The unwelcome work of God
Commentary
Doctors and dentists: They are the patron saints of unwelcome work. They exist for our good, and yet so often we try to avoid them. And when they tell us what work they need to do -- again, for our own good -- we receive it as bad news, and we avoid, delay, resist, and resent it.
All earnest people of faith -- and even some folks with only a marginal belief in God -- pray for him to work in their lives. Yet so often, God's people resist and resent his work in their lives. We pray for protection and healing. We pray for guidance in our confusion and has to offer.
I go to the dentist for a cleaning and a check-up, but I may not want to go through what he tells me I need in some part of my mouth. We are eager for the doctor's help when we're not feeling right, but then we are squeamish about some of the needles and tests and procedures that are part of his help.
Like the child who gobbles down the hot dog but turns away from the vegetables on his plate, we are choosy about what we will receive from God. And in our selected lections for this Sunday, we find some biblical companions: people who did not welcome the work of God.
1 Kings 19:1-15a
We get to see the football player out on the field. He is knocking helmets, talking trash, running like the wind, and colliding like a ram. We see the football player on the field and he seems to be a man of great strength and endurance.
We do not get to see him, however, in the locker room. He is gingerly pulling off tape and padding. He winces as he undresses. He seeks refuge from his pain on a trainer's table and in the whirlpool. If we saw him in the locker room, he would seem to be a man of great pain and exhaustion.
1 Kings 18 shows us Elijah on the field. He is brave, confident, commanding, and apparently fearless. He is outnumbered, yet bold. He goes toe-to-toe with a king, he challenges his foes to a showdown, and he does a little trash-talking of his own (see 1 Kings 18:27). And when the victory on Mount Carmel is won, this superman outruns a chariot back to Jezreel.
"Wow," we say, wide-eyed, as we watch Elijah work. "What a man!"
Then we turn the page to chapter 19, and there is Elijah in the locker room. It's post game, and he is weary and worried. Elijah had won the showdown on Carmel, to be sure, but that victory was not the end. Now the ruthless Queen Jezebel was out to get him, and he fled for his life.
How strange that this man who had already known the miraculous power and provision of God should run for his life. But then how strange that the Israelites should tremble at the Red Sea, having seen so recently God's deliverance in Egypt. And how strange that the disciples should be dumbfounded by a hungry crowd of 4,000 (Mark 8:4) when they had already seen Jesus provide for 5,000, and with less bread (Mark 6:35-44).
We watch and listen to Elijah in our selected passage, and we recognize that he is a tired man. Vince Lombardi said, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all," and the post game Elijah was tired and scared. Of course, a common companion of weariness and fear is self-pity, and Elijah, we discover, is also feeling a little sorry for himself. He tells God that he has had enough, asking the Lord to take his life, though in the next breath he laments, "I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away."
What a man. What a very human man.
And what a God. The God who was willing and able to work powerfully through his bold and confident servant in chapter 18 is also willing and able to work patiently with his weary and cowering servant in chapter 19. Like a tender mother, the Lord provides food and rest for Elijah along the way, and then meets with him at Mount Sinai.
In 1984, Twila Paris wrote a lovely song called "The Warrior Is A Child." The first-person testimony of the song reminds me of the Elijah of chapter 19: "People say that I'm amazing / Never face retreat / But they don't see the enemies / That lay me at His feet / And they don't know that I go running home when I fall down / They don't know who picks me up when no one is around / I drop my sword and cry for just a while / 'Cause deep inside this armor / The warrior is a child."
So Elijah, who stood boldly atop Mount Carmel against his foes a day earlier, now curls up to sleep, his tummy filled by his heavenly Father, a weary warrior.
The subsequent scene at Sinai is a study in contrasts. First, there is the contrast built into the moment: the bombast of wind, earthquake, and fire, where God is not, juxtaposed with the quietness from which God speaks to Elijah.
