Isaiah. 2:1-4
Mat. 10:34-39
Mat. 5:9

 

[1] For years now I’ve arrived at church on Remembrance Day with my heart in my mouth. For years I’ve wondered what our service says to people of Germany ancestry. Have we implied, however unintentionally, that German people are the ogres of the world? that they are people of impenetrable hardness and incorrigible cruelty? Oh yes, we in Streetsville United are both orthodox enough and charitable enough to say we agree with the prophet Jeremiah that the heart of everyone, everyone without exception, is “deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, beyond understanding.” (Jer. 17:9) But even as we say we agree with the prophet do we quietly qualify the statement so as to suggest that the hearts of one nation in particular are especially corrupt and unusually ununderstandable? The last thing I want to do today is foster the myth of superiority; namely, that some of us are superior because our hearts are more benign than the hearts of others.

Yes, the two major wars of this century found Germany our enemy and France our ally. If we were to push back one century earlier, however, we’d find the situation reversed: France was the enemy and Germany the ally. Following the battle of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington defeated the French forces, Wellington remarked, “Never have I come so close to losing.” He would have lost for sure had the British troops not been supported by German forces. In other words, labels like “enemy” and “ally” change in a twinkling.

Think of the United States. We Canadians have been allies of the U.S. throughout this century, as have the British. But the British and the Americans haven’t always been allies. They warred in 1776 and 1812. The Citadel, that massive fortress in Quebec City, was constructed in the last century to protect you and me from the Americans. At the turn of the century British and American navies vied for superiority just in case the two countries went to war again. The United States had on file plans for war against Great Britain as late as 1932. When the Parti Quecbecois came to power in Quebec in 1976 and began talking about asserting sovereignty over the St.Lawrence Seaway and impeding American access to electricity and fresh water, the United States government moved an entire infantry division (10,000 men) to upstate New York opposite Kingston so as to be able to move immediately should American interests be threatened. We mustn’t assume that because America is Canada’s ally today it will always be Canada’s ally.

The expression “concentration camp” has been especially distasteful in the past one hundred years. Who invented the concentration camp? Not the Germans; the British developed concentration camps in their war against the Dutch in South Africa. The Dutch suffered more fatalities in the camps than they suffered through enemy fire. Jeremiah is correct. Human sinnership is universal.

At the same time, while all hearts are deceitful and corrupt, there do occur in history particular concentrations of evil that are to be resisted relentlessly. We can’t use our common sinnership as an excuse for not resisting the appearance of a particular evil, a concentration of evil. Nazism was such an appearance, such a concentration.

 

[2] While there are many aspects to the evil of Nazism that we could discuss today we are going to examine one in particular: Nazism’s victimization of the Jewish people. We mustn’t think that the holocaust was simply part of the war, or at least a consequence of the war, neither more nor less evil than war inevitably is. The holocaust was unprecedented as evil for the sake of evil. Acts of war are customarily undertaken for the sake of something else. A military invasion, for instance, is undertaken for the sake of acquiring territory. Acts of war are customarily viewed as evil (at least by victors) even as those acts of war are undertaken for the sake of garnering natural resources or restoring national reputation or expanding “living room.” The holocaust occurred for none of these reasons; it was evil for the sake of evil.

We should consider several respects in which the holocaust differs from acts of war. Wars are fought by competing parties where both parties have power. Both parties may not have equal power, but both parties have some power. The Jewish people had no power. They made up less than 1% of Germany’s population. They had no access to the armed forces or the government. They were never a threat to the Third Reich; they couldn’t be. Therefore the aggression visited on them can’t be called an act of war.

Neither should we regard the holocaust as another of those collateral “spillovers” of war. Wartime “spillovers” occur when passions are unleashed inadvertently and people are found behaving subhumanly. The holocaust, however, wasn’t the result of mindless passion loosed unintentionally. The holocaust, rather, was planned with utmost rationality, executed with utmost deliberation, perpetrated with utmost detachment. Passion is spent quickly. If the holocaust had been the result of passion loosed in the course of war, it wold have disappeared as quickly as it flared up. It didn’t disappear, however, in that it had never flared up. It was coolly conceived, rationally implemented, deliberately executed, dispassionately protracted. It wasn’t done as a result of collective loss of self-control; it was done with utmost self-control. It was evil for the sake of evil.

Neither should we regard the holocaust as yet another instance of racism. Needless to say, the Nazis were racists. But they weren’t anti-semites because they were racists; they were racists because they were anti-semites. The Nazis, we should remember, pronounced the Japanese to be honorary Aryans! Since the Japanese were honorary Aryans, the Nazis weren’t racist in principle. They were racist to the extent that they were anti-semitic in principle. Moreover, racism asserts that some races are humanly inferior. In North America black people have been deemed inferior to white people; in central Africa, brown people inferior to black people. The Jewish people weren’t deemed humanly inferior, however; they were deemed not human at all but rather verminous. The racially inferior are customarily enslaved; vermin is always exterminated.

Neither were the Jewish people mere scapegoats in the holocaust. To be sure, in the early stages of the Nazi movement they were used as scapegoats. Jews were blamed for all of Germany’s woes; they were blamed for Germany’s loss of international prestige, its financial collapse, it’s defeat and humiliation in World War I. Very quickly, however, the Jewish people ceased to be a scapegoat for anything. As long as any were to be found alive they were to be ferreted out, degraded, and then murdered. Now they were singled out as evil was done for the sake of evil. Auschwitz wasn’t the first time they had been singled out. They had been singled out at Sinai. There, however, they had been singled out for life and a task. Now they were singled out for torment and slaughter.

Let’s be sure we are clear on a point that most people confuse: the holocaust wasn’t an aspect of Germany’s war effort, however misguided. The holocaust wasn’t perpetrated because it was thought to advance Germany’s war effort. It was never going to advance the war effort. By 1943-44 the tide was turning against Germany. An all-out effort was needed if Germany was to regain military ascendancy. Freight trains were needed desperately to transport materials to troop-fronts and airfields and naval depots. These trains were diverted to other destinations and used to transport people to death camps. Zeal for the holocaust undermined the war effort. After D-Day it was obvious that Germany would be defeated. Allied leaders announced that those who were orchestrating the holocaust would be tried, at war’s end, as war criminals and punished. And still the zeal for the holocaust didn’t abate. The holocaust wasn’t an aspect of the war effort; it jeopardized the war effort. It was evil for the sake of evil.

 

[3] In light of such monstrosity we ought never to undervalue the sacrifice that so many Canadians made in the face of it. We ought never to undervalue it, even though we persist in downgrading it to a trifle, even denouncing it. If you think I invent or exaggerate let me refer you to several textbooks in Canadian history written by Canadians for use in Canadian university and highschool classrooms. Discounting the 30,000 men Canada lost in the last war; discounting the 10,000 air crew that were lost in defeating Germany the only way Germany could be defeated, the most recent textbooks on Canadian history discuss Canada’s contribution in only a paragraph or two if they discuss it at all. I consider all such Canadian writers of Canadian history to be violating the ninth commandment, the commandment that enjoins us not to bear false witness against our neighbour. I consider all such revisionism to be disgusting, as revisionism always is.

When the best-selling, two-volume History of the Canadian Peoples comes to discuss the different fronts on which Canadians fought in World War II, its entire discussion lasts one paragraph. Robert Martin, a law professor at the University of Western Ontario whose father perished in the last war, pointed out in a November, 1991 newspaper article that recent history textbooks in Canada had “airbrushed” off the page the sacrifice Canadians made. In a November, 1996 submission to the Globe and Mail a school vice-principal from Surrey, B.C., asked why, on Remembrance Day, her school should have “some veteran…come in and stand up there and bore us all to death with his medals.” When “Victory in Europe” Day was being highlighted overseas (particularly in Holland) Nova Scotia’s Ministry of Education provided no curriculum resources concerning the event of V-E Day and the anniversary celebration currently underway. One board of education in Nova Scotia, however, did hold a daylong training session for teachers on the topic of human rights. The irony would be laughable if it weren’t tragic. Had the Third Reich lasted 1000 years as planned, no teacher would be sitting around a coffee urn discussing human rights. In 1996 an attempt was made to provide curriculum resources for Remembrance Day in Ontario’s schools. The Ministry of Education at Queen’s Park stifled the attempt.

What occurs at the provincial level occurs at the federal as well. In 1992 the CBC and the National Film Board colluded to show on national television The Valour and the Horror. Brian and Terence McKenna, the two men who crafted the details and mood of the movie, implied that the RCAF was a clone of the Nazis. We should note that while the movie vilifying Canadian airmen had the support of the CBC, the CBC refused to air No Price Too High, the response of air force veterans. Canadians forget because Canadians are programmed to forget.

The Dutch, on the other hand; the Dutch don’t forget. The Dutch remember because they want to remember. In May, 1995, the Dutch people festooned their homes and streets with banners commemorating the Canadians’ liberation of Holland. The Dutch have never pretended that Canadian efforts were of the same order as those of the Nazis. The Dutch remember the brutality of the occupation. They know who Anne Frank and Corrie Ten Boom were. They remember the cold-blooded killing of underground resistors who were captured. They remember the treachery and ignominy of fellow-citizens who collaborated. Does this mean that the Dutch harbour an ever-festering hatred towards Germans? Of course not. Myself, I have found very few Dutch people who don’t speak some German and are glad to speak it. The border between Holland and Germany today isn’t armed; in fact, it isn’t even manned. There’s only a sign that tells travelers they are leaving one country and entering another. Dutch and German forces train together today in NATO exercises.

Still, the Dutch remember what Canadians did for them. They take entire schools to the cemeteries of Canadian servicemen and remind their schoolchildren that political freedom comes with price tag attached. On the anniversary of V-E Day in 1995, fifteen thousand Canadian veterans marched through the city of Apeldoorn. The parade was scheduled to last two hours; it lasted eight, so frequently did the Dutch people run into the parade to hug, bedeck and press gifts upon the veterans. Mothers still in their twenties held up their infants so that the baby might receive a veteran’s kiss. The Dutch remember because they have reason to remember. We Canadians have reason too. Yet the CBC refused to televise No Price Too High. PBS, an American network, aired the film in any case.

 

[4] Yet as fine as Canada’s contribution was in the last Great War, Christians can never pretend that war is glorious, let alone godly. General George Patton was never more wrong when he said, “War is humankind’s noblest effort.” What can be noble about the human activity that advertises our innermost depravity and outermost wretchedness? What can be noble about the spectacle of those created in the image and likeness of God sparing no effort to maim and kill others made in the image and likeness of God? So far from being glorious, war proves as nothing else proves what the church holds up as patently obvious: humankind needs saving, and humankind will never save itself. Humankind doesn’t need to be helped; it doesn’t need to be inspired; it doesn’t need to be “topped up” with tonics intellectual or moral. Humankind needs to be saved.

To be sure, on Remembrance Day Sunday we are “remembering” in church. At the same time, the church knows that war isn’t an aspect of the kingdom of God or a herald of the kingdom of God. George Orwell was surely correct when he said, “War has never been right; war has never been sane; but sometimes war has been necessary.” In order to gain proper perspective on the matter we should invert Orwell’s aphorism: war has sometimes been necessary, but war has never been sane, never been right. Never been right in the sense of never been righteous. Righteousness pertains to the kingdom of God, and war is a contradiction of the kingdom of God.

How unrighteous is war? Who knew war better than Ulysses S. Grant, and who waged war more masterfully? When Ulysses S. Grant was leader of the Union forces during the War of the Great Rebellion (its official title in the U.S.A.) Grant used to say, “The purpose of war (the purpose of the war he was waging) is to end war. Then war should be ended as quickly as possible. War is ended fastest when war is waged against civilians. Governments surrender much faster when their civilians are being slain. Therefore always endeavour to wage war against civilians.” War, however necessary, has never been right, righteous. Only the kingdom of God knows righteousness.

Then the church’s responsibility, especially on Remembrance Day, is to exalt the triumph of the Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. Our Lord has been raised from the dead; not merely raised from death, he’s been raised beyond death, beyond the reach of death. The powers of evil that overtook him once can never overtake him again. Raised from the dead and raised beyond death, he now bestrides the world as the guarantee of that new creation in which, says Peter, righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:13)

Unquestionably evil afflicts God’s creation at this moment. Then is evil to distort and disfigure forever what God created out of his goodness and pronounced good? Is evil to linger so long as slowly but surely to gain the upper hand and thereby submerge even the residual goodness of the creation? No! Our Lord has been raised from the dead. His victory can never be overturned. God’s decisive intervention has already occurred. The struggle between the righteousness of God’s kingdom and the unrighteousness of a fallen world is a struggle whose outcome can never be in doubt. Because of our Lord’s victory we who are called to resist evil can never be involved in a losing cause. In resisting evil, rather, we are bearing witness to that triumph whose irreversibility renders our resistance fruitful.

Yet we must be sure to understand that resistance to evil is more than mere defiance of evil. Defiance of evil is certainly necessary; yet defiance of evil is never sufficient. Defiance of evil leaves us locked in a stalemate, with evil always setting the agenda. Defiance of evil, then is essentially negative. Resistance to evil, on the other hand, is essentially positive. Positively, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, we are to “go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” (Isaiah 2:1-4)

For the Hebrew mind “mountain” always has to do with revelation, and revelation is God’s gift of himself accompanied by the illumination of his gift. “House of God” has to do with the venue of worship. The God who longs to give himself to us is apprehended – that is, both understood and grasped — only as he is worshipped. It is only as we worship that we know ourselves the recipients of God’s gift, find ourselves illumined as to the meaning of this gift, learn the ways of God and therefore, ultimately, walk in God’s paths.

