Jeremiah 1:4-8

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s foreparents were people of much courage and much ability. In 1933, when his paternal grandmother was 91 years old, she walked defiantly through the cordon which nasty stormtroopers had thrown up around Jewish shops as part of the anti-Jewish boycott. His maternal grandmother was a gifted pianist; in fact, she had been a pupil of the incomparable Franz Liszt. Bonhoeffer’s mother was the daughter of a world-renowned historian. His father, a neurologist, was a professor in the University of Berlin, and chief of Neurology and Psychiatry at Berlin’s major hospital.

Bonhoeffer himself was born on 4th February, 1906, in Breslau, then part of Germany, now part of Poland. He and his twin sister, Sabine, were the last of seven children. By age 10 his own musical talent appeared (he was now playing Mozart piano sonatas) as well as his proclivity to do the unusual. (For instance, a special treat on his birthday was an egg beaten with sugar. It tasted so good that the ten year old gathered up his pocket money and bought himself a hen!)

The family was religiously indifferent, the father being an agnostic. Bonhoeffer therefore startled the family when he announced, at age 14, that he was going to be a pastor and a theologian. The response was incomprehension. His older brother, Karl-Friedrich (who later distinguished himself as a physicist) tried to deflect him from this course, arguing that the church was weak, silly, irrelevant, unworthy of any young man’s lifelong commitment. “If the church really is what you say it is”, replied the youngster, “then I shall have to reform it.” Soon he began his university studies in theology in Tuebingen and completed then in Berlin. His doctoral dissertation exposed his brilliance on a wider front and introduced him to internationally-known scholars.

Following ordination Bonhoeffer moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he was the assistant minister to the German-speaking Lutheran congregation there. While he had been born to the aristocracy and therefore knew a social privilege denied most German people (especially the 25% who lived on the edge of starvation) Bonhoeffer yet displayed a remarkable ability to relate genuinely to all sorts and classes and types of people.

In 1930 he went to the United States as a guest of Union Theological Seminary, NYC. There he was dismayed at seeing how frivolous American seminarians were concerning the study of theology. His dismay peaked the day a most moving passage from Luther’s writing on the subject of sin and forgiveness was greeted with derisive laughter. Bonhoeffer retorted, “You students at this liberal seminary sneer at the fundamentalists in America, when all the while the fundamentalists know far more of the truth and grace, mercy and judgement of God than do you.” Quickly he recognized the plight of black people in the US, worked among impoverished blacks in the city, and worshipped regularly at a Baptist church in Harlem. In 1931 he returned to Berlin and resumed his university teaching.

While he was certainly a gifted scholar and professor, Bonhoeffer was always a pastor at heart. Not surprisingly, then, at the same time that he lectured he also instructed a confirmation class of 50 rowdy boys in one of the worst slums of Berlin. His first day with the boys was remarkable. As he walked up the stairs to the second floor room the boys at the top of the stair-well pelted him with garbage and began chanting repeatedly the first syllable of his name, “Bon, Bon, Bon…” He let them continue until they wearied of it. Then he quietly began telling the boys of what he had known in Harlem; how there existed another group of people whose material prospects were as bleak as theirs; how it was that Jesus Christ neither disdained nor abandoned anyone; that no human being, however bleak his circumstances, is ever God-forsaken. Bonhoeffer moved into the boys’ neighbourhood and lived among them until the instruction was over. Many of the youngsters remained his friends for life.

In 1933 Bonhoeffer took a leave of absence from the university and moved to London, England, where he pastored two German-speaking congregations. By now he was immersed in the ecumenical movement, assisted, of course, by his facility in French, Spanish and English (he spoke English flawlessly). The life-and-death struggle for the church in Germany was underway. Did the church live from the gospel only, or could the church lend itself to the state in order to reinforce the ideology of the state? Bonhoeffer argued that the latter would render the church no church at all. An older professor of theology, who conformed to nazi ideology in order to keep his job, commented, “It is a great pity that our best hope in the faculty is being wasted on the church struggle.” As the struggle intensified it was noticed that Bonhoeffer’s sermons became more comforting, more confident of God’s victory, and more defiant. The struggle was between the national church (which supported Hitler) and the confessing church, called such because it confessed that there could be only one Fuehrer or leader for Christians, and it wasn’t Hitler. Lutheran bishops remained silent in the hope of preserving institutional unity. Most ministers refused to support the confessing church, whispering that there was no need to play at being confessing heroes. In the face of such ministerial cowardice Bonhoeffer warned his colleagues that there was no chance of converting Hitler; what they had to ensure was that they were converted themselves. An Anglican bishop who knew him well in England was later to write of him, “He was crystal clear in his convictions; and young as he was, and humble-minded as he was, he saw the truth and spoke it with complete absence of fear.” Bonhoeffer himself wrote to a friend at this time, “Christ is looking down at us and asking whether there is anyone who still confesses him.”

Bonhoeffer was much taken with Gandhi’s non-violent resistance, and planned to go to India to learn more of Gandhi’s pacifism. Before he could get to India, however, he was urged to return to Germany in order to lead an underground seminary at Finkenwald. (This seminary aimed at supplying pastors for the confessing church, since not one of the university faculties of theology sided with the confessing church.) In no time Nazi authorities withdrew his Berlin professorship. Bonhoeffer calmly replied, “I have long ceased to believe in the universities.”

While instructing his students at Finkenwald he became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer. He was 35 years old, she, 18. (Maria von Wedemeyer married after the war and lives in Germany today.) During the long days of Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment the two were to correspond as often as authorities and censors permitted them. She visited him once a week. He always wanted her to let him know when she was coming. If she surprised him, said Bonhoeffer, he was deprived of the joy of anticipating her visit.

At this time North American and British church leaders were impatient with any discussion of theology, preferring to concentrate on the church’s politics. Bonhoeffer irked them by insisting that they were preoccupied with symptoms only. While the political compromises were dreadful indeed, the root problem, the disease, was theological: the church was infested with heresy. For this reason Bonhoeffer tirelessly addressed the issue of heresy, maintaining that the church can live only by its confession of Jesus Christ as the one Word of God which it must hear and heed and proclaim.

Two American professors coaxed him into returning to the US and to a teaching position in NYC. As soon as the boat docked Bonhoeffer knew he had made a mistake. He knew that Germany would shortly be at war, knew that the devastation of his native land would be indescribable. He was convinced he would have no credibility in assisting with its recovery and restoration unless he himself endured the devastation first-hand. He was in the US only four weeks.

By this time he was forbidden to speak anywhere in the Reich. Visser’t Hooft, the General Secretary of The World Council of Churches, asked him, “What do you pray for in these days?” “If you want to know the truth”, replied Bonhoeffer, “I pray for the defeat of my nation.”

