John 6:1-15
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
My four grandparents all died before Apollo 11 went to the Moon. I’m sure they would have considered it impossible. Not to mention the impossibility in their minds of talking to someone on a cell phone or sending an email or doing research via internet. Even in the two decades of my adulthood, technology has changed everything in communications. I remember how wonderful it was when I had toddlers that the cordless phone was invented.
I remember struggling to write papers in college because of the write and scratch it out and erase with a pencil method. It was so frustrating. What an amazing thing it was to have a word processor with a delete button, a backspace, with cut and paste so you could move your paragraphs around, with a save and a print button. It redefined writing for me, because no longer did I have to be sure, I could just got with the flow and fix it later.
When Richard and I went to England the first time, we had no telephone in our seminary apartment. So we went to a pay phone every Sunday night to wait for calls from our parents in the US. There was a delay in the phone, which interrupted the flow of conversation. When we returned twelve years later, trans-Atlantic conversations were like speaking to a next door neighbor, and there was email too. When Emily flies to England tomorrow night, she will have a fairly inexpensive cell phone with a virtual US number so we can talk as she moves from England to France to Switzerland to Italy to Greece. Then too, she’ll have Skype,
so we can both see her and talk to her via the internet. Impossible that so much has changed in the last twenty years in communications.
If we human beings, created in the image of God can invent such marvels, dare we say miracles as this, in the short span of a twenty years, just imagine what God can do. In fact, our epistle lesson says God’s power is at work in us to accomplish amazing things. Ephesians 3:20, which we will read as our call to discipleship later in the service says this: Now to God, who by the power at work in us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be the glory... God can accomplish not far more, but ABUNDANTLY far more than we can ask or imagine. This God is amazing. This God can redefine what is possible in your life. This God is the one who came as Jesus Christ and demonstrated such power by turning a boy’s lunch into a feast for 5000. Hear now that story, and be amazed again.
(Read text)
Just to remind us of the 1st Century context: There were no refrigerators and no pantries filled with canned, bagged, and boxed foods. People often drank wine because it was cleaner than water. It goes without saying there was no fast food of any type. Getting food to eat was no small matter. That’s why it was a crisis to have 5000 hungry people on the side of the mountain. And Passover was near, and it just wasn’t right for people to go hungry that day. And perhaps it still is not right for people to go hungry when if we’d just listen to Jesus, there is enough, enough for the masses. There’s enough healthcare too, enough for everyone. We just need to find a way to share the cost of it, so everyone gets what they need.
Now Jesus, who had a plan, asked Philip, “Where will we buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip gives the rational answer. I’ve heard the same rational answer given in many church meetings by sensible people like Philip. It would take an impossible amount of money to accomplish that. But Jesus knew what he was planning. He asked the question to test Philip. Andrew, who had a bit more imagination than Philip, said, “Well here’s what we have. Five loaves and two fish from the adolescent boy who thought he had an ample meal for himself and perhaps one or two others. ” Now whether you’re from an African village or from a melting pot culture like ours, you know that five loaves and two fish are not enough. But Jesus says, “Tell the people to sit down.” And Jesus breaks the loaves and does the impossible.
Jesus was always doing the impossible at mealtime. He turned water into wine. He shared meals with impossible mixes of people. It might not matter whom you sit with to eat these days, but it did in Jesus’ day. And how could Jesus tell Martha, the one providing the meal, that she should just rest and listen like Mary? Who was providing the food, Jesus? Impractical man. But he fed 5000 with two fish and five loaves, so I guess he could have thrown something together for Martha and Mary and their household. He managed to catch a bunch of fish when there were no fish at all. He believed in throwing a veritable feast for the irresponsible son, who threw all his money away in wasteful living, but then decided to go home.
Jesus did impossible things at mealtime. He broke bread and said it was his body and that the wine was his blood. He said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” So how is it that a little piece of bread and a sip of wine or grape juice have the power to fill us completely?
The church has sadly divided itself over trying to explain with rational thought the impossible to understand reality of Christ’s real presence in the communion meal. Instead of arguing over interpretations of words, we should have just been weekly sharing the meal all Christians together, being filled with all the fullness of God.
Our Ephesians passage speaks of being filled with all the fullness of God, as we know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge. Surpassing knowledge. That what feasting with Jesus is all about – surpassing knowledge, being filled full of the love of God. And when we are filled full of the love of God, the possibilities are endless.
We are tested like Philip to define what is possible, and then Jesus, who knows what he’s planning to do, supercedes the possible with the impossible. Is it possible for someone with lung cancer to live the remaining life full of abundant joy – yes, when the possibilities are redefined. Is it possible for a teenager who feels misunderstood by parents and out of step with friends, to be at peace in her soul? Yes, when the possibilities are reshaped by Jesus’ love. Is it possible for burned out, stressed out, worn out parents of preschoolers to find any time to get energized again? Yes, when possibilities are defined by the Creator of those parents and preschoolers.
Is it possible for the unemployed to be sustained financially in these economically turbulent times? Yes, when the possibilities are redefined by the Lord of life, who said “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.” It seems strange to say this, but I am worrying less about our finances now than I was before Richard’s job loss. Back when he was still employed, I thought we were in control. Now our situation is such that I am constantly reminded that I cannot control it, that I must rest my anxieties with God and live one day at a time with gratitude. I know God has a plan, like Jesus had a plan to feed all those people, and that we are simply being tested like Philip.
Is it possible for you with your hidden struggle, your addiction, your insecurity, your secret, your depression, your doubt, to move forward with healing, strength, and confidence? Yes, possibilities redefined by God. Is it possible to find some way through to a new medical system which controls costs and provides excellent health care to a broader spectrum of society? Only when possibilities are redefined by the spiritual compassion that is God, not by the greed of the marketplace.
Is it possible to have growth in a new church in a denomination just learning to do evangelism instead of despairing over membership decline? Is it possible to have develop new church with no building in a suburb filled with upscale housing? Can you grow a new church when you’re daring to blend traditional and contemporary worship enough to stretch many beyond their comfort zones? Can you sustain a new church determined to give away 20% of budget even in a recession? Is it possible for such a new church to thrive? Yes, when the possibilities are redefined by the Lord of life who makes the loaves abound.