Resistance to evil, essentially positive whereas defiance of evil (admittedly necessary) is only negative; resistance to evil always entails peacemaking. Here we should note carefully the difference between peacemaking and peacekeeping. Peacekeeping (once again necessary in our world) presupposes the capacity to wage war. All peacekeepers are armed. This point is surely significant: all peacekeepers are armed. In other words, peace is kept only as the threat of non-peace is a real threat. Peacemaking, however, is different. Peacemaking, so blessed that Jesus pronounces peacemakers “sons (daughters) of God”, those who mirror God’s nature; peacemaking has to do with shalom, and shalom is a synonym for salvation. God has made provision for us in the cross, his characteristic deed of sin-absorbing self-renunciation. We can make peace only as we “go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob”, and there “learn God’s ways and walk in his paths.” It’s plain that God’s way is the way of the cross; it’s plain that to walk in God’s paths is to walk the way of the crucified.

Ascending the mount of the Lord, worshipping in the house of the God of Jacob and learning his ways; all of this exists for one thing only: that we might walk in his paths. Walking in his paths happens to be most difficult of all. Ascending, worshipping, learning: all of this is easy compared to walking, for that walking which is the closest following of our Lord always entails crossbearing. Peacemaking, then, is every bit as arduous and dangerous as warwaging. Peacemaking entails as much hardship, discipline, self-renunciation – sacrifice – as warwaging.

Therefore we must always support those who pursue peace. We must never think that warriors are virile while peacemakers are “pantywaists.” We must never think that peacekeeping, necessary to be sure, is more important than peacemaking. We must always thank God for peacemaking wherever it occurs on however small or large a scale. The resurrection of our Lord from the dead (which resurrection is irreversible) means that the self-renunciation of peacemakers is never finally futile. Peacemaking, on whatever scale, is ultimately an anticipation of that God-appointed day, itself irreversible, when, in the words of the prophet Micah, all

shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. (Micah 4:4)

 

                                                                    Victor Shepherd
November 1998 

Remembrance Day 1998

 

Isaiah 6:1-8   Mark 4:13 -20

 

Yes, I’m aware that Sunday morning has almost passed and there isn’t much left of a rain-free weekend, one of the few we’ve had this summer. Perhaps, then, you want me to conclude the sermon and service as quickly as I can.  For this reason we may have come to this service with something on our mind besides the adoration of God.

Yes, I’m aware that this is the 33^rd time I’ve preached in Knox Church . Many of you have heard me speak dozens of times. Since there are a finite number of synaptic firings in everyone’s grey matter, many of you have already figured out how my ‘noodle’ works. As soon as I announce the text you can outline the sermon.  As soon as I announce the text some of you can write the sermon.

Yes, Isaiah was sitting among fellow-worshippers in the Jerusalem temple, in yet another service, where he had worshipped for years.  What the clergy and congregation were doing that day — singing, praying, speaking, offering — they had done countless times before. He wasn’t expecting anything beyond doing it all one more time.

And then it happened. Precisely when Isaiah expected nothing. It happened to him at worship, as it has happened to me at worship and may happen to anyone at worship.  What happened? “I saw the Lord, seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the skirt of his robe billowed throughout Knox Church at Spadina and Harbord.

“But God is spirit”, someone wants to remind me, “and since God is spirit he doesn’t wear a robe with a swirling skirt”.   Let’s not be pedantic. Let’s not trivialize the episode in Isaiah’s life that left him forever different, as Jacob’s wrestling through the night at Peniel left him forever different, as Paul’s prostration on the way to Damascus left him forever different, as my stomach-churning recognition, during an evening service when I was fourteen years old, left me forever different, unable to deny what I knew loomed before me (the ministry of Word, sacrament and pastoral care) and unable to escape it.  It happened to Isaiah during worship.  Why shouldn’t it happen to anyone at St. Matthew’s By-The-Gas-Station on any worship occasion at all?

 

I: — What exactly happened to Isaiah? “I saw the Lord!” Almost.  He almost saw the Lord. The Hebrew bible insists that no one on earth can “see” God and live. Strictly speaking, Isaiah saw, in his life-altering vision, throne and robes and attendants. Throne and robe and attendants point to Him whom no one can see and live.

Isaiah was sitting in church for the thousandth time expecting nothing more than what had happened (or hadn’t happened) last week when inexplicably the incense-smoke used in worship to symbolize God’s presence suddenly symbolized nothing: it was the palpable presence of God. While the rest of the congrega­tion sat bored half-to-death wishing Rev. Drone would learn to stop when he was finished, Isaiah felt the foundations of the building tremble as though an earthquake were underway. With his Spirit-sensitised sight he saw the Seraphim, creatures who extol God’s holiness, surrounding the throne.

The Seraphim had three pairs of wings.  With one pair they flew around the throne of God, honouring the One whom only the spiritually quickened can approach.  With another pair they covered their eyes but not their ears, their task being always to hear what God utters, never to try to pry into the innermost recesses of God’s ineffableness.  With their third pair of wings they covered their “feet” (feet being a Hebrew circumlocution for genitals; their modesty constrained them to “cover up” before God.)

 

Each Seraph called to the other, “Holy, holy, holy”. To say “holy, holy, holy” of God, rather, is to say that God is uniquely holy, inexpressibly holy, unsurpassably holy, incomparably holy. That’s it — incomparably holy. When Isaiah overhears the Seraphim calling “holy, holy, holy” to each other as they surround the throne of God there is seared upon Isaiah forever the awareness that God is uniquely holy, solely holy, singular­ly holy.

It all adds up to one thing: God is incomparable.  God is not the “nth” degree of anything human.  God is not a projection of humankind at its best or humankind at its strongest or humankind at its most mysterious.  God is uniquely, irreducibly, self-existently GOD.

Vague? Abstract?    Ethereal? Hard-to-find?   Not for Isaiah. God is an evanescence we can’t locate?  God, rather, is the densest density we can’t avoid.   Never will I forget the day I went to see my favourite philosophy professor, Emil Fackenheim, about a term paper I had to write.   (Fackenheim, a world-class philosopher, was the crown jewel of the philosophy department of the University of Toronto . We talked about my essay for five minutes. Then he pushed his glasses up onto his forehead, tipped his chair back, put his feet on his desk, and fired up a big cigar.  “Philosophy”, he said to me, “we’ve talked enough about philosophy. Let’s talk about GOD. (I can’t pronounce the word properly. When Fackenheim said ‘God’ the whole room filled with the shekinah, the presence.) Shepherd, if modernity thinks about God at all, it thinks God is vague while we human beings are concrete. The truth is just the opposite. It’s God who is concrete and it’s we who are vague.  There’s no question mark hanging above Him; the question mark is hanging above us. There’s nothing problematic about Him; but in the wake of the depredations of the past 100 years there’s everything problematic about humankind.”  Puffing out a huge cloud of noxious cigar smoke (by now the cloud of cigar smoke was to me the incense in Isaiah’s temple), Fackenheim concluded, “Just remember, Shepherd, God is not the answer to our questions; God is forever the question to our ‘answers’.  And don’t forget: it’s we who are ‘iffy’ and insubstantial and dubious; but concerning him there is nothing ‘iffy’ or insubstantial or dubious at all.”

Whenever the Hebrew bible speaks of God as “The Holy One” the thrust of the passage is that God distances himself from every kind of human presumptuousness; God distances himself from every kind of human project and projection and prejudice and pet peeve.  God distances himself from all that is not worthy of him, not true of him, simply not him.   The Holy One is incomparable.  Hosea comes upon some Israelite people with vindictive hearts who are bent on retaliation. At that moment Hosea overhears God say, “I won’t do what you people are bent on doing, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst.” (Hosea 11:9)

As Isaiah sat in church, doing whatever it was he had already done a thousand times over, he “saw the Lord, high and exalted”.  He heard the Seraphim magnifying the holiness of God as they called to each other, “There is none like Him!”   In that instant Isaiah knew that “the whole earth is full of God’s glory.” God’s glory is the outer expression of his innermost splendour.  God’s glory is the earthly manifestation of God’s unearthly Godness. And just when Isaiah knew the whole earth to be full of God’s glory, he felt the whole earth to be reeling as though it were breaking up.  Isaiah was threatened. He had nowhere to stand. Where can anyone stand in an earthquake? Every last security he possessed evaporated like a water droplet beneath a blowtorch.

 

II: — What did Isaiah do? He crumbled.   “Woe is me! For I am lost!” He didn’t say, as so much denominational literature says, “This is a meaningful worship-experience. Let’s write it up so others can see if it’s meaningful for them too.”         He crumbled.

Why did Isaiah crumble? “Woe is me. For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.”  Plainly he is horrified. A man of unclean lips? Lips express what lies hidden in the heart. Unclean lips mean defiled heart.  Isaiah knows it of himself; and he knows it of everyone else.   Because his heart is defiled there’s no chance he can make his unclean lips clean, acceptable to God.  Then can his community do this for him, as the collectivists among us like to tell us? But every last person in his community is similarly defiled, corrupted, sin-riddled throughout. Then God is the one to make clean what is now filthy and putrid.   But Isaiah has apprehended God, and now he knows that before the Holy One defiled people aren’t cleansed; they are annihilated.  Intense heat doesn’t cleanse a moth’s wings; intense heat annihilates them. Ultra-intense light doesn’t improve the eye’s sensitivity to light; it annihilates it. “Woe is me!   For I am lost; for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.” The horror is as unendurable as the annihilation is inescapable.

We must always be careful in speaking of God’s holiness.   We must never create the impression, in our experience-hungry era, that an experience of God’s holiness is something like an experience of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra playing our favourite Beethoven composition: a warm bath of aesthetic immediacy soaking us in pleasure, relaxation, sentiment — all of which finds us leaving the concert hall profoundly satisfied. Isaiah didn’t say of his experience of God’s holiness, “More delightful than a Mozart piano sonata, more satisfying than a good meal, more stimulating than an article in The New Yorker.”    Neither did Isaiah, prophet that he was, leave the temple thinking that as a result of his experience he now had enough sermon-material for the next three weeks.         Isaiah didn’t leave the temple.  He didn’t move. Why move when you are milliseconds from annihilation?

Goethe, the greatest of Germany ’s literary giants; Goethe said, “No one can contemplate sheer evil and remain sane.” Goethe may have been right; I think he was.  Isaiah knew, however, that no one can view pure holiness and remain.  It may be that we can’t behold sheer evil and exist sane.  It is certain that we can’t behold the Holy One and exist.  John the seer, the writer of the book of Revelation; John too was exposed for an instant to his Lord, risen, ascended, glorious, “whose eyes were like a flame of fire and whose voice was like the sound of many waters and whose face was like the sun shining in full strength.” (Revelation 1: 12-17) In that instant, John tells us, “I fell at his feet as though dead.”

The holiness of God is incarnated in the Son of God.   Then it’s readily understood why Peter, upon seeing Jesus on one occasion, fell at the feet of the master and cried, “Depart from me; just leave me!” Peter knew, as John the seer knew, and as Isaiah knew, that when we are face-to-face with the Holy One His departure is our only hope of survival.

 

III: — Or is it? Isaiah did survive the dreadful encounter. But not because God departed. “Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.’“

Can you imagine what it would be to be touched — anywhere — with a live coal? And to be touched on the lips, one of the most sensitive areas of the body?  It would be painful beyond telling. Yet even as the pain seared Isaiah and his knees shook from it he knew that the one thing needed had been done. He was now fit to face God and could endure God’s holy presence.

For our Hebrew parents the altar in the temple was the venue of sacrifice. Sacrifices were the God-ordained means whereby defiled people could approach the One who does not tolerate sin. Worshippers brought to the temple the very best animal they had, always a male; a ram, for instance. Why a male? Anyone connected with agriculture knows that the best male of a flock or herd is ever so much more than a good-quality animal; the best male of a flock or herd, used for breeding purposes, is the owner’s future.  When a superb racehorse like Northern Dancer wins the Kentucky Derby or the Queen’s Plate, the racehorse doesn’t keep racing (and winning) until he’s past his prime.         Every time he races he risks injury; an injured horse has to be shot. Once the horse has proven himself by winning two or three big races, he never races again; instead he breeds. Northern Dancer raced for two years and then impregnated mares for 25; Northern Dancer made millions for his owner.  He was his owner’s future.

The best of the flock or herd lent material prosperity to the owner and his family; material prosperity meant social superiority; it all added up to power. In other words, owning a prized animal meant the owner could “lord it over” his neighbours. To give up the animal meant no wealth, no social advantage, no power.  So far from “lording it over” others one could now only serve others. To give it up at worship meant that the worshipper was abandoning the future he had orchestrated for himself and was entrusting his future to God.   Specifically, in bringing the best of flock or herd to the temple as a sacrifice the worshipper was declaring that God was his future.

Isaiah was at worship that day.  He would have brought something to offer at worship.  He may have been “going through the motions”, as we say, aware in his head of what the temple-liturgy meant even as his heart was who knows where — when it happened.  In his vision he saw the seraph take a burning coal from the altar and touch his lips with it. As the coal seared his lips it remedied his heart.  His guilt was purged, his sin forgiven, his sacrifice sealed.         The God whom he couldn’t withstand only seconds ago was now his sole future.

 

As painful as it is to meet up with the holiness of God, we can survive it. We can survive it, however, only as the pain of it becomes a little more painful: the burning coal from the fire which is consuming the sacrifice we say we have brought in good faith, the burning coal from the fire which declares we say that God is our future; this coal has to scorch us. As it scorches us it forever alters the expression our life takes (our lips); it also alters the innermost essence of our life (our heart).  At this moment our profession that God is our future begins to be credible.

 

IV: — The result of it all for Isaiah was that he knew God to be calling him.  “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”         Isaiah could only reply, “Here am I!   Send me.”

Encounter with the Holy One leaves us neither merely prostrated nor merely pardoned. Encounter with the Holy One causes us to hear and quickens our response.   To be drawn into the life of the One who sends all sorts of people and whose sending culminates in the sending of his Son; to be drawn into God’s life is to be sent oneself.         And so Isaiah is sent out.

Will the people to whom Isaiah is sent hear him and heed him?  Will Isaiah’s mission be a howling success? It isn’t going to be a howling success. They will neither hear him nor heed him.  They will only plug their ears and harden their hearts.  Then has Isaiah been commissioned to a fruitless, useless task?   No. Not all of Israel will plug their ears and harden their hearts.  Some will hear and heed; some will respond eagerly and offer themselves as the vehicle whereby God’s purposes are forwarded for the world.