But that special effects show on Sinai also stands in contrast to events beyond that moment. Back at Mount Carmel, for example, God's actions were displayed in terrifying power (1 Kings 18:38-40). And generations earlier, on this same Sinai, God's presence had been revealed to the people of Moses' day in an awesome and intimidating display (Exodus 19:16-22). But on this occasion, it is not the rock-splitting wind, the shaking of the earth, or the fierce fire through which God speaks.
The Lord God of Israel is no Johnny-one-note. A stiff-necked or wayward people need fire from heaven. A tired and frightened Elijah, however, needs quiet reassurance. God provides what Elijah needs there in the locker room.
And then God sends him back into the game.
Galatians 3:23-29
The house that has a toddler in it is probably also a house that has gates in it. When our oldest daughter was that age, we put up a number of gates at critical points in our home. Those gates protected her from falling down the stairs, from getting at things that were breakable, from being exposed to chemicals and appliances, and so on. In short, we put up the gates to protect her from things that could harm her. She was fenced in, but it was for her own good.
The Old Testament law, according to Paul, served that kind of function for humankind. "Imprisoned" (v. 23) may carry too negative a connotation, for he seems to portray more of a protective fencing in. The companion word, "guarded," appears in three other places in the New Testament, each with a neutral or even positive meaning (see 2 Corinthians 11:32; Philippians 4:7; 1 Peter 1:5).
The image of positive guardianship is revisited in the next verse when Paul expands the picturesque purpose of the law to include "disciplinarian." The original Greek word, paidagogos, reveals its sense in its English derivative, pedagogue. The law was a schoolmaster, an instructor, a tutor for humankind. Like the ancient tutors to whom Greek and Roman families entrusted their young boys, so God entrusted his children to the law. And just as those ancient youngsters were not permitted out of the house without the companionship of their tutor, so the law protectively guarded us.
The law, then, fenced us in for our own good. It guarded and protected us. And it instructed us so that we would be prepared to graduate to the freedom found in Christ. The Galatian Christians, who were too tied to the requirements of the law, needed Paul to remind them that the law had served its purpose -- a purpose that led to Christ. Most American Christians, by contrast, are perhaps too dismissive of the Old Testament law, and so we need Paul to remind us of the divine and critical purpose it served.
Luke 8:26-39
Who pleads with Jesus? Everyone, it seems. But not everyone pleads for the same thing.
A legion of demons had tormented this poor anonymous soul. His frightened neighbors had feebly tried to solve one bondage with another, but the shackles were no match for the spirits. And now he spent his tortured days among the tombs -- living in the neighborhood of death.
When Jesus stepped on shore, however, the demons met their match. Those spiritual bullies who had caused trembling in their human victim now shook with fright themselves. While men and women, including often the disciples, failed to recognize who Jesus was, the demons knew. And with his arrival, they feared that their inevitable, eschatological doom had come.
And so they pleaded with Jesus. They begged him not to be thrown into the abyss.
The passage, incidentally, illustrates for us the truth of Jesus' authority. The faith of your people and mine will be greatly strengthened if they can come to grips with this reality: that healing and other provisions from the Lord are not magic or luck or a rare interference with nature. Rather, they are simply the product of the One who is in charge giving an order. And he is in charge of it all, right down to the demons.
After Jesus sent the demons out of the man and into a herd of pigs, a great commotion of self-destruction ensued. Squealing and running to their demise, the pigs embodied the influence of hell, and the event sent the herdsmen running into town to report what had happened. When the townspeople came to see for themselves what had happened, they found the former demoniac clothed and at peace.
And in response, they pleaded with Jesus. They asked him to leave their territory immediately.
Jesus obliged them. He started to leave, but then the man who had been set free followed after him. Unlike his neighbors in that region, this man did not want Jesus to go away.
And so he pleaded with Jesus. He begged Jesus to let him come along with him.
Jesus is who he is, whether we recognize him or not. And what we plead for from him may be the most practical proof of our Christology.
