Sunday, November 17,2013
Proper 28C
Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost
The Reverend Ellen R. Hill
Lectionary readings
Did you notice that the underlying theme of today’s lessons deals with the relationship between human responsibility and God’s promises and commandments? I think the place where that tension is the clearest is in the passage from the prophet Malachi. For the questions which are raised in the Old Testament lesson are the same questions which tend to nag at you and me today. Frankly, if you stop and think about it they’re the same basic questions which seem to appear as the sub-text of a good many of our Sunday morning scripture readings. Questions such as: Why evil people seem to prosper? Why tragedies so often happen to good people? Why some people have so much, while others are barely surviving. Questions which push us to ask ourselves why we should continue to believe that the universe is moral and the creation good in light of all the evil and crime present in our world. And if this God we say we believe in is a God who really cares about truth and righteousness and is all powerful then why does God let all of this go on year after year? What’s the point of being religious, of believing in God since God certainly doesn’t seem to have an eye on what’s happening in this world God created.
The Jews of the 5th century B.C. were asking those very same questions when the book of Malachi was written. They had just returned from exile in Babylon where they’d been held captive for several centuries. Even though they’d reestablished themselves in Israel things weren’t going very well. The people were feeling very uncomfortable about their relationship with God because they felt that God had failed to keep the covenant. The wicked and those who didn’t keep the law were not only going unpunished but they actually seemed to be prospering which is probably the reason why this Old Treatment book was written in the format of a lawsuit.
You see it’s really God who is in the dock this morning. And the summary of the whole passage says the same thing that we’ve heard over and over again: That those who’ve honored God, those who’ve lived according to God’s commandments will prosper. Unfortunately, that isn’t the way things usually seem to work out, at least not for many of us. That’s also the reason why we’re so often tempted to listen to that quiet voice within us which says that since it seems that the wicked are prospering we’re only being fools in not grabbing for ourselves all that we can like everyone else seems to be doing. I can’t help but think that it’s that mentality, that sense of disillusionment with our understanding of our covenantal relationship with God, that has contributed to the incredible number of ethics violations and criminal convictions that we’ve witnessed among our elected public officials. It’s hard to live your life in anticipation that on the Day of Judgement the righteous will be rewarded or to believe that there’s some Book of Life where your name is written down and your good deeds are noted when everyone else seems to be racing off on fabulous trips, driving expensive cars, buying exquisite clothes and moving from one beautiful house to another while you slog along and only seem to get further and further behind.
What the Old Testament lesson seems to be struggling with is whether people really do go unpunished. Whether they do, in fact, get off scot free. Whether God is as uncaring as God seems to be. Otherwise, why would God let good people suffer? Why would God make it seem that living a good and decent life is as meaningless and as much of a waste of time as it sometimes does? These questions aren’t just our questions or the questions of the 5th century Jews, these questions are humanity’s eternal questions.
Eli Wiesel tells a story in his book A Jew Today about a group of Jewish exiles who were left in the desert without food or water. One evening they collapsed with fatigue and four of them fell asleep but only three awoke. So the father dug a grave for his wife and he and the children recited the Kaddish, which is the Jewish prayer for the dead, and then they continued on their journey. At the end of the next day the three of them lay down for the night but only two of them awoke. So, the father dug a grave for his older son and recited the Kaddish with his remaining son and then they continued on their journey. When night came the old man and his son stretched out but in the morning only the father opened his eyes. After he had dug the grave and buried his last son, this is what he said to God: “Master of the Universe I know what you want. I understand what you’re doing. You want despair to overwhelm me. You want me to cease believing in You, to cease praying to You, to cease invoking your name, to cease glorifying and sanctifying it. Well I tell you NO! NO! A thousand times NO! You shall not succeed! In spite of me and in spite of you I shall shout the Kaddish, which is song of faith, for You and against You. This song You shall not still God of Israel!"
This story reminds us that to quarrel with God is really to pay God the supreme compliment. It means that you take God so seriously that you’re willing to argue with God. It means God’s important enough to be worth your anger for we simply don’t get angry at people or about things that aren’t important to us. That same kind of devout and steadfast faith has been repeated throughout history most recently in the death of camps of the Third Reich where God’s name was invoked in prayer and praise in the face of the gas chambers and the ovens of the crematoria.