While he had been a pacifist only a few years earlier, Bonhoeffer’s pacifist convictions were receding. He saw that untold suffering among the German people (especially civilians), as well as among the allies, would swell unless Hitler were removed. He quietly met with several high-ranking officers of German military intelligence who were secretly opposed to Hitler. Together they conspired to assassinate Hitler. Unbeknown to them, the intelligence arm of the secret police was spying on the intelligence arm of the army. The conspiracy was discovered. Bonhoeffer was arrested and assigned to a prison in Berlin. It was April, 1943. He was to be in prison for two years. He was allowed to read, and naturally enough spent most of his time perusing literature, science, philosophy, theology, and history. Much of his reading had to do with the 19th century cultural heritage of Germany. He also managed to reread the Bible 2.5 times

In July, 1944, the hidden bomb which was meant for Hitler did explode, but exploded while he was out of the room. The incriminating files which the secret police turned up pointed to Bonhoeffer directly, as well as others like General Oster and Admiral Canaris. Underground plans were being made to help Bonhoeffer escape when it was learned that his brother Klaus, a lawyer, had been arrested. Bonhoeffer declined to escape lest his family be punished. (He was never to know that Klaus was to be executed in any case, along with a brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi.) It was at this time particularly that Bonhoeffer ministered to his fellow-prisoners awaiting execution, among whom was Payne Best, an office in the British Army. His tribute to Bonhoeffer deserves to be heard.

“Bonhoeffer was different, just quite calm and normal, seemingly
perfectly at his ease… his soul really shone in the dark desperation
of our prison. He was one of the very few men I have ever met to whom God was
real and ever close to him.”

Bonhoeffer was removed from prison and taken to Flossenburg, an extermination camp in the Bavarian forest. On the 9th of April, three weeks before American forces liberated Flossenburg, he was executed. The tree from which he was hanged bears a plaque today with only ten words inscribed on it: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness to Jesus Christ among his brethren.

The physician who signed his death certificate, Dr. Fischer-Huellstrung, was profoundly impressed by Bonhoeffer, and later wrote of his impression. It is only fitting that we have a physician read such a tribute, and I have asked Dr. Robert Bates of our congregation to acquaint us with Dr. Fischer-Huellstrung’s testimony.

 

 

THEMES FROM BONHOEFFER’S WRITING

I have read Bonhoeffer for years and have profited from him unmeasurably. Many themes recur in his writings, and I want to introduce three of them to you at this time.

(i) First the cost of discipleship. In 1937 Bonhoeffer wrote a book with just this title:

COST OF DISCIPLESHIP. It is an extended discussion of the sermon on the mount. The first chapter is called “Costly Grace”. It begins, “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of the church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Bonhoeffer goes on to say, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession… . Costly grace is…the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.”

Bonhoeffer was always rendered angry and sad upon hearing Luther’s discernment of the gospel falsified and perverted. Such perversion riddled the doctrine of justification. “The justification of the sinner in the world”, said Bonhoeffer, “degenerated into the justification of sin and the world. … The only person who has the right to say he is justified by grace alone is the person who has left all to follow Christ.”

Bonhoeffer knew something that we often prefer not to know, that Jesus Christ certainly invites us to become his follower and companion, even as our Lord insists that we can be a companion of him, the crucified one, only as we willingly shoulder our own cross. In other words, the rewards of the kingdom are for those and those only who embrace the rigours of the kingdom. We are disciples ourselves, and the fellowship we belong to is Christian, only as suffering and sacrifice are gladly taken up for the sake of the kingdom.

(ii) The second theme: Christian community. I have already spoken of the underground seminary which Bonhoeffer operated in Finkenwald. While it was indeed a seminary, ie, a school for the training of ministers, it was also more than a school, since all of the students lived on the premises, eating and sleeping and relaxing together. Not surprisingly the students, under Bonhoeffer’s leadership, learned what it is to exist as a community. His wisdom and insight are available to us through his little book, LIFE TOGETHER.

The book is studded with gems. Bonhoeffer notes on the opening page that the physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to all. It was so in NT times when people like Paul and John craved seeing the faces of those to whom they were writing; it is so today. In fact, says Bonhoeffer, the physical presence of one Christian to another is a sign of the presence of Jesus Christ himself.

Bonhoeffer maintained that in any Christian fellowship we belong to each other only because we first belong to Jesus Christ. We are united to Christ in faith, and because united to him, we are united through him to one another. God has ordained that we be united to one another through Christ inasmuch as every Christian needs other Christians to speak and reflect the Word of God to the Christian herself. None of us is so thoroughly possessed of Christian wisdom and maturity that we no longer need our fellow Christians. I need my sister Christian as a proclaimer and bearer of God’s word. And why do I need her in this way? Bluntly Bonhoeffer states that the Christ in my own heart is never as strong as the Christ in my sister’s presence or my sister’s word. Therefore within the Christian community we shall always need each other as the embodiment of God’s word of grace.

What’s more, since all of us have feet of clay and sin-riddled hearts, it is only as I see my bother or sister through Christ that I am no longer impeded by hear faults, nor she by mine. Bonhoeffer had in his bloodstream Paul’s word to the Christians in Rome: “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.”

Perhaps the pithiest comment Bonhoeffer made on the matter of community is this: “he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing more than prattle in the presence of God too.”

 

(iii) The last theme I am going to discuss pertains more to me and Joan than to you: it concerns the work of the pastor. Bonhoeffer was a university professor who wanted nothing more than to be a pastor. He esteemed the work of the pastor even as he recognized the spiritual discipline which must surround all pastoral activity. “No pastoral conversation is possible without constant prayer”, he wrote; “other people must know that the pastor stands before God as the pastor stands before them.”

Bonhoeffer, sophisticated as he was in many branches of learning, yet knew that the ministry of the Word is just that: the ministry of the gospel of the crucified one. The pastor may certainly draw on whatever insights he gains from his learning; yet he must never forget that he is spokesperson for that word which is ultimate. For this reason Bonhoeffer never hesitated to say, for instance, “We do not understand sin through our experience of life or the world, but rather through our knowledge of the cross of Christ. The most experienced observer of humanity knows less of the human heart than the Christian who lives at the foot of the cross. No psychology knows that people perish only through sin and are saved only through the cross of Christ.”

Bonhoeffer recognized that the pastor slakes the thirst of his congregation only as the well within the pastor is deep. He wrote, “A parishioner must be able to sense that the pastor’s words overflow out of the fullness of his heart. They can tell if our proclamation is a spiritual reality for us.”

 

Today is Remembrance Day, a day when we commemorate the departed in a special way. As expected, Bonhoeffer had something to say about commemoration and cemeteries. “The cemetery surrounds the church to show that the place of worship is simultaneously the place of burial. The whole congregation is gathered here, the church militant and the church triumphant, those who are still being tested and those whose trials are over.”

The trials of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are over. May you and I be found as faithful in the midst of ours. Then we, like him, shall move from the church militant to the church triumphant.

