The Strangeness Of God's Care
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle A
Religion is a mutual relationship. We pledge loyalty and devotion to God and God blesses us. This is how Moses worked it out with Yahweh and his people who had recently escaped from Egyptian captivity. If the Israelites prove loyal to this mysterious Sinai god, then God would bless them with prosperity and well being. Those who deal with many gods are no different. Even though they have gods for various concerns, they still expect blessings and security in exchange for loyalty. And certainly considering that Moses' storm god was the abolition of all other gods, the mutual dynamic held: worship and faithfulness guarantee protection and prosperity - or so Moses and much traditional religion have contended.
In our lection today, King Ahaz is frightened. A military attack is threatened and the king fears for his nation. For some reason Ahaz refuses to seek reassurance from God. Sometimes our anxiety prevents us from seeking religious assistance. But Ahaz's refusal was not because of any theological sophistication. So God takes the initiative and gives the king a reassurance anyway. God tells Ahaz that everything will work out all right. Soon a nearby young woman is about to give birth and she will name him "Immanuel," the name meaning "God with us." God wants Ahaz to consider that by the time this child is born, the threats to Ahaz and the nation will be gone. Time is one of the providential ways of God, and waiting without panic is often all that is needed. God tells Ahaz that before this child climbs out of his highchair, the fearsome enemy will be gone.
Some Christians take this passage as a prophecy of the Virgin Birth of Jesus even if it is quite an exegetical stretch to do this. Others counter saying the meaning of the passage does not support this claim. God is simply telling Ahaz that frightening circumstances change and this is one such circumstance. There is nothing to indicate a prediction of the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Those who want to see this text as a Virgin Birth prophesy seem to be loading up this passage with meanings that do not fit.
I
We might as well continue to deal with this issue. Arrogant, unbending scriptural interpretation may shore up the faith of many. But there is often a serious down--side when these doctrines do not pan out or when newer worldviews do not allow their former understanding. All this can drive many persons from the church and cripple those who feel they are second--class Christians because they cannot accept traditional doctrines in today's modern world. It even makes some church persons pretend to believe certain scriptural assertions when talking with their pastor, not knowing that the pastor shares their disbelief.
We hear much about people being hungry for the gospel. This is truth, and always has been. We need assurance that life is not some meaningless trek across cosmic space and time. The human person has a built--in hunger for finding that life is ultimately meaningful and that the Author of life cares for us and all the rest of creation. Many who are bounced and buffeted by our modern, changing, and frightening world, get themselves to church to discover some reassurance.
But these seekers are often fed the gospel in ways that are an affront to their inescapable modernity. They are instructed in styles that complicate their believing because the styles are at odds with the world in which they live. Some suppress this conflict and decide to live in the exhausting split between religion and everyday truth. And some slip away from the church - all churches - not knowing that there are meaningful alternatives. Some of these folks are "the lost sheep" of the Church of Jesus Christ.
One friend and colleague grew up in Marburg, Germany, during the 1930s and '40s. After the war, he came to the United States and eventually became chaplain of a large urban hospital. He tells of playing, during his childhood years, with the children of the great New Testament scholar and theologian, Rudolph Bultmann. Bultmann was a chaplain in the German army in World War I. There he was struck with how out of touch the soldiers were to traditional biblical stories and teachings. They had been reared and educated in the secular--scientific world of western Europe and America. And so Bultmann began his work of re--stating the biblical message in light of our modern worldview. He felt that if the gospel was to make any serious contact with modern persons, it would have to make this effort. Bultmann's work did not satisfy all of those who agreed that it was necessary to try to bridge the gap between the Bible and the modern outlook, but he shocked many out of their theological doldrums. And, of course, his thinking that the effort was necessary was disturbing to many traditional Christians.
