Cross (Colossians 2:6-15)

February 3 - Imagine There's No Evil: The Promise of a New Creation (Revelation 21:1-8)

February 10 - Solvitur Ambulando: Faith-Walking in the Midst of Pain (Mark 9:14-29)

Daily Devotions leading up to each week's sermon can be accessed here. 

 

Recommended Reading:

Long, Thomas G. What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith. Eerdman's, 2012. 

Seamands, Stephen A. Wounds That Heal: Bringing Our Hurts to the Cross. IVP Books, 2003. 

Wright, N.T. Evil and the Justice of God. IVP Books, 2006. 

Check out adult education classes offered at TLUMC using each of these books here. 

 

The Chief Follower

From the current issue of Homiletics, my Senior Writer's Block column on being a follower before being a leader: 

When I came to my current church in 2010, I remember that we had a long discussion about what my official title should be. Since "your eminence" was clearly a bit pretentious and requires a large hat, we looked at some of the other options. I have a marvelous staff and a really fantastic associate pastor, but not the minions of staff that seem to warrant the title "senior pastor." Indeed, I remember being an associate myself and having people say, only half jokingly, "Well, if he's the senior pastor, you must be the junior pastor!"

I know, hilarious, right?

I heard the term "lead pastor" thrown around in some contemporary church circles. Seniority, after all, is a pretty lousy way to determine who's the leader, as if longevity trumps competence. A "lead pastor," by contrast, is simply playing a role on the team as the one for whom the buck stops. Every team needs a leader, we've been taught, and the church is no exception. Just check out the libraries of books published every year on church leadership, and it's pretty clear that we believe that being a leader is a very good and necessary thing. Indeed, if you're not a leader, then there's probably something wrong with you. My pre-ministry life was spent as an Army infantry officer, where your title is worn on your collar and everyone knows his place in the chain of command. I'm down with the whole leadership thing. "Lead pastor" sounded about right.

But two years into it, I'm questioning that choice of title. As I was digging into the Scriptures in preparation for a new process for making disciples that we instituted this fall, I began to realize that for all the energy we put into being "lead" pastors, shepherds, seniors, associates, bishops and whatever else we can be called, for all the reams of paper and megabytes of cyberspace devoted to developing leaders, the truth is that there's actually very little ink spilled in Scripture about leadership. Maybe that's because, as Len Sweet puts it in his marvelous book, I Am a Follower, "Jesus wasn't looking for leaders at all. Jesus was looking for followers." Sweet, in fact, goes on to say that the greatest tragedy in the church in the last 50 years is that we've changed Paul's words, "Follow me as I follow Christ" to "Follow me as I lead for Christ" (paraphrasing 1 Corinthians 11:1). Biblically speaking, leadership is really overrated.

Jesus wasn't running a leadership academy, despite a plethora of books that claim so. Everything Jesus did was really all about developing followers who would create more followers -- not followers of us, but followers of Jesus. In this particular organization called the church, the Scriptures tell us, Jesus is the sole and undisputed leader, shepherd and Lord. Those who would be leaders in his church are first and foremost called to be his followers.

So I wonder: What would happen if all us lead/senior/potentate pastors decided to change our titles to "chief follower" (oxymoron intended) and spent the bulk of our time not trying to lead others, but really trying to follow Jesus ourselves? What if we chose not to read another book on leadership this year and instead focused our whole attention on diving deep into the Scriptures to see what it looks like to be a devoted follower of Jesus who makes other devoted followers, not because we have a title or a job description, but because that's what committed and convinced followers of Jesus do naturally? What if you stopped trying to develop a leadership culture in your church and, instead, put all your emphasis on a followership culture, with everyone devoting themselves full time to following Jesus?

My guess is that it would be a radical shift. Followers tend to make different decisions than leaders do, and they tend to listen a lot more than speak. Leadership hasn't led us out of decline in the North American churches. Only a return to following Jesus has a chance to do so.

Chief follower. What would that look like on your business card?

 

A Christmas Life: The Real Saint Nicholas (A Sermon for Christmas Eve)

Titus 2:11-14

The little seaside town of Demre, in Turkey, isn’t exactly the North Pole. It rarely snows there. Palm trees and orange groves dot the landscape. You won’t hear sleigh bells here, just the sound of the Muslim call to prayer from the minarets of the town mosques. No reindeer live here, and elves are extremely rare. NORAD isn’t paying much attention to Demre tonight, and most folks wrapping presents to put under the tree tonight won’t give it a thought, either. In fact, virtually no one living in Demre celebrates Christmas, and yet this little town is the second most important town in the world next to Bethlehem when it comes to Christmas

See, Demre is the hometown of the original Saint Nicholas, who was born near there sometime in the late third century AD. There’s an old 8^th century Church of St. Nicholas there that once housed the saint’s bones, and even though it is only active as a church one day a year (St. Nicholas Day, December 6), tourists come from around the world to see the birthplace of the one most of them know as Santa Claus.

Of course, the town of Demre cashes in on these interested tourists. You can buy Santa Claus-themed merchandise here that’s as plentiful as any you’d find in, say, Santa Claus, Indiana—everything from key chains, to icons, to Santa earrings.