That little bit of bread and juice is enough to transform us, to fill us up with the fullness of God’s love. And that love which fills us is enough to spread around and still have twelve baskets full. I cannot explain it, just like I cannot explain how Skype will work to help us talk to and see Emily half way around the world? We don’t have to explain how it works. We just need to marvel in it and give thanks for it and enjoy it. That’s the way it is with faith in the miracles of Jesus too. You don’t need to explain how they could have happened. Just revel in the possibilities that are ours when we believe that Jesus lives again and Earth can breathe again. Know that God can accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine. Pass the Word around. Loaves abound.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Rest for the Restless
Mark 6:30-34;45-53
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
“Before Barbara Agoglia left her job, she was on the verge of burnout. Aside from logging upward of 50 hours per week, she had a 90-minute commute to and from work and she had to be on call nearly 24-7. The breaking point came when her son started kindergarten and she didn't have time to wait with him at the bus stop.
“‘The hamster-on-the-wheel analogy is the best way to describe how I felt,’ she says. It's a feeling shared by many Americans who know that simply working hard isn't enough anymore. To get ahead, a 70-hour work week is the new standard. What little spare time is left is often divvied up among relationships, kids and sleep.
“Just how bad have things gotten? That's the subject of Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek, a recent study from the Center for Work-Life Policy. The study found that 1.7 million people consider their jobs and their work hours extreme, thanks to globalization, BlackBerries, corporate expectations and their own Type A personalities. No industry is immune. According to the report, extreme jobs can be found throughout the economy — from retail to media to Wall Street. But this extreme and exhausting trend is taking its toll.” (Tara Weiss, Forbes 2-18-07)
And perhaps this frenzied work week is what blinded us to the mess we were making of our economy, until it was too late for an easy repair.
Why are we so frantic about getting ahead? Or not falling behind? We need to learn to relish life not rush through it. We need to take a step back to pray, to listen for the still, small voice of God. But we don’t.
Even in churches we are tempted to overwork – whether we are church employees or church volunteers. Let’s make sure at Peace that we always give people the space to say “no.” While we hope everyone will be meaningfully involved, we also want everyone to feel free to say “enough.” When Jesus was depleted from healing people, teaching people – who often didn’t really get his message, he needed time away. The Lord of the Universe needed time alone to pray and get refreshed. Hear how Jesus moves from work to rest, from ministry to sabbath, from movement to stillness. By the way, when we get to the feeding of the 5000 miracle, I will simply reference it, but not read the whole story because that’s our story for next week. But it is important to remember how Jesus was in and out of busy times. He did not just rush from one exhausting activity to the next, like many of us do. He escaped the rat race. Hear the story:
Read scripture text.
When the disciples reported to Jesus all they had accomplished, he did not slap them on the back and send them back to work, he said, “Come away with me to a quiet place. Come away with me”
(Singing).
Come away with me to a quiet place, apart from the world with its frantic pace, to pray, reflect, and seek God’s grace. Come away with me. Come away.
Come and pray with me on the gentle sea, on top of a hill in Galilee, in gardens like Gethsemane. Come away with me. Come away.
Come today with thoughts of the countless ways that God’s steadfast love blesses all our days, and join with me in silent praise. Come away with me. Come away.
Come and say, in words whispered from your soul, the feelings and actions you can’t control. Your spirit needs to be made whole. Come away with me. Come away.
Come away with me to a quiet place, to God’s loving arms waiting to embrace all those who come in hope of grace. Come away with me. Come away.
How many of us have taken time this week to just sit. Not sit and think. Not sit with your calendar. Not sit and work out some issue. Just sit, and breathe in God’s care. The trouble with prayer and meditation is that we expect results immediately, if not sooner. We approach meditation with the same feverish task mode that is the busy side of life, rather than recognizing that prayer is a wholly different exercise. Thinking that we should feel exceptionally spiritually refreshed the first several times we commit ourselves to prayer and mediation like someone stepping into a swimming pool for their first week of training and expecting to swim like Michael Phelps.
Studies on the brain have shown that those who have meditated or prayed regularly with exceptional discipline are 90% better at focusing on their meditation and actually calming the stress in their minds. Their amygdala and right prefrontal area which register negative emotions settle down. Those who are relatively unpracticed are not very good at this calming exercise. So we too quickly give up the training, thinking that we are just not spiritual enough for such a practice.
And we return to the vicious cycle of desperately trying to fulfill all the obligations that press upon us. We juggle family and work responsibilities. We volunteer at church and in the community. We move between phone messages and computer messages and then collapse in front of the television to be inundated with more messages – most of them telling us how we can improve some aspect of our life, if we would do this or take that.
And we are breeding busyness in our over-scheduled children with their teams and lessons and piles of homework. I doubt there were many high schoolers a generation ago who were stressed out over homework, but now all the college bound are pressured into competitive academics. I took one AP course in high school. Catherine took eight of them. Many children do not know how to handle a free day, how to sit quietly with a book and not be entertained every minute.
But God gave us a rhythm for life, a gift in the Sabbath. Six days you shall labor and on the seventh day, stop. “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” St. Augustine said. Sabbath is the privilege of resting in the arms of God.
There was a family, a mother, father and five children, one of whom was a little girl born with brain-damage. She could not sit up and was unable to speak. She died before reaching adolescence. She spent her entire life lying in bed in the sunniest room of the house. Several times during the day one or the other member of the family would go up to the girl’s room and keep her company. When she died many people said it was a blessing. But the family mourned for a long time. Someone asked the mother, “Why does the death of this child who has never spoken or moved among you make you all feel so deeply sad?” “You don’t understand,” was the answer. “Whenever one of us was sad or happy, joyful or depressed, we would go to her room and laugh or cry or just put our head on the pillow next to hers. The room was always quiet. When we left we would feel restored.” “But she could not even speak.” “That’s right,” her mother answered, “she could not even speak.”
This little girl whom some would say had a useless life, was a presence where her parents, her brothers and sisters, found Sabbath rest and felt restored.