The church should be a place where confessional humility exists for all. Older understandings must give way to more recent events and wisdom about God and human life. Even the Bible itself shows evidence of later generations revising the teachings and traditions of earlier times, as the book of Deuteronomy indicates. Why does the church seem so fearful that it seldom offers its professions of faith in a provisional manner, subject to future change and revision? Why cannot the church proclaim its scriptures, sermons, creeds, and hymns are only human effort to point out the unfathomable mystery of God? Can't we all admit that our understanding of God and God's ways are but fragments of God's truth and that future day may need to make corrections and revisions? Couldn't we listen to a later Isaiah once in a while:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
- Isaiah 55:8--9
We cannot pant for any absolute doctrinal or ethical standards. Religion, like science, always knows that the mind of God or the truth of nature is never fully caught in any of our attempts. The truth and ways of God are not subject to rigid codification. This is no invitation to theological or ethical laxity. In morality it is simply recognizing that following Jesus is always subject to circumstances and what may be possible at any one moment. When the Christians of eastern Europe were under the rigid totalitarian Communist governments in eastern Europe, the question was how a Christian would respond to this turn of events.
Even though scripture told them they must obey God rather than humans, Christians in these nations regularly heard sermons by their pastors and did Bible study with the conclusion that Christian obedience would be to make their peace with their oppressors and find places where they could cooperate with them. Total resistance was not an ethical possibility. This suggests that a once--and--for--ever code of Christian conduct is not possible in the world, unless martyrdom is our goal. Humility is a significant style for the faith and work of the church for our time. It could also have an exciting evangelistic outcome. Many who shun the church because they cannot fit themselves into our unbending doctrinal or moral fundamentalism, might surprise us by showing up on Sunday mornings.
II
But we do need to return to our theme suggested by Ahab's dilemma - the strange way God cares for us. Many thoughtful persons will wonder at this story because it suggests that God cares for us in what happens, not by some direct intervention that destroys our enemies.
Christians should be offered several options on this matter, not all of them in agreement with the others. The traditional option suggests that we believe that God is a dependable hedge against personal and social disaster. There are a lot of texts that support this. In God's words to Ahaz, God reassures Ahaz that he is watching out for Judah, and in an all--knowing and all--powerful way will make those threatening armies disappear. God assumes the role of mighty protector of the national security of Judah.
But this is not the only option available to serious Christians in our twenty--first century. That the traditional option is not working for many is illustrated by the popularity of Rabbi Harold Kushner's book, Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People? The book sold thousands of copies. People who doubted that faithfulness guarantees security found Kushner speaking with refreshing honesty. Kushner, having watched his young son die of a terrible disease, called for a different understanding of how God cares for the young innocents. His son had committed no great sin, and it did not seem reasonable to attribute his son's suffering to some transgression of his larger family. Yet Kushner, as a rabbi speaking to his congregation, wished to believe in the care of God even in such tragic circumstances. However, the option that Kushner offered came at the price of parting with the traditional understanding of how God cares for us.
Kushner's approach to believing in God's providence holds that God is not in the business of caring directly for persons, or religious groups, or nations. There is no dramatic, saving intervention of God warding off the pain and suffering from our waywardness and the destruction of nature. God does not divert jetliners filled with angry and fanatic terrorists from crashing into tall skyscrapers. Nor does God destine certain individuals to be on those ill--fated jetliners. As much as we would prefer such care and protection and divine meaning, it does not happen. Many sensitive persons will be turned away from church if all we offer them is some version of this.
We would like to think that God cares for us by answering our prayers for a remission of organic disease, for prayers that would have some effect on others even if they are unaware of our prayers for them. A study by a Mayo Clinic doctor has concluded from his study that such prayers are not effective. Yet life is sometimes so painful and frightening we cannot help making such prayerful requests even though we may not believe in their effectiveness. A reverent skepticism would seem to be all that we might offer here. Certainly direct prayer can open us to the God who cares for those for whom we have prayed as well as inspiring ways of helpfulness in those of us who offer the direct prayers. Even self--referential prayers such as Jesus' prayer for himself in the Garden helped him to opt for the godly possibilities that his frightful circumstances offered. But it does not seem that prayer has some miraculous result on the physiological disease that causes the suffering. And while at a distance, prayer widens the sensitivities and sympathies of the person who prays, we do not have much evidence that our prayers travel across space and time, creating good things for the recipient or for the situation prayed for. There are many in and out of our churches who would like to hear of such objections taken seriously.
