March 4, 2012
Challenged
- Mark 8:31-38
- Dr. Teri Thomas
Jack came home from visiting sister in Texas and taught me a new card game.
It looked like I was ahead big time when he said- Oh, by the way, I forgot one thing, if you have a pair of anything that counts as zero. Now he says it, now that I’m winning.
You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game. It is not right.
Yet sometimes it happens in situations much more serious than card games.
My good friend Cindy retired on Dec. 31st. She was ready for life of volunteering and relaxing. Last week she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She is already a breast cancer survivor, plus she is a good person and she just retired. That is not the way it is supposed to work. It’s not right.
Seventeen year old Demetrius Hewlin was late for school almost every morning. But last Monday he arrived at Chardon High School on time, just in time to be shot by classmate in the cafeteria. He was minding his own business, doing what he was supposed to do and he died. Children are not supposed to be shot in school. It is not right.
Last May a tornado went through Joplin, Missouri and killed 161 people. A large group of residents from Harrisburg, Illinois went to help those who had lost homes and businesses. Last Wednesday morning a horrific tornado with 170 mile per hour winds blew through their own town killing at least six people and injuring more than 100. Those who had reached out to help others are now in need themselves.
And on Friday another storm went through the area.
Over 35 people were killed in five states.
Why should this happen to them? It is not right.
It’s not right that your son or daughter graduated from college only to find the job market had disappeared, taking with it any chance for the future they'd dreamt about and worked toward for so long.
It’s not right that while you were making plans for your family’s future your spouse was deciding your marriage was over and making plans to move in with someone else.
It’s not right that you followed all the rules and took everyone’s advice and still your house went into foreclosure and so many of the dreams you'd held seemed to vanish into thin air.
It’s not right that our beautiful child has autism,
our beloved sister is sick unto death,
or that any number of other disappointments and disasters fall upon us.
It’s not right because everything in us teaches us that there things are not what God wants, or desires, or wills.
Who is changing the rules? This isn’t what we signed up for. Someone should have told us that before we started.
Peter had been waiting for a messiah his entire life. His parents and grandparents had been waiting. They had been promised the messiah would come, would follow in the line of the great King David, would rule with justice and might, would reward their faithfulness and chase out their enemies. And now Peter has seen the Messiah and he is confident his prayers have been answered at long last. And the Messiah says to him, “I am going to suffer, and die.” This is not the way it is supposed to work. This is not right.
Peter rebuked Jesus, “No, No! We’ve got a good thing going here.
People are having their needs met and more and more of them are joining up.
We have started a movement. We’re going to be successful.
Some of the guys are already drawing up the blueprints for a new Center for Ministry complex in Capernaum. James and John want to be co-directors and I’m putting together ‘Jesus Tour: A.D. 31’ with t-shirts and kid’s action figures and a possible book deal. Jesus, just think, you could become an author. People might even start quoting you.”
(BLOG, Following Jesus One Step at a Time by Kyle Childress)
Peter, you see, wants and needs a strong God. Jesus has to be that person. After all, he's already brought relief, comfort, healing, and life. So what's all this talk about suffering and death?
Jesus whirled around, “You don’t get it! You need to get out of my way. I must follow this path.
It’s what God wants and who I’m called to be.”
What Peter did not understand was that the God revealed in Jesus always shows up in the broken places of our lives and world. In Jesus we discover, not the God we may want, but the God we desperately need. The God whose sheds glory to join us in our shame; the God who leaves heaven to enter our hells-on-earth; the God who abandons strength -- at least strength as we imagine it – so that God can join us, embrace us, hold onto us, and love and redeem us at our places of weakness.
The God we meet in Jesus comes for those broken in body, mind, or spirit to be one with us and for us. This God will understand our disappointments, and even expects them.
Jesus comes to teach us that faith is not certainty. Hope is not optimism. Love is not painless.
But he also promises that it is at the places of our brokenness that we sense God’s real power, we meet God’s justice, and we are enveloped most fully in God's strong love.
It is in our brokenness that God tells us the way it should be. God tells us what is right.
Thanks be to God. Amen.