Hear these quotes from Wayne Muller’s book on the Sabbath:
Sabbath time is time off the wheel, time when we take our hand from the plow and let God and the earth care for things, while we drink, if only for a few moments, from the fountain of rest and delight…honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us. pg 8
Sabbath time is not spiritually superior to our work. The practice is rather a balance point at which, having rested, we do our work with greater ease and joy, and bring healing and delight to our endeavors. pg 8
Sabbath time can become our refuge. During the Sabbath we set aside a sanctuary in time, disconnect from the frenzy of consumption and accomplishment, and consecrate our day as an offering for healing all beings. pg10
Jesus, for whom anything was possible, did not offer "seven secret coping strategies" to get work done faster, or "nine spiritual stress management techniques" to enhance effectiveness. Instead he offered the simple practice of rest as a natural, nourishing, and essential companion to our work. Learn from me, he said, and you will find rest for your souls. For Jesus when the moment for rest had come, the time for healing (others) was over. He would simply stop, retire to a quiet place, and pray. pg 24
Richard Foster, in chapter 5 of Freedom of Simplicity, speaks of living out of the Divine Center. He distinguishes between our invitation to let God into our lives, a crucial step, and our willingness to enter into God, a deeper communion, which puts God at the focal point, at the center. When God comes into us, we still maintain autonomy. But when we delve into God, we are inviting God to take control. We are resting in the arms of God, entrusting all our worries to God. This is the place of communion with God that can only be learned through the regular, disciplined practice of sabbath and prayer and simplicity of life.
Foster tells the story of Frank Laubach, who devoted his life to practicing the presence of God. Every day in his journal, he would mark down the percentage of time he figured he had been conscious of God’s presence. What a difference it would make if we were more conscious every hour of every day. I admire the Muslim practice of praying five times/day. I’d like to think I’m praying without ceasing as I go through the day, but truthfully, there are hours when I am living an autonomous life, unaware of the Holy Spirit communicating with me. How many blessings am I ignoring? How many moments of guidance do I miss? How much peace do I forfeit, all because of a lack of consciousness about the presence of God.
Here’s what I’m going to try this week and I invite you to come away with me and do it too. I plan to pray on the hour, every waking hour for just a minute or two. And I plan to write in a journal just two or three sentences each night describing my awareness of God that day. I plan this afternoon to take the phone off the hook, close my computer and sleep for an hour or two, and then wake up and relax with my family. I will actively seek to accomplish nothing from lunch time Sunday to lunchtime Monday. To simply be and trust that God will bless the discipline of sabbath rest, to bask in the peaceful wholeness of God’s love, and to listen and wait for God to be more fully revealed to me.
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
“Before Barbara Agoglia left her job, she was on the verge of burnout. Aside from logging upward of 50 hours per week, she had a 90-minute commute to and from work and she had to be on call nearly 24-7. The breaking point came when her son started kindergarten and she didn't have time to wait with him at the bus stop.
“‘The hamster-on-the-wheel analogy is the best way to describe how I felt,’ she says. It's a feeling shared by many Americans who know that simply working hard isn't enough anymore. To get ahead, a 70-hour work week is the new standard. What little spare time is left is often divvied up among relationships, kids and sleep.
“Just how bad have things gotten? That's the subject of Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek, a recent study from the Center for Work-Life Policy. The study found that 1.7 million people consider their jobs and their work hours extreme, thanks to globalization, BlackBerries, corporate expectations and their own Type A personalities. No industry is immune. According to the report, extreme jobs can be found throughout the economy — from retail to media to Wall Street. But this extreme and exhausting trend is taking its toll.” (Tara Weiss, Forbes 2-18-07)
And perhaps this frenzied work week is what blinded us to the mess we were making of our economy, until it was too late for an easy repair.
Why are we so frantic about getting ahead? Or not falling behind? We need to learn to relish life not rush through it. We need to take a step back to pray, to listen for the still, small voice of God. But we don’t.
Even in churches we are tempted to overwork – whether we are church employees or church volunteers. Let’s make sure at Peace that we always give people the space to say “no.” While we hope everyone will be meaningfully involved, we also want everyone to feel free to say “enough.” When Jesus was depleted from healing people, teaching people – who often didn’t really get his message, he needed time away. The Lord of the Universe needed time alone to pray and get refreshed. Hear how Jesus moves from work to rest, from ministry to sabbath, from movement to stillness. By the way, when we get to the feeding of the 5000 miracle, I will simply reference it, but not read the whole story because that’s our story for next week. But it is important to remember how Jesus was in and out of busy times. He did not just rush from one exhausting activity to the next, like many of us do. He escaped the rat race. Hear the story:
Read scripture text.
When the disciples reported to Jesus all they had accomplished, he did not slap them on the back and send them back to work, he said, “Come away with me to a quiet place. Come away with me”
(Singing).
Come away with me to a quiet place, apart from the world with its frantic pace, to pray, reflect, and seek God’s grace. Come away with me. Come away.
Come and pray with me on the gentle sea, on top of a hill in Galilee, in gardens like Gethsemane. Come away with me. Come away.
Come today with thoughts of the countless ways that God’s steadfast love blesses all our days, and join with me in silent praise. Come away with me. Come away.
Come and say, in words whispered from your soul, the feelings and actions you can’t control. Your spirit needs to be made whole. Come away with me. Come away.
Come away with me to a quiet place, to God’s loving arms waiting to embrace all those who come in hope of grace. Come away with me. Come away.
How many of us have taken time this week to just sit. Not sit and think. Not sit with your calendar. Not sit and work out some issue. Just sit, and breathe in God’s care. The trouble with prayer and meditation is that we expect results immediately, if not sooner. We approach meditation with the same feverish task mode that is the busy side of life, rather than recognizing that prayer is a wholly different exercise. Thinking that we should feel exceptionally spiritually refreshed the first several times we commit ourselves to prayer and mediation like someone stepping into a swimming pool for their first week of training and expecting to swim like Michael Phelps.
Studies on the brain have shown that those who have meditated or prayed regularly with exceptional discipline are 90% better at focusing on their meditation and actually calming the stress in their minds. Their amygdala and right prefrontal area which register negative emotions settle down. Those who are relatively unpracticed are not very good at this calming exercise. So we too quickly give up the training, thinking that we are just not spiritual enough for such a practice.
And we return to the vicious cycle of desperately trying to fulfill all the obligations that press upon us. We juggle family and work responsibilities. We volunteer at church and in the community. We move between phone messages and computer messages and then collapse in front of the television to be inundated with more messages – most of them telling us how we can improve some aspect of our life, if we would do this or take that.
And we are breeding busyness in our over-scheduled children with their teams and lessons and piles of homework. I doubt there were many high schoolers a generation ago who were stressed out over homework, but now all the college bound are pressured into competitive academics. I took one AP course in high school. Catherine took eight of them. Many children do not know how to handle a free day, how to sit quietly with a book and not be entertained every minute.