The former demoniac had just met Jesus. There was still much to learn and understand about him, but the man knew enough to know that he wanted more of Jesus. He begged to go along. That man represents all of us who want to go with Jesus, to be with Jesus, to follow Jesus.
The demons knew well who Jesus was, and so they begged him not to hasten their demise. We can hardly embrace the demons as exemplary or commendable, and yet they do manage to compare favorably to the townspeople.
The townspeople -- the folks from the surrounding region -- they are the great tragic figures in this passage. These are people who seem to be more comfortable with a demon-possession than with a healing. People who prefer the swine over the Savior. Jesus comes into their region, bringing deliverance and wholeness, and they beg him to go away.
Imagine what needs -- both physical and spiritual -- might have existed in that town. What all might they have begged Jesus for? The Savior of the world and the Lord of the universe was in their midst. The demons knew it. The former demoniac was coming to recognize it. But for all that the townspeople might have asked him, they asked him to go away.
Application
Perhaps it should not surprise us that God's work is sometimes unwelcome, for so it has been from the beginning of the both the Old and the New Testaments. Early in the human story, Adam and Eve take God's advent as cause to run and hide. And in the story of his coming to earth at Christmas, he is under-accommodated by the Bethlehem innkeeper and vigorously opposed by the local king.
And now we see here, in our selected lections for this Sunday, several layers at which God and his work were unwelcome.
Jezebel stands as a model of those who are outright opposed to God and his work. It runs contrary to their agenda, and so they are out to thwart it. The people of the Gerasenes, meanwhile, are not so vigorously opposed to God's work; they're just uncomfortable with it. Of course, whether the image is Jezebel in hot pursuit of Elijah or the townspeople waving goodbye to Jesus from the shore, the bottom line remains fundamentally the same: People wanted the Lord to go away.
The danger this Sunday is that we will sit in the comfort of unapplied hindsight and judge unfavorably Jezebel and the local residents of the Gerasenes. But the sobering challenge presented to us is to consider the how, what, where, when, and why of our own opposition to God's work. When have we ourselves wished that he would go away? When have we been so uncomfortable with God's work that we have opposed or resisted it?
Our temptation as pastors will be to fill in the blanks for our people. We may feel that we have noticed some ways in which they -- or some of them, at least -- have opposed or resisted God's work. We ought not answer the question for them, however. Such a question is better answered by the Holy Spirit in each individual heart. He knows better than we the ways in which each person is inhospitable to his work -- each person, including you and me.
Apart from Jezebel and the folks around the Gera-senes, we might make the case that someone else in these lections regarded God's work as unwelcome. Elijah. In this instance, though, "God's work" is not limited to that which God is doing in our midst. No, but now "God's work" is expanded to mean that work which God wants us to do.
Elijah was tired and overwhelmed. In spite of the triumph at Mount Carmel, he was convinced that he was all alone in his allegiance to God, and he had had enough. The prophet from Israel went A.W.O.L., fleeing far to the south of the land where his ministry was located. Perhaps he was running from the opposition there. And perhaps he was running from the work altogether.
If so, Elijah was neither the first nor last to regard God's work as unwelcome. Moses didn't want the job offered to him, nor did Gideon. Perhaps Elijah had such predecessors in mind when he cried out, "I am no better than my ancestors." Jeremiah and Jonah, in different ways, were uneasy in the work of God apportioned to them. And we, too, could identify in our own callings some unwelcome parts of the work of God.
Finally, there is the law. This is perhaps the most universally unwelcome work of God, for we human beings have a generally distorted notion of freedom.
We had a dog years ago who had tons of energy and loved to run. Naturally, we couldn't run and play with him as constantly as he was willing, but we rigged up a system in our yard that would allow him to run, as well as be safe. The leash we would hook on his collar was a long one attached to a pulley that ran along a cord stretched out between two trees. This "run" gave our energetic little dog practically the entire yard to play in, but he was discontent within the perceived confinement of the leash. He wouldn't run on the "run," but rather chose to lie down at the farthest reach of the leash, right on the border of his limits, with the collar tugging at his stiff neck.
