Sermon for Proper 24 B (RCL), offered by Nathan Ferrell at St. Luke’s, Westville (Shared Ministry Celebration)
Texts: Job 38:1-7, 34-41; Psalm 104; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45
Themes: Saint Luke, the apostles, walking with Christ
Purpose: to inspire, to encourage
Title: We Are Able
My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord: what a joy and privilege it is for us all to be gathered here together on this day – this Feast of blessed Saint Luke – to rejoice together in the goodness of God, and to embark together on a new adventure in ministry.
We come together as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, his students who are learning from him how to live this human life.
We just heard, in our Gospel reading, about the Lord walking along the road with his disciples. They were walking forward into an uncertain and clouded future. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, ask for a special favor from the Lord. Not very unlike them. After all, they are the ones whom Jesus named “the sons of thunder”! Bold and boisterous they tended to be. But in response, the Lord tests their commitment. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” Are you truly able to follow Me, to walk with Me into Jerusalem, into the midst of the struggle that is to come?
Their response is incredible and very enlightening: WE ARE ABLE.
Today, all of us here are walking with our Lord along a new and unknown road, walking together with him into an unknown future. Today, we begin something new. This new Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry. And so today we ask the Lord for a special favor: to bless this shared ministry with success, to bless us so that our congregations can continue to be places of joyful fellowship, powerful worship, and loving service. We ask the Lord to help us to grow in our love for one another, and also in numbers as new disciples are formed by the Holy Spirit in our midst.
In response, we can be certain that the Lord will test our commitment. Are we truly ready to follow him, to walk with him into new paths of service to others, to open our hearts and our doors to those who need hope and comfort and guidance?
The first disciples had no idea what they were committing themselves to at that moment.
But isn’t that the way it always is? When Jesus stood on the shore of the sea of Galilee and called the sons of Zebedee, Peter and the other fishermen to come and follow him, if the apostles could have glimpsed at that moment all that would lay ahead of them because of this one commitment: if they could have seen all of the future joys, challenges, celebrations, and conflicts that lay ahead of them if they accepted his call, do you think they would have walked on with the Lord?
If you have entered into a committed relationship, when you stood there and declared your intentions and your promises for life-long commitment to your beloved, if you could have seen ahead at that moment to all of the joys and all of the pain that this commitment would bring into your life, do you think you would have continued with your promises?
When you first set out on your career path, if you could have seen all the twists and turns that this journey would lead you on, all of the successes and all of your failures, do you think you would have carried on along that path?
By the grace of God, we are never given this glimpse into the future. By the grace of God, we are given a community of fellowship and support where we can ask our elders about their experiences and learn from them, but these insights are always second-hand. We always must make our own decisions TODAY and each day.
The fact of the matter is this: to experience the abundant life that God has planned for us requires commitment. We must step out into the unknown with determination and courage.
You and I are disciples of the Lord in this time and place. And the Lord is asking us this same question as the one he posed to the first disciples: Are we able to drink the cup that he drank, and be baptized with his baptism? Do we really know what this commitment will mean for our future? No, but we do not know. We do not have this knowledge, but we DO have faith and trust and confidence in the one who calls.
By the grace of God, our response is sure: We are able! Praise be to God: We are able!
This past Wednesday (October 14), the Church remembered the life and ministry of the Bishop Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky. His life is an incredible story of commitment to God’s calling in his life. Here is just a quick synopsis of his remarkable life: Schereschewsky was born into a Lithuanian Jewish family in 1831. He was studying in Germany to become a rabbi when he was given a Hebrew translation of the New Testament.
Through this reading, Schereschewsky fell in love with our Lord Jesus and so he became a disciple of the Lord. Soon, he emigrated to America and he attended the General Theological Seminary in New York City. At the end of his studies, he heard a talk on the need for missionary workers in China and he responded. On the long voyage to China, Schereschewsky taught himself the Mandarin Chinese language. He was ordained as priest in Shanghai and after 15 years of work there, he was elected Bishop of Shanghai. This man worked tirelessly on translation projects: translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew into various Chinese dialects; translating the Prayer Book into Chinese; compiling a dictionary of the Mongolian language.
