Why, God? Enough Is Enough
Sermon
Holy Email
Cycle A Second Lesson Sermons for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany
Object:
E-mail
From: KDM
To: God
Subject: Endurance
Message: Why, God? Enough is enough. Lauds, KDM
Why, God? Enough is enough. Lauds, KDM. Enough is enough. By the time we holler these words, words shunned by supposedly sophisticated people, life circumstances have drawn us to the precipice. By the time we ask the "Why" question, you and I have forgotten about the endurance suffering is supposed to nurture.
Whether the disheartening occasion is a turmoil of relationship, extended economic chaos, the clutter of physical affliction, or a protracted uncertainty, suffering carries us to the outer reaches of our ability to cope. It can heave us into the territory of the precarious.
We get stuck there wandering through the walled wilderness of city streets. Anger, sorrow, despair, frustration -- pick one. A product of fear will be there threatening to overtake and hound us into the new year. During these times, we let ourselves become enslaved by the fear of which the Hebrews sermon speaks, "slavery by the fear of death" (2:15).
Every decline of power, health, or social capacity is a symbolic if not actual little death that brings us closer to the fact of our mortality. Fed up because, despite sturdy efforts to surmount any trouble, we fear being unable to make it through the present calamity. The declaration bursts out, "Enough is enough. I have had it, God. Something has to change now."
At the close of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the aged main character, Jean Valjean, has lost his will to live. His longtime physician, finally summoned, arrives too late. Jean Valjean says to him, "I am going to die." The practicer of medicine has no science to override Valjean's words. He can do nothing to turn around the man's will but offer the art of his compassion. The doctor remains with Jean Valjean as he dies.
Another mystery as puzzling as the will to die is the will to live. Failing to thrive after six weeks in an incubator, a premature infant was sent home. The doctor counseled the parents, "She is going to die anyway, so take her and love her."
Now 58, the same person reflects, "I refused to die. I was ready to live." Speaking further about the depth of this mysterious will to live that has sustained her throughout life, she adds, "My body has always spurned the journey with one system after another breaking down."
"With equal mystery," she continues, "the energy of my soul persists in finding first one alternative way and then another to do my work as a practicer of thriving." The woman has yielded to an inner persistence. Nothing she can do will turn around her life-giving, "I will."
Suffering does strange things to us. Sometimes, as if pushing God away with its bleakness, a rebellious anger causes us to use our challenges to defy God. During such vulnerable times, we are no angels. However, even at our worst, we cannot send God away. Rather than isolating us, the challenges that life changes bring potentially draw us closer to God. The writer of Hebrews grasps this, saying, "It is clear that [Christ] did not come to help angels" (2:16). When at our worst, you and I are the ones needing help.
Hebrews reminds us that God came to earth in the form of a human being who himself endured testing. By overcoming the power of death, Christ takes the fear out of meeting change. Christ saves us for living. His life invites us to view our various life dyings as finishing a chapter, completing a cycle, making a transition, or moving along on the journey.
As a result, we can choose to concentrate on life-giving attitudes. What you and I must endure remains with us. Yet we gain the capacity to transcend it -- not to deny but to move through and get beyond it. Then, we can connect in empathy with others. Part of the paradox of "enough is enough" is in forgetting ourselves while remembering just enough to stay within the reality of our limitations.
By becoming earthbound and claiming us, God shares the pressures of human life. Beyond acceptance, Christ affirms our being, praising us, as Hebrews says, right there "in the midst of the congregation" (2:12).
Christ draws us into another realm. Because of the testing and suffering he endured, our defensive attitudes can melt within us. We need not waste energy explaining our situation to God. Christ's compassionate understanding is immediate. He takes the loneliness out of our suffering.
Sometimes, church folk choose an attitude of annoyance toward the hard-of-hearing. Then we wonder why the deaf stop coming to church. Another member who attends worship less frequently may no longer drive safely or cannot see the bulletin or fears bumping into someone with a cup of coffee. Disease or medication may confuse someone else.
The church, this place that might offer sustenance of courage, then ends up strengthening isolation rather than energizing the spirit of community. We have an alternative. As we recognize the common bond of being temporarily able-bodied people, our own capacity for the life-giving beauty of compassion grows.