It’s no different with us.  Face-to-face with God we are neither merely prostrated nor merely pardoned. God calls us and commissions us to a work that frequently seems fruitless and largely appears useless. Ultimately, however, it isn’t fruitless or useless.

In his parable of the sower and the seed Jesus maintains that relatively little of the seed that is sown ever issues in a full-grown plant. But the little seed that does germinate and mature issues in a full-grown plant whose yield is staggering: up to 100-fold. (This is a yield of 10,000 %.) Much seed is sown, says Jesus; little seed germinates and thrives; but the little that germinates and thrives issues in a huge yield, far beyond what anyone could imagine.

Therefore the one thing we must never do is assume that the work to which God appoints us is fruitless.  We must never assume that because so much seed issues in nothing therefore all seed issues in nothing.  We must always know that the little seed that takes root and matures issues in what is beyond our knowing or telling.  We must put behind us all calculation as to how much fruit our work is going to bear and therefore whether we are going to serve. Our only response can be to say with Isaiah, and to keep on saying, “Here am I; send me” — and then leave the outcome in God’s hands.

This is where it ends. It begins in worship. Isaiah was at worship putting up with several old hymns and a highly repetitive sermon when his world overturned. Someone engulfed him and he knew that the whole earth was full of God’s glory.  Thereafter he never doubted what he was to do in the church, where God’s glory is known; thereafter he never doubted what he was to do in the world, which God’s glory will never abandon.

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd  
August 2008                                                                                                                 

preached on 17th August 2008 at Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto

Isaiah 9:2-6                 Luke 2:21-32

 

Everyone (everyone, that is, except the manifestly unbalanced) craves peace.  We long for peace among nations, peace within our own nation, peace within our family, and, of course, peace within ourselves.  In our psychology-driven age it’s the lattermost, peace within ourselves, that’s the pre-eminent felt need. The pharmaceutical companies have profited immensely from our preoccupation with inner peace. Prominent preachers like Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller have made a career and attracted a following through preaching the same sermon over and over for forty years; namely, how to acquire inner peace.

And yet a moment’s reflection reminds us there’s a peace we ought not to have. There’s a peace born not of inner contentment but rather of inertia.  Several years ago an Anglican bishop penned a greeting to all the parish clergy in the diocese wishing them peace.  One clergyman wrote back, “My parish doesn’t need peace; it needs an earthquake.”

There’s another kind of “peace” (so-called) that God doesn’t want for us and which he’s determined to take from us: that peace which is the bliss of ignorance, the bliss of indifference, the bliss of the deafened ear and the hardened heart in the face of suffering and deprivation, abuse and injustice. Our Lord himself cried to detractors, “You think I came to bring peace?   I have news for you. I came to bring a sword.”   We mustn’t forget that the metaphor of soldiering, of military conflict, is one of the commonest apostolic metaphors for discipleship: to follow Jesus is to follow him in his strife.

Nonetheless, he whose coming we celebrate at this season is called Prince of Peace.  He himself says, “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, give I unto you.” Then what is the nature of the peace he longs for us to have?

 

I: — The first aspect of such peace is “peace with God.”    The apostle Paul writes to his fellow-Christians in Rome , “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” To be justified by faith is to be rightly related to God in a relationship of trust, love and obedience. To be rightly related to God is to have and enjoy peace with God.  Plainly, not to be rightly related to God is have enmity with God. Is it also to be aware of enmity with God? Not necessarily. Most people who lack peace with God and therefore live in enmity towards God remain unaware of it. When they are told of it they smile patronisingly and remark, “Enmity towards God?   I have nothing against him. I’ve never had anything against him.” Such people need to be corrected; they need to be told that even if they think they have nothing against God, he has much against them. He reacts to their indifference; he resists their disdain; he opposes their disobedience; he is angered by their recalcitrance.

Yet even as God rightly resists the indifference of ungodly people (indifference that is actually contempt of him), and even as God reacts as he must, it distresses him to do so.   He longs only to have the stand-off give way to intimacy, the frigidity to warmth, the defiance to obedience, the disdain to trust.  For this reason his broken heart was incarnated in the broken body of his Son at Calvary ; for this reason his Spirit has never ceased pleading.         Sometimes in the earthquake, wind and fire like that of his incursion at Sinai, at other times in the “still small voice” that Elijah heard, God has pleaded and prodded, whispered and shouted, shocked and soothed: anything to effect the surrender of those who think they have nothing against him but whose indifference in fact is enmity.

What God seeks in all of this, of course, is faith.  Not faith in the popular sense of “belief”; faith, rather, in the Hebrew sense of “faith-fulness”, faith’s fulness: faith’s full reliance upon his mercy, faith’s full welcome accorded his truth, faith’s full appropriation of his pardon, faith’s full love now quickened by his ceaseless love for us.  It all adds up to being rightly related to him.  With our hostility dispelled, ignorance gives way to intimacy and cavalierness to commitment. We simply abandon ourselves to him. “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He who is the Prince of Peace effects our peace with God.

 

II: — Knowing and enjoying peace with God, Christ’s people are now blessed with the peace of God.  The peace of God is that peace which every last individual desires. The peace of God is that “eye” of rest at the centre of the hurricane, the oasis in the midst of the desert storm, the calm in the midst of convulsion, the tranquillity that no turbulence can overturn ultimately.   The peace of God is that peace which God grants to his people as they face life’s assaults. No one is surprised to hear that peace with God issues in the peace of God; a peace with God that didn’t issue in a peace deep inside us would be an exceedingly hollow peace.

The peace of God needs to be renewed moment-by-moment throughout life. The peace of God isn’t static, isn’t a state; the peace of God is dynamic, a constantly renewed gift blessing those constantly waiting upon God.  Why the emphasis on “moment-by-moment” and “dynamic”, on “constantly renewed” and “constantly waiting upon”?         Because disruption without us and disturbance within us; these unfold moment-by-moment too. The doctrine of creation reminds us that creation occurs as God suppresses chaos so as to allow life to arise.  In a fallen world, however, chaos always threatens to reassert itself; in a fallen world, chaos always laps at creation, always nudges it, sometimes jars it. A fallen world unfailingly reminds us that the political chaos of disorder, the biological chaos of disease, the mental chaos of unforeseen breakdown: these are ever-present door-knocks of a chaos that ceaselessly knocks at the door of everyone’s life.

Many of the assaults that leave us craving the peace of God are not merely unforeseen but even unforeseeable.         They resemble the “blind side hit” that leaves the football player momentarily stunned. The football player is running full-tilt down the field, looking back over his shoulder for the quarterback’s pass.  Just as the ball touches his outstretched fingertips an opponent, running full-tilt up the field towards him, levels him.  The collision is devastating physically because of the full-speed, head-on impact; it’s devastating psychologically because it wasn’t expected. The worst feature of the blind side hit isn’t the pain of the impact, or even the helplessness of temporary prostration; worse is the disorientation that accompanies it; worst of all is the fear that may arise from it, for if the player becomes fearful of the blind side hit he’ll never want to look back for the quarterback’s pass.  In other words, the fear of subsequent blind side hits has taken the player off the field; he no longer plays the game.

As life unfolds for you and me we are blind-sided again and again. We are clobbered by circumstances we couldn’t foresee and therefore didn’t expect.  Because we didn’t expect them we weren’t particularly armed and equipped to deal with them. Pain of some sort is inevitable; momentary disorientation is likely.  And fear? It would be unrealistic never to fear life’s blind side hits.  The ultimate issue here isn’t whether or not we fear; it’s whether or not our fear is allowed to take us off the field, induce us to quit. Plainly, the peace of God has everything to do with our ardour for life and our commitment to kingdom-work in the face of the clobbering we can’t avoid.

To his fellow-Christians in the city of Philippi Paul writes, “The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”   The Greek word for “keep” (phulassein) is an expression drawn from the realm of military engagements.  “Keep”, in ancient military parlance, has two major thrusts.  In the first place it refers to the action of an army whereby the army repels attackers, holding attackers at bay so that while attackers may assault, even assault repeatedly, they never gain entry, never overrun, never triumph and therefore never annihilate.  In the second place phulassein, “keep”, refers to the protection an army renders inhabitants of a besieged city so as to prevent the city’s inhabitants from fleeing in panic. The apostle draws on both aspects of the military metaphor: the peace of God prevents life’s outer assaults from undoing us ultimately and thereby prevents us from fleeing life in inner panic.

The apostle says one thing more about this peace of God: it “passes understanding”. In fact, it passes “all understanding.” It passes understanding inasmuch as it isn’t natural; it isn’t generated by anything the sociologist or psychologist or neurologist can account for; it isn’t circumstantial. In a word, there’s no earthly explanation for it.         Peace of mind that arose in the midst of peaceful circumstances would be entirely understandable and therefore entirely explicable.  On the other hand, innermost peace in the midst of turbulence and treachery and topsy-turvyness; this is peace that occurs for no apparent reason.

There are parallels, of course, everywhere in the Christian life.  Jesus says to his disciples, “In the world you are going to have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”  Our good cheer arises in the midst of tribulation just because Jesus Christ has triumphed over everything that doesn’t make for good cheer, even as he gathers his people into his triumph. In exactly the same way peace arises in the midst of turbulence and treachery just because Jesus Christ has triumphed over everything that doesn’t make for peace, even as he includes his people in his triumph.

It is the prince of peace who gives us that peace of God which passes all understanding.

 

III: — The one dimension of peace that remains for us to discuss this morning is peace among men and women. Once more there is a logical connexion with the dimensions of peace that we have probed so far: those who know and enjoy peace with God and who are beneficiaries of the peace of God are commissioned to work indefatigably for peace on earth. Jesus maintains that his people are ever to be peacemakers; peacemakers, we should note, not peacewishers or peacehopers or pseudo-peace manipulators.

There are several pretenders to peace among men and women that are just that: pretenders. Pretend-peace, make-believe peace, is simply a matter of pretending that injustice and exploitation, savagery and enforced wretchedness don’t exist.  Pretend-peace, make-believe peace; Jesus says he has come to expose this; expose it and eradicate it.

And of course there’s another form of pretend-peace; it arises not from pretending that injustice and abuse don’t exist; it arises from the deliberate lie, the cleverly-couched deception, intentional duplicity, even out-and-out propaganda.

I am told that those used car dealers who are unscrupulous are adept at a technique known as “paperhanging.”         A used car has a rust-hole in the fender.  The hole isn’t fixed properly.  Instead, paper is glued over the hole and the paper is painted the same colour as the rest of the car.  Anyone could poke her finger through the paper, of course, but it’s hoped that the paper deception will hold up long enough to get the car off the lot.

Paper-hanging abounds everywhere in life.  Much peacemaking, so called, is little more than a smooth tongue smoothing over a jagged wound. Paperhanging peacemaking never works in the long run, of course, but it’s used all the time in the short run to get us quickly past conflicts that will otherwise be publicly visible (and therefore embarrassing) in a family or a group or a meeting. In six weeks paperhanging peacemaking gives way to worse conflict than ever, conflict now marinated in bitterness and frustration; it then gives way to worse conflict still six weeks after that.

When Paul writes, “Let us pursue what makes for peace”; when the author of Hebrews counsels, “Strive for peace with everyone”; when Jesus urges his people to make peace; in all of this we can’t fail to hear the note of urgent doing even as in all of this there’s no suggestion at all of paperhanging.

Then how are we to make peace among our fellows?  In the first place we must always be concerned to see that justice is done. The Hebrew prophets denounce anything else not only as ineffective but as an attempt at magic. God himself castigates the religious leaders of Israel as he accuses them, according to Jeremiah, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” It’s often assumed that naming something thus and so makes it thus and so. It’s assumed that pronouncing “peace” over glaring injustice will yield peace. But it never does.  Peace cannot be made unless injustice is dealt with first.

Please don’t think I am suggesting something impossible for most people, such as ensuring justice in the Middle East or in Latin America or in war-torn countries of Africa . I’m speaking of situations much closer to home. And in this regard I’m convinced that we fail to name injustice for what it is out of fear: we’re afraid that to identify injustice or abuse or exploitation is to worsen conflict.  Likely it will worsen conflict, in the short run. But often conflict has to worsen if any genuine peace is to be made eventually. To expect anything else is to want magic. There’s no shortcut here. The psalmist cries, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of God’s throne.” There’s more to God’s throne than righteousness and justice, to be sure, but without them, the foundation, there would be no throne at all.

In our efforts at peacemaking it’s important for us to examine carefully the earthly ministry of our Lord.         Whenever he himself is made to suffer, he simply absorbs it.  On the other hand, wherever he sees other people made to suffer unjustly, he acts without hesitation. He will go to any lengths to redress the suffering of those who are victimised.  He will stop at nothing to defend the defenceless and protect the vulnerable and vindicate the vilified.         Yet whenever he is made to suffer himself he simply absorbs it.

You and I will be the peacemakers he ordains us to be if we can forget ourselves and our minor miseries long enough to be moved at someone else’s victimisation. But if we are going to remain preoccupied with every petty jab and petty insult and petty putdown, most of which are half-imagined in any case, then so far from promoting peace we are going to be forever rationalising our own vindictiveness.

Remember: when our Lord sees other people abused he’s mobilised, acting instantly on their behalf; when he’s abused himself, however, he pleads for his benighted tormentors.  We are always a better judge of that injustice which afflicts others than we are of that injustice which we think we are suffering ourselves. We retain an objectivity in the former that we abysmally lack in the latter.  Peacemaking requires more than a little wisdom.

 

We are told that he whose coming we celebrate at this season has a unique name: “Prince of Peace.” As we are bound to him in faith we are rightly related to God and therein know peace with God.  Secure in our peace with God, we are the beneficiaries of the peace of God. Possessed of the peace of God, we are freed from our self-preoccupations to work for peace among men and women.