 

A M E N

Victor Shepherd

 

 

Jeremiah 1:4-10

 

[1] “Are there modern prophets and saints?” Is God alive? Does God speak? Does God continue to call and equip and commission and appoint? Of course there are modern prophets and saints.

Let’s think first about prophets, the prophets of the biblical era. The Hebrew prophet is summoned before God, addressed by God, and appointed by God to a specific task. When the prophet is singled out by God (Amos said he was singled out when he was a mature adult, a shepherd in Tekoa; Jeremiah said he was singled out in his mother’s womb before he was even born) the prophet is brought before the “heavenly council”, as it is called. (If we were British monarchists we’d say, “summoned to the throne room”; if we were American republicans we’d say, “summoned to the oval office”.) The prophet is admitted to God’s deliberations with God himself. Once admitted to the heavenly council, the prophet is allowed to overhear God talking to himself out loud; or the prophet is addressed by God directly. Now the prophet has been given (burdened with) a specific word reflecting the mind and heart, the will and way and purpose of God.

But haven’t all God’s people been made aware of the mind and heart of God? Yes. All God’s people know that God has disclosed his will and way and purpose for his people at Red Sea and Sinai, at Calvary and empty tomb. This being the case, who needs a prophet? To be sure, Red Sea and Sinai, Calvary and empty tomb form the people of God and inform them after God’s heart; yet in the pilgrimage of God’s people, in the course of their venturing from deliverance to promised land, they need specific directions for specific crises or opportunities in the midst of specific developments. Sometimes the prophet’s word is directed to the people as a whole, as was the case when the Israelites were exiled in Babylon and they floundered in the midst of foreigners who both taunted them and tempted them. At other times the prophet’s word is addressed to an individual, as was the case when the prophet Nathan told David, after David’s violation of Bathsheba and murder of Uriah, that David, Israel’s greatest king, was also Israel’s greatest “creep.”

In all of this the prophet is different from the teacher. The teacher expounds and interprets the whole body of the truth of God; the teacher articulates the substance of the faith; the teacher mines the rich deposits in the goldmine of the gospel. A modern teacher will expound the Sermon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments or the message of the Psalms or the parables of Jesus.

The prophet, however, is different. The prophet is certainly aware of the whole body of the truth of God, and must never contradict it. (If he does, he’s known instantly as a false prophet.) Still, the prophet has been called and equipped to speak God’s special word to a special crisis or opportunity in the life of God’s people.

Since life is punctured only occasionally by crises, since life unfolds ordinarily most of the time, it’s obvious that teachers have to be many while prophets are few. Teaching is common while prophecy is unusual. Yet both are essential. The teacher acquaints God’s people with their identity and self-understanding as God’s people; the prophet, on the other hand, imparts specific direction in the midst of unique developments. Teachers and prophets are alike essential.

Are there modern prophets? Of course there are.

 

[2] Then what about saints? Are there modern saints? The English word “saint” translates the Greek word hagios, “holy”. In the New Testament church holy people aren’t unusual Christians, super-spiritual Christians, extraordinary Christians. In the New Testament church all Christians, without exception, are called “holy”, “saints”. Even weak Christians, immature Christians, sin-riddled Christians are still called “holy”, “saints”.

The root meaning of “holy” is simply “set apart”. Christians are those whom God has set apart through their faith in Jesus Christ. Set apart for what? Set apart to attest the presence of the kingdom in the person of king Jesus, to be sure; set apart to do the kingdom-work that obedient subjects of the king are eager to do; set apart to labour and struggle while it is still day, aware that the night is coming. Yes! But before any of this, Christians are set apart simply to be. Jesus says his people are to be salt, be light, just be. Before we are set apart to do anything we are set apart to be; to be a people whose existence honours God.

Yet whenever I reflect upon what it means to be set apart, a saint, I think of those graphic images that the apostle Paul uses to speak of Christians in his Corinthian correspondence.

 

(i) Paul says that Christians, saints, are an aroma, the fragrance of God. (2 Cor. 2:15) I am exceedingly fond of perfume. I’ll even stop on the sidewalk and keep sniffing after a woman fragrant with perfume has walked on down the street. To the extent that I love perfume I loathe stenches. How much more I should ever hate to be a stench. I won’t be, for Christians have been set apart to be an aroma, the fragrance of God. The fragrance of God renders God himself attractive.

 

(ii) Paul says too that Christians, saints, are God’s letter. (2 Cor. 3:2-3) We are the letter that God sends to others. The purpose of a letter is to convey information; the purpose of a love-letter is to convey information and disclose the letter-writer’s heart. We are God’s letter, says the apostle, written not with pen and ink but “with the Spirit of the living God … on the tablets of the human heart.”

 

(iii) Paul says too that Christians, saints, are God’s garden, God’s plantation. (1 Cor. 3:9) We have been set apart as God’s garden. The purpose of a garden is to feed people; the purpose of God’s garden is to feed people ultimately with the one who is the bread of life.

In the New Testament all Christians, without exception, are alike designated “saints”, holy ones whose holiness consists first in the fact that they have been set apart. As God’s fragrance we render him attractive; as God’s letter we inform others of his truth and his heart; as God’s garden we are the means whereby others are fed the bread of life.

Are there saints today? Of course there are. No doubt you have your own list of favourite saints, people who have been especially helpful to you in your pilgrimage. I have my own list, too. It’s very long. Still, I want to acquaint you with three men who have meant more to me than I can say. Two of them I have called saints, and the third a prophet. But of course prophets are always saints as well.

 

[3](i) The first is Anthony Bloom. Bloom was born of Russian parents in 1914. His parents, members of the Czarist Diplomatic Corps, took him to Iran where his father was Russian ambassador. After the communist revolution in 1917, his parents couldn’t return to Russia. They moved to France, together with three year-old Anthony.

Bloom speaks of his early years as years of out-and-out unbelief. He affirmed nothing of the gospel and wasn’t even interested in investigating it. In his mid-teens he joined a boy’s club in Paris. The club happened to meet in a church. Out of idle curiosity he picked up a pamphlet containing Mark’s gospel that he had found lying around, and began to read it in contemptuous amusement. Expecting nothing but silly entertainment, he began to sense a presence; the presence of him of whom the gospel speaks. But let Bloom tell you about this in his own words:

“I knew that Christ was standing on the other side of the desk, and the impression was so clear and so certain that I looked up the way one looks round in the street when one has the impression that someone is looking at your back. I saw nothing, perceived nothing with my senses, but the certainty was so great that I knew I had met Christ alive; and if I had met Christ alive, then all the gospel was true.”

Bloom finished his undergraduate education and enrolled in the faculty of medicine. Lacking money for his medical education, he tutored students every night in physics, chemistry, mathematics and Latin — tutored them, that is until 11:00 pm. Then he opened his medical textbooks and began his own homework, working almost until dawn. Bloom says that throughout his four years of medical school he averaged three hours of sleep per night. Upon graduation he qualified as a surgeon.