Beauty opens gates in our fences as winter colors bring change to the western prairie. Gold and amber color tones of dried grasses deepen above the snow as the lowering sun finds them. Here, as with a piece of well-played music or other exquisite art form, a note of loneliness hums within us. When we open ourselves to enjoy the beautiful, other feelings slip in, feelings less comfortable than serene.
Several 89-plus-year-old members of a care center writing group acknowledged such feelings while experiencing beauty. One said, "A sunset makes me feel that way. The beauty of it more than the end of the day brings a twinge of loneliness but also a certain solitude." Another said, "For me, it would be in the morning when the sun rises, seeing the blue sky."
"At the edge of the Grand Canyon," remembered a third participant. "Holding my first great-grandbaby after my husband died." "Looking down over the city of Chicago at night." "The crops." "An ice-coated maple tree in early-morning sun."
Winter colors change within our souls when we notice that God is present both in loneliness and in solitude. As part of this confession, we move closer to letting God be God. Like beauty, the experience of suffering at once can take us out of ourselves and return us to our deeper selves.
God plans for us to live as well as we can. We fall short of answers as to why, some of the time, we hold on to the will to live and then, at other times, nearly succumb to letting go. Suffering's hurt keeps us earthbound. However, an interjection of beauty into our lives relieves the moment by drawing us toward another realm. It lifts us to a higher view. It gives us a breather. It revives and fortifies us.
Why does one person's will to live sustain that person and another's is not enough? We say that a neighbor fought a valiant fight but lost the fight against a cancer or AIDS or suicide. The loss had nothing to do with not fighting hard enough. Life as a fight is an image one might choose. Indeed, the journey can become as sweaty as a physical fight. However, fight may not be the apt image for pressing on. Fighting uses energy we cannot afford to waste.
When you and I have done all we think we can, when we consider life management as mostly our doing, and when we give it our best show but fail, isolation can amplify despair. We can go only so far alone. However, when the darker side that wants to call it quits obscures the light, our lighter side is still there. Despite all sorts of brokenness, it draws us toward a sense of wholeness and oneness with God.
Something happens to our capacity to endure suffering when we realize the one who stands before us also stands with us. Christ at once frees and helps us. Christ draws us nearer to the active faith of renewed hope. Even when we are full of our own troubles, the truth of Christ opens our truth so we, also, might live with compassion.
From: KDM
To: God
Subject: Endurance
Message: Why, God? Enough is enough. Lauds, KDM
Why, God? Enough is enough. Lauds, KDM. Enough is enough. By the time we holler these words, words shunned by supposedly sophisticated people, life circumstances have drawn us to the precipice. By the time we ask the "Why" question, you and I have forgotten about the endurance suffering is supposed to nurture.
Whether the disheartening occasion is a turmoil of relationship, extended economic chaos, the clutter of physical affliction, or a protracted uncertainty, suffering carries us to the outer reaches of our ability to cope. It can heave us into the territory of the precarious.
We get stuck there wandering through the walled wilderness of city streets. Anger, sorrow, despair, frustration -- pick one. A product of fear will be there threatening to overtake and hound us into the new year. During these times, we let ourselves become enslaved by the fear of which the Hebrews sermon speaks, "slavery by the fear of death" (2:15).
Every decline of power, health, or social capacity is a symbolic if not actual little death that brings us closer to the fact of our mortality. Fed up because, despite sturdy efforts to surmount any trouble, we fear being unable to make it through the present calamity. The declaration bursts out, "Enough is enough. I have had it, God. Something has to change now."
At the close of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the aged main character, Jean Valjean, has lost his will to live. His longtime physician, finally summoned, arrives too late. Jean Valjean says to him, "I am going to die." The practicer of medicine has no science to override Valjean's words. He can do nothing to turn around the man's will but offer the art of his compassion. The doctor remains with Jean Valjean as he dies.
Another mystery as puzzling as the will to die is the will to live. Failing to thrive after six weeks in an incubator, a premature infant was sent home. The doctor counseled the parents, "She is going to die anyway, so take her and love her."
Now 58, the same person reflects, "I refused to die. I was ready to live." Speaking further about the depth of this mysterious will to live that has sustained her throughout life, she adds, "My body has always spurned the journey with one system after another breaking down."
"With equal mystery," she continues, "the energy of my soul persists in finding first one alternative way and then another to do my work as a practicer of thriving." The woman has yielded to an inner persistence. Nothing she can do will turn around her life-giving, "I will."