If you traveled to Demre between 1981 and 2000, you would have seen a statue of Saint Nicholas dressed as Father Christmas—a figure in a hooded robe carrying a sack of toys and surrounded by children. In 2000, Russian sculptor Gregory Pototsky presented Demre with a bronze statue of an Eastern Orthodox Saint Nicholas, dressed in the vestments of a Christian bishop and standing atop a globe. The statue stood prominently right in the middle of the town square, which was unusual for a country that is nearly 100% Muslim.

Five years later, however, the town decided to remove the gift and put in its place a different Saint Nick: a brightly colored, American-style Santa Claus, with a large sack of goodies over his shoulder and a large bell in his right hand, making him look like an overly zealous Salvation Army ringer. The plaster of Paris statue was designed to appeal to international tourists by making Santa more recognizable—more like the image of Santa developed by Coca Cola in the early 20^th century—a Santa that’s less a religious figure and more the patron saint of consumerism.

So, which one of these is the real Saint Nicholas? What picture emerges when we cut through all the legend and commercialism? If Demre is confused, then we are certainly no less so. Tonight, millions of people will recite famous Clement Moore poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” (aka The Night Before Christmas) as a bedtime story for anxious children all tucked in their beds, with visions of X-boxes and iPods dancing in their heads. Well, I want to tell you a different story tonight as we gather here in a church decorated to welcome the Christ child—a story of a man whose whole life was focused on following the one born in a manger.

The story begins around the year 260AD in the little village of Patara, just a few miles from the town of Demre (which was called Myra at the time). The apostle Paul had passed through Myra 200 years before as a prisoner on his way to Rome  and he very likely preached there. A Christian church was planted in Myra sometime after Paul’s visit, and was still in place when Nicholas was born.

Nicholas’ parents were Christians, and as a child he heard the stories of the Bible—he sang the Psalms in worship and heard the good news about Jesus—the stories of his birth in Bethlehem, his teaching and healing, his death on a cross and his resurrection from the dead. The church would have met in a large home and not a separate building, and Nicholas would have heard the Scriptures read by the elders and shared in holy communion there each week. Sometimes the church would meet in the town graveyard to remind themselves of the promise of Easter and the resurrection.

This is not church as we experience it tonight, however. Being a Christian in Nicholas’ day would have been a dangerous proposition. Just a few years before he was born, several members of the church in Myra were put to death by Roman authorities for refusing to make sacrifices to the Roman gods. Nicholas’ family would have reminded him of this danger, but they would also remind him that suffering persecution was, as Peter put it, a chance to “participate in the sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 4:13).

Nicholas’ name in Greek meant “victory for the people,” and from the very beginning he seemed to look and act like a saint. He had a strong moral compass and avoided all the usual temptations of young people in Roman society—temptations of money, sex, and grabbing for political power. According to his 8^th century biographer, Michael the Archimandrite, “He never strayed far from the church and, like a nest to a dove the church was to him a refreshment and a comfort. His mind was illuminated by the teachings, and day by day he grew towards a pure and gentle compassion.”

When Nicholas was a teenager, tragedy struck when both his parents died in an epidemic of plague that swept through the region of Lycia in the mid-third century. Nicholas was left alone, but not without help. His parents had apparently been wealthy, probably merchants who plied their trade through the ships coming in and out of the port of Myra. So they left Nicholas with a large inheritance of money to do with as he pleased. Can you imagine being a teenager with that kind of cash?

Well, rather than take the usual route of squandering the money, Nicholas relied on the faith he had received and, according to Michael, “he asked God that he might dispose of his life and his assets in accordance with [God’s] will. He would have remembered the words of Jesus about wealth—about giving to those in need and holding money loosely. He would have certainly recalled Jesus words to a rich young man who was likely in Nicholas’ very situation: “Go sell your possessions and give to the poor,” Jesus had said to the rich man, “and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me” (Matthew 19:21).

It was customary in Roman society for people to take care of their own families, but not to worry about anyone else. The early Christians shocked Roman sensibilities when they insisted on caring for anyone in need—including societal outcasts like prisoners, widows, and orphans. Nicholas took Jesus’ call seriously, which led him to the first and most famous act of his life.

In Patara there was a once-wealthy man who had lost everything. People didn’t have savings accounts or retirement plans, so a lost ship of merchandise or a bad crop could completely ruin a small family. The man had three daughters, and he became so desperate that he resolved to sell each of them one by one into slavery, which, at the time, often meant sex slavery. The problem was that no one would marry these girls because of their poverty and the father’s inability to provide a dowry, so selling the daughters was the only option left—a common practice in the Roman world.

Nicholas heard of the family’s plight. One night, he took some of the gold his parents had left him, tied it in a small sack, and threw it through the open window of the family’s home. Some accounts say he actually threw the sack down the chimney and the gold landed in the girls’ stockings, which were hung by the fire to dry, though those are likely later additions. Michael describes what happened next:

“When daylight came, the man got up from bed and found in the middle of the house a pile of money. He could not hold back his tears…He gave thanks to God but also tried to understand the meaning of this good fortune. Deciding to accept the gift as if it had been given by God, the father of the girls took the serendipitously found gold and noticed that the sum corresponded to the amount of money needed for a dowry. Without delay, he adorned the bridal chamber of his oldest daughter. And so his life once again became good, full of joy and peace of mind, thanks to the intervention of the holy Nicholas who had created a way for his daughter to marry.”