Then World War II broke out and France was invaded. One day, in the course of the German occupation, a German soldier with a shattered forefinger was brought to him. A senior surgeon looking over Bloom’s shoulder said that the finger would have to be amputated. Bloom asked the young soldier what he had done for a living in civilian life. “I”m a watchmaker”, the young man replied, “and if I lose my forefinger I’ll be jobless.” Bloom disregarded the senior surgeon and spent the next five weeks reconstructing the finger.

Bloom continued to practise medicine until 1948 when he was ordained a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church in France, subsequently becoming bishop and archbishop, and finally Orthodox archbishop in England. Until his death a year or two ago he frequently went to a working-class pub for lunch, “for a pie and a pint”, as he put it. He has written much, including two very fine books on prayer. Twice he has been interviewed on Roy Bonisteel’s former CBC program, “Man Alive”, and his presence has elicited more correspondence than anyone Bonisteel has ever interviewed.

Bloom has always known that the gospel strikes the world as foolish. Therefore Christians strike the world as foolish. What the world counts folly, of course, is precisely what the church knows to be the wisdom of God. Bloom spent five weeks reconstructing the shattered forefinger of a man whose forefinger had been a trigger finger, used against Bloom’s fellow-citizens, until the moment of injury.

Bloom was always aware that life unfolds amidst difficulty. Bloom himself knew much difficulty throughout his life. Among other things he had medical problems that hounded him all his adult years. Still, he remained radiant and encouraged fellow-sufferers (all of us) to remain radiant too. In this context Bloom said,

“In present-day medicine people turn to a physician to alleviate the slightest pain because they assume they should never be in pain. The result is that they can face pain less and less; and when there is no pain, they can’t face the fear. In the end they live in pain although there is no real pain yet.”

As often as I read Bloom I recall Psalm 34: “I will bless the Lord at all times. Let the afflicted hear and be glad. Look to him and be radiant.” (If you are trying to demystify the matter of prayer and you need help, read his little book, School for Prayer.)

 

(ii) The next person I want to speak of is a modern prophet, Jacques Ellul. Ellul was born in France in 1912 to parents who cared nothing about the Christian faith. His father especially was a sceptic in the spirit of Voltaire, not only a sceptic but a mocker. Yet since there is no communication-gap the Holy Spirit can’t bridge or frozen heart he can’t thaw, Ellul came to faith when still a young man. He refused to discuss the details of this development since he always found religious exhibitionism distasteful. He did say, however, that since he was seized and subdued by the God he was ardently trying to flee, his conversion was necessarily violent.

Soon Ellul was studying law at university, then teaching it as he was appointed professor of law at the University of Bordeaux. When France was overrun and occupied during the war Ellul became a member of the Resistance. One of his law-students reported him to the Gestapo, the German secret police. The Resistance people immediately hid him in the French countryside where he was disguised as a farmer. For the rest of the war Ellul was an underground fighter in the French Resistance.

After the war Ellul became upset at the treatment accorded those accused of wartime collaboration. French citizens were now howling for the scalps of those French men and women who had collaborated with German forces in hope of saving their own skin. Ellul found the French government treating these people brutally, acceding to the popular howl, denying them the most rudimentary due process of the justice system. Whereupon Ellul stepped out of his law-school professorial robes and became the lawyer representing the collaborationists. In other words, he now defended the very people who would have tortured and killed him had they found him a year or two earlier. Overnight Ellul went from being a wartime hero (brave Resistance fighter) to peacetime bum (public defender of French scum.) He did what he did, he says, because he knew that in Jesus Christ the kingdom of God has come; as a citizen of that kingdom he knew he lived in a new order where assumptions and expectations were entirely different from those of the old order. He noted that virtually everyone clings to the old order even though God’s judgement has condemned it, while very few dwell in the new order even though God’s blessing has established it.

Soon Ellul became professor of the history of institutions as well as professor of law. Now he began the work that has made him famous around the world. He insisted that the threat to our humanness, in the latter half of the 20th century, is technology. By technology he doesn’t mean mechanization or automation. (He has never suggested that a horse is preferable to an automobile or a tractor.) By “technology”, rather, he means the uncritical exaltation of efficiency. If something can be done efficiently, then it will be done, regardless of the truth of God or the human good. Once the technology of the atom bomb had been developed (the atom bomb being the most efficient weapon the world had seen to date), then of course the bomb was going to be dropped. As soon as abortion-techniques were refined and made vastly more efficient, then of course abortions proliferated, without concern for the status of the creature being slain. As soon as electronic surveillance techniques were developed, then of course they were used by governments and others to violate the privacy of citizens who remain unaware of being violated.

Ellul has written 40 books and 400 articles on a variety of topics. One of his major books concerns propaganda. He argues convincingly that propaganda is deployed everywhere in life to seduce people into consenting unthinkingly to the exaltation of efficiency. At the same time propaganda is deployed to blind people to the dangers of whatever is put forward as more efficient. Concerning the generating of electricity, for instance, we’ve been told that coal-fired generators pollute the environment. And so they do, to some extent. We are told that nuclear generators don’t pollute. Ellul points out that propaganda keeps people ignorant of one crucial fact: every year there are approximately 500 major nuclear accidents throughout the world, with results that are simply horrific — even as very little of this is heard in the news.

Then do you want to learn how the news is managed and who manages it? Read him. Do you know the social techniques that are used to make people feel they are free and creative when in fact they are mindnumbingly controlled and conformed and enslaved? Read him.

Ellul insists that only the God of the gospel can free us. Only the God of the gospel highlights the world for what it is and thereby calls us to a new existence in Jesus Christ. Apart from the God of the gospel and what he does now there is no future, says Ellul, no genuine future. There is only a dreary repetition of the past. Not surprisingly Ellul too has written a startling book on prayer, contending that it is only as we pray that we are given something that isn’t the past recycled; only as we pray do we have a genuine future at God’s hand.

Ellul died in Lyon, France, in 1995.

 

(iii) The last person I shall speak of is Ronald Ward, British Anglican clergyman, classics scholar-turned-New Testament scholar. Ward was awarded his Ph.D degree for his thesis, “The Aristotelian Element in the Philosophical Vocabulary of the New Testament.” Emigrating to Canada he was professor of New Testament at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, from 1952-1963. He has written a dozen books. Long before I knew him, long before I began my own studies in theology, I heard my father speak admiringly of him. In the late 1950s Ward had preached at a noon-hour Lenten service held in St. James Anglican Cathedral, Toronto, for downtown business people. My father came home astonished at both Ward’s scholarship and the authenticity with which Ward spoke of his most intimate life in his Lord. On my 24th birthday my mother (now a widow) gave me one of his books, Hidden Meaning in the New Testament. The book explored the theological significance of Greek grammar. Dull? Does grammar have to be dull? I read his discussion of verb-tenses, imperative and subjunctive moods, prepositions, compound verbs, his discussion illustrating the truth and power of the gospel on page after page. Greek grammar now glinted and gleamed with the radiance of God himself. Insights startling and electrifying illuminated different aspects of Christian discipleship and left me glowing inside every time I thought about them.

