“Religions are our human attempts to get God on our side and to do something for us.” Bible scholar and pastor Brian Stoffregen said that – and I think he is right. “Some religions,” he continues:
… stress saying the proper words, reciting the correct creed or proper confessions of faith. Some religions stress worshiping the right way and following the correc
t rituals. While some religions stress doing or living in a certain way. Whether it is "creed, cult, or conduct" (terms borrowed from Robert Capon), or all three, religions are still our human attempts to get God on our side and to get God to do what we desire. Exegetical Notes at Crossmarks.com
Today I want to talk with you about what happens when our religion runs out of gas. What do we do when we come face to face with God’s absence – a real spiritual emptiness in our lives – or an encounter with suffering like that of Job or Christ on the Cross? For you see, not only is it guaranteed that most of us will come upon this emptiness at least once in our adult lives, some of us will experience it over and over again. And, unless I miss the mark completely, I suspect that some of us here today are in that place even as I speak, right?
The book of Job puts it bluntly:
God has no right to treat me like this— it isn't fair! If I knew where on earth to find him, I’d go straight to him. I'd lay my case before him face-to-face, give him all my arguments firsthand. I’d find out exactly what he's thinking, discover what's going on in his head. Do you think he'd dismiss me or bully me? No, he'd take me seriously. He'd see a straight-living man standing before him; my Judge would acquit
me for good of all charges. (But)… I travel East looking for him—and find no one; then West, but not a trace; I go North, but he's hidden his tracks and then South, but not even a glimpse. Job in Peterson’s The Message, 23: 2-9
This is adult talk for children of God who are ready to grow up, ok?
And there’s nothing sentimental, sweet or sanitized about it – just the real deal about what it feels like to be abandoned or deserted by God – so that all we know is hard anguish or intense emptiness. I think the psalm for today gets it just about right:
God, it seems you've been our home forever; long before the mountains were born, long before you brought earth itself to birth – from "once upon a time" to "kingdom come"—you have been God. So please don't return us to mud, saying, "Back to where you came from!" I understand that you've got all the time in the world—whether a thousand years or a day, it's all the same to you… but that’s not how life feels to me! Are we no more to you than a wispy dream, no more than a blade of grass that springs up gloriously with the rising sun a
nd is cut down without a second thought? We live for seventy years or so (with luck we might make it to eighty), and what do we have to show for it? Trouble. Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard. Who can make sense of such rage, such anger against the very ones who fear you?
No wonder some call this the psalm for the middle aged, right? It is a personal prayer profoundly attuned to the shortness of life. The poet cries out to God for both wisdom and intimacy – she aches for a connection to the heart of compassion she has known since the beginning of time – and fears that life will only descend into a darker bleakness. This is a terrifying encounter – one that many of us have known – the journey from once upon a time to thy kingdom come you have been my God but now… nothing.
I’ve been in that hell – maybe you have, too. It is a place that most of God’s loved ones visit – even our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember his weeping in the garden or h
is agony from the Cross? “My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?”
So let’s take some time to talk about what God’s absence from our hearts might mean for us as well as what Christ’s way encourages us to do in those hard times. Because you see, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Part two of Psalm 90 is a clue: Teach us to live well, O Lord! Teach us to live wisely and well… that the loveliness of your presence might rest upon us again and confirm your love within our hearts.
Now, our tradition tells us that the way to live well – that is, the way to live into the wisdom and the rhythm of the Living God – is neither a secret nor a prize to be purchased or won. Rather, the way of living well in Christ is grounded in the Cross. Mark’s gospel makes this clear by calling those who follow Jesus “people of the way,” because we have chosen to accompany Christ on a journey to the Cross: sometimes this leads us to suffering and fear but it also leads to resurrection and renewal, too.
You see in Greek the word for the way, hodos, literally means “a road” or “the path” – that’s how this morning’s text from
Mark begins: As Jesus went out into the street – the hodos—he began another leg of the journey on the way.