Unfortunately, after 6 years as Bishop he was afflicted with Parkinson’s Disease, and he resigned from his post due to his growing paralysis. However, this saintly man knew what it was that God had called him to and so he continued with his translation work. At the end of his life around the beginning of the 20th century, he hand-typed nearly 2000 pages of the Bible which he translated into Mandarin – WITH ONE FINGER! At that point, only his middle finger responded now to his brain’s commands, but that was all that he needed.
A few years before his death, Bishop Schereschewsky said this in conversation:
“I have sat in this chair for over 20 years. [Referring to his extremely slow and tedious work of translating and typing.] It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.”
My brothers and sisters, when the Lord called him to a task which seemed beyond his physical strength to complete, he answered: “I am able.” Do you see the kind of tenacious commitment that Christ inspired in his life? 20 years of typing with one finger to finish this project that God had called him to! Was it hard? Of course, but when God calls and when we say yes, then we know with full confidence that God gives the energy needed to complete the task.
Our Teacher asked this of his students as they headed up to Jerusalem: Are you able to drink the cup that I must drink, and to share in my baptism? He was on the way to offer his life as a ransom for many. He came to serve and not to be served. And so today, the Lord asks us this question as well.
Are we able to serve others in his name, to offer our combined gifts, energy, compassion, resources, and talents to serve those around us? Are we able to grow as healthy communities of faith that experience together the abundant life that Christ brings to us?
Yes, we are able! Let’s try saying it together. “We are able!”
We are able, not because we are smart or talented or savvy or gifted. We are able to do this work together, because God has called us to this task. It has required a YES from all of us to get to this point, and if we continue to say YES to this calling, then we can know with full confidence that God will supply what is needed to complete the task.
For we are called here together in order to serve. It was the great basketball coach, John Wooden, who said this: “Happiness begins when selfishness ends.” It was Mother Teresa who taught us so clearly that a life which is not given in service to others is not a life. Bishop Schereschewsky shows us what this kind of commitment means. Saint Luke and the apostles have laid the foundation for us: a foundation of trust, confidence, and commitment. In this place and time, you and I are building upon this foundation, leaving our legacy of following the Lord in paths of service and ministry.
Thanks be to God that we can walk forward along this path together. Amen.
Reports, musings, sermons, happenings from a Presbyter (Priest) of The Episcopal Church who loves Jesus, the natural world, ice and snow, and is raising 3 children with his artist-wife, Erin McGee Ferrell. (This photo is of the Presidential range in NH taken from Vermont.)
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Holy Boldness
Sermon for Proper 23 B (RCL), offered by Nathan Ferrell at HS, Bellmawr & St. Luke’s, Westville
Texts: Job 23:1-9,16-17; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31
“Let us, therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
My dear friends in Christ: God is calling us to live lives of holy boldness. God desires to bless our lives with grace – grace which precedes and which follows us. Grace that will transform us so that our lives naturally overflow with good works: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23).
Boldness for the sake of the gospel is not something for which we Episcopalians are quite well-known. Beauty in liturgy, prudence and balance and order perhaps. We are well-known for these qualities, perhaps, but not for boldness. And I understand. The Christian life is a marathon rather than a sprint, and we need a steady, healthy diet of continual grace to sustain us over the long haul. Boldness seems more like a Red Bull: a quick jolt of energy which usually does not last for very long.
Someone once sent an anonymous letter to their local newspaper complaining about the lack of energy he received from church. “I’ve gone to church for 35 years,” he wrote, “and have heard something like three thousand sermons. But for the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them. So I’ve concluded that I’m wasting my time, as are the preachers for even bothering to deliver sermons at all.”
This letter began a real controversy back-and-forth on the op-ed page of the paper. It continued for a few weeks until another letter came in which settled the matter. That letter stated: “I’ve been married for 35 years. In that time my wife has cooked some thirty-two thousand meals for us. But for the life of me, I can hardly remember a single one of them. I do know, however, that they all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work each day. If it weren’t for all of those meals, then I would be dead today!”