God established his law as the safe boundaries in which his people could live, happy and free. The law leashed us in and fenced us off from that which would hurt us, and it pointed us toward faith in Christ. But humanity, like the prodigal son, peered out longingly to the world beyond the gates of the Father's property. And the very commandments established to keep us safe and at home were broken and resented -- the unwelcome work of God.
An Alternative Application
Luke 8:26-39. The story of the demoniac and the townspeople from his region stands in stark contrast to the familiar story of the woman at the well in John 4.
In both episodes, an individual who is out at the edge of society has a profound encounter with Christ. The man lived apart from his neighbors, visibly tortured, and troubling to all. The woman, by contrast, did not live apart from her community, but her lifestyle was marginal. Furthermore, her spotted past suggests a person who may have had some demons of her own.
Eventually, that Samaritan woman runs into town to tell her friends and neighbors about Jesus. "He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" she excitedly asks (John 4:29). And in response to her testimony, the townspeople hurried out to the well where Jesus was. When they came to Jesus, they begged him to stay with them, and he remained there two more days. Many believed in Jesus first because of the woman's testimony, and then later from their own contact with him.
Meanwhile, the report of the demoniac's deliverance also was reported back to the nearby town, and the townspeople came out to see. Unlike the folks in the Samaritan village, however, these people urged Jesus to go away. And there is no evidence that anyone came to believe in Jesus, either from the story of the man's healing or from meeting Jesus personally.
The immense difference between how these two towns responded to Christ could lie within the people themselves. After all, not everyone who met him followed him or believed in him. And it is worth noting that individual responses to Jesus are profoundly shaped by the larger mood and movement of the community.
The one apparent difference between the two stories, though, is in the transmission of the message about Jesus. In Samaria, the woman herself gave her testimony. In the Gerasenes, however, it was more detached witnesses who reported what had happened to the demoniac. Perhaps a personal testimony is required for faith in Christ. Accordingly, Jesus told the demoniac -- and tells us -- "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you."
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 42; Psalm 43
Though numbered separately in almost all texts, Psalms 42 and 43 are actually one psalm. Even a cursory reading makes this clear, and a closer reading leaves little doubt that the two poems should be read as one. The central message of the psalm is the Presence of God, or more to the point, the absence of the Presence. The psalmist draws our attention to the need to be steadfast in our faith with a recurring refrain spread out across the two poems: "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God" (42:5, 11, and 43:5).
The mystic tradition has used as an image to describe the path to God the concept of "desire" or even "yearning." The psalmist offers us another path -- necessity. As an animal cannot live without water and searches fervently until water is found, so is our pursuit of God. God is the water of life without which we cannot live. God is that essential life element that cannot be overlooked or left behind.
And of course, no one in the psalmist's audience would likely dispute that understanding of God. The problem for the psalmist and his audience is not that they fail to recognize the importance of God in their lives; the problem is they can't find God.
We cannot be sure what has created this problem. The psalmist and his audience may have been part of the exile. There may have been some other national calamity that created a crisis of faith and a sense of God's absence. But even if we cannot know for sure what has created the crisis, we can appreciate the psalmist's advice for dealing with it.
If it was water we were lacking, would we sit on our hands and say, "Well, if that water wants to find me I'm right here"? Of course not. We must have water to live. And if we don't have it, we go find it. We dig for it, we listen for it, and we smell for it. We put our whole being into focused motion to find that one thing we must have to live.
The psalmist would have us confront the absence of God's Presence in exactly the same way. Never mind whatever disruption there has been in life, search for God with all we have. Never mind what pain or disappointments we may have experienced, without God we are nothing -- let's go find him.
The refrain that recurs throughout the two poems is a touchstone for us, a reminder that not only is it necessary for us to find God, but also that if we keep searching and not lose heart, we will find God. The moment of doubt and spiritual emptiness will not last. If we will remain faithful and attend to those things we know are right, our efforts will be fruitful and we will again experience the life giving Presence.