The prophet Isaiah anticipated Jesus of Nazareth as the “Prince of peace.” Centuries after Isaiah our Lord’s birth constrained angels to cry, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.”

 

                                                                                      The Reverend Dr Victor Shepherd              

14^th December 2008  

Advent II
Church of St. Bride, Anglican, Mississauga

Isaiah 25:6-10         Psalm 40:1-3           Hebrews 10:11-18  Luke 2:22-38

 

Loitering is illegal. Loiterers can be jailed. Why?   What harm can there be in standing around?   Police departments are quick to tell us how much harm there is in standing around. Police departments know that the person who stands around for no reason, with nothing in mind, is someone who won’t be merely “standing around” for long.  Someone merely standing around is someone who is readily drawn into whatever disturbance might boil up around him.  Idleness is readily co-opted by evil.  The empty-handed, empty-headed loiterer who claims he’s only standing around readily becomes an accomplice of whatever evil is lurking.

Advent is a time of waiting, but not a time of waiting around, not a time of loitering.  To wait, in scripture, is always to wait for, to anticipate, to expect. To wait, in scripture, is always to be on the edge of your seat in anticipation of something that God has promised.

The Hebrew verb “to wait (for)” is derived from two Hebrew words meaning tension and endurance.  If we are waiting for something momentous, waiting eagerly, longingly, expectantly, then we live in a tension as great as our endurance is long.

I am always moved at the people in the Christmas story who wait in such tension with endurance.

Elizabeth , for instance; she had been childless for two decades.  In Israel childlessness was the worst misfortune that could befall husband and wife. Each year’s barrenness found Elizabeth waiting, her endurance tested.

Zechariah, Elizabeth ’s husband; he was unable to speak from the time he learned of his wife’s pregnancy until their son, Yochan, “gift of God”, was born.  Nine months may not strike us as a long time to wait for speech to return, but it’s unimaginably long when you don’t know if your speech is ever going to return.

Simeon had spent years looking for, longing for, the Messiah of Israel.

Anna had been married only seven years when she was widowed. Now, at 84 years of age, she lived on the temple precincts, “worshiping with prayer and fasting, night and day,” Luke tells us.  When she finally beheld the infant Jesus she knew that what she had waited for for 60 years had appeared at last.

These were godly men and women.  And like all godly folk they knew how difficult it is to wait; how difficult it is to wait for God. It is difficult. No wonder the psalmist exhorts us, “Wait for the Lord.  Be strong, and let your heart take courage.  Yes, wait for the Lord.”

At the same time we must remember that to wait, in scripture, is never to “wait around.”   To wait is never to loiter, doing nothing, available for whatever evil looms up. To wait, in scripture, is to wait knowing that we don’t wait alone; God waits too.  God waits for us, his people.  The prophet Isaiah tells us that God waits for Israel to bear fruit. When God waits, and waits specifically for his people, it’s never the case that God is “waiting around,” doing nothing.         God always waits for Israel by working in Israel . God waits by doing.

Think of the diverse pictures scripture paints of God’s involvement with Israel , God’s working among his people.

–          a mother nursing her infant.  The mother nursing her infant is waiting in one sense; she isn’t doing anything else, can’t be washing the kitchen floor.  Yet in nursing her infant she isn’t “doing nothing.”  What could be more important than the wellbeing of her babe?

–          a father helping a young child to walk.  The father is waiting for the child to grow up even as he does something about it.

–          a heartbroken husband (we’re still talking about how the bible portrays the waiting God) resolving not to leave the wife who has disgraced herself and humiliated him.   Such waiting, replete with resolution, is a long way from doing nothing.

In none of this could God be said to be waiting around, loitering, up to no good at all. As a matter of fact, the one word that characterizes God’s involvement with Israel is passion. And since God waits for Israel to bear fruit by doing whatever he can with Israel , it’s plain that God’s waiting for us is his impassioned involvement with us. God waits by hastening.

Then our Advent-waiting must never be waiting around, loitering. Our Advent-waiting must be marked by impassioned involvement.

But impassioned involvement with what?   What exactly are we waiting for?

 

I: — The apostle Paul says that the entire creation is “waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”   In other words, the entire creation is waiting for, longing for God’s deliverance from anything and everything that stands in the way of its fulfilment. Right now the entire creation is frustrated; it doesn’t unambiguously serve the purpose for which God fashioned it.

[a]         For instance, the earth was created to sustain all of humankind.  To be sure, bodily good isn’t the only good. There are also an intellectual good and a cultural good and an emotional good and a spiritual good. At the same time, unless the bodily good is maintained; that is, unless physical need is met, the remaining goods never arise.         No intellectual good or cultural good or spiritual good is going to appear in the person who is starving to death or merely malnourished.  For centuries the earth yielded enough food to feed the world’s population many times over, even as malnutrition and starvation consumed millions of people. So far as feeding people is concerned, the earth has been frustrated in serving the purpose for which God created it.

And then in the twinkling of an eye a corner was turned. In the twinkling of an eye a new situation has arisen: as of today, for the first time in human history, more people will die prematurely from overeating than will die prematurely from undereating.   Once again so far as sustaining people is concerned, the earth is frustrated in serving the purpose for which God created it.

[b]         Physicians tell me that the most sophisticated aspect of all the growing edges in medicine (and medical science has many growing edges) pertains to fertility. For decades infertility was deemed a female problem.  The new growing edge pertains to male fertility.  Huge advances are underway here.  Good. Millions of couples will conceive otherwise never could have.  And right next door to the fertility clinic, in any hospital, we can find the abortuary. The contradiction here leaves me speechless.

[c]         Billions of tax-payer dollars are spent each year on public education. The end result is that the level of adult illiteracy in Canada has slowly risen from 35% to 47%. Yes, as much as is spent on public education, it can always be argued that not enough is spent, since other jurisdictions spend more than we do.  At the same time, social problems are never remedied simply by throwing more money at them. Trillions of dollars have been poured into slum areas of American cities, and the slums are no closer to disappearing.

[d]         And then there are the people who continue to approach me; the chronically mentally ill. Twenty-five years ago the development of neuroleptic drugs was heralded as a breakthrough inasmuch as the new drugs would permit ill people to live outside of institutions. Undoubtedly some ill people have benefited. A great many, however, have not. Many defenceless people were put on the street with a bottle of pills.  In two days they had lost their pills, or traded them for something else, or had forgotten how frequently to take them.  They couldn’t return to the institutions from which they had been discharged, because these institutions had been replaced by carriage-trade condominiums. Many of these people are in worse condition than ever they were when they were institutionalized. When Maureen and I were in Washington four weeks ago we were startled at the number of psychotic people found in downtown Washington . It’s the same in every major North American city.

The entire creation is frustrated, says the apostle. It waits – and we who are part of it wait too – for its restoration.

But waiting never means waiting around.   Waiting for God’s deliverance of the creation entails our impassioned involvement with it, entails our zealous doing on behalf of it, wherever it is frustrated and for whatever reason.         Unless we are doing something about the world’s frustration we aren’t waiting for God at all; we’re merely waiting around, loitering, soon to be part of the problem instead of its alleviation.

Remember: God waits for Israel to bear fruit by spending himself unreservedly for Israel .

 

II:         In the second place, says the apostle, we ourselves wait for adoption as daughters and sons of God, “the redemption of our bodies”, as he puts it.   But aren’t we sons and daughters of God by faith now?   To be sure, scripture insists on the distinction between creature of God and child of God. Every human being is a creature of God, made in God’s image, loved and cherished by him. Children of God, however, are those who have heard and heeded the gospel invitation, and who now cling in faith to the Incarnate One, Jesus Christ, their elder brother. Believing people are God’s children now. We are born of God and have been granted a new nature from God.

Then why is it said that we are waiting for adoption as God’s sons and daughters?   The apostle’s point is this: while we have been made new at God’s hand, we don’t appear very new.  To be sure, sin no longer rules us; Jesus Christ does.  But while sin no longer rules us, sin continues to reside in us.  Martin Luther used to say, “Yes, we are new people in Christ; but the old man, the old woman, won’t die quietly. The corpse twitches.”

The apostle is puzzled about the gap, the undeniable gap, between his new life in Christ and his contradiction of it every day. On the one hand he knows that all whom Jesus Christ draws to himself are made new in him; on the other hand he’s surprised at how much of the “old” man seems to hang on in him. Listen to Paul as he speaks of himself in Romans 7.   “I don’t understand my own actions.  For I don’t do what I want, but rather I do the very thing I hate.   Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?”   Still, he knows that his ultimate deliverance is guaranteed: “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

When Paul speaks of himself as ‘wretched’ he doesn’t mean primarily that he feels wretched.  He’s not telling us how he feels; he’s telling us what he is.  No doubt he didn’t feel good about it; still, he’s telling us primarily of his condition, not of his feeling.  His condition is this: there’s a dreadful contradiction within him. He recognizes that his practice falls abysmally short of his profession.  Until he was apprehended by Christ he wasn’t aware of any contradiction within him; now he knows that Christ has rendered him new even as everyone around him finds him entirely too ‘old’.  It’s his condition that’s wretched.  “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?”

The ancient Romans devised a terrible punishment for criminals; namely, strapping a corpse onto a criminal’s back. Imagine the sheer weight of it. Imagine the odour, the leaks, the overall hideousness.  It must have been ghastly beyond description.

Did I say “ghastly beyond description”?  But such ghastliness is my spiritual condition; such ghastliness is my outward life compared to my inward truth and my Christian profession. Who will deliver me from this hideous contradiction, this body of death?

In our sober discussion of this topic we must be sure to notice something profound.  The apostle dares to admit his own innermost contradiction, dares to raise the question, only because he already has the answer.  “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  He’s going to be delivered from the walking contradiction he is. The burden of the ‘old’ man that seems strapped to him is going to be lifted.  He knows it. He’s waiting for it. We wait for it too.

But we don’t wait around.  We don’t loiter. We genuinely wait for our deliverance only if we are doing something about our self-contradicted discipleship, only if we are doing something about the inconsistencies in us that are so glaring that many people wonder if there aren’t two of us.

We must remember, in this season of Advent-waiting, that God waits for Israel to bear fruit by sparing nothing of himself to have Israel bear fruit. We wait for the final, full manifestation of our adoption as God’s sons and daughters by sparing nothing of ourselves to shed that corpse, repudiate it, which renders us grotesque at this moment.         And “thanks to God through our Lord Jesus Christ”, we shall one day be rid of the burden on our back and perfectly reflect that image of God in which we were created, which image our Lord is now, and which image we cannot fail to display.

 

III: — Lastly, we wait with our Lord as he waits himself. We stand by him in his waiting.   The book of Hebrews tells us that after Jesus Christ had offered up himself for us, “he sat down at the right hand of God, and since then has been waiting until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.”

The reference to footstool in Hebrews 10 is borrowed from Psalm 110. Psalm 110 – about footstool and enemies – is the most frequently quoted psalm in the New Testament. This fact alone tells us that the apostles, and all Christians after them, know that enemies abound. Enemies are enemies; that is, enemies can do enormous harm.

When I was a youngster I couldn’t grasp why the psalmist spoke so very often of enemies. Was he unusually nervous, even paranoid?   Now I understand. Enemies are anything that hammers us, anything that threatens to undo us, anything that assails us from without or wells up from within.

Enemies from without are easy to identify.   Jesus had enemies in the religious hierarchy of Jerusalem ; he had enemies in the civil government of Rome ; enemies in the dark depths of the spirit-world; enemies among his followers (Judas, traitor), even enemies among his closest friends (Peter, whom Jesus described as satanic, on at least one occasion.)   As I have read church history, I have learned that every forthright Christian spokesperson has been flayed at some point by all the enemies just mentioned.

In addition there is one enemy which you and I must contend with that our Lord never had to contend with; namely, himself. Of all the enemies who might assault us, there seems to be one who always assaults us: our very own self. More often than not we are our own worst enemy.  For this reason a principal enemy, always lurking, is the enemy within.

Whether our enemy exists inside us or outside us, however, enemies are enemies. We need to identify them and resist them.

But we never have to resist them alone.  Even now our Lord is at work, resisting those enemies who molest his people. To be sure, even our Lord is waiting for that day when all the enemies of his people are made his footstool. But until that day, he isn’t waiting around, loitering.  On our behalf he resists those enemies he has already defeated, waiting for that day when defeated enemies are dispersed forever.  We genuinely wait for our Lord only as we wait with him as he continues to resist everything that molests his people, and all of this in anticipation of that day when his enemies (ours too) have been dispersed.

 

Elizabeth waited during that first Advent, as well as Zechariah, Simeon and Anna. They all waited for the one who was to be the Messiah of Israel and the ruler of the cosmos. But they didn’t wait around, loiter. They were as impassionedly engaged as the God of Israel whom they knew.  Therefore the only form our waiting can take is an impassioned doing of the truth.

 

In Advent we wait for him who came once for the world’s redemption.  We wait for him who continues to come to us unfailingly day after day. We wait for him who will come again to vindicate all who are about his business now.

 

                                                                                                               Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                               

Advent 2006

 

 Isaiah 30:15       Jeremiah 24:7       Mark 1:14-15       Romans 2:4

 

Some words in the Christian vocabulary have acquired a “bad press.” As soon as such a word is mentioned negative associations surround it. “Repentance” is such a word. For many people the word is off-putting because of the images that accompany it: breast-beating, tears, self-accusation, self-rejection. Repentance is commonly thought to be a matter of fishing around in the hidden depths of spiritual sludge, dredging up whatever might be there and staring at it unhelpfully. And to be sure, among some people whose zeal outstripped their wisdom it’s been thought that the worse we can appear to ourselves (at least) the more virtuous we are supposed to be.

“Repentance” has a bad press, again, in that it’s frequently linked to an exaggerated feeling of guilt. We’ve all heard preaching that attempts to precipitate a crisis of repentance (so-called) by artificially magnifying guilt. The fires of guilt are stoked until repentance is seized to extinguish them. Coincidentally I have noticed that mental health experts tend to be suspicious of “religion” if not downright hostile to it. I have long thought too that their anti-religious sentiment appears to be fed by the distressed people who seek them professionally, the distress of these people quickened by religiously fanned emotional torment. If repentance presupposes emotional shipwreck, who needs it?