But God gave us a rhythm for life, a gift in the Sabbath. Six days you shall labor and on the seventh day, stop. “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” St. Augustine said. Sabbath is the privilege of resting in the arms of God.
There was a family, a mother, father and five children, one of whom was a little girl born with brain-damage. She could not sit up and was unable to speak. She died before reaching adolescence. She spent her entire life lying in bed in the sunniest room of the house. Several times during the day one or the other member of the family would go up to the girl’s room and keep her company. When she died many people said it was a blessing. But the family mourned for a long time. Someone asked the mother, “Why does the death of this child who has never spoken or moved among you make you all feel so deeply sad?” “You don’t understand,” was the answer. “Whenever one of us was sad or happy, joyful or depressed, we would go to her room and laugh or cry or just put our head on the pillow next to hers. The room was always quiet. When we left we would feel restored.” “But she could not even speak.” “That’s right,” her mother answered, “she could not even speak.”
This little girl whom some would say had a useless life, was a presence where her parents, her brothers and sisters, found Sabbath rest and felt restored.
Hear these quotes from Wayne Muller’s book on the Sabbath:
Sabbath time is time off the wheel, time when we take our hand from the plow and let God and the earth care for things, while we drink, if only for a few moments, from the fountain of rest and delight…honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us. pg 8
Sabbath time is not spiritually superior to our work. The practice is rather a balance point at which, having rested, we do our work with greater ease and joy, and bring healing and delight to our endeavors. pg 8
Sabbath time can become our refuge. During the Sabbath we set aside a sanctuary in time, disconnect from the frenzy of consumption and accomplishment, and consecrate our day as an offering for healing all beings. pg10
Jesus, for whom anything was possible, did not offer "seven secret coping strategies" to get work done faster, or "nine spiritual stress management techniques" to enhance effectiveness. Instead he offered the simple practice of rest as a natural, nourishing, and essential companion to our work. Learn from me, he said, and you will find rest for your souls. For Jesus when the moment for rest had come, the time for healing (others) was over. He would simply stop, retire to a quiet place, and pray. pg 24
Richard Foster, in chapter 5 of Freedom of Simplicity, speaks of living out of the Divine Center. He distinguishes between our invitation to let God into our lives, a crucial step, and our willingness to enter into God, a deeper communion, which puts God at the focal point, at the center. When God comes into us, we still maintain autonomy. But when we delve into God, we are inviting God to take control. We are resting in the arms of God, entrusting all our worries to God. This is the place of communion with God that can only be learned through the regular, disciplined practice of sabbath and prayer and simplicity of life.
Foster tells the story of Frank Laubach, who devoted his life to practicing the presence of God. Every day in his journal, he would mark down the percentage of time he figured he had been conscious of God’s presence. What a difference it would make if we were more conscious every hour of every day. I admire the Muslim practice of praying five times/day. I’d like to think I’m praying without ceasing as I go through the day, but truthfully, there are hours when I am living an autonomous life, unaware of the Holy Spirit communicating with me. How many blessings am I ignoring? How many moments of guidance do I miss? How much peace do I forfeit, all because of a lack of consciousness about the presence of God.
Here’s what I’m going to try this week and I invite you to come away with me and do it too. I plan to pray on the hour, every waking hour for just a minute or two. And I plan to write in a journal just two or three sentences each night describing my awareness of God that day. I plan this afternoon to take the phone off the hook, close my computer and sleep for an hour or two, and then wake up and relax with my family. I will actively seek to accomplish nothing from lunch time Sunday to lunchtime Monday. To simply be and trust that God will bless the discipline of sabbath rest, to bask in the peaceful wholeness of God’s love, and to listen and wait for God to be more fully revealed to me.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Revering God's Holy Power
2 Samuel 6:1-19
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Central to our Judeo-Christian heritage is our commitment to worship God, to revere God’s holy power. The word “worship” comes from two words – worth and ship. To worship God means to devote ourselves to giving worth to God.
If I give worth or value to my house, then I devote myself to decorating it and keeping it clean. I spend money on its upkeep. I admire its beauty and try to figure out ways to make it more beautiful. Some people worship their homes. You can feel it when you walk in. Some congregations worship their buildings.
If I give worth or value to my relationships – my children, my husband, my friends, parents – then I spend time building those relationships. I spend money sharing meals and other enjoyable experiences. I spend energy relating to those people. Some people worship families and friends. You can see the way they orbit around and cling tenaciously to those relationships, sometimes to the detriment of the very relationships they treasure.
Some are totally career-focused. They give primary worth to their employment. Work, work, work. Everything comes second to work. Some people worship their careers, while other worship the entertainment that their careers allow them. For the money to have a boat or season tickets or money to eat out at all the best restaurants. Some of us worship the entertainment world. Some of us love our books or our music or our computers or our televisions, and spend most of our time and energy adoring them.
When I was in the 7th grade, I got some great new Converse shoes. It’s been fun to watch Converse make a come-back as a throw-back. Yes, those green suede Converse shoes were the best. I remember spraying them with that suede protectant stuff. Those shoes mattered too much. I was too crazy about those shoes. Just like it mattered way too much to me to own a house when we were moving here. We had never owned a house before. People always said, “Why are you still renting – you’re in your forties? 4 years rent in Atlanta. 9 years rent in Montgomery. 3 years rent in England. 2 years in a manse Why don’t you build up equity? Own a house. Too much concern for home-ownership.
I’m guessing that most of you would agree that life is a balancing act. All things in moderation can be a good motto. But all that we love, all that we adore, all that we worship is not worthy of such veneration. Let’s make sure that we’re focused first on the Holy One who made us, the Holy One who sustains us, the Holy One who will never abandon us.
We are created to worship God. Today’s text is a fascinating look at the worship of the Israelites under King David’s leadership. We can learn a great deal about worship from this story. You’ve heard me explain to the children about the ark of the covenant, the focal point of their worship, and such a revered symbol of God’s presence and power. It is difficult for us to appreciate just how revered the ark was. Even if you’ve watched every movie in the Raiders of the Lost Ark series, and you can quote Indiana Jones lines like Harrison Ford, you still cannot begin to appreciate the value of the ark of the covenant.