The grace that God gives to us is like those 32,000 meals. It’s hard to be excited about a steady diet of healthy food, until we have a chance to look back and see how, in each time of need, God’s grace has been there for us, reliable and constant. Because of our experience of the faithfulness of God, it is right for us to step out with boldness and with love for the sake of the Gospel.
The Letter to the Hebrews states with great conviction that “the word that God speaks is living and active…it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Right away, the Gospel of Mark gives us a clear and direct example of this very truth. Our Lord meets the rich, young ruler along the road. An aristocratic, young Jewish man who seemed intent upon keeping the law, following the commandments, and yet who – it seems – was afraid of truly loving God.
“You lack one thing.”
Do you know the kind of reckless abandon that overcomes the one who falls suddenly in love? Can you remember it, perhaps, from some point in your own life? When you would drive a thousand miles or stay up all night every night or spend every last dime just to be with your love, to woo your love?
Early in the 20th century, William Malcolm MacGregor, a great Scottish preacher and professor, spoke about the rich young ruler in one of his sermons. I love these words! They are one of my favorite quotes. I have shared them with you before, but here they are again once more, quite apropos to our meditation here today:
“Jesus did love a man who was able, sometimes, to be reckless. He did not care for the rulers as a class, but when one of them forgot his dignity and ran after a peasant teacher and fell on the road at His feet, we read that ‘Jesus, seeing him, loved him.’ He did not choose for His disciples discreet and futile persons, but a man whose temper was not always under control, and whose tongue was rough when has was roused, and another who might have been a saint, but his life got twisted and he betrayed his Lord. He saw a widow flinging into the treasury all that she had, which no doubt was a very foolish action, but it stirred his heart with gladness to see somebody venturing herself simply upon God. [Jesus] wanted life in men, energy, impulse; and in His Church He has often found nothing but a certain tame decorum, of which even He can make little.”
–William Malcolm MacGregor, great 20th century Scottish preacher and professor
Life, energy, impulse. God longs to see this kind of energetic action and reckless abandon in us. Yes, I know that this kind of enthusiasm is difficult to maintain over the long haul of life. But the grace of God continually refreshes our hearts, if we are open to it.
The Letter to the Hebrews calls us to continue on with this kind of boldness: “Let us hold fast to our confession.” Cling to it, the text says, don’t ever let go of our confession, our declaration of faith. It is, in fact, our declaration of independence.
2 Timothy 1:7 speaks to us clearly on the matter: “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”
I know it doesn’t feel this way to you now, but the truth is, my friends, that when we stand in just a few minutes and say the Nicene Creed together, it is a radical thing that we are doing. I know it feels old and stale and boring. But in fact, we are declaring our allegiance, our loyalty, our commitment to this God who speaks through the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.
Remember: folks died for this creed. Saints watched while their houses were being burned down, while their families were tortured for this creed! It is a treasure, and it means something profound. It is, in fact, a call to bold action.
There’s a story about the Coast Guard unit stationed down at Cape May. One night a tropical storm came in from the Atlantic and a ship was breaking apart just off of the coast. The Coast Guard commander woke the men under his command and told them to get ready to go out to sea. They were going out to rescue the crew in danger. One of the young recruits shot back incredulously, “But, Captain! If we go out there, we may never come back!”
The Captain answered, with full command and conviction, “Son, you don’t have to come back. You have to go out.”
Being a Christian means that we bet our lives on the truth of God’s word; that we risk our convenience, our comforts, our security, and at times even our safety, in order to go out into the unknown, to launch out into the dark stormy waters where the need is greatest.
The rich young ruler had it all, or so he thought. But he was so comfortable, so safe, so tame. He was insulated from the needs of the world around him. Our Lord Jesus loved him and longed for him to be fully alive. And the only way to do that – for him and for us – is to risk, and to love.
Give your safety away, Jesus told him, to those who need it more. Throw yourself over the edge. Abandon yourself to the love of God. Fall in love with God.