One such gem had to do with the two ways in which the Greek language expresses an imperative. (The two ways are the present tense and the aorist subjunctive.) If I utter the English imperative, “Don’t run!” I can mean “You are running now and you must stop” or I can mean “You aren’t running now and you mustn’t start.” When two different gospel-writers refer to the Ten Commandments, one gospel-writer uses one form of the Greek imperative to express “Thou shalt not”, while the other gospel-writer uses the other form. One says, “You are constantly violating the command of God and you must stop.” The other says, “You aren’t violating the command of God now, and don’t even think of starting.” Both truths are needed in the Christian life; both are highlighted by means of grammatical precision.

Ward left the University of Toronto and found his way to a small Anglican congregation in Saint John, N.B. By now (1970) I was in Tabusintac, a 400-mile roundtrip away. Several times I sat before him, Greek testament in hand, asking him about grammatical points that had me “stumped”. What did I gain from my visits? Vastly more than lessons in grammar; I gained an exposure to a godliness I had seen nowhere else, a godliness that was natural, unaffected, unselfconscious, real.

Any point in grammar Ward illustrated from the Christian life. One day I asked him about two verses in Mark’s gospel where Jesus says, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out.” The verb is skandalizein, to cause to stumble. But in the space of a few verses Mark uses two different tenses: one tense suggests completed action in the past, one occurrence only; the other tense suggests an ongoing phenomenon. When I asked Ward about it he said, “Victor, in a moment of carelessness or spiritual inattentiveness or outright folly the Christian can be overtaken by sin. Horrified, he says, `Never again!’, and it’s done with. And then there’s the Christian’s besetting temptation with which he has to struggle every day.”

As often as I spoke with him I knew I was in the presence of a simple man, a humble man, an erudite scholar, and a spiritual giant. Yet his gigantic stature never dismayed me. On the contrary, I was only encouraged. He frequently prefaced what he had to say to me with, “As you know, Victor,…”, as if I were his spiritual equal. I wasn’t and I knew it. He continued to assume I was. “As you know, Victor, the worst consequence of prayerlessness is the inability to pray; as you know, Victor, if we fear God we shall never have to be afraid of him.”

While Ward spent most of his time either as professor or as pastor of a small congregation, he was always an evangelist at heart. Before he died (only a few years ago) he had conducted preaching missions to large crowds on every continent. Despite his exposure to large crowds he always knew of the need to sound the note of the gospel-summons to first-time faith within the local congregation.

I have come to appreciate the need for this myself. And so I wish conclude the sermon today by reading the concluding paragraph of his book, Royal Theology. In this paragraph Ward speaks of the conscientious minister who prepares throughout the week that utterance which is given him to declare on Sunday. Such a minister, says Ward,

“should find that his responsive congregation is not only literally sitting in front of him but is figuratively behind him. When he proclaims Christ there will be an answering note in the hearts of those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious. When he mentions the wrath of God they will be with him in remembering that they too were once under wrath and by the mercy of God have been delivered. When he speaks of the Holy Spirit they will rejoice in Him Who has brought Christ to their hearts with His fruit of joy. When he speaks of the church they will dwell on that vast company of the redeemed which has responded to God’s call and has received Christ, the multitude which no man can number of those who are His peculiar treasure. When he speaks of the word of the cross they will welcome the open secret of the means of their salvation. And when he gives an invitation to sinners to come to Christ, they will create the warm and loving atmosphere which is the fitting welcome for one who is coming home.”

 

                                                                          Victor Shepherd
February 1998          

                          

Jeremiah 9:23-34            2^nd Corinthians 12:1-10               Matthew 20:20-28

 

I: — We do our best to avoid them just because we find them obnoxious. The boasters, I mean; the braggarts, the blowers. They are always blowing. We are in the middle of a worthwhile conversation when the blower spots the group and swaggers over, uninvited. (Offense #1) He “horns in” and eavesdrops on what is simply none of his business. (Offense #2) Then he butts into the conversation and takes it over, monopolizes it. Now the conversation is merely a monologue that features him. (Offense #3) You’ve been to South America ? He’s been farther south than that: Antarctica . In July, no less. (July is the dead of winter in Antarctica , in case you didn’t know.) Your daughter is graduating from university? His daughter has just been awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at a real university. You have spoken to the local bank manager about a household loan? Only yesterday he was speaking to the president of True Blue Securities – “Just to check up on the off-shore portion of my medium risk part of my investment portfolio.”

The man is a pain-in-the-neck. We find him to be an irritant. Disciples of Jesus, however, regard him much more seriously and see him as much more sinister. Disciples of Jesus, we understand, have grasped how serious and sinister boasting is and why.

In Romans 1 the apostle Paul lists the human vices evident in men and women who share in the world’s corruption. He speaks of fallen humankind as envious, murderous, quarrelsome, heartless, faithless, ruthless, abusive of parents, slanderous (it sounds dreadful, doesn’t it) and boastful.   Is boasting really in the same league as cruelty and slander and faithlessness and parent-abuse? The apostle thinks it is.

In his second letter to Timothy Paul does it again: “Lovers of self, lovers of money, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, boasters – holding the form of religion but denying the power of it.” Then he adds the clincher: “Avoid such people.” We are to avoid them before they corrupt us. Lest we think Paul is ridiculous in being upset over bragging we should hear from James, brother of our Lord himself. James says, “You boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

Evil? To be sure, boasting is annoying; it’s offensive. But evil? It’s evil just because it ruins discipleship. Jesus insisted that his disciples reject all titles of honour and all positions of privilege. Titles of honour and positions of privilege twist our thinking and shrivel our heart. Titles of honour and positions of privilege invariably lead to bragging, to inflated superiority, to pomposity. Titles of honour and positions of privilege invariably cause us to disdain those who don’t have titles of honour and positions of privilege. Quite simply, the disciple who has begun to brag is making herself useless to the kingdom of God . After all, Jesus washed feet. John Wesley ate with the poorest people he knew and ate the same food as they. Robert McClure, missionary surgeon all his working life, told a highschool graduating class in Mississauga (I had been asked to go along to pray) that throughout his missionary service in India he’d ridden the Third Class section of the train. He laughingly told the teenagers and their parents that he’d done this for two reasons: one, there wasn’t a Fourth Class; two, he had noticed that the Third Class section of the train travelled at the same speed as the First Class.