But what might this optional view of God's care for individuals and the earth look like? This option would take seriously that none of us are exempt from suffering and death. This challenges much of our cultural climate, for we are encouraged to believe that we can eliminate all personal and social pains, and perhaps live forever, if not a whole lot longer. Our consumer society builds upon these illusions. Persons who ought to know better seem unwilling to face the fact that human life is caught up in webs and systems of pain and suffering that do not seem to be going away. While we make better toothbrushes, nothing seems to dent the rot that plagues so much of our world. And if we should begin to think that human life is getting a lot better, we need only to watch the evening television news to be disabused of this conclusion. All this does not make us gloomy pessimists or unbelievers in the goodness of God. It might make us honest before God, ourselves, our neighbor, and the world. This could be a first step toward healthy spiritual honesty.
So if God does not directly intervene in history or nature to care for us, what then is God's style? If personal and national righteousness have only a marginal relation to God's blessings, how does God care for us at all? If our prayers do not go beyond shaping our own relation to God's ways, why do we even talk about the care of God?
Our answer will not satisfy those who wish for a god who will grant special favors and tweek the universe in their behalf. Yet an alternative to the traditional answers may be salvation for many in our time. Just then, how does the "strange" care of God come to us? If God is not a god who pulls Jesus off the cross, not a god who stops our government from sanctioning racial segregation for decades, not a god who zips in and renders the hangman's rope useless against Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not a god who remits the brain tumors of Mozart or George Gershwin or Thomas Wolfe, not a god who restrains the fists of the abusive husband or halts the cravings of the addict, then what sort of God might we have?
Perhaps the answer has been with us all along. It is an answer found in the book of Job and in the story of Jesus on the cross. God's care for us is not a miraculous deliverance for which we often plead but that inner miracle of God's presence. God cares for us by standing with us in our pains and fears, encouraging us to make responses to suffering that steer clear of self--pity, blame, and paralysis of action and spirit. This presence can empower us to personal spiritual growth as well as creating improvements in the ways we live together. Paul Scherer, commenting on the ending of the book of Job has written, there may be "no solution for any of the soul's anguish, the mind's fear, the heart's despair, except in the peace of that presence [of God ]." To have God be with us is the care that overcomes all suffering. And of course, it is implicit in Christ's suffering. God did not deliver him from the evil of others.
Unless we assume that Jesus knew all along that God was planning that he die on the cross, then Jesus must have had some disturbing thoughts about how God was caring for him. But the record shows that Jesus took his death in all the confusion, doubts, and pains with the sense that beyond all these terrible realities, God was with him. That was enough for Jesus and it is enough for us - indeed all that we might need. We can be inspired by the biblical stories of Job and Jesus in asserting that this strange way of understanding God's care can be part of our faithful response to God in today's world.
In our lection today, King Ahaz is frightened. A military attack is threatened and the king fears for his nation. For some reason Ahaz refuses to seek reassurance from God. Sometimes our anxiety prevents us from seeking religious assistance. But Ahaz's refusal was not because of any theological sophistication. So God takes the initiative and gives the king a reassurance anyway. God tells Ahaz that everything will work out all right. Soon a nearby young woman is about to give birth and she will name him "Immanuel," the name meaning "God with us." God wants Ahaz to consider that by the time this child is born, the threats to Ahaz and the nation will be gone. Time is one of the providential ways of God, and waiting without panic is often all that is needed. God tells Ahaz that before this child climbs out of his highchair, the fearsome enemy will be gone.
Some Christians take this passage as a prophecy of the Virgin Birth of Jesus even if it is quite an exegetical stretch to do this. Others counter saying the meaning of the passage does not support this claim. God is simply telling Ahaz that frightening circumstances change and this is one such circumstance. There is nothing to indicate a prediction of the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Those who want to see this text as a Virgin Birth prophesy seem to be loading up this passage with meanings that do not fit.
I
We might as well continue to deal with this issue. Arrogant, unbending scriptural interpretation may shore up the faith of many. But there is often a serious down--side when these doctrines do not pan out or when newer worldviews do not allow their former understanding. All this can drive many persons from the church and cripple those who feel they are second--class Christians because they cannot accept traditional doctrines in today's modern world. It even makes some church persons pretend to believe certain scriptural assertions when talking with their pastor, not knowing that the pastor shares their disbelief.
We hear much about people being hungry for the gospel. This is truth, and always has been. We need assurance that life is not some meaningless trek across cosmic space and time. The human person has a built--in hunger for finding that life is ultimately meaningful and that the Author of life cares for us and all the rest of creation. Many who are bounced and buffeted by our modern, changing, and frightening world, get themselves to church to discover some reassurance.