My friends, we can do the same! But above all else, we must not continue on with a bland, tame decorum of politeness, which can never be used in the transformation of human lives. Our Lord calls us to holy boldness, to love others in the power of the Holy Spirit, to speak the living Word of God to those who are hopeless and lost. By the grace of God, we will do this together, as a community of holy boldness and love. Amen.
Texts: Job 23:1-9,16-17; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31
“Let us, therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
My dear friends in Christ: God is calling us to live lives of holy boldness. God desires to bless our lives with grace – grace which precedes and which follows us. Grace that will transform us so that our lives naturally overflow with good works: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23).
Boldness for the sake of the gospel is not something for which we Episcopalians are quite well-known. Beauty in liturgy, prudence and balance and order perhaps. We are well-known for these qualities, perhaps, but not for boldness. And I understand. The Christian life is a marathon rather than a sprint, and we need a steady, healthy diet of continual grace to sustain us over the long haul. Boldness seems more like a Red Bull: a quick jolt of energy which usually does not last for very long.
Someone once sent an anonymous letter to their local newspaper complaining about the lack of energy he received from church. “I’ve gone to church for 35 years,” he wrote, “and have heard something like three thousand sermons. But for the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them. So I’ve concluded that I’m wasting my time, as are the preachers for even bothering to deliver sermons at all.”
This letter began a real controversy back-and-forth on the op-ed page of the paper. It continued for a few weeks until another letter came in which settled the matter. That letter stated: “I’ve been married for 35 years. In that time my wife has cooked some thirty-two thousand meals for us. But for the life of me, I can hardly remember a single one of them. I do know, however, that they all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work each day. If it weren’t for all of those meals, then I would be dead today!”
The grace that God gives to us is like those 32,000 meals. It’s hard to be excited about a steady diet of healthy food, until we have a chance to look back and see how, in each time of need, God’s grace has been there for us, reliable and constant. Because of our experience of the faithfulness of God, it is right for us to step out with boldness and with love for the sake of the Gospel.
The Letter to the Hebrews states with great conviction that “the word that God speaks is living and active…it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Right away, the Gospel of Mark gives us a clear and direct example of this very truth. Our Lord meets the rich, young ruler along the road. An aristocratic, young Jewish man who seemed intent upon keeping the law, following the commandments, and yet who – it seems – was afraid of truly loving God.
“You lack one thing.”
Do you know the kind of reckless abandon that overcomes the one who falls suddenly in love? Can you remember it, perhaps, from some point in your own life? When you would drive a thousand miles or stay up all night every night or spend every last dime just to be with your love, to woo your love?
Early in the 20th century, William Malcolm MacGregor, a great Scottish preacher and professor, spoke about the rich young ruler in one of his sermons. I love these words! They are one of my favorite quotes. I have shared them with you before, but here they are again once more, quite apropos to our meditation here today:
“Jesus did love a man who was able, sometimes, to be reckless. He did not care for the rulers as a class, but when one of them forgot his dignity and ran after a peasant teacher and fell on the road at His feet, we read that ‘Jesus, seeing him, loved him.’ He did not choose for His disciples discreet and futile persons, but a man whose temper was not always under control, and whose tongue was rough when has was roused, and another who might have been a saint, but his life got twisted and he betrayed his Lord. He saw a widow flinging into the treasury all that she had, which no doubt was a very foolish action, but it stirred his heart with gladness to see somebody venturing herself simply upon God. [Jesus] wanted life in men, energy, impulse; and in His Church He has often found nothing but a certain tame decorum, of which even He can make little.”
–William Malcolm MacGregor, great 20th century Scottish preacher and professor
Life, energy, impulse. God longs to see this kind of energetic action and reckless abandon in us. Yes, I know that this kind of enthusiasm is difficult to maintain over the long haul of life. But the grace of God continually refreshes our hearts, if we are open to it.
The Letter to the Hebrews calls us to continue on with this kind of boldness: “Let us hold fast to our confession.” Cling to it, the text says, don’t ever let go of our confession, our declaration of faith. It is, in fact, our declaration of independence.