Repentance is often confused, in the third place, with remorse. Unquestionably the remorseful person feels dreadful. Remorse, however, is depression-ridden regret over what one has done or over the consequences of what one has done. Remorse, depression-riddled regret, is never the same as repentance (as we shall shortly see.)

It’s easy to understand that “repentance” is a word our society prefers to forget. No one is going to be helped by anything that rubs our nose in our personal garbage pail or artificially magnifies guilt or soaks us in depression.

Nevertheless, we Christians can never delete the word from our vocabulary. After all, we know that Jesus Christ comes only to impart wholeness, healing, helpfulness, and yet he summons people to repentance every day of his earthly ministry. Not only is the summons to repent always on our Lord’s lips; it’s always an urgent summons. “Don’t put it off,” he insists; “What are you waiting for? Can’t you see this is what the physician prescribes? Can’t you see that you need this as you need nothing else?” The summons to repentance is one of the major building blocks of our Lord’s ministry. If we pull it out, his ministry becomes unrecognizable.

 

I: — Repentance, at bottom, isn’t garbage-pail picking. It is a change of mind with an attendant change in life. Both are needed. If there’s only a change in our thinking then we are racing our motor with the gears in neutral: lots of impressive-sounding noise pouring forth (from under the hood) but no advance. I remember sitting with a suffering man, an alcoholic still a long way from contented sobriety, at 3:00 a.m.    He knew he had a problem. His pain was intense and unrelieved. He knew the progression of the ailment, the consequences for himself and his family. He had also been told time and again what help was available. Sitting alongside us was another habituated fellow who had been sober for several years. As our suffering friend insisted (utterly unrealistically) that he had his situation turned around in his mind, the sober fellow kept asking him, “But what are going to do about it?” Racing the motor with the gears in neutral gets us nowhere. A change of mind without a change in life-direction falls short of repentance.

On the other hand if there’s a change in behaviour without a profound transformation of mind and heart then we have merely conformed outwardly to peer pressure. Inwardly we are no different. As soon as a changed environment changes the peer pressure our behaviour will alter again – even as we remain the same inwardly. This chameleon-likeness is obviously not the repentance Jesus urges. He insists on both a change in how we are thinking, how we understand ourselves before him, and a change in the course we are pursuing.

Foundationally, repentance is a turning toward God. The Hebrew mind understands such turning to be a returning to God, an about-face. When the Israelite people heard the prophets summon them to repentance they immediately saw three vivid pictures that the prophets were forever holding up before the people.

[i] The first is that of an unfaithful wife returning to her husband. She has violated their marriage covenant. She has disgraced herself and humiliated her spouse. She has rendered their marriage the butt of cruel snickering and bad jokes. If she isn’t publicly ridiculed, she is privately whispered to be treacherous. Yet her husband’s love for her, however wounded, remains undiminished and his patience unexhausted. As she turns to him she returns to longstanding love.

[ii] The second picture the Hebrew prophets paint is that of idol-worshippers returning to the worship of the true God. In the Hebrew language, the word for “the idols” is “the nothings.” Idols are literally nothing: vacuous, insubstantial. Yet nothing is never merely nothing. In some sense nothing is always something. Nothing, never merely nothing, is always something; paradoxically, something with terrific power. Think of a vacuum. By definition a vacuum is nothing and yet is possessed of such power that it sucks everything around it into it.

Think of a lie. By definition a lie is nothing. A lie is a statement that corresponds to nothing. Yet a lie has immense power. Think of slander. Slander is a statement that ruins someone’s reputation, ruins her future, ruins her earthly fortunes when in fact the statement is wholly insubstantial, vacuous, nothing. But the damage nothing does isn’t nothing; the damage that nothing does is everything: ruinous.

Or think of a statement that isn’t slanderous but is merely untrue. If I were to say, in the course of this sermon, that a huge snowstorm was on the way most people would stop listening to the sermon and begin plotting how they were going to get home. Some would get up and leave right now. Others would move their car from the parking lot to the street so as not to be ploughed in. All would lament that we hadn’t worn our winter boots to worship and would make a note to purchase another pair tomorrow. In other words all of us would be orienting our lives around the statement that record snowfall is imminent – when the statement is a lie. Nothing, our Hebrew foreparents knew, is never merely nothing. Nothing – vacuity, hollowness – it’s oddly ‘something’ with destructive power.

When idol-worshippers turn from idols to the true and living God they return to truth, reality, substance, solidity; in a word they return to blessing so weighty that nothing can inhibit it or frustrate it or dissipate it.

[iii] The third picture from the Hebrew bible is that of rebel subjects returning to their rightful ruler. To rebel against rightful rule, fitting rule, appropriate rule, is always to move from order to chaos. We must be sure to understand that groundless rebellion is revolt against legitimate authority, not against arbitrary authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is no more than a bully’s coercion, enforced by gun or club. Authority, on the other hand, is that which ensures our greatest good. When rebel subjects rebel not against authoritarianism but against proper authority they plunge themselves into disorder and chaos. When they return to their rightful ruler they return to trustworthy wisdom, to that which ensures their blessing, their greatest good.

To repent, then, is to return to longstanding love, to truth, to legitimate authority.

We can know all of this, at least be aware of it in our head, and yet remain unaware of specific areas of our lives where (re)turning is needed. Since we are unaware of what’s needed now no amount of looking in upon ourselves will tell us what’s needed. We need someone else to tell us, someone whom we trust, someone from whom we can hear the truth about ourselves without exploding or denying or “retaliating.”

For years I assumed that I had privileged access to myself. In other words, I assumed that not only did I know more about myself than anyone else knew about me, I necessarily knew more about myself, knew more about myself in all circumstances without exception, than anyone else could know about me. I clung to this illusion and folly for years, Little by little, amidst much pain and no less public embarrassment, I came to see that while there are certainly some situations where I know more about myself than others do, there are many situations where anyone at all has better insight into me than I have into myself. There are situations where a five-year old has better insight into me than I have into myself. Finally I surrendered my illusion: I don’t have privileged access to myself. None of us has.

For this reason we need someone we trust to hold the mirror up to us, someone whose gentle word we know isn’t an attack upon us; we need some such person to help us see what we are never going to see by ourselves. Such a person says to us, “Why do you keep putting your wife down when in fact she needs affirmation?” “Why are you so harsh with your children at home but pretend such affection in public?” Because the mirror has been held up by someone we trust we aren’t going to “fly off the handle” and flee into our fort with all guns blazing. Instead we shall soberly admit what the mirror reflects: we must turn to face the truth about ourselves and the claim of our Lord upon us, even as the face of longstanding love shines upon us ceaselessly.

 

II: — What moves us to repentance? Why would anyone gladly make a “u-turn”, eagerly turn around? One thing above everything else moves us to repent: the mercy and kindness of God. Paul writes to the Christians in Rome , “Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”

John the Baptist spoke much of repentance. His motive for it was fear, sheer fear. “The axe is laid to the root of the tree. The chaff is being burned in the fire. Repentance is the only route to survival.” It’s the big threat.

Yet we falsify Jesus if we pretend that he never threatened. He did. And besides, didn’t Jesus say he endorsed cousin John’s ministry without reservation? Yet Jesus differs from John the Baptist in one important regard: for Jesus the decisive motive for repentance is the overwhelming, all-encompassing, incomprehensible mercy of God. We joyfully repent as God’s mercy floods us. Jesus speaks three unforgettable parables in Luke 15 of the lost coin, lost sheep and lost son. Each parable concludes with a repentance throbbing with joy.

I think that our foreparents (or at least some of them) may have erred in thinking that the big threat engineered repentance. The big threat, however, doesn’t change the human heart. To be sure it does coerce tolerable conduct, even as people hate the one who threatens them. How many adults are there who were emotionally bludgeoned into being models of middle-class convention and hated their parents for it? And how many adults, for the same reason, have grown up feeling the same way about God?

Before we write off our foreparents we should understand that our contemporaries (particularly our religious contemporaries) err in thinking that repentance is genuine only if we first disparage ourselves or purge ourselves or induce an unusual mental state. But to think we have to undergo a technique-ridden, psycho-religious initiation is to cast aspersion on God’s mercy and soak ourselves in anxiety: “I can’t seem to get into the right spiritual space.” Nowhere does Jesus prescribe self-disparagement or psycho-religious self-preparation. He simply stands before us and assures us that his arms, the arms of the crucified, embrace everyone without exception, without condition and without hesitation. His mercy is simple, profound, transparent, effectual.

Repentance, says Jesus, is coming to our senses, as the son in the far country came to his senses when he thought of the waiting father. Repentance, says Jesus, is to become a child again, because for a child everything is received as gift. Repentance, says, Jesus, is so far from anything miserable that it calls for a party, for celebration, for dancing.

 

III: — I want to conclude the sermon today with a glance into history at three of our foreparents who did get it right, who did know what scripture means by “repentance.”

First is Martin Luther (1483-1546.) On Hallowe’en, 1517, Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg . In those days it was the custom to post publicly any item on which you were inviting public debate. Luther had much in mind that he thought should be debated publicly; he had ninety-five matters (at least) in mind. And the first? “When scripture says ‘Repent’ it means that the life of the Christian is daily, lifelong repentance.” To say that the life of the Christian is daily, lifelong repentance is to say that every morning when our feet hit the cold floor we orient ourselves afresh to the truth that is before us. Every morning we re-check our course to ensure that we are on course. Every morning we resolve that this day we are going to live as those who are re-orienting themselves to persistent love, to truth and substance, to rightful rule and authority. The life of the Christian is a daily, lifelong reaffirmation of this.

The second person I want us to think about is John Calvin (1509-1864), another Sixteenth Century Reformer. In his Commentary on Deuteronomy, in the course of discussing the Ten Commandments, Calvin argued cogently that the form in which God’s command comes to us is invitation. On the one hand the command to repent is just that: a command. On the other hand, in light of God’s all-embracing mercy, the form of the command isn’t a sergeant-major’s bark but a winsome invitation: “Why don’t you repent? Isn’t it better to re-orient your life than not to? Your Father is waiting for you to RSVP the invitation.”

The third person is really a cluster of persons: Seventeenth Century Puritans. The Puritans insisted that all God’s commands are covered promises. All God’s commands are promises in disguise. To be sure, God does command us to repent, return. At the same time, by his Spirit God guarantees the fulfilment of his command. If ever we doubt that we can repent, can repent adequately, all we need do is look to our Lord who submitted to John’s baptism of repentance not because he, Jesus, needed to repent but because we need to. In other words, if we doubt the adequacy of our own repentance we must cling afresh to Jesus Christ in faith, for in clinging to him we are one with him who gathers our defective repentance into his sufficient, effectual repentance and thereby ensures that ours is adequate. All the commands of God are covered promises.

 

Mark tells us that Jesus came into Galilee with a very simply message: “The Kingdom of God , the reign of God’s mercy, is on your doorstep. So why not repent, turn into it, and cast yourselves upon the best news you will ever hear?”

Why not?

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                            

 February 2004

 

Isaiah 40:27-31

 

Do you ever feel yourself to be an alien in Canada even though you have lived here most or all of your life? Do you ever feel that the current culture has exiled you, left you feeling you don’t belong any longer, left you feeling you are a stranger precisely where you had always thought you would feel at home?

One of my friends, a vice-principal in Scarborough, was telling a grade eight class about the popular musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Not one child knew it was based on a biblical story. Amazed, my friend took his discovery to the staffroom and told his fellow-teachers there, only to find that not one teacher knew the musical was based on a biblical story. With the erosion of the Judaeo-Christian tradition my friend has observed the erosion of other matters which we have always taken for granted: punctuality, honesty, diligence. One grade eight youngster came to school late, sat down sulkily and informed the teacher that he was going to do no work at all. The youngster would not open a book, pick up a pen, or think a thought. He was determined to do nothing except frustrate the teacher and encourage other students to follow him in his defiance. When my v.p.-friend informed the boy’s mother that her son was going to be suspended she accused him of picking on her boy: “Why should he be suspended? He hasn’t done anything wrong. How could he have done anything wrong if he hasn’t done anything at all? He doesn’t have to do schoolwork if he doesn’t feel like it.”

I often feel like an exile, an alien, a stranger who will be forever out-of-step. In the wake of mushrooming AIDS in India an Indian physician, an epidemiologist, has concluded that all government attempts at informing people of the ways and means and consequences of infection are useless; utterly ineffective. Only one thing has any chance of bringing people to their senses, says this MD, fear. When he says “fear” he means sheer terror, he tells us. The AIDS picture is be painted so horrifically that people will be terrified. It’s odd, isn’t it, that whenever a preacher has said that God is to be feared the preacher has been accused immediately of emotional blackmail, manipulation, psychological assault, anything else bad you might wish to add. We are not permitted to say that God is to be feared, even as God is characteristically merciful, even though what is at stake is nothing less than our eternal wellbeing. We are, however, permitted, even urged, to say that AIDS is to be feared when what is at stake is our temporal longevity. Where the salvation of God is the issue fear is deemed deplorable; where infectious disease is the issue fear is deemed commendable. Am I in exile? I feel I must be living on another planet!

To say the least I am amused when I read the rhetoric that boards of education spout concerning pluralism. Since we live in a pluralistic age, we are told, religious bias will be tolerated nowhere in the educational enterprise. And so when a Muslim speaks about Islam his contribution is welcomed as an instance of pluralism; but when a Christian speaks about the gospel his contribution is rejected as sectarian religion. Islam is culture, Christianity is religion. A Muslim youngster informed the class about Islamic festivals. My wife informed the class about Easter — and in turn was informed by board-authorities that what she had done was unacceptable. Do you ever feel yourself an alien precisely where you used to think you belonged?