Therefore, Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
All earnest people of faith -- and even some folks with only a marginal belief in God -- pray for him to work in their lives. Yet so often, God's people resist and resent his work in their lives. We pray for protection and healing. We pray for guidance in our confusion and has to offer.
I go to the dentist for a cleaning and a check-up, but I may not want to go through what he tells me I need in some part of my mouth. We are eager for the doctor's help when we're not feeling right, but then we are squeamish about some of the needles and tests and procedures that are part of his help.
Like the child who gobbles down the hot dog but turns away from the vegetables on his plate, we are choosy about what we will receive from God. And in our selected lections for this Sunday, we find some biblical companions: people who did not welcome the work of God.
1 Kings 19:1-15a
We get to see the football player out on the field. He is knocking helmets, talking trash, running like the wind, and colliding like a ram. We see the football player on the field and he seems to be a man of great strength and endurance.
We do not get to see him, however, in the locker room. He is gingerly pulling off tape and padding. He winces as he undresses. He seeks refuge from his pain on a trainer's table and in the whirlpool. If we saw him in the locker room, he would seem to be a man of great pain and exhaustion.
1 Kings 18 shows us Elijah on the field. He is brave, confident, commanding, and apparently fearless. He is outnumbered, yet bold. He goes toe-to-toe with a king, he challenges his foes to a showdown, and he does a little trash-talking of his own (see 1 Kings 18:27). And when the victory on Mount Carmel is won, this superman outruns a chariot back to Jezreel.
"Wow," we say, wide-eyed, as we watch Elijah work. "What a man!"
Then we turn the page to chapter 19, and there is Elijah in the locker room. It's post game, and he is weary and worried. Elijah had won the showdown on Carmel, to be sure, but that victory was not the end. Now the ruthless Queen Jezebel was out to get him, and he fled for his life.
How strange that this man who had already known the miraculous power and provision of God should run for his life. But then how strange that the Israelites should tremble at the Red Sea, having seen so recently God's deliverance in Egypt. And how strange that the disciples should be dumbfounded by a hungry crowd of 4,000 (Mark 8:4) when they had already seen Jesus provide for 5,000, and with less bread (Mark 6:35-44).
We watch and listen to Elijah in our selected passage, and we recognize that he is a tired man. Vince Lombardi said, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all," and the post game Elijah was tired and scared. Of course, a common companion of weariness and fear is self-pity, and Elijah, we discover, is also feeling a little sorry for himself. He tells God that he has had enough, asking the Lord to take his life, though in the next breath he laments, "I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away."
What a man. What a very human man.
And what a God. The God who was willing and able to work powerfully through his bold and confident servant in chapter 18 is also willing and able to work patiently with his weary and cowering servant in chapter 19. Like a tender mother, the Lord provides food and rest for Elijah along the way, and then meets with him at Mount Sinai.
In 1984, Twila Paris wrote a lovely song called "The Warrior Is A Child." The first-person testimony of the song reminds me of the Elijah of chapter 19: "People say that I'm amazing / Never face retreat / But they don't see the enemies / That lay me at His feet / And they don't know that I go running home when I fall down / They don't know who picks me up when no one is around / I drop my sword and cry for just a while / 'Cause deep inside this armor / The warrior is a child."
So Elijah, who stood boldly atop Mount Carmel against his foes a day earlier, now curls up to sleep, his tummy filled by his heavenly Father, a weary warrior.
The subsequent scene at Sinai is a study in contrasts. First, there is the contrast built into the moment: the bombast of wind, earthquake, and fire, where God is not, juxtaposed with the quietness from which God speaks to Elijah.
But that special effects show on Sinai also stands in contrast to events beyond that moment. Back at Mount Carmel, for example, God's actions were displayed in terrifying power (1 Kings 18:38-40). And generations earlier, on this same Sinai, God's presence had been revealed to the people of Moses' day in an awesome and intimidating display (Exodus 19:16-22). But on this occasion, it is not the rock-splitting wind, the shaking of the earth, or the fierce fire through which God speaks.