Suffering does strange things to us. Sometimes, as if pushing God away with its bleakness, a rebellious anger causes us to use our challenges to defy God. During such vulnerable times, we are no angels. However, even at our worst, we cannot send God away. Rather than isolating us, the challenges that life changes bring potentially draw us closer to God. The writer of Hebrews grasps this, saying, "It is clear that [Christ] did not come to help angels" (2:16). When at our worst, you and I are the ones needing help.
Hebrews reminds us that God came to earth in the form of a human being who himself endured testing. By overcoming the power of death, Christ takes the fear out of meeting change. Christ saves us for living. His life invites us to view our various life dyings as finishing a chapter, completing a cycle, making a transition, or moving along on the journey.
As a result, we can choose to concentrate on life-giving attitudes. What you and I must endure remains with us. Yet we gain the capacity to transcend it -- not to deny but to move through and get beyond it. Then, we can connect in empathy with others. Part of the paradox of "enough is enough" is in forgetting ourselves while remembering just enough to stay within the reality of our limitations.
By becoming earthbound and claiming us, God shares the pressures of human life. Beyond acceptance, Christ affirms our being, praising us, as Hebrews says, right there "in the midst of the congregation" (2:12).
Christ draws us into another realm. Because of the testing and suffering he endured, our defensive attitudes can melt within us. We need not waste energy explaining our situation to God. Christ's compassionate understanding is immediate. He takes the loneliness out of our suffering.
Sometimes, church folk choose an attitude of annoyance toward the hard-of-hearing. Then we wonder why the deaf stop coming to church. Another member who attends worship less frequently may no longer drive safely or cannot see the bulletin or fears bumping into someone with a cup of coffee. Disease or medication may confuse someone else.
The church, this place that might offer sustenance of courage, then ends up strengthening isolation rather than energizing the spirit of community. We have an alternative. As we recognize the common bond of being temporarily able-bodied people, our own capacity for the life-giving beauty of compassion grows.
Beauty opens gates in our fences as winter colors bring change to the western prairie. Gold and amber color tones of dried grasses deepen above the snow as the lowering sun finds them. Here, as with a piece of well-played music or other exquisite art form, a note of loneliness hums within us. When we open ourselves to enjoy the beautiful, other feelings slip in, feelings less comfortable than serene.
Several 89-plus-year-old members of a care center writing group acknowledged such feelings while experiencing beauty. One said, "A sunset makes me feel that way. The beauty of it more than the end of the day brings a twinge of loneliness but also a certain solitude." Another said, "For me, it would be in the morning when the sun rises, seeing the blue sky."
"At the edge of the Grand Canyon," remembered a third participant. "Holding my first great-grandbaby after my husband died." "Looking down over the city of Chicago at night." "The crops." "An ice-coated maple tree in early-morning sun."
Winter colors change within our souls when we notice that God is present both in loneliness and in solitude. As part of this confession, we move closer to letting God be God. Like beauty, the experience of suffering at once can take us out of ourselves and return us to our deeper selves.
God plans for us to live as well as we can. We fall short of answers as to why, some of the time, we hold on to the will to live and then, at other times, nearly succumb to letting go. Suffering's hurt keeps us earthbound. However, an interjection of beauty into our lives relieves the moment by drawing us toward another realm. It lifts us to a higher view. It gives us a breather. It revives and fortifies us.
Why does one person's will to live sustain that person and another's is not enough? We say that a neighbor fought a valiant fight but lost the fight against a cancer or AIDS or suicide. The loss had nothing to do with not fighting hard enough. Life as a fight is an image one might choose. Indeed, the journey can become as sweaty as a physical fight. However, fight may not be the apt image for pressing on. Fighting uses energy we cannot afford to waste.
When you and I have done all we think we can, when we consider life management as mostly our doing, and when we give it our best show but fail, isolation can amplify despair. We can go only so far alone. However, when the darker side that wants to call it quits obscures the light, our lighter side is still there. Despite all sorts of brokenness, it draws us toward a sense of wholeness and oneness with God.
Something happens to our capacity to endure suffering when we realize the one who stands before us also stands with us. Christ at once frees and helps us. Christ draws us nearer to the active faith of renewed hope. Even when we are full of our own troubles, the truth of Christ opens our truth so we, also, might live with compassion.