2 Timothy 1:7 speaks to us clearly on the matter: “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”
I know it doesn’t feel this way to you now, but the truth is, my friends, that when we stand in just a few minutes and say the Nicene Creed together, it is a radical thing that we are doing. I know it feels old and stale and boring. But in fact, we are declaring our allegiance, our loyalty, our commitment to this God who speaks through the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.
Remember: folks died for this creed. Saints watched while their houses were being burned down, while their families were tortured for this creed! It is a treasure, and it means something profound. It is, in fact, a call to bold action.
There’s a story about the Coast Guard unit stationed down at Cape May. One night a tropical storm came in from the Atlantic and a ship was breaking apart just off of the coast. The Coast Guard commander woke the men under his command and told them to get ready to go out to sea. They were going out to rescue the crew in danger. One of the young recruits shot back incredulously, “But, Captain! If we go out there, we may never come back!”
The Captain answered, with full command and conviction, “Son, you don’t have to come back. You have to go out.”
Being a Christian means that we bet our lives on the truth of God’s word; that we risk our convenience, our comforts, our security, and at times even our safety, in order to go out into the unknown, to launch out into the dark stormy waters where the need is greatest.
The rich young ruler had it all, or so he thought. But he was so comfortable, so safe, so tame. He was insulated from the needs of the world around him. Our Lord Jesus loved him and longed for him to be fully alive. And the only way to do that – for him and for us – is to risk, and to love.
Give your safety away, Jesus told him, to those who need it more. Throw yourself over the edge. Abandon yourself to the love of God. Fall in love with God.
My friends, we can do the same! But above all else, we must not continue on with a bland, tame decorum of politeness, which can never be used in the transformation of human lives. Our Lord calls us to holy boldness, to love others in the power of the Holy Spirit, to speak the living Word of God to those who are hopeless and lost. By the grace of God, we will do this together, as a community of holy boldness and love. Amen.
Perfect Through Sufferings
Sermon for Proper 22 B (RCL), Offered by Nathan Ferrell at HS, Bellmawr & St. Luke’s, Westville
Texts: Job 1:1,2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4,2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
“It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10).
Dear friends in Christ: this morning, we need to take some time this morning to wrestle with this question: Why? Why is it fitting, as the Letter to the Hebrews states, that God should make our Lord Jesus perfect through sufferings? Why was his cross and passion necessary? Could not the work of our salvation have been accomplished in another way?
It would be a great mistake to think that this question did not haunt the minds of the earliest disciples, to think that they did not struggle to understand the sufferings of the Lord. In fact, they searched through the Hebrew scriptures and they prayed and talked together to try and understand how the Lord’s suffering fit into the entirety of God’s plan for the world.
We can actually see this tension in the text of Hebrews itself. The text that we heard this morning says this: “we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” But many other of the ancient manuscripts wrote that last phrase to say this: “so that apart from God he might taste death for everyone.”
You can see right here how the early church struggled with this question: did Jesus taste death by the grace of God, that is as an intentional part of God’s will, or did he taste death apart from God, that is in violation of God’s will? Or to put it simply: whas Jesus supposed to be crucified, or was this a victory by the forces of evil which God overcame in the resurrection?
The question has never been fully answered. These two ways of viewing the crucifixion remain in the church to this very day. Did God plan the crucifixion, or did God allow the crucifixion?
The reason for this tension ought to be rather clear to all of us. It is perfectly natural for us to assume that God is always victorious; that in a conflict with human beings, God naturally will always win! Right! After all, God is the Creator of all things! God cannot be beaten or conquered by human strength. This was the thinking of the Hebrew people, of course. They all believed that God was to send the Messiah to destroy the evil forces among humanity and to free God’s people from tyranny. This Messiah could not be defeated, of course. After conquering, the Messiah would continue to reign for ever.
Did you know that the Koran teaches the same kind of thinking? You can see how Mohammed used this same natural kind of thinking as he developed the Koran. Among the Arab peoples, the concept of honor been prominent in shaping their relationships. Of course, in this way of thinking, true prophets are always honored by God and therefore they cannot be defeated by sinful human beings. This is what Mohammed believed, and so this is why the Koran refutes the idea that Jesus died on the cross. To Mohammed, Jesus was a true prophet, and so God must honor him and guard him from sinners. Mohammed suggested that it was someone else who was crucified instead, because God would never allow such a calamity!