The Lord God of Israel is no Johnny-one-note. A stiff-necked or wayward people need fire from heaven. A tired and frightened Elijah, however, needs quiet reassurance. God provides what Elijah needs there in the locker room.
And then God sends him back into the game.
Galatians 3:23-29
The house that has a toddler in it is probably also a house that has gates in it. When our oldest daughter was that age, we put up a number of gates at critical points in our home. Those gates protected her from falling down the stairs, from getting at things that were breakable, from being exposed to chemicals and appliances, and so on. In short, we put up the gates to protect her from things that could harm her. She was fenced in, but it was for her own good.
The Old Testament law, according to Paul, served that kind of function for humankind. "Imprisoned" (v. 23) may carry too negative a connotation, for he seems to portray more of a protective fencing in. The companion word, "guarded," appears in three other places in the New Testament, each with a neutral or even positive meaning (see 2 Corinthians 11:32; Philippians 4:7; 1 Peter 1:5).
The image of positive guardianship is revisited in the next verse when Paul expands the picturesque purpose of the law to include "disciplinarian." The original Greek word, paidagogos, reveals its sense in its English derivative, pedagogue. The law was a schoolmaster, an instructor, a tutor for humankind. Like the ancient tutors to whom Greek and Roman families entrusted their young boys, so God entrusted his children to the law. And just as those ancient youngsters were not permitted out of the house without the companionship of their tutor, so the law protectively guarded us.
The law, then, fenced us in for our own good. It guarded and protected us. And it instructed us so that we would be prepared to graduate to the freedom found in Christ. The Galatian Christians, who were too tied to the requirements of the law, needed Paul to remind them that the law had served its purpose -- a purpose that led to Christ. Most American Christians, by contrast, are perhaps too dismissive of the Old Testament law, and so we need Paul to remind us of the divine and critical purpose it served.
Luke 8:26-39
Who pleads with Jesus? Everyone, it seems. But not everyone pleads for the same thing.
A legion of demons had tormented this poor anonymous soul. His frightened neighbors had feebly tried to solve one bondage with another, but the shackles were no match for the spirits. And now he spent his tortured days among the tombs -- living in the neighborhood of death.
When Jesus stepped on shore, however, the demons met their match. Those spiritual bullies who had caused trembling in their human victim now shook with fright themselves. While men and women, including often the disciples, failed to recognize who Jesus was, the demons knew. And with his arrival, they feared that their inevitable, eschatological doom had come.
And so they pleaded with Jesus. They begged him not to be thrown into the abyss.
The passage, incidentally, illustrates for us the truth of Jesus' authority. The faith of your people and mine will be greatly strengthened if they can come to grips with this reality: that healing and other provisions from the Lord are not magic or luck or a rare interference with nature. Rather, they are simply the product of the One who is in charge giving an order. And he is in charge of it all, right down to the demons.
After Jesus sent the demons out of the man and into a herd of pigs, a great commotion of self-destruction ensued. Squealing and running to their demise, the pigs embodied the influence of hell, and the event sent the herdsmen running into town to report what had happened. When the townspeople came to see for themselves what had happened, they found the former demoniac clothed and at peace.
And in response, they pleaded with Jesus. They asked him to leave their territory immediately.
Jesus obliged them. He started to leave, but then the man who had been set free followed after him. Unlike his neighbors in that region, this man did not want Jesus to go away.
And so he pleaded with Jesus. He begged Jesus to let him come along with him.
Jesus is who he is, whether we recognize him or not. And what we plead for from him may be the most practical proof of our Christology.
The former demoniac had just met Jesus. There was still much to learn and understand about him, but the man knew enough to know that he wanted more of Jesus. He begged to go along. That man represents all of us who want to go with Jesus, to be with Jesus, to follow Jesus.