But these seekers are often fed the gospel in ways that are an affront to their inescapable modernity. They are instructed in styles that complicate their believing because the styles are at odds with the world in which they live. Some suppress this conflict and decide to live in the exhausting split between religion and everyday truth. And some slip away from the church - all churches - not knowing that there are meaningful alternatives. Some of these folks are "the lost sheep" of the Church of Jesus Christ.
One friend and colleague grew up in Marburg, Germany, during the 1930s and '40s. After the war, he came to the United States and eventually became chaplain of a large urban hospital. He tells of playing, during his childhood years, with the children of the great New Testament scholar and theologian, Rudolph Bultmann. Bultmann was a chaplain in the German army in World War I. There he was struck with how out of touch the soldiers were to traditional biblical stories and teachings. They had been reared and educated in the secular--scientific world of western Europe and America. And so Bultmann began his work of re--stating the biblical message in light of our modern worldview. He felt that if the gospel was to make any serious contact with modern persons, it would have to make this effort. Bultmann's work did not satisfy all of those who agreed that it was necessary to try to bridge the gap between the Bible and the modern outlook, but he shocked many out of their theological doldrums. And, of course, his thinking that the effort was necessary was disturbing to many traditional Christians.
The church should be a place where confessional humility exists for all. Older understandings must give way to more recent events and wisdom about God and human life. Even the Bible itself shows evidence of later generations revising the teachings and traditions of earlier times, as the book of Deuteronomy indicates. Why does the church seem so fearful that it seldom offers its professions of faith in a provisional manner, subject to future change and revision? Why cannot the church proclaim its scriptures, sermons, creeds, and hymns are only human effort to point out the unfathomable mystery of God? Can't we all admit that our understanding of God and God's ways are but fragments of God's truth and that future day may need to make corrections and revisions? Couldn't we listen to a later Isaiah once in a while:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
- Isaiah 55:8--9
We cannot pant for any absolute doctrinal or ethical standards. Religion, like science, always knows that the mind of God or the truth of nature is never fully caught in any of our attempts. The truth and ways of God are not subject to rigid codification. This is no invitation to theological or ethical laxity. In morality it is simply recognizing that following Jesus is always subject to circumstances and what may be possible at any one moment. When the Christians of eastern Europe were under the rigid totalitarian Communist governments in eastern Europe, the question was how a Christian would respond to this turn of events.
Even though scripture told them they must obey God rather than humans, Christians in these nations regularly heard sermons by their pastors and did Bible study with the conclusion that Christian obedience would be to make their peace with their oppressors and find places where they could cooperate with them. Total resistance was not an ethical possibility. This suggests that a once--and--for--ever code of Christian conduct is not possible in the world, unless martyrdom is our goal. Humility is a significant style for the faith and work of the church for our time. It could also have an exciting evangelistic outcome. Many who shun the church because they cannot fit themselves into our unbending doctrinal or moral fundamentalism, might surprise us by showing up on Sunday mornings.
II
But we do need to return to our theme suggested by Ahab's dilemma - the strange way God cares for us. Many thoughtful persons will wonder at this story because it suggests that God cares for us in what happens, not by some direct intervention that destroys our enemies.
Christians should be offered several options on this matter, not all of them in agreement with the others. The traditional option suggests that we believe that God is a dependable hedge against personal and social disaster. There are a lot of texts that support this. In God's words to Ahaz, God reassures Ahaz that he is watching out for Judah, and in an all--knowing and all--powerful way will make those threatening armies disappear. God assumes the role of mighty protector of the national security of Judah.
But this is not the only option available to serious Christians in our twenty--first century. That the traditional option is not working for many is illustrated by the popularity of Rabbi Harold Kushner's book, Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People? The book sold thousands of copies. People who doubted that faithfulness guarantees security found Kushner speaking with refreshing honesty. Kushner, having watched his young son die of a terrible disease, called for a different understanding of how God cares for the young innocents. His son had committed no great sin, and it did not seem reasonable to attribute his son's suffering to some transgression of his larger family. Yet Kushner, as a rabbi speaking to his congregation, wished to believe in the care of God even in such tragic circumstances. However, the option that Kushner offered came at the price of parting with the traditional understanding of how God cares for us.