+ But in time hodos took on a symbolic meaning, too, denoting those who followed the way – those who belonged to the way – those who walked in the way of Jesus and the Cross.
+ And Mark underscores this repeatedly: his story begins with the call to “prepare the way” of the Lord, it continues with Jesus teaching his disciples that the Messiah must be on the way to Jerusalem – which meant the agony of the Cross – and it concludes with Jesus walking the way of the Cross as he carries it on his shoulders towards his own crucifixion.
So, given this commitment to the way of the Cross, let me suggest to you that the first insight about what God’s absence might mean is this: if it is really grounded in the Cross, it will never make sense to us in our ordinary understanding of the word. The cross of Jesus, you see, isn’t logical. Remember what St. Paul said about the way of the Cross: it is folly and scandal? For those trying to comprehend the way of the Lord, the Cross offends; and for those trying to practice a spirituality of the being good, the way of the Cross is a pain-filled insult.
+ What do you mean the way to authenticity and real meaning in life has to do with dying to self?
+ What are you talking about: those who are first shall
be last and the poor in spirit are really the beloved of God?
The logic and order of the real world is clear: if you want to get ahead, you have to compete and work hard. After all, God helps those who help themselves, right? So what is Jesus talking about when he tells us: If you want eternal life – that is meaning and satisfaction right now and blessing with God forever – then go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. Then, come follow me?
That just doesn’t make sense – which is my first insight about living well and practicing the way of Jesus – it should shock and offend and even frighten you because it is totally counter-cultural. I have been emphasizing the upside down aspects of this way for most of the summer and fall; and if I sound like a broken record, I’m sorry but the hard truth is clear: the heart of Christ’s grace and gratitude is all about dying to our self.
+ The way of Jesus and his Cross have NOTHING to do with getting our own way; it’s all about embracing God’s way – a way and a life that has almost nothing to do with creed, cult or conduct and everything to do with letting go.
+ And in a world obsessed – maybe even addicted – to possessions, talking about letting go and becoming as empty and vulnerable as a child sounds… insane and offensive.
But that’s what the way of Jesus means: letting go. Listen to the most famous summary of Christ’s way as stated in Matthew 5:
You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God a
nd God’s kingdom. You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One who is most dear to you. You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought. You're blessed when you care for at t the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for. And you're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right for then you can see God in the outside world.
This is shocking and offensive stuff – or it should be – which is my second insight into embracing the way of Christ in God’s absence: most of us will never feel ready to let go and trust God deeply without… a shock. We live in a safe and secure place where most have enough to eat and we rarely fret about a roof over our heads. In fact, our lives are so grounded in working hard and purchasing what we believe we have earned that we can’t comprehend what it might mean to fully trust God and not ourselves. For most of… we need a shock.
That’s what Jesus is doing when he tells the rich young man that he has to give up his wealth before he can follow: it is NOT that his money is bad. But this soul has so much of everything he needs that doesn’t know how to be vulnerable. So Jesus shocked him – turned him away – and told him there were just some things that his money couldn’t buy.
This was deliberate, you see: maybe a disappointment could become a catalyst for change. He needed to have his heart opened – so Jesus knocked him on his behind – much li
ke a shock to our health awakens us to the shortness and vulnerability to life and prayed that this good soul might be awakened.