Yet there are reasons why people feel themselves exiled, far from home. They don’t feel “at home” with life, with themselves, ultimately with God, inasmuch as too many negativities have piled up too quickly. Recently I have endeavoured to support a family whose mother, much younger than I, has had to undergo very extensive surgery for life-threatening disease. Her husband is on permanent Long Term Disability benefits, having undergone head-injury in an automobile accident and is now chronically impaired.

A few weeks ago I was interviewing a couple who wish to get married. As I always do I asked them if either had been married before. The fellow had. “Do you currently possess a decree absolute?” (In other words, are you legally divorced, and thus legally free to marry again?) “I’m not divorced”, he replied slowly, “I’m a widower. My wife died of a brain haemorrhage. I have one child, a boy fifteen, and he has Downs’ Syndrome.” I understand that these people may feel exiled from something or someone when they long to feel “at home”.

The first thirty-nine chapters of the book labelled Isaiah were written by the prophet Isaiah who lived eight hundred years before our Lord. The remaining chapters of the book (plus chapter thirty-five) were written two-hundred years later, during the Babylonian exile, by an unnamed prophet or school of prophets. The Israelite people have been carried off into exile, Their captors, the Babylonians, make fun of them, taunt them, humiliate them, despise them. The Israelite people feel themselves so far from home they couldn’t feel stranger. What compounds their strangeness in the midst of the Babylonians is their feeling that God has abandoned them. It’s bad enough to be a non-citizen in a land where you don’t belong and have no rights; how much worse it is to endure this plus the haunting impression that God has forgotten you. They couldn’t help asking themselves, “Would anything ever jog his memory? Was he ever going to return to them?” The Israelite people knew that they had been appointed a light to the nations. A light to the nations? — most of the time they now groped in the dark themselves. All too soon they became dispirited, demoralized, weary. They wanted only to lament, “What is the point of going on? Why struggle to be God’s faithful people? Why not give up and yield to the pressure of Babylonian paganism? We are weary beyond telling.”

I understand. I understand that God’s people in exile felt bone-weary; I understand because I know how weary God’s people in exile feel today.

 

II: — Then it is all the more important that we listen to this unnamed prophet whose invigoration at God’s hand has given us our text this morning. To us weary people he cries,

HAVE YOU NOT KNOWN? HAVE YOU NOT HEARD?
THE LORD IS THE EVERLASTING GOD…
HE DOES NOT FAINT OR GROW WEARY,
HIS UNDERSTANDING IS UNSEARCHABLE.

This prophet does not begin by telling people, “Just be patient”. He doesn’t say, “Cheer up now, nothing is as bad as it appears”. He doesn’t insult them by reminding them that they would feel better if only they stopped bellyaching. Instead he directs their attention away from themselves to GOD. “Do you not know? HE doesn’t grow weary, never. And HIS understanding is unsearchable” — which is to say, God’s grasp of our situation is wider, deeper, more comprehensive, more thorough than our fragmentary, distorted grasp can ever be. It’s as though we are standing before a huge painting. The painting is immensely detailed, yet not chaotic or even cluttered; the painting has balance and coherence and unity. Nevertheless, we are standing so close to it, with our faces hard up against it, that we see nothing of the balance and coherence and unity. In fact we are so close to the welter of detail that we can’t even recognize it as detail; to us it looks like a smudge, a smear, a blot. From a range of half-an-inch we can see only a fuzzy daub which means nothing and whose colour we can’t even recognize.

Instead of imagining yourself with your nose against a painting imagine yourself looking up at the underside of a rug. From the underside of the rug we can see splashes of colour, bits of this and that, and unaccounted for threads dangling here and there. If we could only see from above, looking down on the rug, then we should see that the million-and-one threads have, by the artistry of the weaver, been formed into a pattern which is nothing less than breathtaking. HIS UNDERSTANDING IS UNSEARCHABLE. God is the weaver. He sees what he weaves. For now we can only the underside, and must trust him with the topside. For not only is his understanding unfathomable, his persistence is undeflectable just because HE NEVER GROWS WEARY. The prophet comforts his people not by pretending that exile is less onerous than they know it to be (no comfort in such an insensitive bit of patronizing) but rather by directing them to the God whose unsearchable understanding and undeflectable persistence comprehend their situation now and will weave something glorious from it which they will one day see themselves and for which they will praise him.

In the meantime, says this unnamed prophet, we are to WAIT FOR THE LORD. Not wait around, not linger aimlessly, not loiter mindlessly; we are to wait for the Lord in that we have set our hope on this our God and we have entrusted our future to him. We are to hang on to him for the present and wait for him for the future. He sees our situation whose where we can see it only fragmentarily and with more than a little distortion. He can weave from the jumble of irruptions what leaves us agape if not aghast. He can comprehend at once in his “eternal now” what we see only piecemeal with each passing instant. Not even those developments in our lives which we find now to be unrelieved negativity are going to frustrate him. Then wait for him we must.

 

II: — Yet even as we wait for him we do not find ourselves waiting around, nothing going on. As we wait for him eversomuch is going on since, says the prophet, as we wait for him our strength is renewed, we share in one or another characteristic of eagles, we run without giving up in weariness, and we walk without falling down faint.

 

[i] Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. Believers of every era have found God to be as good as his promise. Centuries before the unnamed prophet wrote our text another of God’s people, Joshua, spoke God’s message to a fearful people: “Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

“Be strong! Be of good courage!” It’s a command, isn’t it; it’s a command, not a promise. The spiritual giants of Puritanism (don’t tell me you are tired of hearing about my love of the Puritans; if you aren’t acquainted with their experience or God consider yourself underprivileged) used to say, “All God’s commands are covered promises”. They meant that every command of God is a veiled promise of God. What God commands us to do he first promises us what we need to do it. Every command of God, in other words, is just another form of the promise of God. It is the command of God that we be strong. It is the promise of God that if we wait for him we shall find our strength renewed. Believers without number can testify that this promise God has fulfilled time and again in their own life. If we feel we have not yet proved it in our life then we should listen to the testimony of those who have — like the poor black woman whom Jean Vanier was visiting in the slums of Cleveland. He was taken aback at this woman’s medical condition, surrounded by her economic condition, and didn’t know what comfort to offer. He simply placed his hand on her forehead and said, “Jesus”. “I been walking with him forty years”, she whispered. Years earlier still John Paton, missionary to the pacific island of Tonga, went with his wife on the mission field knowing that God had commissioned them both to this ministry. Shortly after arriving on the island he had to bury his wife, and then his daughter a few days later. He wrote in his journal that there were moments when he felt he was on the edge of irremedial blackness, yet always came to know afresh that he was sustained, strengthened for that vocation which he also knew had not been rescinded.

It would not be difficult to multiply the testimonies of men and women who knew that the command, “Be strong and of good courage”, is the covered promise, “Those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength”, and who proved the promise fulfilled. It would not be difficult. Nevertheless I want to bring forward the testimony of someone whose experience or God must surely help us all. The apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Philippi, “I have learned to be content, whatever the circumstances may be. I know how to live when things are difficult and how to live when things are prosperous… I have learned the secret of eating well or going hungry, of facing either plenty or poverty. I AM READY FOR ANYTHING THROUGH THE STRENGTH OF THE ONE WHO LIVES WITHIN ME.“

Six hundred years before Paul wrote a word of this his ancestors, powerless in the face of the Babylonian captivity and exile, had also proved the promise. Just because they waited for God and were strengthened they were able to live — not pine or whine or decline — even in exile.

 

[ii] In the second place those who wait for the Lord are going to mount up with wings like eagles. Our Hebrew foreparents had noted that the eagle nested in inaccessible places. The eagle lived where only other eagles lived. But live there other eagles did. Fellow-believers — and only fellow-believers — know where I live, because only fellow-believers can live where I live. There is a profound sense in which the Christian lives in an inaccessible place. The Christian lives where those not yet born of the Spirit do not live simply because the realm of the Spirit is accessible only to those who surrender to the Spirit. All of this is to say that there is a struggle peculiar to the Christian which only other Christians know about; it is also to say that there is a comfort for the Christian which only other Christians can give, just because only other Christians profoundly have access to us. I cannot tell you how often I have been helped by the spiritually sensitive among us who know the temptations, frustrations, discouragements and pitfalls peculiar to a minister — and who have lent me that comfort, encouragement and even safety which only other eagle-nesters can. I needn’t supply you with the specifics. It is enough for us all to know that the eagle lives in places accessible only to other eagles.

We Christians who are in assorted exiles in our secularized, pluralistic age know that to wait for the Lord is to comfort others and to be comforted ourselves with a comfort that is uniquely ours in the midst of our unique difficulty.

 

[iii] In the third place those who wait for the Lord are going to run without becoming weary; so weary, that is, as to quit running. In the ancient Hebrew world jogging was unheard of and the Olympic Games centuries away. People never ran for leisure. They ran for two serious reasons: to deliver good news and to save life. Both purposes coalesce in the gospel, for the gospel is good news which saves. However much you and I may feel alienated in our culture; however much we may feel alienated in our denomination (whose national office has defended the witchcraft of Wicca); however much we may feel exiled in a milieu which disdains hard-edged truth and prefers sentimental illusion; however much any of this is current we remain charged with the responsibility of running without growing weary to the point of not running. We remain charged with exemplifying and commending that good news which, vivified by God himself, saves from death, destruction and damnation. The fact that the gospel seems to evaporate before it has chance to soak in is not our responsibility. The hearing it receives in an alien culture is not our concern. All that matters is that we continue to exemplify and commend what we know to have brought us life in God. The prophet tells us that as we wait for the Lord we shall continue to do just this.

 

[iv] Lastly, those who wait for the Lord are going to walk and not faith, walk and not collapse. Walking is the common Hebrew metaphor for obedience. Throughout scripture we are told to walk worthily of God, walk worthily of our calling, walk as children of light, walk in newness of life. The walk we walk is simply the ethical shape which faith lends our lives. To walk worthily, to walk as children of the light, is to obey him who insists that where there is no obedience there is no faith, even as he maintains that the gate which admits us to the walk is narrow and the walk itself rigorous. To say that the gate which admits us is narrow and the walk itself rigorous is to say that discipleship is not a cakewalk, not a saunter; it doesn’t meander. And above all, the walk of discipleship is always and everywhere walking against the flow of the shufflers and strollers all around us.

From the standpoint of that ethical shape to our lives which faith imparts Christians in exile today feel they are living on a different planet. When Maureen caught a grade four girl stealing Explorer money out of our home in Toronto the girl’s mother exclaimed, “Why was my daughter so stupid as to let herself be caught!” The disparity between what God requires of his people sexually and what our society endorses I won’t even comment on. But it is disturbing when theology students regularly approach me for essays they can crib and turn in as their own for an “A” grade when in fact they are ignorant, lazy, dishonest and soon to occupy our pulpits.

The one thing about the Israelites which first amazed and then angered their Babylonian captors was the Israelite refusal to capitulate. They refused to conform. They told their Babylonian exilers straight out, “If we conform to you outwardly we won’t know who we are inwardly, for in fact we shall have ceased to be God’s people”.

To walk without fainting means that you and I are going to behave as followers of Jesus without apology in the midst of a social exile which regards our discipleship as ridiculous. But walk without fainting we must, and walk without fainting we shall, just because to walk worthily is promised all who wait for the Lord.

We exiles are sustained in all this just because God’s understanding is unsearchable; which is to say, even our exile (in whatever form it takes) God not only sustains us in now but will use in ways we have not yet seen for our edification, our neighbour’s encouragement, and his own glory.

Then wait for him we shall until that day when faith gives way to sight, our exile ended, our pilgrimage over, and we are lost in wonder, love and praise.d

 

F I N I S

 Victor Shepherd

Isaiah 43:25

1^st Chronicles 16:8-13             Galatians 2:1-10            Luke 22:14-23

 

At least once a week I tell my seminary students that of all the subjects in the theological curriculum the most important, unquestionably, is Old Testament. For it’s through studying the Old(er) Testament that we come to know the specific Hebrew meanings of common English words.

Today we are going to probe the Hebrew meaning of “remember”.  We shall be helped to understand “remember” if we first learn the meaning of “forget”. To forget, in modern discourse, is simply to have an idea or notion slip out of the mind. To forget a person is simply no longer to have the idea of that person in one’s consciousness. But in the Hebrew bible to forget someone is much more serious: to forget someone is to annihilate that person, obliterate him, destroy him.  When the Israelites cried to God not to forget them they didn’t mean, “Be sure to think of us once in a while.” They meant, “Don’t annihilate us, don’t blot us out.”   It’s obvious that to forget, in Hebrew, has to do not with ideas but with living realities. In the same manner to remember has to do not with recollecting notions but with living realities. In a word, to remember, Hebraically, is to bring a past event up into the present so that what happened back then continues to happen right now — and is therefore the operative reality of our existence.  What unfolded back then, altering forever those whom it touched then, continues to be operative now, altering forever those who “remember” it now. When the Israelites are urged to remember the deliverance from slavery of their foreparents centuries earlier they aren’t being urged merely to recollect a historical fact; rather they are being urged to live the same reality themselves, the reality of deliverance, seven hundred years later. Just as their foreparents knew most intimately a great deliverance at God’s hand, together with the gratitude and the obedience which that deliverance quickened, so they are now to know most intimately a similar deliverance at God’s hand, together with a similar gratitude and a similar obedience.

This is very different from the way we speak of remembering today. When we remember we merely bring to mind the idea or notion of an event.  But when our Hebrew foreparents spoke of remembering they meant something far stronger; they meant that what had happened in the past continued to be a present, operative, life-altering reality.

 

I: — Over and over the Hebrew bible insists that God remembers.  God remembers his covenant; God remembers his holy promise; God remembers his steadfast love; God remembers his mercy.  All of these items amount to the same thing.  God’s covenant is his bond with us.  Of his own grace and truth God has bound himself to his people.  He will never quit on us out of weariness or give up on us out of frustration or desert us out of disgust.  He has pledged himself to us.   To be sure, his gracious pledge to us aims at forging in us our grateful pledge to him; as he binds himself to us we are to bind ourselves to him. Nevertheless, even though we break our covenant with him he never breaks his with us.   Our gratitude to him may be — is — as fitful as our moods; nonetheless, his graciousness towards us is unvarying.