So, as I read the text, I’d like you to say with me any words in the passage about the ark. They will be marked in yellow. Please join me on all the yellow words.
Read scripture
Let’s talk about the most troubling part of the passage first, the shocking part. Uzzah and Ahio are doing their job with the ark. Then because the ark looks like it is unstable, Uzzah does the natural thing, using common sense he reaches out to steady it. Zap! He’s gone. We could have skipped over and not read that part of the story, but it’s there and I think we can find something meaningful in it. There are consequences for our behavior, even if our motives were pure. I mean, if you run out in front of a car to save your child, and you get hit in the process, we would simply say, “What a devoted parent, sacrificing life for the good of the child.” Touch the hot electric wire, and you get electrocuted. We could get angry at God or we could say it was natural consequences. What we have trouble believing is that anything like the ark of the covenant could be so mysteriously sacred and dangerous. Hot to the touch. We have trouble believing it because we cannot explain it like we explain electricity. Just like we have trouble explaining why one child with cancer recovers and another doesn’t. David gets mad with God, because he figured this death was unjust. It did not need to happen – Uzzah’s motive was pure. “God’s power is too dangerous for me to trust it,” David says, and so he waits for three months, leaving God’s mysterious power in the ark at the Gittite’s house, until he hears that blessings have come upon that house. Then he trusts God again.
So we can learn from David that the human problem of viewing God’s power as unfairly utilized is not a new thing. We don’t really need to dispense with this Old Testament God, as some might want to do, saying “I don’t believe in a God who strikes people down.” Obviously, David had a problem with it too. He got angry about it, and essentially said, “Let’s leave the holy power of God at the Hittite’s house.” I’m not going to say that God strikes people down, but I am willing to say that God allows bad things and sometimes even ordains things that seem bad to us, in order to teach us or bring something better than we could have had otherwise. God is holy and does things, which sometimes seem wrong to us. We are the children. God is the parent. Parents often do things that their kids think are horribly unfair.
Karl Barth addressed this problem we humans have with making God in our own image: "One cannot speak of God simply by speaking (of humanity) in a loud voice." (The Word of God and the Word of Man, pp. 195-196.) In the words of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 55, verse 8, God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
And what we learn from Uzzah and from Isaiah and from Job too, is that God’s holiness is not to be trifled with. It is to be revered with utmost respect, with awe, even with fear and trembling.
Second point. We learn from David and the house of Israel traveling with him that worship is to be joyful and liberating. They did not just dance. They danced with all their might. Have you ever seen someone dance with all their might? I bet it was not in worship. With all liturgical arts, with visuals, with movement, with singing, and with instrumental music, we should pour ourselves into the worship of God. It is not wrong for people to worship God with all manner of enthusiasm and vigor, with any form of music or dance.
It is however, wrong, for God’s holiness to be handled carelessly, without deep, deep respect. So when we judge worship which is different from ours, as we inevitably do, let us judge it not by criticizing volume, style or vigor, but by the way God’s holiness is communicated or handled. Are the worship leaders and the music reverent toward God or does the music and the worship draw more attention to the leaders themselves or the music itself? Who or what is being worshiped? Sometimes one feels in worship that the human leader is being revered more than God’s own self. Pomposity, arrogance, self-aggrandizement can be seen in the leaders of many mega-churches. We talked last week about the danger of human power corrupting people’s souls.
Finally, let’s talk about Michal’s reaction to this service of worship. There’s always somebody upset about the worship, isn’t there? She is disgusted. Why? Later in chapter 6 we learn that she thought David was inappropriately dressed, that he was too intimate in front of the crowd. He had girded himself with a fancy set of boxers, called an ephod. Actually, an ephod was a decorative ceremonial article of clothing, ordinarily made of linen. It would have been elaborate and may have covered most of the torso. But Michal was not happy. Let’s remember that Michal is Saul’s daughter and David’s wife. Dear old dad has been displaced by her husband, who is too full of himself. Michal herself had been taken from another husband to appease David. She’s probably thinking that good ole dad would have never worn an ephod without a tunic over it. She’s probably feeling angry about being passed around between David and Palti, to make peace between the regions of Israel and Judah. She’s got issues and her complaint comes out in the form of frustration with David’s worship.
In summary I could say, “In churches, there’s always somebody dying, somebody questioning “Why God?” and somebody complaining about worship because they really mad about something else.” Someone’s dying, Lord. Kumbayah. Someone’s doubting, Lord, Kumbayah. Someone’s dissing, Lord. Kumbayah. Oh, Lord, Kumbayah. Meanwhile, the holiness of God continues to be a powerful force for good, and the majority keep singing God’s praise and celebrating God’s goodness.
Peace people, you have made good progress in loosening up the frozen chosen to celebrate in song and dance the goodness of God. Let’s keep working at that, while also remembering that we should never lose a sense of the sacred in our services. Annie Dillard said we should be wearing crash helmets in worship, in case the Holy God decides to show up in full power. There should be an element of respect, of awe toward the power of God.
When we see the water, when we hear the word, when we taste the bread, when we touch each other with the peace, when we pray the prayers, God’s holiness abounds. We are here to give God worth with all our might, with every fiber of our being, in spirit and in truth, to give God all the honor and all the glory. And to remember that God is an awesome God and we are merely God’s humble and thankful children. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and forever.
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Central to our Judeo-Christian heritage is our commitment to worship God, to revere God’s holy power. The word “worship” comes from two words – worth and ship. To worship God means to devote ourselves to giving worth to God.
If I give worth or value to my house, then I devote myself to decorating it and keeping it clean. I spend money on its upkeep. I admire its beauty and try to figure out ways to make it more beautiful. Some people worship their homes. You can feel it when you walk in. Some congregations worship their buildings.
If I give worth or value to my relationships – my children, my husband, my friends, parents – then I spend time building those relationships. I spend money sharing meals and other enjoyable experiences. I spend energy relating to those people. Some people worship families and friends. You can see the way they orbit around and cling tenaciously to those relationships, sometimes to the detriment of the very relationships they treasure.
Some are totally career-focused. They give primary worth to their employment. Work, work, work. Everything comes second to work. Some people worship their careers, while other worship the entertainment that their careers allow them. For the money to have a boat or season tickets or money to eat out at all the best restaurants. Some of us worship the entertainment world. Some of us love our books or our music or our computers or our televisions, and spend most of our time and energy adoring them.