Seeing what an effect the gift had had on the family, Nicholas returned two more nights and tossed two more anonymous bags of gold through the open window for the other two daughters. The third time, the father of the girls was waiting in the dark to see who was committing these acts of lavish generosity. When the third bag of gold hit the floor, the man ran outside and found Nicholas and said to him, “If it were not for your goodness, which was stirred up by our Lord Jesus Christ, I have long since consigned my life to ruin and shame.” Nicholas swore the man to secrecy about what he had done, and yet, who could not tell this story eventually?

It’s difficult to express the uniqueness of this act in Nicholas’ time. In those days, in a culture of patronage, anonymous giving simply was not done. Usually, if a wealthy benefactor helped someone, the receiver would be obligated for life (kind of like the Godfather – someday you will do a service for me…). What Nicholas did was completely novel and it had a tremendous impact on the Christian communities who first heard the story. It became the story that identified Nicholas and made him one of the most popular saints in Christian history.

Notice that there’s nothing really magical about this story—no reindeer, no toys, no taking into account who is naughty or nice. It’s simply an act of sacrificial kindness toward someone in need—quite a different story than the one we celebrate in our Christmas specials and shopping malls. Santa Claus, as we know him, is the product of retailers who use him to sell their wares to those who can afford to stack presents under the tree that most of us don’t really need. The real Saint Nicholas was the product of a relationship with Christ, who gave everything away for those who had nothing. No one can do what the magical Santa does. Everyone can do what Nicholas did.

The story doesn’t stop there, however. Nicholas went on to participate in some of the most important events in Christian history. While Nicholas was still a young man, a great persecution of Christians took place under the Roman emperor Diocletian, who needed a scapegoat for the Empire’s precarious economic situation. Nicholas may have been studying for the priesthood when a crisis occurred there in Myra—every bishop (or overseer) of the church there had been imprisoned or killed, one after the other. One night in the year 295, the senior bishops of the area gathered to pray through the night for God to lead them to the person they could ordain as the next bishop of Myra. One of the bishops received a vision, where God told him to go with the others to the house of God and wait there for the first person to walk through the door in the morning. His name will be Nicholas.

Sure enough, Nicholas was the first to cross the threshold of the church that morning. Nicholas became one of the youngest bishops ever in the church—about the same age as Jesus when he started his public ministry. The bishop was both a man of the people and a man of God, executing the ministries of the church in the example of Christ. Nicholas fit the bill perfectly, and while being ordained a bishop was a huge honor for someone so young, it would not be easy.

No sooner had Nicholas been ordained as bishop than he was arrested on religious charges, imprisoned without trial, and was beaten and tortured. A common torture dealt to Christian prisoners was to blind their right eyes and cut the sinews of their left ankles. Nicholas born the scars of holding to his faith, even though he escaped becoming a martyr. For the majority of his tenure as Bishop of Myra, Christians were a hated minority, a target for angry mobs and the whims of the emperor. Still, Nicholas was steadfast in his ministry with the people, despite the scars he carried in his own body.

When the emperor Constantine took over in the early 4^th century, Christianity went almost overnight from being a persecuted minority to the religion of the empire. He called together a great council to standardize the church’s doctrines and Nicholas was part of the 300 or so bishops who gathered for the discussion and debate. It must have been a sight—a gathering of old bishops, many of them missing eyes and limping, some missing limbs—looking more like a gathering of pirates than a collection of religious leaders. The debates were intense, the major question being whether Jesus was actually God in the flesh, the same substance as God, or only a being “like” God. Nicholas believed what John’s Gospel said about Jesus, that Jesus, the Word was with God and was God—the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us.

He argued fiercely for this biblical position and, according to some sources, even slapped the heretic bishop Arius across the face in a fit of righteous rage. Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice! He apologized, of course, but his zeal for Christ was always evident.

The stories of Nicholas’ Christian deeds of justice and compassion are myriad. When back in Myra, he heard of some men who were falsely accused of a crime and were about to be beheaded. He advocated on their behalf and, acting as their advocate, got them acquitted because of his reputation as an honest bishop. For this reason, the saint who would be Santa Claus became the patron saint of prisoners.  In another instance, Nicholas went to the emperor to plead the case of his people who were under an undue burden of taxes, and got them lowered. There are lots of stories like this concerning Nicholas’ passion for his people. Every one of them reveals that he lived up to his name, “victory for the people.”

When Nicholas died somewhere in the 330s, he was buried in Myra, but relic seekers managed to take his bones to various places around the world, meaning only parts of Santa Claus actually made it all over the world! Today, most of his remains rest in Bari, Italy, where anthropologists recently constructed what his face might have looked like—not a bit like our Santa Claus, but the same kind of face as the people he served.