The psalmist tells us that God remembers his holy promise.  His covenant is his promise, and because he “remembers” it his promise remains operative no matter what.

And since the God whose promise is forever operative is the God whose nature is a fountain of effervescing love, the psalmist maintains that God remembers his steadfast love.

And when this love meets our sin, this love takes the form of mercy; God remembers his mercy. In a word, the operative reality permeating the entire universe at this moment is God’s remembered covenant, promise, steadfast love and mercy.

 

Since God is God his memory must be exceedingly good; in fact, is there anything God doesn’t remember?         Does God have a photographic memory, remembering everything forever? The truth is, God is supremely good at forgetting; he loves to forget, literally “loves” to forget. A minute ago I said that to forget, in Hebrew, doesn’t mean to let slip out of one’s mind accidentally; to forget is to annihilate deliberately, blot out, obliterate.  To God’s people who humble themselves penitently before him, says the prophet Isaiah, God declares, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my sake, and I will not remember your sins.”   The prophet doesn’t mean that God has absentmindedly lost track of human sin. He means that God has blotted out the sins of repentant people; their sin is no longer operative, it no longer determines their standing before God or impedes their access to God. God is marvellously adept at forgetting whenever he beholds repentant people.

But of course there is always that throbbing mercy of God which we want God to remember, for we want such mercy to remain the operative truth, the final truth, the ultimate reality of our lives.  For this reason the dying criminal, crucified alongside our Lord, gasped with his last gasp, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” The dying criminal, profoundly repentant, had just rebuked the unrepentant criminal strung up on the other side of Jesus, “Don’t you fear God?  You and I are under the same sentence of condemnation, and we deserve it.” It is a wise person who knows that her sentence of condemnation is precisely what she deserves, wise again when her plea which pushes aside all frivolous requests is simply, “Jesus, remember me”.  This plea is a plea that the mercy which was wrought at the cross become now and remain eternally the operative truth and reality of our womb-to-tomb existence. “Jesus, remember me.” “I, I am the God who blots out your transgressions for my sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

 

II: — Those men and women whom our Lord remembers in this way; a peculiar remembering is required of them as well.  In the sermon on the mount Jesus says to his disciples, “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go; first, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” Jesus insists that as we gather with others for worship our own spiritual affairs must be put in order. To think we can worship the holy God and cavalierly overlook the unholy corruption of our hearts and the spiritual disorder of our lives is to dishonour God. Jesus speaks, in the Sermon on the Mount, of the futility of attempting to worship God while our heart and our brother’s heart are estranged.  By extension, Jesus speaks of the futility of attempting to worship God while any spiritual disorder about us is unaddressed.   This is not to counsel scrupulosity, a perfectionism which leaves people nervous, self-rejecting, and despairing.   But it is to get serious about putting right what we know not to be right in our lives.

You see, to overlook or regard as trivial what we know to be out of order within us is only to find it getting worse.   What is spiritually corrupt will never get better by itself.   Hatred will never re-nature itself as love; it will only become more hateful until it consumes and controls us.  Lust will never alchemize itself into non-exploitative affection; lust will only disguise itself as affection as it worsens until it fills the horizon of our life. When are we going to learn that the person found lying can be forgiven (and should be forgiven) but cannot be trusted?   I am dismayed when I come upon people who are indifferent to truth-telling and transparency. Don’t they know that they will not be trusted (at least by me)?   They have advertised themselves as devious and bent on deceiving others. Plainly they are untrustworthy.

Whatever our spiritual disorder is, says Jesus, we should first “remember” it; then we should be sure to “forget” it.         He means we should acknowledge our spiritual disorder as operative right now in order that it might be obliterated and we ourselves be healed.

The Christians who characteristically have had the best perspective on such matters are my old friends, the 17th century Puritans. The Puritans (who have been maligned with a reputation they don’t deserve) are the master diagnosticians of the human heart.  On the one hand the Puritans knew that people who are always taking their temperature are neurotic fusspots.  On the other hand, the Puritans knew that people who never take themselves to a physician, even when the symptoms of illness are glaring, are simply fools. The Puritans had read our Lord’s word, “If you are bringing your gift to the altar and you remember whatever spiritual corruption lurks within you, do something about it immediately — otherwise your worship is phoney, and your declared love for God pretence.”

Thomas Watson, my favourite Puritan thinker, states pithily, “Christ is never loved till sin be loathed.”   At the same time Watson is careful to leave with us that word which will spare us self-rejection but will rather comfort us as it redirects us to our Lord himself: “Do not rest upon this, that your heart has been wounded for sin, but rather that your Saviour has been wounded for sin.” His final pronouncement takes us back to the God who remembers his own steadfast love and promised mercy: “Are they not fools who will believe a temptation before they believe a promise?”    God remembers his promise of mercy, and we must remember the selfsame promise as often as we remember the disorder within us.

 

III: — We are not yet finished with our Hebrew lesson in remembering.  Paul tells the Christians in Galatia that they must remember the poor.  To remember the poor, everyone knows by now, isn’t to recall them to mind, or even to think charitably about them.  To remember the poor is to make the reality of their poverty an operative ingredient in our discipleship.

Next question: who are the poor?  I do not dispute that there are economically disadvantaged people in our midst. At the same time, virtually no one in Canada is economically destitute. The social welfare system in Canada virtually guarantees that no one is destitute; no one is economically resourceless. In Canada there are two ways of contributing to the financial needs of the needy: voluntary and involuntary. The voluntary way is to make a donation when someone knocks at your door.  The involuntary way is income tax.  The income tax which we pay supports those who cannot maintain themselves elsehow. When Maureen’s father was accommodated in a nursing home, Maureen became aware of the large government subsidy required to keep her father there.  Maureen also figured out that what it cost the taxpayer to accommodate her dad in the nursing home was precisely what she herself paid in income tax. When other schoolteachers complained in the staffroom about having to pay income tax, Maureen gently told them she was glad to “remember” her father.

In ancient Israel the poor were commonly gathered up in the expression, “widows and orphans and sojourners”. The sojourner was a resident alien. As an alien the sojourner was uncommonly vulnerable.  Widows were bereft of income (in a society where wage-earners were exclusively male). Orphans were bereft of everything. They were vulnerable too. In other words, the meaning of “poor” in Israel was unusually vulnerable”; the poor were those who are especially defenceless.

When Paul urges us to “remember the poor” he means that we are to be fused to those who are extraordinarily vulnerable.  These people may not be financially poor at all.  Nonetheless, we are surrounded on all sides with people who are extraordinarily vulnerable, defenceless, even though they may be wealthier than we. It’s not difficult to find people who are financially adequate yet who are emotionally vulnerable, psychiatrically vulnerable, racially vulnerable, ethnically vulnerable, physically vulnerable, intellectually vulnerable.  And of course those who are spiritually vulnerable are legion — everyone, in fact. Then what exactly are we to do as we “remember” such people?         There is no pre-packaged formula; there is no sure-fire, step-by-step program of remembering the poor.  One thing we must do, surely, is scatter ourselves among those who are vulnerable, defenceless, in any respect.

Because of my responsibilities on Sunday morning I rarely socialize on a Saturday evening (no more than once or twice a year.)   On one such occasion, however, I was to go to a brass band concert in which one of my friends was playing.  I was about to back my car out of the driveway when a car drove up furiously into the driveway of the house next door.  A young woman emerged, ran up onto the front steps, and began pounding the door, kicking the door, and banging on the kitchen window, all the while shouting for the occupant to come out.  (Plainly she was bent on harming the occupant.)   It so happened that the occupants were a very elderly, infirm couple of Polish extraction with limited English facility.  They refused to open the door, and were cursed all the more loudly, as the furious attacker kept pounding on the kitchen window until it broke. (It turned out the furious woman was looking for the woman who was a tenant in the house’s basement apartment.) I can’t describe the terror that overtook the elderly couple upstairs.  They were beside themselves.  I telephoned the police, then sat with the shaken couple until the police arrived; I gave the police the licence number of the car and a description of the miscreant, and did what I could to comfort the distraught old folks until I had to leave for my social engagement.         My point is this: at the moment of the assault, the aged couple were poor in the biblical sense of “poor”; that is, they were extraordinarily vulnerable, defenceless.   They were not financially underprivileged; obviously they could afford to live on my street. Still, they were “poor” at that moment.  To remember the poor in this context is to do what the moment requires.

Who are the poor for us? The single mother whose husband has gone to jail?   The child who is intellectually challenged and is tormented by other children? The elderly man who gets flustered and confused every time he goes to the bank and cannot pay a bill without unravelling?   The unmarried person who finds living in an exclusively couple-oriented society almost a form of solitary confinement?  The spiritual groper who doesn’t know whether to try the New Age Movement or Old Age Atheism or Jesus Christ or Kung Fu — and who wonders if there is even any difference?  Whom do you and I know to be especially vulnerable, defenceless?  These are the people whom our lives must intersect, for only as their vulnerability becomes an aspect of our lives are the poor remembered.

 

IV: — And then there is another aspect of “remembering” that we must mention in view of the season that is upon us.         On Remembrance Day we shall remember.  Many who remember on that occasion will remember in the popular sense of recalling to consciousness the idea of war, plus the idea of service rendered by relatively few on behalf of many.  Even such remembering is certainly better than no remembering.  But because you and I have gone to school in Israel , we are going to remember in a much profounder sense.  We know that to remember is to make a past event the operative reality, the determining truth, of our lives now.

What was the past event? It was sacrifice, enormous sacrifice, the costliest sacrifice imaginable, for the sake of justice and peace. The circumstances in world-occurrence at the time of our foreparents required that they bear arms to secure justice and peace.  The circumstances in world-occurrence at this moment do not require that Canadians as a whole bear arms.  But this is not to say that the sacrifice required of us is any less. Justice and peace have never been obtained without sacrifice, and never will be.  After all, that justice which is our justification before God, and that peace (shalom) which is our salvation before God; these were obtained only by the sacrifice of the cross. Then we must understand that to redress the slightest injustice anywhere in life; to supplant hostility with peace anywhere in life; this requires sacrifice of some sort, however undramatic — and always will.

Today is Remembrance Day Sunday.  We remember the sacrifice our foreparents made years ago.  To remember such sacrifice is to have all that they gave and gave up become the operative reality of our lives now.  Then it remains only for you and me to decide what this gospel-vocation for justice and peace requires of us now.  To be sure, such a vocation will require something different from each of us. In “remembering” in the sense in which we must remember, we must ever keep in mind the Remembrance Day statement, “Lest we forget.”   “Lest we forget” doesn’t mean, “Lest a recollection of something decades old fade from consciousness”; “Lest we forget” means “Lest the sacrifice our foreparents made be blotted out, annihilated, rendered of no account.”  In a fallen world where injustice and savagery are the order of the day, justice and peace arise only as sacrifice is made; which is to say, only as the sacrifice made on our behalf is remembered, and thereby made the operative reality of our lives now.         To remember a sacrifice made for us is simply to make our own sacrifice on behalf of others.

 

When we remember on Remembrance Day, we remember (in the biblical sense) those who were poor (vulnerable) in a special sense.  But this is surely to remember those who are poor in the widest biblical sense. And we remember these people just because God first remembers us.  He remembers his covenant with us, his promise to us, his steadfast love and mercy for us. He doesn’t forget. Which is to say, so far from being blotted out, believing and repentant people are held dear in the heart of God, and will be for ever and ever.

 

                                                                                                       Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           November 2006

 

Isaiah 49:13-18

 

I: — Like you I watched the World Trade Centre tower burn in NYC, smoke billowing out of the windows on upper floors as people hung out of the windows knowing that torment and death awaited them if they didn’t jump, while torment and death awaited them if they did. I watched the airplane flying into the second tower, setting it ablaze too. Like you I watched both towers crumble, trapping 5,000 people inside. We all watched it many times over.

As often as I have watched I have tried to imagine what it would be like to be inside the burning or crumbling tower: the terror in one’s heart, the convulsion in one’s psyche, the sheer physical torment of glass and concrete breaking one’s bones, as well as the panic of asphyxiation. The suffering endured by any one person who died in Tuesday’s tragedy is incomprehensible.

[a] Many who ponder such suffering find themselves asking, “Why does God permit people to suffer like this?'” When we ask the question, “Why suffering?”, we may be assuming that anyone half as good and half as mighty as God is supposed to be would be able to program a universe and design human beings in such a way that suffering would never occur. In asking the question we are assuming that we human beings who are asking the question at this moment could remain who and what we are — persons (not animals or things) whose intellectual nature is what we know it to be — even if we were redesigned so as to be unable to suffer. But is this the case? To ask the question, “Why suffering? Why does God permit suffering?”; to ask this question requires a high level of abstract thought. The capacity for a high level of abstract thought presupposes a very sophisticated brain and neural structure. After all, a toad doesn’t ask questions like the question in our minds today; neither does a robin. A robin isn’t distressed over the matter of slaying a worm, when all the while the writhing of the worm indicates that the worm resists being stretched and slain and eaten. The robin merely kills and eats instinctually, as instinctually as the worm itself does whatever worms need to do to stay alive. We human beings, however, are different. We don’t act instinctually; we ask questions. To ask the question, “Why suffering in a world ruled by God?”; simply to understand that there’s a problem, simply to be able to formulate the question: all of this requires an exceedingly complex neural structure. The complex neural structure that allows us to understand the problem and formulate the question is the same complex neural structure that gives us our extraordinary capacity for pain.