Can you see it? This is the normal, the natural way of thinking. It is a very simple worldview, a black and white way of seeing reality. God is right; sinful humanity is wrong. Justice prevails; lawbreakers are punished. God wins; evil loses.
The problem is, however, that reality is not quite that simple, is it? It’s just not that easy to put into a simple little box like that.
This is where the story of Job comes in. The entire story of Job is an attempt to understand the dynamic at work between a good and loving and all-powerful God and the forces of evil which seem in general to have their way on the earth.
(Quick note to all of you: if you have never sat down and read straight through the book of Job, you really should! It’s a great read: a wee bit long-winded in the middle, but the poetry there is beautiful and it truly is a compelling story! Anyway…)
Unfortunately, the reading that we have here for today from Job is torn horribly out of context. Job is stricken in every conceivable way: his children are killed, his wealth and property is all destroyed, and finally his body is afflicted. At first, as we see here, Job “persists in his integrity”. He accepts everything as part of God’s plan. And yet, throughout the book, as he talks with his wife and his friends about his unfortunate situation, Job grows more and more despondent. His friends speak with the normal wisdom, the natural view of life that we just discussed. That is, Job must be suffering as a punishment for his sins. God is just and serves justice to the sinner. But Job insists on his innocence with vehemence and rejects their simple thinking. Finally, Job brings everything that God has done into question and declares that it would be better if he had never been born. He ends up filled with bitterness until God speaks directly to him out of a great storm.
God speaks and puts Job back in his place. “Where were you,” God asks, “when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4). And the final result is this: God is God, and we human beings are not. We are nothing but dust and ashes, mere specks in the life of the universe.
And yet…and yet, God loves each of us and cares for each one of us.
Suffering is so very difficult to understand. If God is so good and so loving and so wise and so all-powerful, then why does God allow this suffering to continue?
If God truly is more ready to give us blessings than we ever even ask for, then why does God send or allow evil to come to us?
Does God plan for our sufferings, or does God simply allow them? And why?
There are no answers to these questions. Life is not a simple black and white affair. In the end, God is God and we are not. Trust is required, faith is necessary to live through the sufferings of life without becoming bitter and hard-hearted. I believe that Job’s initial question is a good one for all of us to consider: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (Job 2:10).
Remember where we began: It was fitting that God should make the pioneer of our salvation perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10). He is the pioneer, the trailblazer, the trendsetter, the guide for this new life that we are now leading.
And so the question comes right back around to us: if God was to make our Lord perfect through sufferings, then are we ready for the same thing? In some mysterious way that is beyond our understanding, I believe that God uses our suffering to perfect us so that we can be of service in the kingdom of God, shaped and molded into the kind of people that God would have us to be.
It doesn’t make any sense in the normal way of thinking, and it can be quite painful, but God is God, and we are not. And this God, who is faithful and loving and wise – this God we can trust with our lives. Amen.
Texts: Job 1:1,2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4,2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
“It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10).
Dear friends in Christ: this morning, we need to take some time this morning to wrestle with this question: Why? Why is it fitting, as the Letter to the Hebrews states, that God should make our Lord Jesus perfect through sufferings? Why was his cross and passion necessary? Could not the work of our salvation have been accomplished in another way?
It would be a great mistake to think that this question did not haunt the minds of the earliest disciples, to think that they did not struggle to understand the sufferings of the Lord. In fact, they searched through the Hebrew scriptures and they prayed and talked together to try and understand how the Lord’s suffering fit into the entirety of God’s plan for the world.
We can actually see this tension in the text of Hebrews itself. The text that we heard this morning says this: “we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” But many other of the ancient manuscripts wrote that last phrase to say this: “so that apart from God he might taste death for everyone.”
You can see right here how the early church struggled with this question: did Jesus taste death by the grace of God, that is as an intentional part of God’s will, or did he taste death apart from God, that is in violation of God’s will? Or to put it simply: whas Jesus supposed to be crucified, or was this a victory by the forces of evil which God overcame in the resurrection?