Scripture includes bragging in its recitation of wickedness for one reason: bragging is the self-advertisement of the person who has come to despise the way of discipleship, since discipleship entails foot washing and other forms of uncomplaining service. Bragging is the self-advertisement of someone who prefers the company of the self-important, the so-called superior. Jesus insists we are to walk the Way of discipleship with him. Boasters don’t like to walk; they prefer to strut.

The apostles, not merely James and Paul whom we’ve mentioned today but all of them together; the apostles, like the Lord they love, see a stark “either/or” where we prefer to see gradations. The either/or they put before us is as stark as any: either we follow Jesus on the Way of self-forgetful service or we brag. Is there nothing in between? They think not. Our Lord thinks not.

 

II: — Then why does Paul, who condemns boasting, also speak of a kind of boasting, a different sort of boasting, that he believes to be good? Translators of the bible, aware that we might be confused to read of both a boasting that is condemned because evil and a boasting that is commended because good, often translate boasting in the good sense by the English word “glorying.” Where the Greek text tells us that Paul boasts of the congregations under his care, modern English translations tell us that he glories in these congregations. He glories in these congregations for one reason: God is manifestly at work in them. God is doing something in them. Paul glories not in himself (this would be boasting in the reprehensible sense) but in God’s work among the people Paul loves.

On another occasion Paul cries, “It’s necessary that I boast; I must boast.” But then he doesn’t start blowing about himself. Just the opposite. So moved is he at the manifest working of God in the people he cherishes that he must glory in, he’s impelled to glory in, the goodness and grace of God. He feels he must publicly extol God and praise God for God’s patience with fractious people; praise God for God’s perseverance amidst obstreperous people; praise God for God’s penetration of stony hearts otherwise impenetrable – all of which eventually redounds to the praise of God’s glory. This is what the apostle means when he speaks of boasting in the good sense, “boasting in the Lord.”

Then he brings it closer to home. He must boast of, glory in, where God is most at work in his own life. And where is God most at work in his own life?   In Paul’s weakness. It is Paul’s weakness that God has taken up and used most wonderfully. “If I’m going to boast at all,” he says, “I’m going to boast of, glory in, my weakness, for it’s precisely here that God works most effectively.”

If we were asked right now where we thought God was most at work in our life or had been most at work, where we thought we could most clearly see the hand of God tellingly at work, almost certainly we’d mention something positive: the new job we landed with a large raise, the scholarship our teenager won, the international athletic recognition our daughter finally gained, the good fortune (as it were) that turned up when we least expected it. Would it ever occur to any of us to name something negative, something painful, something confusing, even un-understandable? Would it occur to us to name a “downer,” a real “downer,” adding that we were certain God was especially effective here, in the “pits” of our life?

Paul tells us he boasts of his weakness, glories in his weakness. What’s his weakness? We don’t know for sure. We do know that he was a poor public speaker. He was so very ineloquent, in fact, that the congregation in Corinth laughed at him. His public addresses were devoid of rhetorical smoothness and polish and flourishes. Hearers snickered. As for his physique, not even the costliest fitness club could have done anything for him. When the Corinthian Christians saw the bow-legged, pint-sized man from Tarsus they laughed. (As Christians, of course, they shouldn’t have been laughing at any human being. But then the Corinthian Christians, we all know, were immature and shallow.) Paul, needless to say, would never be called to a prominent pulpit today. In fact he wouldn’t be called to any pulpit.)

Even though his speech and physique were laughable, there was something about Paul that the Corinthian Christians didn’t laugh at just because they craved it for themselves: his vivid, ever-so-vivid, psychedelic religious experience. It had been graphic, intense, striking. It had stamped itself upon him so memorably that he would never be able to forget it. “Caught up to the third heaven” is how he speaks of it. It had been an experience of such consummate intensity and intimacy and weight that no word could describe it or come close to it. When asked about it Paul could barely croak, “I heard things that cannot be told; I saw what may not be uttered.”

Myself, I have had a psychedelic experience only once. It was drug-induced. After I had been given a narcotic several times to reduce pain (this on a physician’s order,) the cumulative effect of the narcotic overtook me. Not only was I in no pain, on this particular night in hospital I was euphoric. I floated. Better than that, I flew. Better still, I soared; I soared to regions and reaches that I haven’t visited since. (Obviously I’ve never forgotten the experience.) As a result of his apprehension at the hand of Jesus Christ Paul had undergone something even more vivid – without narcotics. He could have bragged about it before the congregation in Corinth , since those people admired anyone who had been on such a “trip.” Yet before these shallow people the apostle glories in one matter only: his weakness. He knows it’s at the point of his weakness – whatever it is – that the power of the Spirit rests upon him. As he continues to glory in his weakness (boast of this) he continues to hear God speak to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, since my power is made perfect in your weakness.”

 

III: — Then it’s at precisely the point of your weakness and mine that God is going to work most effectively. But this shouldn’t surprise us. After all, we Christians are aware that God did his most effective work precisely where, from a human perspective, he couldn’t do anything. God did his mightiest work, his “all-mightiest” work (he reconciled a wayward world to himself) precisely where, in the person of his Son, he was utterly helpless. Who, we must consider soberly, who is weaker, more helpless, and therefore more useless apparently, than a beaten-up man unable so much as to wriggle while he dies between two terrorists at the edge of the city garbage dump? In the days prior to this event Jesus had insisted that the moment of his glory – his glory, no less – (I’m speaking still of the cross) was upon him. Then we too must learn to glory in our weakness, for it is here that the power of Christ rests upon us.

When you had that nervous breakdown and your family (understandably) tried to protect you, and tried to cover up their own embarrassment by calling it something else; when you had that breakdown (I know, the mere memory of it is hideous,) it wasn’t an episode in which God deserted you or you had fallen out of his favour. It wasn’t a sign of unbelief or diminished faith. It was a period of weakness in which the power of Christ continued to rest upon you regardless of how you felt. What’s more, at the point of your weakness (hideous as it was to you then) others saw a vulnerability in you, even a humanness, that they hadn’t seen before. Seeing it in you freed them to admit their own vulnerability and fragility and frailty and weakness. Being freed to admit it in themselves (that is, freed from their illusion of superiority) was a work of grace. And no longer feeling guilty about their own weakness was another work of grace.

A minister told me he went to sit with parishioners whose child had just been crushed by an automobile. As soon as he was admitted to the home his carefully rehearsed palaver deserted him. He found himself crying uncontrollably. That was all he could do. He had nothing to say. (Of course a minister who finds himself with nothing to say feels useless, since ministers often think they make their living with their mouth.) He told me he felt stupid crying like that; felt inept, and felt most unprofessional. After all, aren’t ministers accustomed to dealing with this sort of thing? Months later the parents told him his very helplessness was their greatest consolation. (In fact, had he uttered his carefully worked out palaver, from a position of strength, he would have been asked to leave.)

