C Proper 11 16 Ord NH BFC 2019
Secret Book of James 5
July 21, 2018
My kids will tell you that I still believe that
my luck at stoplights is somehow connected to my ethical behavior. As someone who is forever late or forgetting
meetings, I bristle and curse when I don’t understand why I’m not granted a
green light when the meeting I’m trying to get to is particularly important. Not sure but I do believe I get some
well-deserved “side-eye” as I complain about the length of a particular
stoplight. It shows, coursing through my
bloodstream, is still the belief in a god of retributive justice—a god who will
punish me with red lights for the errors of my ways and a god who gives me the
goodness of green lights when I live righteously and with moral rectitude. Silly.
I know. But I think that god of
retribution, which is strongly linked to the prosperity gospel (If I am good
God will reward me with material wealth.
And its converse, if I am wealthy, prosperous, and in power, I must be
good), that god of retributive justice is at the heart of our nation’s
gospel.
A
central teaching within Buddhism is that “life is suffering.” In Buddhist understanding this is not to say
that all of life is suffering but “life is suffering” moves us away from
simplistic pleasantries and helps us to understand that the reality of change
and impermanence and necessary growth often happen in the waters of suffering
and struggle. We must ford them. Even more so, we know that for adolescent
people, communities, and nations, change and impermanence are often avoided so
as not to make the difficult journey to adulthood.
The
Christian theologian, Douglas John Hall, speaks of our human existence
constituting suffering. We cannot help
but experience loneliness, boundaries or limits, temptation, and anxiety—forms
of suffering that happen just by being human.
Hall goes on to assert that it is not only the nature of being human
that creates suffering but the nature of “becoming” into our full role as
covenant partners with a Tender God that also knows suffering.[1] We all may remember a time when the only path
made to get to the other side of growth was through suffering and pain,
requiring us to leave the familiar, the old habits and practices, to even
admit, “Yes, I was wrong and will need to be better.” If we are to be better, to grow, our
suffering may not only be a necessary cost of discipleship but also a way to
move us from complacency.
And God suffers. Throughout Scripture, God knows, has intimate
relationship with the pain of God’s people, weeps openly for them, dies a
little bit inside each time the power God has given us impedes or destroys the
joy God intends for all of creation. God
grieves. That is all over the
Bible. That is supposed to be directly
conveyed in the life of Christ. As God
in Christ suffers and dies, Scripture poetically affirms that God is
heartbroken. The Temple curtain tearing
in two upon Christ’s death is like the Jewish parent who rips open their
clothing to show the vulnerability and pain within their heart. All of this is to understand our God as in
genuine relationship with the world, reaching out hands to you on this day so
that your heart might not only be full of the love God intends but also expand
to grieve with God over the suffering we see in the world.
“The Bible does not claim that all
suffering is the will of God or that no suffering is the will of God. Or, that
all suffering is due to sin or that no suffering is due to sin. Or, that all
suffering is bad and to be avoided at all costs or that no suffering is bad.”[2] Sometimes the complexity of sin and suffering,
as people of faith, leaves us with more questions than answers. Too often what is taught in our early years, simplistically,
to keep us in line, is that God seeks retribution for our sins. So suffering is a result of our sin—for not
cleaning our plate, picking up our clothes, or lying, or giving sass to our parents. “One more time, one more time, Mister, and
you are going straight to hell!”
That
is why so many people, in various churches, have spoken to me about their love
the book of Job. The book of Job begins
with a man who has done everything right in the world. And, it would seem, his wealth, his large
family, and his health all come from God’s favor because Job is a just and
righteous Jew. Simplistically, Job does
well, without much suffering and struggle, because he lives righteously and
well.
But
then it all falls down—Job loses his family, his wealth, and his health. And the assumption of Job’s friends,
simplistically, is that Job has done some great sin to inherit this evil. Even Job’s wife tells Job to curse God and
die. Job protests. He argues.
He contends, in truth, that he has done nothing to endure such suffering
and refuses to blame God for his suffering.
And when God shows up, it is only Job who has spoken correctly of
God. God speaks from the whirlwind to
tell Job, “The becoming of all of creation caused me great suffering,
unimaginable suffering. It is the nature
of things.” It could be correctly said
that our creative power is born out of a willingness to enter into the
suffering of growth and newness.
We
have to get this as Christians so that we don’t spend all of this anxiety fretting
over our sins, thinking that God is going to or has gotten all retributive on
us, paying us back for our unwillingness to be moral bean counters out of fear
that we will suffer or struggle. Yes,
as we grow spiritual muscle, there may be times when the work we do as
Christians feels serendipitous, all things come into rhythm and harmony, and
things give way to let us know we are on the right track. But, as we grow, there are times when to
grow, to “become” as not only an individual but also a community, means that we
give up on adolescent dreams of providence and prosperity where all the traffic
lights turn green on the way to our destiny.
Sometimes the work before us requires a willingness to slog through, to
know we will be taking one step forward only to be thwarted to take two steps
back. To know that resistance to the work
we do is not that we are in the wrong.
No. It may very well mean that we
are meeting resistance because we are faithful.