There are lots of stories about Saint Nicholas, some of which are true, most of which are the fanciful distortions of legend. Our version of Santa Claus is actually a Scandinavian legend loosely based on the real Saint Nicholas, but many generations removed from the real thing. I don’t know about you, but I find the real story to be the most compelling—the story of a Christmas life, one lived not just once a year, but all the time. A life that is willing to sacrifice, to suffer, to give oneself fully to the work of Christ. It’s a giving life more than a receiving life. It’s the kind of life that Jesus himself would live and invites us to follow him in living ourselves.

Paul’s letter to Titus describes that kind of Christmas life. “For the grace of God has appeared,” says Paul. The Word of God became flesh in the form of a baby in a manger, the one who came to save us all. This grace, this gift of God is about “training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and godly.” We don’t merely celebrate the gift of God at Christmas. Like Nicholas, we go out and make that gift a reality. We renounce dependence on the collection of stuff, the indulgence of ourselves and, instead, live lives that are worthy of Christ. Paul goes on to say that Christ will return again—a second Advent—and when he returns, what will he find us doing? Will we be sitting on piles of presents, or will we be silently and secretly changing the lives of people who are in desperate need?

Indeed, says Paul, that’s what the gift of Jesus is all about. “He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.” We are not simply to “be good for goodness sake,” but for the sake of Christ, whose goodness changes the world.

Zealous for good deeds! You want the spirit of Christmas? That’s it. It’s not about us. Christmas is not your birthday. It’s about being zealous to do what Christ has done—not just during the holiday season, but every day. Can we retrain ourselves to move away from consumption and toward generosity? Can we sacrifice a few more toys so that someone who is desperate can survive? Can we stand up for those who are broken, imprisoned, poor, and marginalized? Can we focus on “victory for the people” over poverty, sin, and death? Rather than teaching your kids to be good because Santa is coming or there’s some “elf on the shelf” watching their every move (a holiday version of extortion? But I digress…), teach them the way of Jesus and the example of the real St. Nicholas—to be good for the sake of Christ. That’s a real Christmas life, my friends. Anything else is just a caricature.

What if we made it a goal in the coming year to represent this Saint Nicholas with our giving to Christ? What if, instead of entering the fray at the mall, we all decided to try and help lift one family out of poverty in 2013? What if instead of spending all our time visiting relatives we chose instead to visit someone in prison, or spent time talking to that homeless man on the street? I’m guessing that Christmas would start to feel a lot different—and maybe even honor the Christ child more than any sale or full stocking ever could.

In 2008, the town of Myra replaced the Coca Cola Santa with yet another statue—this one of a Saint Nicholas with Turkish features—a trimmed beard, a patterned jacket, a round Seljuk styled cap or boerk, and he carries on his shoulders not a sack of goodies, but a young child—children were the beneficiaries of many of his acts of kindness. Behind him appears a slightly older boy dressed in a simple tunic. He looks like a common man—someone just like us, someone who could be fully devoted to Christ. We can do extraordinary things if we devote our lives to the manger born King. Tonight we just don’t celebrate a holiday, we remember the invitation of Christ, who wants to be born in us—to change us so that we can join him in changing the world for the sake of his kingdom. Will you follow him?

Tonight as you get ready for bed, I hope you will remember the story of this Saint Nicholas—the story of one who gave his life completely to Christ. And then, tomorrow, may you begin living his style of Christmas life every day!

Source:

English, Adam. The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus: The True Life and Trials of Nicholas of Myra. Baylor University Press, 2012. (BTW, I highly recommend this book!) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scandalous Love

Hosea 1:2-10

It must have been frontpage news at the supermarket checkout counters in Israel, right next to the hummus and the Tic-Tacs: “Local Prophet Marries Prostitute” screamed the headline of the Israel Inquirer. “Holy Man Hosea Hooks Up with Hooker” winked the Samarian Post. You can just imagine the pictures—the paparazzi following Hosea around, the seductive poses of his wife Gomer there in the centerfold. If the Israelites had had Google, Hosea and Gomer would have been the number one search term in about 750BC, especially given that in 2012 the number one Google search term was Whitney Houston dying in a bathtub.

Americans love a good scandal. Whether it’s a government official getting caught in an affair or celebrities hooking up in secret, we want to see the pictures. Somehow it makes us seem more self-righteous, which may be why most people feign disgust at the tabloids but then secretly buy them. Tabloid sales are increasing while newspaper readership is decreasing. The more salacious the news, the better it sells.

We might look at the book of the prophet Hosea as a kind of tabloid story in the midst of the grand narrative of the Bible—like a National Enquirer tucked into the middle of the New York Times. I mean, look at how the story starts: “Go take for yourself a wife of whoredom,” God tells Hosea, “and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord” (v. 2). The fact that God commands this of Hosea, a faithful prophet, makes it even more intriguing. Inquiring minds want to know why.

Read deeper into the Scriptures, however, and you’ll see that God is making the prophets do this sort of thing all the time. Isaiah walked around Jerusalem barefoot for three years as a sign of God’s judgment on Israel’s enemies. Jeremiah walked around with an oxen’s yoke on his next as a sign that Judah would be under the yoke of Babylon. Think of these as a kind of political theater designed as a public display that would get people thinking about the symbolism. Hosea’s task, however, may have been the most personally difficult of all the prophetic tasks—to intentionally go out and marry a woman who we knows will leave him for liaisons with a host of other men.