When I was in the 7th grade, I got some great new Converse shoes. It’s been fun to watch Converse make a come-back as a throw-back. Yes, those green suede Converse shoes were the best. I remember spraying them with that suede protectant stuff. Those shoes mattered too much. I was too crazy about those shoes. Just like it mattered way too much to me to own a house when we were moving here. We had never owned a house before. People always said, “Why are you still renting – you’re in your forties? 4 years rent in Atlanta. 9 years rent in Montgomery. 3 years rent in England. 2 years in a manse Why don’t you build up equity? Own a house. Too much concern for home-ownership.
I’m guessing that most of you would agree that life is a balancing act. All things in moderation can be a good motto. But all that we love, all that we adore, all that we worship is not worthy of such veneration. Let’s make sure that we’re focused first on the Holy One who made us, the Holy One who sustains us, the Holy One who will never abandon us.
We are created to worship God. Today’s text is a fascinating look at the worship of the Israelites under King David’s leadership. We can learn a great deal about worship from this story. You’ve heard me explain to the children about the ark of the covenant, the focal point of their worship, and such a revered symbol of God’s presence and power. It is difficult for us to appreciate just how revered the ark was. Even if you’ve watched every movie in the Raiders of the Lost Ark series, and you can quote Indiana Jones lines like Harrison Ford, you still cannot begin to appreciate the value of the ark of the covenant.
So, as I read the text, I’d like you to say with me any words in the passage about the ark. They will be marked in yellow. Please join me on all the yellow words.
Read scripture
Let’s talk about the most troubling part of the passage first, the shocking part. Uzzah and Ahio are doing their job with the ark. Then because the ark looks like it is unstable, Uzzah does the natural thing, using common sense he reaches out to steady it. Zap! He’s gone. We could have skipped over and not read that part of the story, but it’s there and I think we can find something meaningful in it. There are consequences for our behavior, even if our motives were pure. I mean, if you run out in front of a car to save your child, and you get hit in the process, we would simply say, “What a devoted parent, sacrificing life for the good of the child.” Touch the hot electric wire, and you get electrocuted. We could get angry at God or we could say it was natural consequences. What we have trouble believing is that anything like the ark of the covenant could be so mysteriously sacred and dangerous. Hot to the touch. We have trouble believing it because we cannot explain it like we explain electricity. Just like we have trouble explaining why one child with cancer recovers and another doesn’t. David gets mad with God, because he figured this death was unjust. It did not need to happen – Uzzah’s motive was pure. “God’s power is too dangerous for me to trust it,” David says, and so he waits for three months, leaving God’s mysterious power in the ark at the Gittite’s house, until he hears that blessings have come upon that house. Then he trusts God again.
So we can learn from David that the human problem of viewing God’s power as unfairly utilized is not a new thing. We don’t really need to dispense with this Old Testament God, as some might want to do, saying “I don’t believe in a God who strikes people down.” Obviously, David had a problem with it too. He got angry about it, and essentially said, “Let’s leave the holy power of God at the Hittite’s house.” I’m not going to say that God strikes people down, but I am willing to say that God allows bad things and sometimes even ordains things that seem bad to us, in order to teach us or bring something better than we could have had otherwise. God is holy and does things, which sometimes seem wrong to us. We are the children. God is the parent. Parents often do things that their kids think are horribly unfair.
Karl Barth addressed this problem we humans have with making God in our own image: "One cannot speak of God simply by speaking (of humanity) in a loud voice." (The Word of God and the Word of Man, pp. 195-196.) In the words of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 55, verse 8, God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
And what we learn from Uzzah and from Isaiah and from Job too, is that God’s holiness is not to be trifled with. It is to be revered with utmost respect, with awe, even with fear and trembling.
Second point. We learn from David and the house of Israel traveling with him that worship is to be joyful and liberating. They did not just dance. They danced with all their might. Have you ever seen someone dance with all their might? I bet it was not in worship. With all liturgical arts, with visuals, with movement, with singing, and with instrumental music, we should pour ourselves into the worship of God. It is not wrong for people to worship God with all manner of enthusiasm and vigor, with any form of music or dance.
It is however, wrong, for God’s holiness to be handled carelessly, without deep, deep respect. So when we judge worship which is different from ours, as we inevitably do, let us judge it not by criticizing volume, style or vigor, but by the way God’s holiness is communicated or handled. Are the worship leaders and the music reverent toward God or does the music and the worship draw more attention to the leaders themselves or the music itself? Who or what is being worshiped? Sometimes one feels in worship that the human leader is being revered more than God’s own self. Pomposity, arrogance, self-aggrandizement can be seen in the leaders of many mega-churches. We talked last week about the danger of human power corrupting people’s souls.
Finally, let’s talk about Michal’s reaction to this service of worship. There’s always somebody upset about the worship, isn’t there? She is disgusted. Why? Later in chapter 6 we learn that she thought David was inappropriately dressed, that he was too intimate in front of the crowd. He had girded himself with a fancy set of boxers, called an ephod. Actually, an ephod was a decorative ceremonial article of clothing, ordinarily made of linen. It would have been elaborate and may have covered most of the torso. But Michal was not happy. Let’s remember that Michal is Saul’s daughter and David’s wife. Dear old dad has been displaced by her husband, who is too full of himself. Michal herself had been taken from another husband to appease David. She’s probably thinking that good ole dad would have never worn an ephod without a tunic over it. She’s probably feeling angry about being passed around between David and Palti, to make peace between the regions of Israel and Judah. She’s got issues and her complaint comes out in the form of frustration with David’s worship.
In summary I could say, “In churches, there’s always somebody dying, somebody questioning “Why God?” and somebody complaining about worship because they really mad about something else.” Someone’s dying, Lord. Kumbayah. Someone’s doubting, Lord, Kumbayah. Someone’s dissing, Lord. Kumbayah. Oh, Lord, Kumbayah. Meanwhile, the holiness of God continues to be a powerful force for good, and the majority keep singing God’s praise and celebrating God’s goodness.
Peace people, you have made good progress in loosening up the frozen chosen to celebrate in song and dance the goodness of God. Let’s keep working at that, while also remembering that we should never lose a sense of the sacred in our services. Annie Dillard said we should be wearing crash helmets in worship, in case the Holy God decides to show up in full power. There should be an element of respect, of awe toward the power of God.