The demons knew well who Jesus was, and so they begged him not to hasten their demise. We can hardly embrace the demons as exemplary or commendable, and yet they do manage to compare favorably to the townspeople.
The townspeople -- the folks from the surrounding region -- they are the great tragic figures in this passage. These are people who seem to be more comfortable with a demon-possession than with a healing. People who prefer the swine over the Savior. Jesus comes into their region, bringing deliverance and wholeness, and they beg him to go away.
Imagine what needs -- both physical and spiritual -- might have existed in that town. What all might they have begged Jesus for? The Savior of the world and the Lord of the universe was in their midst. The demons knew it. The former demoniac was coming to recognize it. But for all that the townspeople might have asked him, they asked him to go away.
Application
Perhaps it should not surprise us that God's work is sometimes unwelcome, for so it has been from the beginning of the both the Old and the New Testaments. Early in the human story, Adam and Eve take God's advent as cause to run and hide. And in the story of his coming to earth at Christmas, he is under-accommodated by the Bethlehem innkeeper and vigorously opposed by the local king.
And now we see here, in our selected lections for this Sunday, several layers at which God and his work were unwelcome.
Jezebel stands as a model of those who are outright opposed to God and his work. It runs contrary to their agenda, and so they are out to thwart it. The people of the Gerasenes, meanwhile, are not so vigorously opposed to God's work; they're just uncomfortable with it. Of course, whether the image is Jezebel in hot pursuit of Elijah or the townspeople waving goodbye to Jesus from the shore, the bottom line remains fundamentally the same: People wanted the Lord to go away.
The danger this Sunday is that we will sit in the comfort of unapplied hindsight and judge unfavorably Jezebel and the local residents of the Gerasenes. But the sobering challenge presented to us is to consider the how, what, where, when, and why of our own opposition to God's work. When have we ourselves wished that he would go away? When have we been so uncomfortable with God's work that we have opposed or resisted it?
Our temptation as pastors will be to fill in the blanks for our people. We may feel that we have noticed some ways in which they -- or some of them, at least -- have opposed or resisted God's work. We ought not answer the question for them, however. Such a question is better answered by the Holy Spirit in each individual heart. He knows better than we the ways in which each person is inhospitable to his work -- each person, including you and me.
Apart from Jezebel and the folks around the Gera-senes, we might make the case that someone else in these lections regarded God's work as unwelcome. Elijah. In this instance, though, "God's work" is not limited to that which God is doing in our midst. No, but now "God's work" is expanded to mean that work which God wants us to do.
Elijah was tired and overwhelmed. In spite of the triumph at Mount Carmel, he was convinced that he was all alone in his allegiance to God, and he had had enough. The prophet from Israel went A.W.O.L., fleeing far to the south of the land where his ministry was located. Perhaps he was running from the opposition there. And perhaps he was running from the work altogether.
If so, Elijah was neither the first nor last to regard God's work as unwelcome. Moses didn't want the job offered to him, nor did Gideon. Perhaps Elijah had such predecessors in mind when he cried out, "I am no better than my ancestors." Jeremiah and Jonah, in different ways, were uneasy in the work of God apportioned to them. And we, too, could identify in our own callings some unwelcome parts of the work of God.
Finally, there is the law. This is perhaps the most universally unwelcome work of God, for we human beings have a generally distorted notion of freedom.
We had a dog years ago who had tons of energy and loved to run. Naturally, we couldn't run and play with him as constantly as he was willing, but we rigged up a system in our yard that would allow him to run, as well as be safe. The leash we would hook on his collar was a long one attached to a pulley that ran along a cord stretched out between two trees. This "run" gave our energetic little dog practically the entire yard to play in, but he was discontent within the perceived confinement of the leash. He wouldn't run on the "run," but rather chose to lie down at the farthest reach of the leash, right on the border of his limits, with the collar tugging at his stiff neck.