At one time a friend of mine was the chaplain at Maplehurst Prison, in Milton . Maplehurst, like all medium-security jails in Ontario , has been upgraded to maximum security. More electronic locks and more razor wire. It houses 400 convicts. Their average age? Twenty-two. My friend was leading a workshop aimed at equipping church people as prison visitors. She was relating the suffering servant motif of Isaiah 53 to the men she sees every day in prison. You recall Isaiah 53: “He was despised and rejected, one from whom people hide their faces…we esteemed him not.” My friend isn’t naïve: she doesn’t pretend that men are in prison for no reason at all. They have offended, and the society-at-large has recognized their offence and reacted to it. These men have rent the social fabric; many have wounded others. The point my friend was trying to have church visitor-trainees understand was this: before the convict lands in prison for damaging something or someone, he is a frightfully wounded person himself. Long before he violates someone else, he’s been violated repeatedly himself. My friend was trying to have church folk see that in drawing near to these convicts who are despised and rejected and unesteemed we ourselves become acquainted with the presence and power and healing of God.

When she had concluded her workshop she felt she had failed. She wandered off into a corner of the church hall by herself, overcome. (Subsequently she told me that for years she has felt futile, unable to convey adequately to people like you and me the extent to which convicts, dear to her, are victims themselves before they ever victimize anyone else.) Weeks later, when we leaders of the event read the evaluation sheets, we discovered that her presentation had been moving, effective, beyond all appearances. It is always upon our weakness (or what we perceive to be our weakness) that the power of Christ rests.

 

Today I have mentioned several instances where people who were embarrassed by their weakness, even humiliated by it, were yet able eventually to see how, and how fruitfully, the power of Christ rested upon their weakness. What about those instances where no less weakness is evident in us but we haven’t seen how, let alone how fruitfully, Christ’s power rests upon us? Here all we can do is trust God for what we haven’t yet seen as surely as we cannot deny what we have already seen.

And so when our teenager runs off the rails and we are powerless over the development, and powerless again over our humiliation arising from it; when we are given the pink slip and the not-so-golden handshake at work and all we can do is rage uselessly about it; when…. You fill in the rest from your own experience. Even then we are going to trust the God who did his most effective work precisely when his own son was most helpless, most humiliated, most useless and most in pain.

 

We began today by recalling not merely how offensive bragging is, but also how dangerous it is. For bragging or boasting is the self-advertisement of those who scorn the self-forgetfulness of discipleship. In addition, braggarts always deny their own weakness and despise the weakness they see in others.

And yet Paul says we are to boast. We are to “boast in the Lord.” We are to glory in God’s activity within us and his power attending us. We are even to boast of or glory in our weakness, for it is here that God will use us more effectively than we have ever imagined. So reads the gospel of the Crucified One.

 

                                                                                                 Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                

September 2004

 

Jeremiah 31:2-3    Exodus 15:13-21     Romans 8:31-39     Luke 15:25-32

 

1]         “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”, exults the apostle Paul at the climax of his weightiest theological treatise, “nothing.”   The apostle does not say this lightly.  He is painfully aware of what seems to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, what aims at separating us.  Certainly it often leaves us feeling that we have been separated.  “It” can be any one of the deadly things which afflict us, some of which Paul lists: distress, persecution, homelessness, war, hunger, relentless danger. I understand why he says these appear to drive a wedge between us and God’s love. Who among us wouldn’t feel (at least occasionally feel) separated from God’s love if we were homeless, or hungry, or disease-ridden?  Nonetheless, it is the apostle’s conviction that God’s love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord is so relentless, so penetrating, that laser-like it gets through to us and sustains us regardless of what is coming down on top of us. More than sustain us, it can even get us to sing and dance and rejoice.

There is one ground for all of this, and one ground only: Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead.  Because he has, his triumph can never be undone.  Death could not crush him ultimately.  The strong love of God which raised him from the dead has made you and me beneficiaries of the same strong love.  This love is strong enough to get past and overturn whatever jars us, creeps up on us, or threatens to crumble us.

For this reason scripture insists that God’s people are always rendered able to dance. God’s people have already tasted a deliverance fashioned through God’s triumph. Then of course we shall dance. The psalmist says of the worshippers in the temple, “Let them praise God’s name with dancing, making melody to him with timbrel and lyre”.         As Miriam and her women-friends looked back on their people’s deliverance through the Red Sea , Miriam led her friends in dancing, exulting, “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously”. When the Ark of the Covenant, signifying God’s presence, was wrested out of the hands of the Philistines and returned to Jerusalem , David “danced before the Lord with all his might”.  I often imagine Israel ’s greatest king, outfitted in his regal splendour, cavorting in utter unself-consciousness: he didn’t know how he looked, and he didn’t care. After all, if you are going to dance with all your might, you can’t care how you look.  When God’s people are impelled to dance, self-consciousness gives way to new awareness of God’s triumph and God’s deliverance.

 

2]         And yet God’s people don’t merely dance.   We also struggle. We have to contend. We even have to fight. In one of his last writings Paul says pithily, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”         It’s plain that we “keep the faith” only as we also “fight the fight”. There is a fight we have to fight if we are genuinely possessed of faith in God.

Why? Because God fights too. God fights in advance of us. God fights for us. The people of Israel are on their way out of slavery in Egypt when they look up and see Pharaoh’s forces close behind.  They begin to panic and shout at Moses, “Have you brought us out to die in the wilderness? We told you back in Egypt that we would rather be slaves to the Egyptians than die in the wilderness.” Moses replies, “Fear not. See the salvation of the Lord. God will fight for us. So hold your peace.”

Most people maintain that they are afraid of fighting, and therefore they avoid fights. I think, however, that people are not afraid of fighting; they are afraid of losing. And not merely afraid of losing; they are afraid of being licked; and having been licked, they are afraid of being humiliated.  What we really fear, at bottom, is devastating defeat which leaves us publicly humiliated. This is what we actually fear when we say we are afraid of fighting. If we knew that ultimately we couldn’t be defeated at all, let alone licked; if we knew that so far from being humiliated we should one day be vindicated, then we would rise to fight as God’s people are called to do.

As a matter of fact God’s people are called to wrestle and to dance at the same time.  We are called to wrestle in a way we shall discuss in a moment; we are called to dance inasmuch as we are the beneficiaries of God’s triumph and have tasted that love from which none of our struggles can separate us. Then dance we shall.

It’s obvious, isn’t it, from what I said a minute ago that we fight properly and fight persistently only as we first dance and continue to dance. We can contend where we should contend only as we are first soaked in God’s strong love and continue to be soaked in it.

If we attempted to wrestle only, we should soon become grim, then exhausted, and finally despairing. But if God’s triumph and God’s love surround us and seep into us, we shall keep on contending without succumbing to futility or frenzy.