When we see the water, when we hear the word, when we taste the bread, when we touch each other with the peace, when we pray the prayers, God’s holiness abounds. We are here to give God worth with all our might, with every fiber of our being, in spirit and in truth, to give God all the honor and all the glory. And to remember that God is an awesome God and we are merely God’s humble and thankful children. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and forever.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The Power of Weakness
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
What is it about our culture that we get so enthralled with celebrities’ fall from power? Unless we are personally connected to these folks, we relish the sordid details of a John Edwards’ or a Mark Sanford’s fall from power. We watch for countless hours the remembrances of Michael Jackson, analyzing the complexities of an insecure yet powerful personality. We wait with baited breath for more news about Sarah Palin, to figure out whether her resignation was motivated by weakness or the desire for more power. How can people possibly live a normal life when we are so determined to put them on a pedestal and examine every inch of their lives, until we find the chink in their armor, the weak spot, and then exploit it?
Power is a dangerous thing. Lord Acton was right, when in 1887 he said to the bishop: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
A Gallup poll of 1,015 adults nationwide — conducted in May just before we were treated to the saucier details of the lives of South Carolina’s Republican governor and Nevada’s Republican senator — found that 92 percent of Americans think it is morally wrong for a married man or woman to have a fling. We may think it is wrong, but we sure do enjoy learning all about it. We have this affinity for the weakness of others.
The Corinthians were enjoying a good bash of the celebrity preacher Paul. I am not insinuating that Paul’s weakness, his thorn in the flesh, was infidelity. He was not a married man, so he could not have been cheating on his wife. It is more likely that Paul had a physical weakness or infirmity. Richard, in his dissertation, on Paul’s understanding of mortality from 2 Corinthians, asserts that Paul had a sickness which had left him close to death, and that “this near-death experience precipitated a crisis of confidence regarding the apostle’s authority and reliability.” (Richard Deibert, 2 Corinthians and Paul’s Gospel of Human Mortality”)
Hear now Paul’s very careful way of speaking about his struggle. Hear how he sets up the great irony by speaking about all the things about which he might boast, but then addresses his weakness and claims he’d rather boast of that.
Read scripture
Through the years, scholars have speculated about Paul’s thorn in the flesh with as much curiosity as we have about philandering politicians. Some have said he had a problem with his eyes. Others have claimed he had epilepsy. Some have said he is speaking about persecution. But most have concluded that it is some kind of physical ailment. Paul makes it nearly impossible to figure out, and perhaps that it good because we can all relate to some kind of weakness. “Whatever it was, this repeated or sustained experience of physical distress was so humbling and distressing to Paul that he prayed for its removal: “Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me" (2 Corinthians 12:8). Just like our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42), Paul prayed three times for the difficulty to be taken away.
And the answer to his prayer is this message: “'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength, my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Through his painful experience, and the prayer prompted by this experience, Paul discerned the working of divine grace in his life; he learned that his weakness was the way in which the power of the risen Christ was revealed in him. He learned through personal experience that divine power is made perfect in weakness.
This insight, the fruit of prayer, provided Paul with a permanent template, a common paradigm, for all his life in Christ. It became an interpretive key capable of opening in his life numerous doors otherwise closed. He found that this vision sustained him in every sort of suffering and misfortune: “So I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me.. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (12:9-10).
This experienced pattern of strength rendered perfect in weakness is what enabled Paul to discern that “though our outer nature nature is perishing, yet the inner nature is being renewed day by day” (4:16). His prayer on the subject of his physical affliction enabled the Apostle to see that “we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus may be made known in our mortal flesh” (4:11). (Father Patrick Reardon)
Whatever weakness you have, physical or other, remember that through prayer and seeking God’s grace, your weakness can become the power of God at work in you. While we were in Montreat, my mother apologized to me every time we needed to leave the house, walk down the irregular stone staircase to go to worship or some other event. She would say “I’m sorry I slow you down. I’m sorry I’m so dependent on your help. I’m sorry. You don’t have to wait for me.” I kept telling her it was no problem, but she continued to apologize until I finally said, “You know, Mama, it is a gift to me to move slowly because in my day-to-day normal life, I have to move fast.” Her weakness empowered me to slow down.
What could be perceived as a weakness – unemployment for Richard – will by God’s providence, prove to be a strength. Our family life will enjoy a respite from the frenzied schedule of two ministries. We will have the opportunity to work harder to achieve greater simplicity in life, as the class studying Foster’s book on the measure of freedom is learning. But most importantly, our entire family will realize again in a deeper way just how dependent we are on the grace of God to get us through life. We will be on our knees in dependency.
“My grace is sufficient for you.” I was planning to say a few things about that before I was weakened by the uncertainty of Richard’s unemployment. But now those words take on real meaning. God’s power is being perfected in Richard, along with us, his family. Some folks don’t experience much weakness until the aging process begins to erode their confidence and render them powerless in many areas of life. I’m not sure any of us who have experienced weakness – physical, emotional, or psychological – are immediately glad for the experience. Most, like
Paul, pray for it to be removed. Lord, I am sick of taking medication for depression or anxiety. I’m tired of this hearing deficit or mobility trouble or cancer treatment. I wish I were not an alcoholic. I wish I did not have this chronic disease or this mental illness. Lord, deliver me from it. But most often we are not delivered from something, but delivered through it. Through grace of the Lord, we are empowered in our experience of weakness.
God turns everything upside down. In weakness is strength. In dependence is power. In dying to ourselves is eternal life. Earthly power, worldly strength, visual beauty have nothing to do with honor in the Kingdom of God. In fact, all those things can be an obstacle to true honor.
Our country is experiencing a season of relative weakness. You know, I think that this recession or depression could be the best thing that has happened to our country in a long while. I don’t mean to minimize the suffering. It is real and it hurts, but being weak, we have an opportunity to grow strong, to learn what real freedom is. Real freedom is not freedom from responsibility but freedom for others, sensitivity to others.
What Jesus Christ did in his life and death was live the very life we live – a life of joy and peace and love, but also of struggle, pain, and dejection. Jesus became what we are to raise us up to what he is. That’s why his grace is sufficient because Christ showed us the power of weakness, the power of freedom for others.