Over the years, I have come to trust that shock and even suffering has been built into the fabric of reality by God so that from time to time we are awakened from our selfishness. Not that God is waiting to zap us – that would be cruel. Rather, I sense that God has constructed our lives in such a way that periodically we can be shocked and rattled out of our false sense of security. The poet, Scott Cairns, put it like this in his most recent essay, The End of Suffering:
Most of the pain and agony in our lives hold the possibility of becoming a “wake up call” for us to grab our attention: “I’m thinking that this is what most, if not all, of our afflictions are inclined to do… They grab our attention. They shake us up and, by thus rattling the bars of our various cages, they serve to shake us – blinking all the while – awake.” Quoting Simone Weil, he goes further: “Affliction compels us to recognize as real what we do not think possible… our afflictions drag us – more or less kicking – into a fresh and vivid awareness that we are not in control of our circumstances, that we are not quite whole, that our days are salted with affliction.” (Cairns, pp.6-7)
We tend to avoid our wounds – those inflicted by our harsh encounters with real life as well as those that are self-inflicted – so that we are rarely fully awakened. And without this awakening we remain too full of ourselves – saturated in sensations but empty of insight. But if “we take care to acknowledge the
truths (brought to us by pain), and are canny enough to attend to them, faithful enough to lean into them, then the particular ache of that waking can initiate a response that the Greeks were wont to call kenosis – an emptying, an efficacious hollowing” that can lead also to a hallowing of life as well. (Cairns, p. 8)
Did you get that? The way of the Cross both shocks and awakens us to our vulnerability – we feel it and ache with it –and want to fix it or run away from it because usually it hurts like hell. But if we are willing to journey with it – trust that even our affliction is part of the hodos – the way – then a little of our selfishness dies and there is little more room for God’s compassion within us.
Mother Teresa used to say that God breaks our hearts with the pain of the world because that’s the only way our hearts can get bigger – and I think she’s on to something. The third insight is that our suffering and experience of God’s absence is designed to help us reach out and trust God more profoundly than ever before: our longing and emptiness, you see, push us to cry out like a child. And most of us hate this – we want to be in control - we hate to cry out… but as long as we act like we’re God, then God lets us get what we’ve asked for… the ugly, empty illusion of control.
Now left to ourselves we’re likely to end up bitter and angry and small hearted – you’ve met people who have been shrunken by their anguish – folks just beaten to a pulp by suffering or locked into their bitterness.
+ Anguish can do that to us if left alone – that is why God calls us
into community – so that we can learn how to live well and grow up in the way of the Cross.
+ It isn’t automatic, Christian friends, nor is it intuitive. That’s why the psalmist prays: Teach us to live well, O Lord! Teach us to live wisely and well… that the loveliness of your presence might rest upon us again and confirm your love within our hearts.
To learn from our suffering and make sense of God’s absence in the way of Jesus requires a place to practice the way of the Cross and learn from those who have been nourished by God’s upside down kingdom – and that is what we’ll consider next week – how to practice and learn together in community.
For now let me simply remind you that Jesus told us that all of this is impossible by ourselves – you have NO chance at all if you think you can pull this off by yourself – but if you rely on God, then the odds get a whole lot better. Such is the good news for those who have ears to hear…
credits: 1) www.issr.org.uk/ 2) chagall @ www.dunedinschool.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/job-adolf-hitler-and-the-ethics-of-the-hebrew-bible-or-why-philip-davies-and-deane-galbraith-are-more-or-less-wrong/ 3) psalm 90 @ www.danielrenstrom.com/2008/07/21/psalm-90/ 4) trees @www.abbey-roads.blogspot.com/2009/07/you-will-not-fear-terror-of-night.html5) snowy path @ www.centralpark.com/photos/show/12854/snowy-cps-pathway6) beatitudes @www.brooksidecrc.org/2007_announcement_archives.htm 7) cross @ mattstone.blogs.com/photos/christian_art_symbols/lords-prayer-cross.html 8) cross @ mattstone.blogs.com/photos/christian_art_symbols/lords-prayer-cross.html 9) cross @hmattstone.blogs.com/photos/christian_art_symbols/lords-prayer-cross.html 10) new age religion @ hmattstone.blogs.com/photos/christian_art_symbols/lords-prayer-cross.html
Our Buddhist brothers and sisters say, "There are many paths up the mountain."
ReplyDeleteprecisely right... thanks.
ReplyDelete