In asking the question we are assuming that we can have the extraordinary privilege, as it were, of being able to reflect as we do without our extraordinary vulnerability to suffering. But – let me say it again – the neural complexity that supports advanced thinking is the same neural complexity that supports increased suffering. Whenever we ask the question, “Why does God allow us to suffer?”, we are asking, in effect, “Why doesn’t God create us so that we can think profoundly enough to ask the question about suffering even as he creates us so that we have no capacity for suffering itself?” In asking for this has it ever occurred to us that we might be asking for something that is logically self-contradictory? If we were to ask, “Why doesn’t God make a square circle?”, we’d recognise immediately the silliness of what we’ve proposed and we’d never fault God for not making a square circle, since a square circle is a logical impossibility, an instance of nonsense, non-sense. No one faults God for not creating non-sense. When we ask the question that has motivated today’s sermon we should pause; we might be asking for non-sense; we might be asking for a logical impossibility.

[2] In the second place, since we are creatures with enormous sensitivity to suffering, we must admit that some sensitivity to pain is essential to our self-preservation. Sensitivity to physical pain is essential if we are going to survive in a physical world. The elderly person who has lost sensitivity in her hand places her hand on a stove element to steady herself. She burns her hand. Then the burn infects. Now she has blood poisoning in her arm. Because she has diminished sensitivity to pain she can’t protect herself; unable to protect herself, she can’t preserve herself.

[3] In the third place, our capacity for suffering is also our capacity for pleasure. To be without any vulnerability to pain would mean that we were also incapable of experiencing pleasure. Everyone knows that the parts of the body that are most capable of pleasure are also those most capable of pain. In the same way those aspects of our mental existence and our emotional existence that are most vulnerable to pain are the same aspects through which we experience the most profound and the most intense mental and emotional delight. Once more, to fault God for not making us able to experience pleasure without exposure to pain might be faulting him for not creating a logical impossibility, non-sense.

[4] In the fourth place, when we think beyond our private vulnerability to suffering to our capacity to cause others to suffer, the question then becomes, “Why is the universe so arranged that people can be made to suffer terribly on account of someone else’s cruelty?” When we ask this question we forget that that arrangement of the universe which makes it possible for others to harm us also makes it possible for others to help us. Human existence is much more interconnected than we commonly think. We are connected — intertwined with, even — our spouse. Marriage makes it possible for our spouse to lend us a comfort and consolation that no other human being can. Marriage also makes it possible for our spouse to make us suffer as no other human being can. Our lives are interconnected with our family, with neighbours, with colleagues at work. Politically we are connected with fellow-citizens. Economically we are connected with people throughout the world whom we have never seen and never shall. Human existence entails pervasive, inescapable interconnectedness. The interconnectedness that makes it possible for others to help us also makes it possible for others to harm us. If we couldn’t be hated we couldn’t be loved.

“Why does God allow people to suffer, and suffer dreadfully?” I trust that what I have said so far helps us understand that some suffering, at least, is inevitable.

II: — At the same time, I am aware that while what I’ve said discusses the small-scale question — how and why it is that we have a capacity for pain, and in our universe at least, must have some capacity for pain — what I’ve said doesn’t discuss the large-scale question: how and why is it that enormities like the enormity of last week occur in a world ruled by the God “whose love is as great as his power, and neither knows measure nor end”, in the words of the old hymn?

One reason we were horrified as we were this week is that we saw the event in which 5,000 people died through the deliberate, wanton cruelty of fellow humans. The truth is, there are other events where far more people die through deliberate, wanton cruelty, but we are much less affected by these events just because we don’t see them — unless we have access to film.

One of the most hideous instances of gratuitous suffering, in my opinion, concerns the children who were annihilated en masse between 1939 and 1945. The parents of these children were gassed first; gassed, that is before their remains were burnt. The children, however, were never gassed: they were thrown live into huge incinerators. I don’t become unravelled easily, but I’m close to unravelling every time I see film-footage of the event. You too have seen the pictures of the children huddled behind barbed wire at the railway stations, waiting for the train that was soon to take them to the place of execution; 1.5 million children. Can you imagine the terror, the torment, in the nine year old’s heart as he was separated from his parents, packed into a windowless boxcar, jolted for several days, only to be let out at Theresienstadt or Auschwitz? Why does God allow this?

III: — In light of what I’ve just said I have to tell you how unhappy I am with Harold Kushner’s best-selling book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People. I’m disappointed in the book for several reasons. In the first place there’s virtually no discussion of God’s love in Kushner’s discussion of God. In view of the fact that God is love, that God’s nature is to love, the book is woefully deficient right here. In the second place, because God’s love isn’t discussed, the rest of the book is skewed. Kushner writes, “Let me suggest that the bad things that happen to us in our lives do not have a meaning when they happen to us. [I’ve no problem with this.] They do not happen for any good reason which would cause us to accept them willingly. [No problem here either.] We can redeem these tragedies from senselessness by imposing meaning on them.” I do object to this statement! We redeem them by imposing meaning on them? Any meaning that is imposed can only be arbitrary. An arbitrary meaning is no genuine meaning; something imposed is just another form of “make-believe”, and no less “make-believe” for being adult “make-believe.” Those who perished amidst the terror of holocaust or hijacked airplane; what meaning were they supposed to impose on the event? And why impose that meaning rather than another? And how would the imposition of such arbitrary meaning redeem the tragedy?

Harold Kushner’s book is yet another attempt at theodicy. Theodicy is the justification of God’s ways with humankind, the justification of God’s ways in the face of human suffering. All attempts at theodicy left-handedly put God on trial, so to speak, and then develop arguments that acquit God, allowing us to believe in him after all, allowing us to believe that he really is kind and good despite so much that appears to contradict this. All theodicies assume that we know what should happen in the world; as long as there continues to happen what shouldn’t, God (we think) is on trial; we have to develop arguments and marshal evidence that will acquit him if we are to go on believing in him.

IV: — All of which brings me to my next point; namely, our assumption that the questions we think to be obvious and obviously correct are the right questions. The question, for instance, “If God is all-good, he must want to rectify the dreadful state of affairs so often found in the world; if God is all-powerful, he must be able to rectify such a state of affairs. Since such a state seems not to be rectified, then either God isn’t all-good or he isn’t all-powerful, is he?” Next we set about trying to remove the suspicion that surrounds either God’s goodness or his might. We think our question to be the right question, even the only question. But in fact the question we’ve just posed didn’t loom large until the 18th century, specifically the 18th century Enlightenment. The question we’ve just posed was raised by Enlightenment thinkers who weren’t even Christians. Eighteenth century Enlightenment atheists raised the question, and Christians took it over in that they thought it to be a profound question. But this question didn’t loom large in the Middle Ages where physical suffering, at least, was worse than it is today. This question wasn’t pre-eminent in the ancient world; neither was it front-and-centre in the biblical era. The pre-eminent question in the biblical era wasn’t “Why?” because those people already knew why: the entire creation is molested by the evil one. It won’t be molested for ever, but it is for now. Therefore the pre-eminent question in the biblical era was “How long? How long before God terminates this state of affairs? What’s taking him so long?”

Think for a minute of the biblical era; think of John the Baptist. John and Jesus were cousins. Not only were they related by blood, they were related by vocation. John began his public ministry ahead of Jesus. John’s ministry ended abruptly when a wicked woman had him slain. What did Jesus do when he learned of John’s death and the circumstances of John’s death? Did Jesus say, “We need a theodicy! We need a justification of the ways of God! We need an explanation of how John’s terrible death could occur in a world ruled by a God whose love is mighty. And if no explanation is forthcoming, then perhaps we can’t believe in God?” Did Jesus say this? He said no such thing. When John’s arteries and windpipe were sliced open Jesus didn’t cry to heaven, “You expect me to trust you as my Father. But how can I believe you’re my Father, for what Father allows his child to be beheaded? In view of what happened to cousin John, I can’t be expected to think that I’m dear to you!” Jesus said no such thing. When he was informed of the grisly death of John, Jesus said, “It’s time I got to work.” Whereupon he began his public ministry, and began it knowing that what had befallen John would befall him too, and did it all with his trust in his Father unimpaired.

My point is this: that question which we suppose to be a perennial question, “How can we continue to believe in a mighty, loving God when terrible things keep happening in our world?” — wasn’t the most pressing question in the biblical era or the ancient church or the mediaeval church. It was shouted only in the 18th century Enlightenment, and was shouted by atheists. Having heard the atheists’ question, the church took it over thinking it to be the soul of profundity.

Inasmuch as I teach a course in the thought of John Wesley at Tyndale Seminary I speak often about the Wesley family. Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles, had 19 children. Ten of them survived. As the other nine died (eight of them in infancy), Susannah’s heart broke. Never think that she was unaffected; never think that her heart wasn’t as torn as anyone’s heart would be torn today. Read her diary the day after a domestic helper accidentally smothered Susannah’s three-week old baby. Infant death was as grievous to parents then as it is now. What was different, however, is this: even as Susannah pleaded with God for her babes while they died in her arms she never concluded that God wasn’t to be trusted or loved or obeyed or simply clung to; she never concluded that as a result of her heartbreak God could only be denounced and abandoned.

Until the 18th century Enlightenment there was no expectation of living in a world other than a world riddled with accident, misfortune, sickness, disease, unrelievable suffering, untimely death, terror. There was no expectation of anything else. It was recognized that the world, in its fallen state, molested as it is by the evil one, is shot through with unfairness, injustice, inevitable inequities, unforeseeable tragedies. When John the Baptist was executed Jesus didn’t say, “If honouring God’s will entails that then I need a different Father!” Instead Jesus said, “I’ve got work to do and I’d better get started!” Susannah Wesley didn’t say, “If I bear children only to have half of them succumb to pneumonia and diphtheria, I should stop having them.” Instead she had twice as many. If today our expectation is so very different on account of the Enlightenment, then what did the Enlightenment cause us to expect?

[V] — We were brought to expect that humankind can control, control entirely, the world and everything about it. The Enlightenment brought us to expect that we are or can be in control of every last aspect of our existence. Think, for instance, of the practice of medicine. The Enlightenment brought us to expect that the practice of medicine would smooth out our lives. And with the new expectation of physicians there arose as well a new agenda for physicians. Whereas physicians had always been expected to care for patients, now physicians were expected to cure patients. Until the Enlightenment physicians were expected to care: they were to alleviate pain wherever they could, they were expected to ease the patient in every way possible, and above all they were expected to ease the patient through death, which death everyone knew to be unavoidable in any case. But cure? No one expected physicians to cure, at least to cure very much. Nowadays physicians are expected to cure everything. I’m convinced that people unconsciously expect physicians to cure them of their mortality. When physicians can’t cure people of their vulnerability to death, blame for such failure is unconsciously transferred from medicine to God.

In the same way I’m convinced that people today expect leaders on every front in our society to be able to control. In the wake of the Enlightenment we assume that our political leaders ought to be able to control all potential problems with our society; our military leaders ought to be able to control all potential problems with national security; our financial wizards ought to be able to control all potential problems concerning money. Prior to the Enlightenment we expected all such leaders to care; now we expect them to cure. But they can’t; they can’t cure our world. Blame for such inability is unconsciously transferred to God.

“Why do such events as last Tuesday occur in our world?” This question isn’t as old as humankind. In fact it’s very recent. Furthermore, it wasn’t posed first by people who were steeped in the nature and purpose and way of God. It was posed — even as related expectations were fostered — by atheists who, at the time of the Enlightenment, came to think there was nothing humankind couldn’t control.

 

VI: — The question, “Why does God allow…?”; we raise the question expecting an answer. But scripture already announces the answer: the world lies in the grip of the evil one. The evil one, we are told is the prince of this world. Note: he is prince, but he is not king; Christ is king. Then we need to look to the king. We need the king’s confidence and encouragement. We need the king’s assurance that one day we are going to be delivered.

A good place to begin is the book of Hebrews. Hebrews speaks of Jesus as the pioneer of our faith. It’s not that Jesus is the pathfinder; he doesn’t find a path. Rather, he forges a way through life’s suffering and life’s terrors for us. Having forged a way through this himself, he comes back for us and beckons us to follow him. His life wasn’t immune from suffering, even terror; therefore, the way through that he has forged for us will never give us immunity from suffering or terror. A careful reading of the written gospels convinces us that our Lord knew physical torment, mental torment, spiritual torment; knew it every day, and knew it with unutterable intensity particularly in the last week of his life. Yet in the light of his resurrection we know that he has been through it all ahead of us, and because he’s been through it ahead of us we have confidence that there is a way through. We aren’t going to get part way through our journey with him only to have him turn to us and say, “I thought there was a way through, but it appears there isn’t; I’m stymied; we’re all in the same ‘fix’ together; your situation is therefore as hopeless as mine.” In his resurrection he has gone through it all ahead of us.

We have just spoken of our Lord’s resurrection. His resurrection enables us to interpret his cross rightly. Plainly the cross indicates there’s no limit to the vulnerability our Lord will expose himself to for us; there’s no limit to his identification with us in our terrors; there’s nothing he will stop short of in standing with us in life and in death and in everything dreadful in both. Then his resurrection means too there is no impediment to our inheriting that victory, his victory, which finally relieves us of our predicament. For this reason there’s a glorious text from the book of Hebrews that we should tape to our refrigerator door and our bathroom mirror: “For since Jesus Christ himself has passed through the test of suffering, he is able to help those who are meeting their test now.” (Heb. 2:18, NEB) We must memorise this and repeat it until we shall remember it for as long as we shall remember our own name.

As long as we remember? What if we don’t remember? What if, from time to time, tragedy or terror renders us unable to remember? Then what matters above all else is that God remembers. His promise to his people through the prophet Isaiah must sink into us: “I have graven you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:16) We need to learn the context of the promise. During their exile at the hands of Babylonian captors God’s people feel that God has forgotten them. Through the prophet Isaiah God asks them, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands.” Can a mother neglect, even abandon, the child she has borne and nursed? She can. We read of this in the newspaper every day. But there’s no chance at all that God is going to neglect or abandon those to whom he has given birth. If you find these verses from Isaiah too much to memorise for now, then memorise the little paraphrase I learned as a youngster:

    “My name from the palms of his hands
Eternity cannot erase;
Impressed on his heart it remains
In marks of indelible grace.”

 

                                                                         Victor Shepherd
16 September 2001