The East County Observer this week had a special insert for the 4th of July. In it was a picture of twin brothers, who were about 14. One of boys had lost a leg. He was trying to learn to run competitively with an artificial one. Having just read this scripture, I thought to myself that the irony is, the weaker twin, the one-legged one is probably the stronger one, especially if he has learned to turn to God for his strength.
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
What is it about our culture that we get so enthralled with celebrities’ fall from power? Unless we are personally connected to these folks, we relish the sordid details of a John Edwards’ or a Mark Sanford’s fall from power. We watch for countless hours the remembrances of Michael Jackson, analyzing the complexities of an insecure yet powerful personality. We wait with baited breath for more news about Sarah Palin, to figure out whether her resignation was motivated by weakness or the desire for more power. How can people possibly live a normal life when we are so determined to put them on a pedestal and examine every inch of their lives, until we find the chink in their armor, the weak spot, and then exploit it?
Power is a dangerous thing. Lord Acton was right, when in 1887 he said to the bishop: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
A Gallup poll of 1,015 adults nationwide — conducted in May just before we were treated to the saucier details of the lives of South Carolina’s Republican governor and Nevada’s Republican senator — found that 92 percent of Americans think it is morally wrong for a married man or woman to have a fling. We may think it is wrong, but we sure do enjoy learning all about it. We have this affinity for the weakness of others.
The Corinthians were enjoying a good bash of the celebrity preacher Paul. I am not insinuating that Paul’s weakness, his thorn in the flesh, was infidelity. He was not a married man, so he could not have been cheating on his wife. It is more likely that Paul had a physical weakness or infirmity. Richard, in his dissertation, on Paul’s understanding of mortality from 2 Corinthians, asserts that Paul had a sickness which had left him close to death, and that “this near-death experience precipitated a crisis of confidence regarding the apostle’s authority and reliability.” (Richard Deibert, 2 Corinthians and Paul’s Gospel of Human Mortality”)
Hear now Paul’s very careful way of speaking about his struggle. Hear how he sets up the great irony by speaking about all the things about which he might boast, but then addresses his weakness and claims he’d rather boast of that.
Read scripture
Through the years, scholars have speculated about Paul’s thorn in the flesh with as much curiosity as we have about philandering politicians. Some have said he had a problem with his eyes. Others have claimed he had epilepsy. Some have said he is speaking about persecution. But most have concluded that it is some kind of physical ailment. Paul makes it nearly impossible to figure out, and perhaps that it good because we can all relate to some kind of weakness. “Whatever it was, this repeated or sustained experience of physical distress was so humbling and distressing to Paul that he prayed for its removal: “Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me" (2 Corinthians 12:8). Just like our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42), Paul prayed three times for the difficulty to be taken away.
And the answer to his prayer is this message: “'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength, my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Through his painful experience, and the prayer prompted by this experience, Paul discerned the working of divine grace in his life; he learned that his weakness was the way in which the power of the risen Christ was revealed in him. He learned through personal experience that divine power is made perfect in weakness.
This insight, the fruit of prayer, provided Paul with a permanent template, a common paradigm, for all his life in Christ. It became an interpretive key capable of opening in his life numerous doors otherwise closed. He found that this vision sustained him in every sort of suffering and misfortune: “So I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me.. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (12:9-10).
This experienced pattern of strength rendered perfect in weakness is what enabled Paul to discern that “though our outer nature nature is perishing, yet the inner nature is being renewed day by day” (4:16). His prayer on the subject of his physical affliction enabled the Apostle to see that “we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus may be made known in our mortal flesh” (4:11). (Father Patrick Reardon)
Whatever weakness you have, physical or other, remember that through prayer and seeking God’s grace, your weakness can become the power of God at work in you. While we were in Montreat, my mother apologized to me every time we needed to leave the house, walk down the irregular stone staircase to go to worship or some other event. She would say “I’m sorry I slow you down. I’m sorry I’m so dependent on your help. I’m sorry. You don’t have to wait for me.” I kept telling her it was no problem, but she continued to apologize until I finally said, “You know, Mama, it is a gift to me to move slowly because in my day-to-day normal life, I have to move fast.” Her weakness empowered me to slow down.
What could be perceived as a weakness – unemployment for Richard – will by God’s providence, prove to be a strength. Our family life will enjoy a respite from the frenzied schedule of two ministries. We will have the opportunity to work harder to achieve greater simplicity in life, as the class studying Foster’s book on the measure of freedom is learning. But most importantly, our entire family will realize again in a deeper way just how dependent we are on the grace of God to get us through life. We will be on our knees in dependency.
“My grace is sufficient for you.” I was planning to say a few things about that before I was weakened by the uncertainty of Richard’s unemployment. But now those words take on real meaning. God’s power is being perfected in Richard, along with us, his family. Some folks don’t experience much weakness until the aging process begins to erode their confidence and render them powerless in many areas of life. I’m not sure any of us who have experienced weakness – physical, emotional, or psychological – are immediately glad for the experience. Most, like
Paul, pray for it to be removed. Lord, I am sick of taking medication for depression or anxiety. I’m tired of this hearing deficit or mobility trouble or cancer treatment. I wish I were not an alcoholic. I wish I did not have this chronic disease or this mental illness. Lord, deliver me from it. But most often we are not delivered from something, but delivered through it. Through grace of the Lord, we are empowered in our experience of weakness.
God turns everything upside down. In weakness is strength. In dependence is power. In dying to ourselves is eternal life. Earthly power, worldly strength, visual beauty have nothing to do with honor in the Kingdom of God. In fact, all those things can be an obstacle to true honor.
Our country is experiencing a season of relative weakness. You know, I think that this recession or depression could be the best thing that has happened to our country in a long while. I don’t mean to minimize the suffering. It is real and it hurts, but being weak, we have an opportunity to grow strong, to learn what real freedom is. Real freedom is not freedom from responsibility but freedom for others, sensitivity to others.
What Jesus Christ did in his life and death was live the very life we live – a life of joy and peace and love, but also of struggle, pain, and dejection. Jesus became what we are to raise us up to what he is. That’s why his grace is sufficient because Christ showed us the power of weakness, the power of freedom for others.
The East County Observer this week had a special insert for the 4th of July. In it was a picture of twin brothers, who were about 14. One of boys had lost a leg. He was trying to learn to run competitively with an artificial one. Having just read this scripture, I thought to myself that the irony is, the weaker twin, the one-legged one is probably the stronger one, especially if he has learned to turn to God for his strength.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)