Sermon delivered Sunday, June 20, 2010, at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Lewis Center, OH. If you would like to listen to the audio version of this sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.
Lectionary texts: 1 Kings 19:1-15a; Psalm 22:18-27; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What is the Human Condition?
Good morning, St. Andrew’s, and happy Fathers’ Day to all you dads and expectant dads out there! This morning I want to talk to you about a difficult subject. Early in the week, a friend of mine suggested that I talk about why bad things sometimes happen to us. Where is God when things go south for us, especially when we have apparently done nothing wrong to deserve bad things? I believe the Lord spoke to me through that suggestion because it resonated with me deeply as it often does when he wants me to preach on something and the assigned texts lined up to allow me to preach on it.
Now it is a well known fact that this is a difficult subject on which to preach. And so I decided that it would be best if I tested out this sermon on a pilot audience before I preached it to you. I did so Friday night and I asked my wife to take pictures of the audience as I preached so that afterward I could visually analyze their reaction to what I had to say. This picture is typical of the audience’s reaction and I think it speaks for itself [show picture of the kid holding his head in his hands]. So if I see most of you holding your head in your hands by the sermon’s end, I will tell you who gave me the suggestion to preach it and you can take it up with him. If, on the other hand, you like it, I’ll be more than happy to take all the credit for it.
In this morning’s OT lesson, we see a frightened and dejected Elijah running for his life—literally. Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, King of Israel, has promised to have him killed for having 450 prophets of Baal killed. That this particular threat caused Elijah to be afraid is curious at best. You recall that two weeks ago, we read in 1 Kings 17 about the story of the widow of Zarephath, in which Elijah told her not to be afraid in the midst of a severe famine and later resuscitated her dead son. In both cases, Elijah appealed to God and the Lord delivered. And then in 1 Kings 18, we read the poignant story of Elijah standing alone against 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and being vindicated as a true prophet of God as God displayed a mighty act of power in which he showed himself to be the one true God, while showing that Baal was a false and powerless god and that his prophets were no prophets at all.
Given the spectacular successes Elijah experienced, and especially since today’s story apparently occurred immediately after Elijah’s success against the Baals, we really have to wonder why Jezebel’s threat frightened him so badly that he felt compelled to run for his life. Unfortunately the text does not tell us and so we will never know for sure. Perhaps Elijah was just tired. After all, his experience on Mt. Carmel would have been emotionally intense and draining. Perhaps he became distracted and let his weak human nature cloud his memory regarding all God had done for him so that he listened first to Jezebel and forgot to listen to the promises of God to be with him in any and every circumstance. If this is the case, then Elijah failed to do what he had previously done. He failed to wait for God’s command and his fear led to impatience, which ultimately led to disobedience because Elijah then fled to the wilderness before he received his “marching orders” from God as he had done in the previous two stories.
Whatever the reason, we as humans can relate to Elijah, can’t we? When things get dark in our lives, we immediately ask God the “why” question. Why did you let my retirement funds get decimated? Why did you allow our baby to be stillborn? Why can’t I find work? Why am I afflicted with chronic illness? Why is my son or daughter a drug addict? Why did you allow our home to be destroyed by tornado or flood or fire? Why did my loved one die prematurely or unexpectedly? Why did you allow my parent to develop Alzheimer’s or rot away in a nursing home? Why are you allowing the oil spill in the Gulf? Why do you allow poverty and suffering on so large a scale? Why did you allow 9/11? And lest you think I am approaching this from a purely hypothetical perspective, why did my grandma Shaffer, one of the sweetest ladies you will ever find in the whole world, have a massive stroke and be reduced to behaving in ways over an extended period of time that would have only horrified her if she had been in her right mind? The list is endless, but you get the point. When things go wrong, enquiring minds—sometimes sinfully so—wanna know why.
Where is God’s Grace?
It is at this point that you are probably either going to be holding your head in your hands or be on the edge of your seat, waiting for me to give you a definitive answer to all these “why” questions. If you are in the latter camp, you may soon be holding your head in your hands because I must tell you that I do not know why God allows all these bad things to happen. I am not privy to inside information nor do I have the mind of God (as is surely apparent to any of you who have heard me preach enough).
In fact, the Bible spends little time answering our “why” questions. God did not tell Abraham why he asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac, nor did Abraham ask God why. Instead he attempted to carry out God’s request and found that God demonstrated himself to be trustworthy. Neither did God tell Moses why he picked him to lead God’s people out of Egypt. Moses protested and gave him many valid reasons why he was not fit to do so, but that made no difference to God and so Moses led God’s people out of Egypt. Likewise with the prophet Jeremiah when God called him to be his prophet. Paul certainly didn’t ask to be picked as an Apostle of Christ, nor do we have any record of him asking God why he was picked to do so. No, Paul just went out and did the work he was called to do—and suffered mightily for it.