 

3]         As a pastor it is my privilege to be nourished constantly by people who wrestle and dance every day.  At one time I sat on the Board of Directors of the Peel Mental Health Housing Coalition. (The PMHHC seeks to find or construct accommodation for chronically mentally ill adults.) One of our board-members was also a consumer of our services; that is, she was afflicted with schizophrenia herself.  One of her worst episodes overtook her while she was worshipping in church. The police had to be called to remove her from the service.  Her illness follows a pattern: she is fine for several months, and then psychotic, hallucinatory, hospitalized for four or five months, and then better again. Yet she does not hide in false shame, does not give up but rather speaks to community groups when she is well. Recently she was honoured for her community work by means of an award conferred through the Canadian Mental Health Association.  She wrestles without quitting, but also without falling into “poor meism” or “why meism?” or raging resentment at those of us whose good fortune it would be so easy for her to envy and resent.

Several years ago a man fell in love with her.   He knew of her condition. There were no secrets. Yet he loved her, and they decided to marry. A psychiatrist from the local hospital carefully explained to the fellow what schizophrenia is, how bizarrely schizophrenic people think and behave, how frequent the episodes are, the nature of treatment required, and so on. The man took it all in and said he loved this woman and would cherish her, illness and all. They married.

Now what we can understand with our head (understand entirely with our head) we cannot anticipate at all in our heart.  And so when my friend’s illness overtook her again, her husband was aghast. He thought he had come to terms with it; and so he had, at the level of thought.  When it happened, however, it was something else.   Now he had to wrestle — with himself, with her illness, with the commitment he had made to her. The two of them have been married for several years now, and they wrestle conjointly. Courage.  Resilience. Persistence.  But no whining. Their attitude to it all is, “Why should we surrender to this intruder?  Why should we cower before or step around this usurper?”

In their attitude they remind me of young David (he was only a teenager) in his encounter with Goliath.         David comes down from tending sheep in the hills only to find the men of Israel drooping. The so-called men of valour are fearful, dispirited, licked.  What chance would any of them have against the seven-foot Goliath? David looks around him and says, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”         “Who is this self-important bully?   Why do you allow this ungodly ruffian to deflect you from what God has appointed you to do?” We all know the rest of the story.

As a pastor I marvel at the courage and persistence I see in people every day. The person with severe arthritis: getting up a step of eight inches is like climbing Everest. But these people do it, don’t they. My physician in New Brunswick had five children and a wife who was incurably incapacitated through neurological disease. He had a large practice to maintain, five children to sort out, a wife whose condition was heartbreaking. Still he was diligent in his work, patient with people who complained petulantly of minor matters, eager to spend fifteen minutes with me (after he had diagnosed my bladder infection) telling me that there weren’t twenty-five hours in the day and the sooner I grasped this the sooner I’d recover. In it all he remained ardently, gloriously life-affirming. “I will fight for you”, says the Lord God to the people of Israel , “I will fight for you.” That doesn’t mean that we can now do nothing; it means that our doing, our fighting, will never be in vain. And therefore we do not give up.

Never. Even if the struggle is fierce. In his first letter to the congregation in Corinth Paul writes, “I fought with beasts at Ephesus ”. The Greek word he uses for “fight” means to be engaged in gladiatorial combat.  But Paul was a Roman citizen, and no citizen could be forced into gladiatorial combat. Clearly he is using the word metaphorically.         “I fought with beasts at Ephesus .” He means that he wrestled there with opponents who were bent on submerging the gospel.  Plainly the struggle was intense; and initially, at least, he seemed to have no chance of succeeding.         Yet wrestle he had to and so wrestle he did.

Make no mistake. To speak of wrestling with beasts is no exaggeration.  On one occasion a twenty-six year old man came to see me.  He had just been released from an alcohol-treatment centre; was now working part-time (thirty hours per week) for $8 per hour; had been to prison several times for breaking-and-entering and theft.  He hated prison, simply hated it, and had been badly beaten during his last imprisonment. He sat in my office and told me with transparent genuineness how fierce a struggle it is for him to stay on the street.  He told me that when he gets “down” on himself and loses his confidence and resilience and hope; when he gets “down” on himself what bubbles up is what has been ingrained in him for years and is now second nature: theft. Minutes before he dropped in to talk with me he was walking past the church in Mississauga, hungry, when he looked through the glass front doors, saw the baskets of food the congregation had collected for the food bank, and immediately wondered how he was going to steal it. Finally he walked around to the back door of the church (it was open) and sat in the choir room until I returned from lunch.  “You don’t have to steal food here”, I told him; “we will give you food.” I gave him what was in the baskets. You and I have no idea how fierce the struggle is for this young man; how fierce it is, and what will surely befall him if he ever gives up the struggle. “I fought with beasts at Ephesus ”. Some people fight with beasts in Schomberg.

Few people in this service, if any, struggle with criminality.  Our areas of wrestling are different.  In some cases it is an “Achilles Heel” which arose through psychological wounding incurred who knows how and who knows when.         Yet wrestle we must, for not to wrestle would be to spend the rest of our lives looking like David’s countrymen who resembled whipped dogs in allowing an uncircumcised Philistine to defy the armies of the living God. Or we wrestle with a besetting temptation which has harried us for years.  Capitulation would be sin; we know this, and know that our capitulation would be without excuse.  And of course capitulation would mean more sin.

At the end of the day Paul says we wrestle not against flesh and blood; that is, we don’t wrestle against merely human adversaries. All wrestling, finally, is spiritual conflict. And so it is all the more important to know that God will fight for us.

 

4]         Yet wrestling isn’t the only thing we do.  We dance as well. There is celebration of little victories gained already and greater victories to come; celebration above all of him who fights for us and never forsakes us. I am moved every time I read Jeremiah’s joyful exclamation at God’s faithfulness and God’s never-failing love.  Listen to the prophet:

Thus says the Lord:

“The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness…

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued

my faithfulness to you.

Again you shall adorn yourself with timbrels, and shall go forth

in the dance of the merrymakers.”

Listen again to the very first line of Jeremiah’s exclamation: “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness”.  To be alive, to be functioning at all, is to have survived the sword in some sense. So you and I have survived the sword. It is certainly better than not having survived it, but it still sounds bleak. Jeremiah tells us, however, there is also grace in whatever wilderness we happen to inhabit. We don’t all inhabit the same wilderness; but we do inhabit a wilderness of some kind, even a wilderness peculiar to us. Yet it is in the wilderness that grace is promised us and grace is found.

Why is there grace in the wilderness?   How does there come to be grace in the wilderness?   The prophet again: “(Says the Lord) “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”           The bottom line is this: “Again you shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.”

 

There is one thing I want for myself above everything else.  I want my demeanour, my appearance, my body-language; I want my uncontrived face and physique to exude one message: there is always grace in the wilderness, and because there is, anyone at all may join in the dance of the merrymakers.

 

                                                                            Rev.Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                 

July 2006