Why does God make Hosea do this tabloid-worthy task? We get a clue here in the second verse of chapter one: “The land commits great whoredom (NIV says “adultery”) by forsaking the Lord.” One of the most common biblical metaphors for the relationship between God and Israel is that of a marriage: God as the loving husband and Israel as his bride. But Israel has been an unfaithful spouse, forsaking God and running after the gods of wood and stone that their pagan neighbors worshipped. Rather than relying on God’s provision and love, they sought the comfort and pleasures of Canaanite idolatry, which in the ancient world often involved sexual promiscuity. The Israelites thus broke the covenant that God made with them at Sinai—a covenant where they pledged fidelity by having or making other gods, particularly gods made in their own image.

Remember that God had made this covenant with Israel has his chosen people—a people who would be a light to the rest of the world by being holy and set apart; a people faithful to one God and to each other. Israel’s sin broke that covenant, much like infidelity breaks the marriage covenant between husband and wife. Hosea’s marriage would be an acted parable of how far the relationship had deteriorated.

So Hosea marries Gomer and, in the midst of this scandalous relationship, they have three children whom God tells Hosea to name. The first is Jezreel—Jezreel was the fruitful plain in the northern hill country, and the site of many of Israel’s battles. It was also the route of enemy of invasion into the northern kingdom of Israel. By naming the firstborn son Jezreel, God foreshadows that Israel will be invaded as the result of their sins. You can imagine the tabloid shots of little Jezreel and the speculation about his name there at the checkout counter.

The second child, a daughter, is name Lo-ruhamah or “not pitied.” The sign is clear: God will have no pity on those who forsake him. And the third child, “Lo-ammi’s” name delivers the starkest image yet: Israel is “not my people,” says the Lord, because of their flirtation with other gods. As God is wont to do, he will punish his people by giving them exactly what they want, letting them court other gods as lovers who will ultimately use them and sow the seeds of their destruction.

Indeed, this is what Gomer, Hosea’s wife, does. She goes after her lovers who use her and provide her with gifts (2:5). She doesn’t realize that it is Hosea who provides for her and really loves her, just like Israel does not realize that it is God alone who loves and provides for her. If you read this story in the tabloids, you would certainly support Hosea in cutting this woman loose, just like we would support any man or woman dealing with an unfaithful spouse. We might even expect God to go and find another people who might be more faithful to him.

But here’s the real scandal in the story. Rather than leaving her, which would have been far less embarrassing in a culture of honor and shame, Hosea goes after her and pursues her. Chapter three begins with Hosea going to redeem his wife by buying her with a ransom and bringing her back home to live with him once again. She must give up the promiscuous life, but she is no longer condemned. She is home and part of the family again.

This is an extraordinary measure of grace toward one who deserves only condemnation, but it is not only Hosea’s way—it is God’s way. Like Hosea redeeming his wayward spouse, God will redeem his people. Look at 2:19—even after all of Israel’s unfaithfulness, God says to her, “I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.

And then look down at 2:22. Notice what God does for the children: Jezreel will be prosperous with produce and not blood. God will have pity on Lo-ruhamah, the one who had no pity. And Lo-ammi, the one who was not my people, will be God’s people again. A faithful God redeems his unfaithful people and reconciles with them through his love.

This isn’t the kind of text we expect to be reading at Christmas—not something you’d put on a children’s bookshelf or read by the fire on Christmas Eve. But this story, at its heart, is the story of Christmas, the story of God’s coming to ransom and redeem a people who have long been searching for love in all the wrong places.

The clue is right there in the manger—the name of the child isn’t “no pity” or “not my people”: his name is Emmanuel—not “God against us” or “God apart from us” but “God with us.” God takes the extraordinary step of coming to his people in person to redeem them and dwell with them, to make a home with them. That’s what John writes in his Gospel: The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14). He came not to condemn, but to buy us back with the ransom of his own blood.

When I was back at Asbury Seminary for my doctoral graduation this week, we sang what has become known as the Asbury Hymn—Charles Wesley’s “And Can It Be.” It is a powerful song about the gospel, and whenever I hear it, it makes me weep. One of the verses captures the power of the incarnation of God in Christ:

"He left his father’s throne above, so free so infinite his grace. Emptied himself of all but love, and bled for Adam’s helpless race. Tis mercy all, immense and free, for O my God it found out me!"

When Jesus began to preach, that immense and free mercy found out many people who themselves had lived scandalous lives:

He came upon a woman, much like Gomer, who had been caught in the act of adultery with another man. Jewish law said that she deserved to be stoned to death, and should receive neither love nor forgiveness. Jesus offers her both and embarrasses the hypocritical crowd.

He met a woman in Samaria who had had five husbands and was living with another man. She is much like Gomer. He offers her living water, a new chance at life and grace.

He encounters Zaccheus—a man who cheated and swindled his neighbors from behind his tax collection table. He is sitting in a tree when Jesus finds him. Jesus takes the risk of going to his house and eating with him, which causes Zaccheus to begin living as an honest and generous man.

He tells a story about a wayward son who squanders all his inheritance and then comes slinking home back to his father who, in a stunning reversal of convention, runs out to meet his son, embraces him, and welcomes him home. It’s embarrassing, scandalous, and unexpected. But that’s the nature of grace!