Kushner's approach to believing in God's providence holds that God is not in the business of caring directly for persons, or religious groups, or nations. There is no dramatic, saving intervention of God warding off the pain and suffering from our waywardness and the destruction of nature. God does not divert jetliners filled with angry and fanatic terrorists from crashing into tall skyscrapers. Nor does God destine certain individuals to be on those ill--fated jetliners. As much as we would prefer such care and protection and divine meaning, it does not happen. Many sensitive persons will be turned away from church if all we offer them is some version of this.
We would like to think that God cares for us by answering our prayers for a remission of organic disease, for prayers that would have some effect on others even if they are unaware of our prayers for them. A study by a Mayo Clinic doctor has concluded from his study that such prayers are not effective. Yet life is sometimes so painful and frightening we cannot help making such prayerful requests even though we may not believe in their effectiveness. A reverent skepticism would seem to be all that we might offer here. Certainly direct prayer can open us to the God who cares for those for whom we have prayed as well as inspiring ways of helpfulness in those of us who offer the direct prayers. Even self--referential prayers such as Jesus' prayer for himself in the Garden helped him to opt for the godly possibilities that his frightful circumstances offered. But it does not seem that prayer has some miraculous result on the physiological disease that causes the suffering. And while at a distance, prayer widens the sensitivities and sympathies of the person who prays, we do not have much evidence that our prayers travel across space and time, creating good things for the recipient or for the situation prayed for. There are many in and out of our churches who would like to hear of such objections taken seriously.
But what might this optional view of God's care for individuals and the earth look like? This option would take seriously that none of us are exempt from suffering and death. This challenges much of our cultural climate, for we are encouraged to believe that we can eliminate all personal and social pains, and perhaps live forever, if not a whole lot longer. Our consumer society builds upon these illusions. Persons who ought to know better seem unwilling to face the fact that human life is caught up in webs and systems of pain and suffering that do not seem to be going away. While we make better toothbrushes, nothing seems to dent the rot that plagues so much of our world. And if we should begin to think that human life is getting a lot better, we need only to watch the evening television news to be disabused of this conclusion. All this does not make us gloomy pessimists or unbelievers in the goodness of God. It might make us honest before God, ourselves, our neighbor, and the world. This could be a first step toward healthy spiritual honesty.
So if God does not directly intervene in history or nature to care for us, what then is God's style? If personal and national righteousness have only a marginal relation to God's blessings, how does God care for us at all? If our prayers do not go beyond shaping our own relation to God's ways, why do we even talk about the care of God?
Our answer will not satisfy those who wish for a god who will grant special favors and tweek the universe in their behalf. Yet an alternative to the traditional answers may be salvation for many in our time. Just then, how does the "strange" care of God come to us? If God is not a god who pulls Jesus off the cross, not a god who stops our government from sanctioning racial segregation for decades, not a god who zips in and renders the hangman's rope useless against Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not a god who remits the brain tumors of Mozart or George Gershwin or Thomas Wolfe, not a god who restrains the fists of the abusive husband or halts the cravings of the addict, then what sort of God might we have?
Perhaps the answer has been with us all along. It is an answer found in the book of Job and in the story of Jesus on the cross. God's care for us is not a miraculous deliverance for which we often plead but that inner miracle of God's presence. God cares for us by standing with us in our pains and fears, encouraging us to make responses to suffering that steer clear of self--pity, blame, and paralysis of action and spirit. This presence can empower us to personal spiritual growth as well as creating improvements in the ways we live together. Paul Scherer, commenting on the ending of the book of Job has written, there may be "no solution for any of the soul's anguish, the mind's fear, the heart's despair, except in the peace of that presence [of God ]." To have God be with us is the care that overcomes all suffering. And of course, it is implicit in Christ's suffering. God did not deliver him from the evil of others.
Unless we assume that Jesus knew all along that God was planning that he die on the cross, then Jesus must have had some disturbing thoughts about how God was caring for him. But the record shows that Jesus took his death in all the confusion, doubts, and pains with the sense that beyond all these terrible realities, God was with him. That was enough for Jesus and it is enough for us - indeed all that we might need. We can be inspired by the biblical stories of Job and Jesus in asserting that this strange way of understanding God's care can be part of our faithful response to God in today's world.
