Sunday, October 17, 2010

Sermon for 10.17.10


The world watched in wonder and awe as one of the most inspiring rescue stories I can ever remember unfolded over the past week. If you’re like me, it was hard to keep from watching the dramatic appearance of one Chilean miner after another, liberated by a capsule called Phoenix from a hot underground tomb where they had been trapped for 69 days. I watched the men step out of the capsule, allow themselves to be unstrapped, and then turn and step into the arms of their waiting families while the crowd shouted “Chi, chi, chi, le, le, le,” and the world watched, and wept. And I wondered whether any of the men felt just a bit like Lazarus, called forth from the dead, stepping out of the tomb, blinking in the sunlight, whether they felt as if the voice of God had shouted to them, “Lazarus, come forth!”

And in fact, it seems that, for a number of them, their Christian faith sustained them in very real ways. Mario Gomez acted as a spiritual leader for the trapped men, requested Bibles, prayer books and religious statues, and led them in prayers twice a day. Mario Sepulveda, the jubilant second miner out, who led the crowd in cheers and chanting, jumping and hugging, said he left 40 years of his life down in the mine. “I was with God, and I was with the devil. They fought, and God won.” He said he reached out for God’s hand, and never let go. And from that moment on, he never doubted that he would be rescued.

All of them, as they emerged into the fresh air, were beige T-shirts. On the front were the words, Gracias, Senor (Thank you, Lord), and on the back were these words from Psalm 95, words which they said had brought them great comfort: “In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him.” For many of them, it seemed, God was present with them, so that it was not 33 people underground, but 34.

We can look at this miraculous resurrection of 33 miners from an underground tomb and ask ourselves – Where was God in all this? Did God reach out his hand and rescue these miners? Is the rescue attributable to a divine miracle? This is not a question that I can answer, for several reasons. First, if you didn’t believe in God at all, you could look at the careful, methodical, dedicated, impassioned work of the engineers, medical workers, psychologists and many other people who devoted the last 69 days to getting these men home alive, and credit the rescue to them – and you’d be right, in a way. It would be wrong to discount the human ingenuity that brought them home.

More than this, in general, it’s always dangerous to say what God is and isn’t doing, and why. If we assert that God rescued these 33, we have to ask ourselves why other miners die in other accidents, why perfectly kind and faithful people get incurable diseases, why hurricanes strike and innocent people are swept away. Surely we can’t say that the faith of those who die in other situations is any less valid than the faith of these miners, or that more people were praying for the miners and therefore God paid more attention.

And we know perfectly well that everyone suffers – most of us not as publicly or dramatically as the miners, most of us in ordinary, humble, common ways. We might suffer from stress, from strained relationships, from financial worries, from substance abuse (our own or that of someone we love), from grief, from health problems, from fatigue and disappointment and fear. And as your pastor, someone who has the privilege of walking that road of suffering with many people, I know that faithful and prayerful people are just as likely to endure these things as anyone else – faith is not a magic bullet that will make these struggles magically melt away.

So let’s ask ourselves: where is God in our suffering? What’s the role of faith in times like these? And that is where our scriptures give us some excellent guidance.

In Genesis reading today, Jacob is experiencing one of those nights we’ve all had: night so caught up in worry and stress that you spend the whole night wrestling with something you can’t identify – yourself, an angel, God maybe. In Jacob’s case, here’s what’s happening: Jacob has spent years deceiving, scheming and tricking others out of what is theirs. As a young man, he schemed with his mother to trick his father into giving the birthright to him instead of his older twin brother, Esau. When his father found out what he had done, Jacob fled for his life, with Esau’s threats following. He then spent years with his uncle, married his uncle’s two daughters, engineered an ingenious breeding scheme to divert most of his uncle’s sheep to himself, and when his uncle found out and got angry – he fled once more.

With nowhere to go, he heads back home, to his angry twin brother. Afraid his brother will attack with an army, he sends his wives and children away to safety, and waits alone for his brother to arrive. And in the dark night as he waits for the showdown that will determine the course of his life, indeed whether he lives or dies, he begins to struggle. The text tells us that a man shows up and they wrestle all night – and when morning comes and the man tries to leave, Jacob refuses to let go until the man gives him a blessing. Somehow Jacob has identified the man as God, or God’s messenger. And God gives him a new name: instead of Jacob, the deceiver, he becomes Israel, one who struggles with God and prevails. The angel, or God, strikes him once more, in the hip, and marks him with a wound that will make him limp for the rest of his life.

And God’s blessing seems to bear fruit – because in the morning, a miracle happens. Esau arrives, and instead of doing what Jacob fears and attacking him, Esau weeps with joy, and opens his arms, and welcomes his brother home. Is it a miracle? Nothing supernatural happens as Esau weeps and holds out his arms – yet the miracle has happened inside him – rivalry and hatred has been transformed into welcome and love, and the nation of Israel is born.

In our gospel passage, we have another story of someone who refuses to let go. Jesus tells a parable of a widow who will not stop bothering an unjust judge until the judge relents and grants her justice. Now I don’t think Jesus is telling us that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and that God is like an inattentive parent who keeps getting interrupted by an annoying child until he finally says, OK, you can have a cookie. (I would do that, but I don’t think God does!)

On one level, Jesus is saying if a bad judge will sometimes listen, how much more will a loving God listen? Of course God hears our prayers. But there’s more to it, of course, because Luke records this story at a time when the Christian community was suffering persecution and in danger of losing heart, giving up on their faith that Jesus would return. Luke, in fact, is relating this parable of Jesus’ to a group who is wrestling through the same kind of dark night of struggle and worry that Jacob did. They are wondering: where is God? And how are we going to survive? And how will we find our way out of this dark and scary place? And what is going to happen in the morning? And Jesus is telling them, God is here, right here in this struggle, God is the one you are wrestling with – God is with you – and if you have faith in God, you will find the strength you need to face these worries.

Prayer is not a matter of asking God for personal favors, personal miracles. Prayer is a matter of staying in relationship with God, knowing that in that relationship we will find the strength we need to help us through our struggles. And that as we struggle with God, as we grab onto God’s hand and refuse to let go, we will be blessed.

In the case of the Christian community hearing the parable of the unjust judge. the blessing is the deep knowledge that God is not an unjust judge, that God is loving and merciful, and that God will always be present with them – a knowledge that gives them the ability to turn their small band of dispirited believers into a worldwide movement of divine transformation. In the case of Jacob, struggling with an angel, the blessing is a personal transformation that allows him to greet the brother he fears and loves, and to see that love, not fear, comes out triumphant.

In the case of the Chilean miners, the blessing seems to have been a spirit that brought together every single person involved in the rescue, from the president of Chile to the engineers at NASA who provided special protein drinks, to every miner entombed in that dark, cramped underground cavern, and made them think of every possibility, prepare for every contingency, and engineer the perfect rescue operation. But even more than that, it seems to have been a spirit of teamwork inside the mine that refused to give up, refused to let go, kept faith every moment that God would never desert them – and brought the miners together as a group.

And in the case of you and me, with our ordinary everyday struggles, I think prayer brings us a spirit of hope. Hope that in our own long dark nights of struggle, dark nights that for some of us last for weeks or years – we may begin to understand that underneath all our worry and stress, the one we are really wrestling with is God. That God is present, giving us the hope, strength and faith we need. That somewhere in our struggles, God has a call for us. That somehow at the end of the struggle, we will be transformed. And that we, too, at the end of the dark night, will emerge blinking into the sunlight, God’s voice echoing in our minds, knowing that we have never been alone, that every moment of the way, God was present with us.

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