Jesus didn’t come to bless the perfect, or to do the expected. Jesus didn’t come to point his fingers at those on the tabloid pages or those who keep secrets in dark alleys and bedroom. He came to ransom them—to ransom all of us. He came to pursue us out of a deep love for us. He came to offer forgiveness, love, reconciliation. He came to bring us home, not just to some faraway heaven, but to a real life here and now.

A week from tomorrow we will have a packed house on Christmas Eve. I am always fascinated at that phenomenon—why the church will be full to overflowing one night a year but rarely on a regular Sunday. It’s easy to speculate and, quite frankly, easy to get annoyed at the H2O people (Holidays 2 Only). Sure, some will come out of tradition, others because family members dragged them here. But I wonder if the real reason that people tend to only come on that night is that they can stay hidden in the crowd—that they are honest about their waywardness, more so than people in the church who may simply be hiding that waywardness a little better. I wonder if they think that their lives are simply too scandalous, too unacceptable to God. I wonder if they’re trying to avoid having their lives become fodder for gossip from the self-righteous who will discover the story and wag their heads.

Most wayward people stay away from church because there’s no one willing to pursue them in love, to offer them grace, to welcome them home. The church of Jesus Christ has largely lost his pursuit of scandalous love—radical, unconditional, redeeming love for the world; love that costs, love that risks embarrassment, love that reaches out to the broken with an open hand rather than a clenched fist.

Church, are we willing to love those strangers who will come here with a scandalous love? Are we willing to go out of our way, maybe even risk embarrassment, to extend a hand, a word of grace, an offer of Christ?

And what about the days after Christmas? Do you know people around you who are in need of some scandalous, unconditional, reconciling love?

Or, maybe it’s you who need it. Maybe you have been wandering far off, looking for love in all the wrong places. Christ says to you today, “I want to take you home. I’ve paid your ransom with my life. Won’t you come home with me?”

Hosea intentionally married a spouse who soon left him. God intentionally came to a people who had left him. Can we live in, or give in, to that scandalous kind of love?

You can read the scandalous news in the Bethlehem Star: Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. His name is Emmanuel. God with us.

There is no better news than that. Amen. 

Weeping for the Children

I had just finished officiating at a funeral yesterday when I came into the office and heard the news about the horrific shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. Death is the enemy that stares us all in the face on a daily basis, but there are certain days that make it seem like the enemy is winning. 

As I watched the news coverage, it struck me that this tragedy is especially difficult because of it's proximity to Christmas. A season that we expect to be all sweetness and light has turned dark for the families of the victims and the family of the mentally disturbed shooter. It's painful to imagine the unopened presents, the incomplete child artwork meant for Christmas cards for mom and dad, the empty places around the tree that families will be dealing with during this season that's supposed to be about peace and joy. 

I am reminded, however, that the Christmas story has its own dark side that speaks to us poignantly today. In Matthew's version (2:16-18), after Jesus is born, the children of Bethlehem are massacred by another mentally disturbed assailant. Most historians and psychologists believe that Herod the Great suffered from a paranoid psychotic disorder--one that led him to murder even some of his own children and his beloved wife because he thought they were plotting against him. When Herod hears of a king born in Bethlehem, his disturbed mind leads him to order the deaths of children under two years old as a way of eliminating any rival to the throne. It's another senseless tragedy in the midst of a string of senseless and brutal tragedies spanning human history. 

I have read many posts in the last day quoting the lament of Matthew 2:18, which is actually a quote from Jeremiah 31:15--"A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more." Jeremiah writes about the people of Israel being taken away into exile in Babylon. Matthew borrows the quote to express the pain felt in Bethlehem as God's children, innocent children, are no more. It seems a very appropriate verse for us to remember today. 

We remember, too, that the infant Jesus was spared from this tragedy. Joseph was warned in a dream to take the child and his mother into exile in Egypt (2:13-15). I have often wondered why God didn't warn the other fathers and mothers about this impending tragedy? Indeed, that's the mystery of suffering. It seems to random, so out of control, and where is God in the midst of that? 

We might cry out to God for not saving the innocent. We would not be alone in that. The Psalms are full of laments to God in the midst of pain and tragedy. We ask, "Why?" and often the answer isn't obvious or forthcoming. Job cries out to God for meaning, but he doesn't receive a five-point explanation for his suffering. We wonder when God will speak to us in the midst of all this pain and sorrow. Does God stand apart from us? Has he forsaken us? It's easy for us to think so on days like yesterday.

And yet, if we're paying attention, we remember the whole story. We remember that God's innocent son will suffer and die on a cross at the hands of a screaming mob. We remember that God's way of dealing with evil and death are not by ignoring them, but by becoming human and going through them. We remember that our God is not remote from our suffering, but suffers with us and for us. This is the great mystery of the gospel. 

In January, we will be launching a series of sermons called "What Shall We Say?: Evil, Suffering, and the Presence of God." We will look at some of the deep questions we have about human suffering, and about how we deal with the pervasive evil that seems to dominate our consciousness every day. We don't promise easy answers, no five-point plans--only a chance to turn our eyes toward the cross. 