It
was the great freedom seeker, abolitionist, and writer, Frederick Douglass who
said,
Let
me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the
progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august
claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting,
agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to
silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is
no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are
men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without
thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many
waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing
without a demand. It never did and it never will. [3]
We
are now in an age where it is not overly dramatic to say that our lives are
required of us, that we need to necessarily creatively confront the evil that
is consuming the earth, casting hate into our communities, and making no bones
about looking for salvation in white hope and prosperity. That gospel has legs and will require a
people, with fearlessness and fortitude, to speak and act bravely for reform to
take place, willing to endure the necessary struggle and suffering to
persevere.
This
is what it means when Christ encourages the disciples, both in the gospels and
in the reading we have from the Secret Book of James this morning, to embrace
the cross as a form of real living over and against Rome’s imperial power. In contrast to what many of have been taught,
that Jesus’s suffering and death was unique in the First Century, what we have
learned is that the telling of Jesus and the cross is to indicate solidarity
with the Jewish people who were routinely crucified in the First Century. When we do know that suffering is a necessary
part of bringing about reform and transformation, we flinch less, and recognize
that suffering solidarity may be required of us.
How
hope was found in my heart yesterday as I watched Buddhist monks Native
leaders, and people of Japanese ancestry, an unlikely ensemble, holding hands
in Lawton, Oklahoma, to say that Ft. Sill would not once again become a
detention camp, risking potential arrest, bodily harm, being overrun by the
world’s greatest imperial power. Jewish
people were arrested at the capitol shouting “Never again is now” willing to
say that the suffering of their people reaches its hands out to the suffering
of immigrant peoples. Sisters of Mercy
from Chicago, Illinois, traveled to Washington, D.C. where Capitol Police
arrested 70 people protesting in the capitol rotunda, including a 90 year-old
nun. Bob Rivett, a retired doctor,
father, and grandfather, wrote an article for The Guardian while he sat
on Waterloo Bridge in London waiting to be arrested for his membership in
Extinction Rebellion, a group he believes is trying to save the world as
climate change advances exponentially.[4] Rivett does this as Great Britain’s police
ask for tougher sentences to curb the activism of Extinction Rebellion. Native elders were arrested, some with
wheelchairs and others with canes, were arrested for refusing to yield on the
sacred mountain of Mauna Kea in Hawai’i, a sacred mountain Native people say
the University of Hawai’I and the State of Hawai’i have seen as a thing to be
used and exploited.[5] Do you feel it? Can you see it? God is rising up. And the labor pains of a new world are
underway.
You
may not be surprised to learn that Pastor Harmon was present this week when a
woman came raving into our building, upset about the art display of children at
the front of our building. Good thing it
was Lisa. She met her with eloquence,
courage, and grace. Meanwhile, people
like Margie MacDonald write editorials in the paper we know are not being
well-received by certain community leaders.
As
we decide, as a congregation, how we shall be in solidarity, how we shall
creatively engage and confront, we must also keep another thing in front of
us. Though life may sometimes be
suffering as requiring our courage and not defaulting to Pollyanna solutions,
we should also be mindful that God seeks something bigger and broader for
us.
Therapist
Esther Perel knows full well the impact of suffering and trauma in a life. As the Jewish daughter of a father and mother
who lost all of their family in the Holocaust, Perel knows that there are
people who never come back from suffering and trauma. She witnessed it as her family struggled to
make a life among other Holocaust survivors in Antwerp, Belgium. She asked her husband, who works with torture
survivors, “What’s the process, and how do you know when a person comes back?
What kind of coming back does a person do after they have been in solitary
confinement for years, or away, dislocated, et cetera?”
And
they both began to reflect on when a person does come back. What they concluded
was that there’s something about when a person can once again take risks,
because it means that people are not completely trapped in a state of vigilance. Coming back happens when people can once
again play, or experience pleasure or joy, because it means they are not
completely wrapped in the sense of dread. We can’t be on guard and let go. And
playfulness comes with a certain element of letting go.[6] That is why it will always be important, in
this courageous congregation, for ice cream socials, birthday cake Sundays, and
holy hikes. They all remind us that we
are playfully nimble, willing to take risks all over again, to perhaps enter
into the suffering and struggle that will bring becoming to our community and
our world.
In
other words, it is a serious, difficult time.
We want to act, as people of faith, accordingly. But I want to make sure we are having fun,
scheduled and spontaneously, so that we aren’t lost or become the hatred and
fear intended for us. As Christians, we
are called to the intentional suffering and struggle of solidarity at the foot of the cross. We are also called to know
that God intends our joy and play and celebration and rest. Amen.
[1] Douglas John Hall, God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House,
1986), pp. 66, 120.
[2] Terrence E. Fretheim, “To Say Something—About God,
Evil, and Suffering,” Word and World, Volume XIX, Number 4, Fall
1999.
[3] Frederick Douglas, “If there is no struggle, there is
no progress,” Blackpast, 1857, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1857-frederick-douglass-if-there-no-struggle-there-no-progress/.
[4] Bob Rivett, “Extinction Rebellion protestors aren’t
activists—we just want to save our world,” The Guardian, July 19,
2019.
[5] N. Jaymila Chisholm, “Native Hawaiian Elders Arrested
in Telescope Protest at Mauna Kea,” Colorlines, July 18, 2019. https://www.colorlines.com/articles/native-hawaiian-elders-arrested-telescope-protest-mauna-kea
[6] “Interview with Esther Perel: The erotic is an antidote to death,” OnBeing
with Krista Tippett, July 11, 2019, https://onbeing.org/programs/esther-perel-the-erotic-is-an-antidote-to-death/.
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