The one book in the Bible that explores the “why” question a bit is Job, but here again we do not find many answers for enquiring minds. You recall that after multiple catastrophes had befallen him, Job asked God to explain himself to which God responded by asking Job a series of rhetorical questions. “Were you there when I created the universe? Do you know why things behave the way they do? Do you have the mind to call my justice into question?” I remember becoming extremely irritated the first couple of times I read God’s response to Job. What kind of answer is that? Who does God think he is, anyhow? Job has legitimate questions. Answer him! Of course, God eventually showed me the folly of my thinking. He reminded me at the heart of my objections was the assumption that the two parties in this conversation were equal. But of course they are not. God is God and we are not, much as we sometimes do not like to accept that.
And so for whatever reasons, God has chosen not to answer our “why” questions. Sure, I could speculate on why some of the bad things happen to us but it would only be speculation and I do not want to waste your time this morning with my speculations. Instead, it seems to me that our time would be more profitably spent by looking for a biblical answer on how to respond faithfully when dark times and trials descend upon us.
The first thing Scripture tells us to do, sometimes implicitly, is to trust God in any and every circumstance, especially during our darkest hours. When we do that, we allow God to prove himself to be trustworthy and true to his word. Abraham did this with Isaac. Moses did this repeatedly in the wilderness when God’s sinful and rebellious people pushed him and his leadership to the very limits. Paul often endured hardships and persecution for the sake of Christ and the spreading of his Gospel, even boasting to the Corinthians that when he was at his weakest Christ was at his strongest in him (2 Corinthians 12:10).
In fact, the very opposite seems to be at the heart of Elijah’s problem in today’s lesson. Elijah let his fear get the better of him after receiving a death threat—and given the circumstances we can surely understand this. Instead of waiting for God’s command on how to proceed next and trusting God to deliver as Elijah’s previous experience confirmed that God would, Elijah fled to the wilderness and told God he wanted to die. He let the immediate circumstance get him so distracted that he became totally discouraged and downhearted and forgot to trust God. Even worse, his fear apparently made him forget all that God had done for him so that he could not draw on that experience to help him seek God in his present difficult situation.
And what was God’s response to Elijah’s faithlessness? God was faithful to his distressed prophet. He sent an angel, probably in human form, to minister to Elijah in the wilderness. God had work for his prophet to do and he was not going to let Elijah get in his way! But Elijah continued to flee and there in that abandoned cave God confronted him. “What are you doing here in this cave,” God asked, and then he showed Elijah how he could speak to him in a still, small voice as well as through mighty acts of power. Here God seems to be reminding Elijah and us to listen for and to him in the midst of our trials and we will hear him speak to us. It may not be the answer we want to hear but then we must decide if we trust God or not.
And this is where we can tie in our lesson from last week’s sermon about justification by grace through faith. It is precisely during our crisis moments that we need to remember God’s great promises to us and his great act of love for us. We must remember that we have a God who loves us so much he became Incarnate and lived among us. He died a terrible death on the cross for us, bearing the awful punishment for our sins, and giving us our one and only hope and chance to live with him forever. As Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle lesson, we have been given the opportunity to become God’s very children through adoption, an opportunity made possible by the blood of Christ. If God loves us that much when we were his enemies, why would a God like that abandon us in our darkest hours? It simply does not make sense.
No, we may not understand this fully but Scripture tells us to respond to God by trusting him. As our Gospel lesson reminds us this morning, God calls us to trust his ways and his purposes, even when we do not fully understand them. God doesn’t want us to fear his ways and purposes when we don’t fully understand them as the Gerasenes did when they saw what Jesus had done for the demoniac. They saw the demoniac healed but they also saw a herd of pigs destroyed in the process. They did not understand and this made them afraid, despite the healing that had occurred. Likewise, we can get so caught up in our own trials that we forget to trust in the One who loves us and gave himself for us so that we can live with him forever, and who will ultimately heal us.
Does trusting God during our darkest hours mean that we have to enjoy our woes? Hardly. Nowhere does Scripture tell us to enjoy our suffering. Neither does it equate trusting in God with enjoying suffering. Instead, the Bible reminds us continually to put our hope and trust in God and he will not disappoint if we are willing to let him answer us and comfort us on his terms, not ours. When we can finally get to this point, we will demonstrate to God and ourselves that we really do believe he is God and we are not, but this is a slow and arduous process.
Second, Scripture reminds us repeatedly that God’s justice will be fully executed, but not until Christ comes again to finish the work of God’s New Creation. God will deal with all the wrongs and injustices of this broken and fallen world, but on his terms and in his time, in part to allow as many people to come to a saving faith in Christ as possible (see, e.g., Matthew 13:24-29). Again, this may not help us in the immediacy of our suffering and trials but it is important for us to wrap our minds around this truth because it points us to the fact that life is much more than just biological existence. Life, real life, is having a relationship with the living God, now and forever.