So often our modern agony as believers arises from the tension of trying to live in a world which seems out of control, in a relationship with what we believe to be a good and powerful God, when the truth is that God often seems weak and victimized by the world. And if God isn’t weak and victimized, and is in fact all powerful, then God certainly can’t be good and must somehow be responsible for evil and must be called to account. Either God is the executioner at Auschwitz and Dresden and Hiroshima or God was a participant with the rest of the victims. You see there must have been a lot of righteous people who were killed at Nagasaki as well as Coventry. And the question is as fresh today in the debate about the drone strikes and poison gas.
Maybe it’s only by looking at God as a participant in the world’s suffering that we can begin to explain what otherwise seems like the profoundly deafening silence of God in the face of incredible evil. Perhaps part of the answer lies in the fact that there are righteous people scattered among the wicked in every community. And what we must remember as Christians is that even a minority of righteous persons can have a salvific effect on the greater community. Jesus Christ certainly proved that. For on that cross he was utterly alone, completely surrounded by evil doers and mockers, which is why as Christians we can’t all retreat to the safety and seclusion of a cloistered life. God has placed us squarely in the middle of evil and corrupt societies. And in those communities our very presence creates the possibility of new history.
We can see that in a small but powerful way right here in Santa Ana where this parish, as the Body of Christ, has for more than 30 years provided ministries to serve the poor, the homeless, the hungry and the discriminated against in this community. As a result of that action the Church of the Messiah has been a healing and transforming presence in this community. But you cannot reform a community unless you’re identified with it. And to be identified with it means you have to become one with it. So it seems that in the face of the complexity of our lives and the evil which seems to surround us on every side, all we can be sure of is our fundamental understanding that humanity in the end is saved by the lives of righteous persons which may, on occasion, entail sacrifice on our part.
Happiness and enjoyment aren’t the aim of life, spiritual growth is. Even though our faith tells us that this world, with it’s seemingly unjust suffering, isn’t the last word; it doesn’t help to soften the paradox of God’s seeming injustice here and now. For that same God, in whom we place our hope and who has the power and freedom to bestow grace, is also the same God who doesn’t prevent cancer cells from growing in the bodies of children or typhoons from killing thousands of innocent people.
That’s our major problem. The contrast between what we feel should be and what actually is. But if we look at the way Jesus answered questions like these in the Gospels we’ll see that he didn’t make those kind of distinctions. Once when he was asked why the wicked prospered he responded by pointing out that God made the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike. Most of us really do know that there is some randomness to life. Even though we don’t like to admit it we also know that the real question in life, and the ultimate question behind all of the questions in today’s lessons, isn’t really about unfairness or why bad things happen to good people. The real question is about our relationship with God.
When the disciples asked Jesus about life’s fairness he forced them to examine their own relationship to God. But that makes uncomfortable and just like those 5th century Jews when you and I find that God’s answers are confusing or frightening we’re tempted to look for answers someplace else. We’re tempted to look for a God who doesn’t demand repentance. A God who doesn’t allow tragedy and suffering to afflict the faithful. The only problem is that the idea that only good things happen to good people died on the same day we hung Jesus on that cross. Because in his act of dying Jesus asks us: Can you trust God in both joy and in pain? Can you let go of your demand that God to God on your terms? Can you love God without linking your love to the particular kind of cards that life deals you? For God’s love doesn’t carry any promises about good or bad except the promise that God won’t let anything worse happen to us than what happened to God’s own son.
That’s why we come to that table on Sundays. To be given the bread and the wine that are the body and blood of Jesus which was broken and spilled on our behalf. For through that act you and I remember and we honor the way that God has responded to our questions about the fairness of life in the gift of the Babe born in Bethlehem. For the way that we as Christians have dealt with the paradox of God’s seeming injustice and this enduring faith of ours has its roots deep in our Jewish heritage which was beautifully summed up by Eli Weisel when he wrote the following:
“There were many periods in our past when we had every right in the world to turn to God and say,‘Enough! Since you seem to approve of all these persecutions, all these outrages, have it Your way! Let Your world go on without Jews! Either You are our partner in history or you are not. If you are, do your share! If you are not we consider ourselves free of our commitment since you choose to break the covenant, so be it! And yet and yet we went on, believing, hoping, invoking God’s name. We did not give up on God! For this is the essence of being Jewish! Never to give up! Never to yield to despair! And so it must be for us as Christians as well! AMEN
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