God established his law as the safe boundaries in which his people could live, happy and free. The law leashed us in and fenced us off from that which would hurt us, and it pointed us toward faith in Christ. But humanity, like the prodigal son, peered out longingly to the world beyond the gates of the Father's property. And the very commandments established to keep us safe and at home were broken and resented -- the unwelcome work of God.
An Alternative Application
Luke 8:26-39. The story of the demoniac and the townspeople from his region stands in stark contrast to the familiar story of the woman at the well in John 4.
In both episodes, an individual who is out at the edge of society has a profound encounter with Christ. The man lived apart from his neighbors, visibly tortured, and troubling to all. The woman, by contrast, did not live apart from her community, but her lifestyle was marginal. Furthermore, her spotted past suggests a person who may have had some demons of her own.
Eventually, that Samaritan woman runs into town to tell her friends and neighbors about Jesus. "He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" she excitedly asks (John 4:29). And in response to her testimony, the townspeople hurried out to the well where Jesus was. When they came to Jesus, they begged him to stay with them, and he remained there two more days. Many believed in Jesus first because of the woman's testimony, and then later from their own contact with him.
Meanwhile, the report of the demoniac's deliverance also was reported back to the nearby town, and the townspeople came out to see. Unlike the folks in the Samaritan village, however, these people urged Jesus to go away. And there is no evidence that anyone came to believe in Jesus, either from the story of the man's healing or from meeting Jesus personally.
The immense difference between how these two towns responded to Christ could lie within the people themselves. After all, not everyone who met him followed him or believed in him. And it is worth noting that individual responses to Jesus are profoundly shaped by the larger mood and movement of the community.
The one apparent difference between the two stories, though, is in the transmission of the message about Jesus. In Samaria, the woman herself gave her testimony. In the Gerasenes, however, it was more detached witnesses who reported what had happened to the demoniac. Perhaps a personal testimony is required for faith in Christ. Accordingly, Jesus told the demoniac -- and tells us -- "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you."
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 42; Psalm 43
Though numbered separately in almost all texts, Psalms 42 and 43 are actually one psalm. Even a cursory reading makes this clear, and a closer reading leaves little doubt that the two poems should be read as one. The central message of the psalm is the Presence of God, or more to the point, the absence of the Presence. The psalmist draws our attention to the need to be steadfast in our faith with a recurring refrain spread out across the two poems: "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God" (42:5, 11, and 43:5).
The mystic tradition has used as an image to describe the path to God the concept of "desire" or even "yearning." The psalmist offers us another path -- necessity. As an animal cannot live without water and searches fervently until water is found, so is our pursuit of God. God is the water of life without which we cannot live. God is that essential life element that cannot be overlooked or left behind.
And of course, no one in the psalmist's audience would likely dispute that understanding of God. The problem for the psalmist and his audience is not that they fail to recognize the importance of God in their lives; the problem is they can't find God.
We cannot be sure what has created this problem. The psalmist and his audience may have been part of the exile. There may have been some other national calamity that created a crisis of faith and a sense of God's absence. But even if we cannot know for sure what has created the crisis, we can appreciate the psalmist's advice for dealing with it.
If it was water we were lacking, would we sit on our hands and say, "Well, if that water wants to find me I'm right here"? Of course not. We must have water to live. And if we don't have it, we go find it. We dig for it, we listen for it, and we smell for it. We put our whole being into focused motion to find that one thing we must have to live.
The psalmist would have us confront the absence of God's Presence in exactly the same way. Never mind whatever disruption there has been in life, search for God with all we have. Never mind what pain or disappointments we may have experienced, without God we are nothing -- let's go find him.
The refrain that recurs throughout the two poems is a touchstone for us, a reminder that not only is it necessary for us to find God, but also that if we keep searching and not lose heart, we will find God. The moment of doubt and spiritual emptiness will not last. If we will remain faithful and attend to those things we know are right, our efforts will be fruitful and we will again experience the life giving Presence.
Therefore, Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