And so, we grieve.  We weep for the children, their teachers, their families today. Indeed, we weep for all of those who will die today and every day, for all those who suffer. But may we not grieve today "as those who have no hope" (I Thessalonians 4:13). May we turn to the cross and the one who suffers with us--whose suffering, somehow, leads to the ultimate victory over death.  

 

 

Expect a Miracle: A Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent

Micah 5:2-5a

 So, have you put up your Christmas tree yet? We have the same debate every year at our house—when to put it up, when to take it down, etc. I know lots of people have different traditions about the tree.

No matter when you put it up: on Christmas Eve or the day after Thanksgiving (or, if you’re a department store, sometime around Labor Day), the Christmas tree is the most simple and recognizable symbol of the season. It’s been the same for centuries, ever since the Christians adopted the symbol from Germanic paganism — the evergreen being seen as a symbol of eternal life because it’s always green even in the dead of winter. Wherever you go these days, you can expect to see that basic triangular shape, be it artificial or real — beautiful green boughs narrowing upward to the point where you put the star. 

But wait a second. Before you anchor that tree in its stand and find a place on it for the those candy canes you’ve kept since the Nixon administration, consider checking out the hottest trend in Christmas tree chic — an idea that could flip the whole idea of the Christmas tree on its ear — literally.

Enter the upside-down, ceiling-mounted Christmas tree. That’s right, across the country a small revival of an old tradition is growing where people are actually attaching their Christmas trees upside down with the base on the ceiling — a holiday stalactite, if you will. It’s an upside-down, backward approach to the conventional positioning of a Christmas tree.In fact, retailers like Hammacher Schlemmer and Target are actually manufacturing trees just for this purpose.

Like just about anything these days, though, the concept isn’t exactly new. Upside-down Christmas trees date all the way back to 12th-century Europe, when they were often used to illustrate the three persons of the Trinity, though they’ve been out of vogue for nearly a millennium.

What’s the point of sticking your tree on the ceiling? Well, other than just being different, the upside-down tree has several practical applications. For one thing, say the marketing experts, you can put more and larger presents under it, which makes it the perfect option for big spenders. If you live in a cramped apartment, a ceiling-mounted tree also takes up less floor space, making it attractive to some city-dwellers. And, from a stylistic standpoint, you can put your more prized ornaments at eye level instead of down near the ground where no one can see them except toddlers and nosy canines.

Of course there are drawbacks. For example, where do you put the star? And some will wax even more philosophical by wondering how you water a tree that’s anchored upside down. 

Then there is the traditionalist argument: Why would you be so gauche as to nail a tree to the ceiling? After all, that’s not Christmas! Some might even argue that the shape of the tree points to heaven, which would make it a sin to turn it upside down. 

There’s nothing like tweaking sacred tradition to tick people off. One of the things that we pastors have noticed over the years of doing the Christmas Eve marathon is that Christmas is the ultimate holiday sacred cow. You just don’t mess with Christmas. For many people the biggest fear of this season is that Christmas won’t happen according to plan, that something will go awry and ruin Christmas thoroughly. 

The truth is that, especially for us baby boomers, we’ve been trained to think this way. Remember all your childhood animated Christmas specials? The Grinch, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Charlie Brown — what’s the basis for those stories? Someone is out to ruin Christmas and to keep it from coming. All must be perfectly restored to order for the season to be valid. 

I found this out immediately after his first Christmas Eve service I ever preached. It was a packed sanctuary with many new visitors and a festive atmosphere. I went to the door to greet people after the service, believing that all was right with the world, when one of the long-time church members came to the door but refused to shake my hand. Scowling, he said, “Thanks for ruining my Christmas — we didn’t sing “The First Noel” as the second carol. We’ve always sung that carol second in the order of worship on Christmas Eve. Without that, it’s just not Christmas.” Then he stormed out the door.

I felt like I was in my own animated special: “The Pastor Who Stole Christmas.” 

People just seem to get wrapped around the axle about the smallest things this time of year. Indeed we all have our expectations, our hopes, our “perfect” scenarios, whether it be for a holiday or for any other aspect of our lives. It’s interesting that at Christmas everyone talks about Christmas “magic” and Christmas “miracles,” but a miracle implies that something out of the ordinary has happened. At Christmas time, people seem to expect the exact opposite of a miracle, wanting everything to be the same. For some reason, we don’t like any deviation — no upside-down-ness to our lives. 

The Scriptures that we read during Advent and Christmas, however, tell us that turning things upside down is exactly what God is up to.

The prophet Micah wrote about a coming reversal in fortune for the people of Israel. The nation faced God’s judgment because of their apostasy — a judgment carried out by enemies who would build a wall of siege against them and “strike the ruler of Israel upon the cheek” in an open display of disdain (Micah 5:1). The old patterns of idolatry and corruption that characterized the reign of many of their kings had made the nation almost Grinch like in its devotion to self-interest, material gain and oppression of the weak (Micah 2:1-2). 

In the midst of this prophecy of judgment and tough times ahead, God still offered hope. A new king would arise who would break this old pattern and, in effect, turn things upside down. His origins from the lowly town of Bethlehem, “one of the little clans of Judah,” are a signal that God is interested in overturning the human expectations of power and prestige in favor of uplifting the weak (5:2). 