The question has never been fully answered. These two ways of viewing the crucifixion remain in the church to this very day. Did God plan the crucifixion, or did God allow the crucifixion?
The reason for this tension ought to be rather clear to all of us. It is perfectly natural for us to assume that God is always victorious; that in a conflict with human beings, God naturally will always win! Right! After all, God is the Creator of all things! God cannot be beaten or conquered by human strength. This was the thinking of the Hebrew people, of course. They all believed that God was to send the Messiah to destroy the evil forces among humanity and to free God’s people from tyranny. This Messiah could not be defeated, of course. After conquering, the Messiah would continue to reign for ever.
Did you know that the Koran teaches the same kind of thinking? You can see how Mohammed used this same natural kind of thinking as he developed the Koran. Among the Arab peoples, the concept of honor been prominent in shaping their relationships. Of course, in this way of thinking, true prophets are always honored by God and therefore they cannot be defeated by sinful human beings. This is what Mohammed believed, and so this is why the Koran refutes the idea that Jesus died on the cross. To Mohammed, Jesus was a true prophet, and so God must honor him and guard him from sinners. Mohammed suggested that it was someone else who was crucified instead, because God would never allow such a calamity!
Can you see it? This is the normal, the natural way of thinking. It is a very simple worldview, a black and white way of seeing reality. God is right; sinful humanity is wrong. Justice prevails; lawbreakers are punished. God wins; evil loses.
The problem is, however, that reality is not quite that simple, is it? It’s just not that easy to put into a simple little box like that.
This is where the story of Job comes in. The entire story of Job is an attempt to understand the dynamic at work between a good and loving and all-powerful God and the forces of evil which seem in general to have their way on the earth.
(Quick note to all of you: if you have never sat down and read straight through the book of Job, you really should! It’s a great read: a wee bit long-winded in the middle, but the poetry there is beautiful and it truly is a compelling story! Anyway…)
Unfortunately, the reading that we have here for today from Job is torn horribly out of context. Job is stricken in every conceivable way: his children are killed, his wealth and property is all destroyed, and finally his body is afflicted. At first, as we see here, Job “persists in his integrity”. He accepts everything as part of God’s plan. And yet, throughout the book, as he talks with his wife and his friends about his unfortunate situation, Job grows more and more despondent. His friends speak with the normal wisdom, the natural view of life that we just discussed. That is, Job must be suffering as a punishment for his sins. God is just and serves justice to the sinner. But Job insists on his innocence with vehemence and rejects their simple thinking. Finally, Job brings everything that God has done into question and declares that it would be better if he had never been born. He ends up filled with bitterness until God speaks directly to him out of a great storm.
God speaks and puts Job back in his place. “Where were you,” God asks, “when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4). And the final result is this: God is God, and we human beings are not. We are nothing but dust and ashes, mere specks in the life of the universe.
And yet…and yet, God loves each of us and cares for each one of us.
Suffering is so very difficult to understand. If God is so good and so loving and so wise and so all-powerful, then why does God allow this suffering to continue?
If God truly is more ready to give us blessings than we ever even ask for, then why does God send or allow evil to come to us?
Does God plan for our sufferings, or does God simply allow them? And why?
There are no answers to these questions. Life is not a simple black and white affair. In the end, God is God and we are not. Trust is required, faith is necessary to live through the sufferings of life without becoming bitter and hard-hearted. I believe that Job’s initial question is a good one for all of us to consider: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (Job 2:10).
Remember where we began: It was fitting that God should make the pioneer of our salvation perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10). He is the pioneer, the trailblazer, the trendsetter, the guide for this new life that we are now leading.
And so the question comes right back around to us: if God was to make our Lord perfect through sufferings, then are we ready for the same thing? In some mysterious way that is beyond our understanding, I believe that God uses our suffering to perfect us so that we can be of service in the kingdom of God, shaped and molded into the kind of people that God would have us to be.
It doesn’t make any sense in the normal way of thinking, and it can be quite painful, but God is God, and we are not. And this God, who is faithful and loving and wise – this God we can trust with our lives. Amen.
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