Sermon Text: Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 8.7-15
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, 2 Jul 06
Introduction: This Sunday marks the Fourth of July, "Independence-Day" week-end. This season of the year forces us to deal with a question which hangs heavily upon our culture: In what way may a faith community celebrate "freedom," honor patriotism and our soldiers, without sinking into simplistic, bumper-sticker sloganeering, "Triumphal-ism," "Civil Religion" or hijacking God to be "on our side?" Fortunately we have some good minds who have thought about this question. Here is one:
"The God of the Bible is a 'coming God,' Who 'is and who was and is to come.' (Revelation 1.4) It is not in our domination that the coming God is present; it is in our suffering. To speak of any nation as the fulfilling Messianic promise is to skip over martyrdom. 'Only those who endure with Christ shall reign with him.' (II Timothy 2.12) So, where can we find God in this public history of ours? We are always inclined to see God, the Absolute, only in whatever is like ourselves. What is like us endorses us, what is alien makes us unsure. It is on Golgotha that the coming God is present in history." (Contemporary Theologian, Jurgen Moltman, God for a Secular Society, The public relevance of theology, 1999 pp. 18-19)
The great preacher of a generation ago, Helmut Thielicke, once said: "We pray 'God bless America,' never realizing that God might find this very difficult. What is more, if God did bless us, we might not like it."
As a "blessing from God," they discovered, Israel went into exile when what they wanted most was the kind of God who would whip-up on the Philistines.
No, this "patriotism" business is not so simple that it can be settled with strident themes of Empire or put to rest by the usual liberal/conservative fulminations.
Then there are our texts of today, "crying out" for God not to "turn away" from our anguish. (Psalm130)
One great cultural commentator and "theologian" of our time, Bonnie Raitt has this wonderful song, which is a prayer actually, repeating the simple phrase over and over: "Help me Lord, Help me Lord, Help me, Help me Lord..." Sometimes that is all we can muster, bringing all of our tortured soul to a suffering God, for only a suffering God can help, and more poignantly, One who "suffers with."
In the New Testament lesson, the Apostle Paul is arguing for "finishing things," in this case completing the financial offering for the saints in Jerusalem, which effort seemed to begin well and then falter. "You who began last year...now finish doing it, so that you can match your eagerness with completing it..." "Flash-in the pan" personalities, full of charisma and energy...then nothing! It seems like we might be dealing here with a question of staying-power or stamina, a life lived with purpose over the long haul. How do we keep that? And why do we seem to run out of gas?
We are constantly in competitive situations and live out our lives in relentless "anticipation" of being judged or "compared to." Judith Viorst captures this quality ( Imperfect Control: Our lifelong struggles with power and surrender, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1998, p. 38.):
I love, love, love my brand-new baby sister
I'd never feed her to a hungry bear.
I'd never (no! no! no!)
Put her outside in the snow
And by mistake forget I put her there.
I'd never want to flush her down the toilet.
I'd never want to drop her on her head.
I'm only asking if
She by mistake fell of a cliff
The next time we could get a dog instead.
But there is certainly more to it than this. In anticipation of being rejected, we reject ourselves, sort of "messing things up," just when we are about to succeed. To avoid the hammer falling, we might give up ahead of time -- save ourselves the trouble. Is this what is going on here? We're talking about "finishing things."
There are those who have looked carefully at this phenomenon of "Stamina."
The International Committee for the Study of Victimization undertook research that looked at people who had suffered serious adversity -- cancer patients, prisoners of war, accident victims -- and had survived. They found that people fell generally into three categories:
An example: Vice Admiral James Stockdale was the highest-ranking United States military officer imprisoned during the height of the Vietnam War. He was tortured over twenty times and forced to submit to unspeakable horrors, during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965-1973. After his release, Stockdale became the first Three-Star officer in the history of the Navy to wear both Aviator Wings and the Medal of Honor. (image credit: US Navy, via Wikipedia)
In an interview, he was asked: "Who didn't make it out? "
"Oh, that's easy" he said, "the optimists."
"They were the ones who said 'We're going to be out by Christmas. And Christmas would come and go...and they would die of a broken heart.'"
"There is a very important lesson here: You can never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end --- which you can never afford to lose --- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." So here is Stockdale's compelling message: "We're not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!"
This insight has come to be known as the "Stockdale Paradox" or the "Hardiness Factor": Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and, at the same time, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
There is a difference between Christian hope, and "keeping a stiff upper lip." Hope of this Christian kind, comes walking out of graves, and has no patience with merely "thinking positively." Resurrection hope is a different kind altogether, which can get us out of whatever prisoner-of-war circumstances we may find ourselves in.
The end has been assured for those of Christian faith. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, God's embodiment with us, is our guarantee. We are not "born" with this kind of stamina, this unwavering, ferocious resolve.
Church is a place where we nurture this stamina story into embodiment in our lives. So may it be with us, the capacity "finish well."
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