This king will be a shepherd who will “feed his flock in the strength of the Lord” (5:4). Shepherding is a common metaphor for leadership throughout the Bible and this image calls to mind the choosing of David over Saul as the king of Israel back in I Samuel. It is the humble, compassionate servant whom God chooses over mighty warriors and handsome princes. 

The word “Messiah” is not mentioned by Micah in this passage, but Christians have long read this as a messianic prophecy, naturally applying it to Jesus as the one who would secure his people and “be the one of peace” (5:4-5). 

Jesus came amidst a swirl of expectations about a messiah who would save his people and do it according to a preconceived, religiously approved, and non-miraculous plan. He was expected to wield a sword instead of a shepherd’s crook and make peace by eliminating the enemies of Israel, particularly the minions of Rome who occupied their land. The Messiah was to make a list, check it twice, determine who was naughty and nice and make sure that the ultimate holiday — the restoration of Israel — would come according to the script, complete with happy ending and roll the credits. 

Instead, Jesus does nothing less than turn their expectations upside down and hang them from the spiritual ceiling as a way of making room for everyone. He preached love over and against vengeance for enemies. He spent time with the outcasts and proclaimed that they would be the new “in” crowd. He was a great teacher but performed as a lowly servant, even washing feet. For Jesus the categories of rich and poor, in and out, great and humble, even life and death were all reversed. It’s no wonder that traditionalists would argue that he was ruining everything and want him out of the picture. We’re happy with the idea of a baby in a manger, so long as he stays there.

Think of some of the ways miss the miracle because we’re expecting the same old thing:

We expect to fight the crowds on Black Friday and to go into debt making sure that everyone gets the gift that they want—the real miracle is that Jesus and his grace are the only gifts we really need.

We expect that Christmas is all about being happy. It isn’t. It’s about being obedient and preparing the way for Christ and his kingdom—As Jesus comes into the world on a mission, he sends us out on one as well. The miracle is that we find Jesus in all the unexpected places we will go because he sends us there. It’s not our own happiness that makes Christmas—it is bringing peace to those who need it.

We expect to see a radiant baby Jesus in a quiet stable—no crying he makes, like we expect to sing in “Away in a Manger.” But the miracle and the reality is that this Jesus is anything but silent. He cries out for justice, for mercy, for compassion, and for a completely new order of life in God’s kingdom. This baby is the one who turns the whole world upside down and he calls us to join him.

Instead of celebrating sameness and traditional uniformity during the Christmas season, we should be celebrating the upside down and backward nature of the gospel that Jesus ushers into the world. A manger-born Messiah, a counterintuitive teacher, a religious rebel to the establishment, a crucified King and a resurrected Redeemer — nobody expected this at the time. It would’ve been too much, too off-the-map, making upside-down Christmas trees look normal by comparison. 

Jesus worked miracles because he was focused on not seeing the world as it is, expecting the same old patterns of greed and poverty and brokenness to continue. Rather, Jesus saw the world as God intended it to be—a place of peace and justice, a place of wholeness and healing, a place where Black Fridays are abolished in favor of Easter Sundays. Jesus’ miracles—his healings, his feeding of large numbers of people with nothing but five loaves and two fish, his casting out of demons, his mastery of the wind and waves, even his victory over death—were all signs that things will be radically different in his kingdom.

I wonder what would happen if Jesus’ followers chose to not continue trying to meet the usual expectations of Christmas and, instead, decided to bring the miracle of Christ and his kingdom into the world? What if instead of buying stuff we want and don’t need we gave our money to serve people who need and don’t have? What if instead of trying to make ourselves happy we instead made it our sole desire to give ourselves to the work of the kingdom by serving someone else? What if instead of settling for a silent night, we instead joined Jesus and cried out for justice for people who have no voice because they are too poor, too young, too strange, too out of the way for the world to notice?

It was to one of these people that the angel Gabriel came. Mary was just a poor teenage girl in an out of the way town in the middle of nowhere when the angel came and offered her the chance to bear God’s ultimate miracle to the world. It wasn’t an offer of piles of presents, soft lights, and silent nights, but one that offered the likelihood of ridicule as an unmarried pregnant girl, the pain of childbirth, and the pain of watching her son stagger up a hill toward death on a cross. Mary was invited to bear a miracle that would change the world, and it would cost her everything.

I think Christmas invites us to consider the same offer. Are we willing to bear the miracle of Christ to the world, even if it costs us something? Are we willing to endure the sacrifice it takes to be one of his followers and live the life of his kingdom? Are we willing to forgo fewer presents under the tree in order to bring God’s presence to those who are in need? Are we willing to change someone else’s circumstances—to be their miracle? In this series, Joe and I will be challenging you, and ourselves, to think about a different kind of Christmas—one that confronts us with the coming of a Savior who will turn the world upside down. We’ll be looking at some ways you can be God’s miracle for someone else. 

You know, maybe stapling our trees to the ceiling isn’t such a bad idea after all if it causes us to think differently about the flip side of Christian faith. Perhaps we could all use a little upside-down Christmas this year — and see the world from the perspective of Jesus, the best miracle and gift we will ever receive.