For example, what ultimately happened to the demoniac that Jesus healed in today’s Gospel lesson? What was the fate of the widow of Zarephath’s son whom Elijah raised, or Lazarus or the widow of Nain’s son whom Jesus raised? They all died. And what about healing that may occur in our own bodies? What is our ultimate fate? We may be healed from several particular ailments or diseases but someday something is going to kill us and we will die. As one of my favorite old comedians, Rodney Dangerfield, once joked, “I eat right, exercise, and take very good care of my body. Why? So that I can grow old and die!”
Given the reality of our finite and mortal condition, Scripture urges us to develop a realistic and eternal perspective about life, where we see life as having a relationship with the Source and Author of all life and not just biological existence. Our mortal bodies will surely die but for those of us who have put our whole hope and trust in Christ, we will be raised to new life and fitted with new resurrection bodies that will never again be subject to the awful things that can happen to our mortal bodies. In other words, we will be ultimately healed, and forever. This hope can and should sustain us in our present infirmity and suffering because it points again to the kind of God we have and the nature of real life. Does your Christian hope sustain you?
Where is the Application?
So what lessons can we take from all of this? There are at least three, I think. First, while we may be tempted to dwell on the “why” questions, Scripture reminds us that our time is better spent putting our whole hope and trust in God and developing our relationship with him, rather than expecting him to treat us as his equals. The mystery of suffering will always remain a mystery, at least on this side of the grave, and so we have a choice to make. We can either focus our energy on asking questions that are impossible to answer or seek help from a God who loves us passionately and who has a consistent track record with his people. This doesn’t mean that we Christians will be immune to bad things happening to us or that our prayers will be answered for us in the way we would like. I know several of you who are suffering mightily right now with terrible problems, but I also see you doing it with great courage, grace, hope, and a power that is not yours because you know the One who loves you and you know he is helping you weather the storm. It may not always be pretty, but it is sufficient for the moment. When my time comes, I hope God will help me to face my trials with as much grace and power as he has given some of you.
Second, and related to the point above, if we are to fully trust God, we must become literate in God’s story. We must see that he has a proven track record with his people. Accordingly, we must drink deeply of God’s story and read how God remains faithful to his wayward and rebellious people, even when we do not deserve it. You can find these stories in the OT books like Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Ruth, and Esther. The names, places, and circumstances change but God’s great love, mercy, and grace never do. In the NT you can read, among others, Paul’s letters and be reminded of the fact that even now God has blessed you with his very Presence in the Person of the Holy Spirit to help you in your struggles and trials. This, in turn, reminds you that you never, ever have to live life alone or struggle by yourself.
Last, and related to the second point, Scripture reminds us that we should let God love us through his people. When you are suffering or struggling, let God’s people reach out to you and love on you. Don’t be a rugged individualist and insist on suffering in silence or by being alone. We are creatures of flesh and blood and we need the human touch. God has demonstrated repeatedly that he loves us through other people and we dare not deny ourselves this means of grace, if for no other reason than to have others help remind us that despite our trials, we still have other blessings. Taking our cue from Elijah today on how not to respond to adversity, we are reminded to see all the blessings that God has bestowed upon us, and not to focus exclusively on our trials or suffering. This may not make us feel better immediately but it will help remind us that God’s other blessings are signs that he has not abandoned or forsaken us.
Summary
In closing, I want to make one thing very clear. I do not want you to interpret any of this as me minimizing your suffering or trials. I am not telling you to keep a stiff upper lip. I am not telling you suffering will make you a better person, although it might. I am not suggesting that suffering is for the good, although it may be in certain instances. No, I am rather suggesting that suffering is ultimately a mystery and must be dealt with through faith in our living God. It is better for us to focus our efforts in asking God to help us trust him to deliver us, in whatever form that takes, than to insist that he answer our “why” questions.
We do not learn to trust others automatically. We learn to trust them (or not) because they have demonstrated to us that they are trustworthy (or not), and they have done so because we have given them a chance to demonstrate their (un)trustworthiness. Likewise with God. I cannot answer your “why” questions for you because like you I am mortal and do not have a special pipeline into the ways of Almighty God. But I can tell you that we have a God who is big enough to help us in our struggles, who loves us passionately, who gave himself in a terrible and costly act for us, and who promises to never leave or abandon us, especially in our darkest hours. We have his very Spirit testifying this truth to us and helping us in our trials, suffering, and weakness. Once you begin to wrap your mind around these great truths, you will discover, through the very help of the Spirit, that you really do have power sufficient for the moment as well as the promise of being restored and healed forever. And that, folks, is Good News, now and for all eternity.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.