"What Are We to Believe?"
I Samuel 1:4-20 Mark 13:1-8
In his book, The Longing for Home, Frederick Buechner wrote the following words: "The world floods in on all of us. The world can be kind, and it can be cruel. It can be beautiful, and it can be appalling. It can give us good reason to hope and good reason to give up all hope. It can strengthen our faith in a loving God, and it can decimate our faith. In our lives in the world, the temptation is always to go where the world takes us, to drift with whatever current happens to be running the strongest."
I witnessed and experienced both cruelty and kindness last week. I think that what happened to my niece was cruel. But it was good to be with family. I saw people I have not seen for fifteen years. There were relatives I did not recognize. My hope is that the experience was not one that decimated faith but one that finally strengthened our faith in a loving God. I also know that whatever progress we might have made will most likely be short lived as it doesn't take long to get back into the current of the world and give in to the temptations that always surround us.
One of the issues I have been dealing with since I first found out that my niece had cancer, but more so in the last two months when it was obvious that the cancer was winning, is the fact that life is not fair. I have one brother and one sister. They grew up in the same house with the same parents, a middle income family. They went to the same schools. For most of their lives they have lived in the same community. Now they are both retired. When my brother retired he paid cash for a fifty-five acre farm in
The reading about Hannah made me think of another situation in our family. Our son, Adam, and his wife, Candace, want to have children. They are both twenty-eight years old. There has been no pressure put on them from their parents but Adam's father-in-law did ask him if he needed some instructions. Candace's sister, Elizabeth, who is younger than Candace, already has three children. Adam and Candace are friends with two other couples who both had children last summer. Once in a while, something will be said unintentionly by one of the other couples that leave Adam and Candace feeling a bit like Hannah, empty and barren. It would be easy for Adam and Candace to say it is not fair. It would also be easy to raise questions like what have we done wrong, does God love them more, is their faith stronger than our faith.
On Friday I led a funeral for someone forty-six years old who had been married for 16 years. Yesterday we held services for Mary Agnes Doty. She and Dr. Doty were married for 61 years. Does that mean that God loved one couple more than the other? In the case of Mary Agnes and Dr. Doty we might all say "Yes," because they were such special people but in our hearts I don't think we believe that.
The fairness issue really came to a head for me this fall as our niece was obviously dying and we read passages in church about people being healed. Of course that raises the issue of faith and prayer. Are the ones who are healed the ones who have a stronger faith and who pray harder?
And my answer to that has to be no. There are healings in the Bible that don't even mention the faith of the person healed. Well, then, what about prayer. Maybe it is the person who is prayed for the most by the most faithful people. There is a group who gather every Tuesday in the meeting room of this church called the Shepherds. I don't know of a group that prays with more faith than that group of people. I know they prayed for my niece. If faith and prayer were the answer to healing, she would be alive today.
My conclusion, life is not fair. Good people suffer, bad people prosper. It rains on the just and the unjust. So why believe, why pray?
According to the story about Hannah we believe and we pray because God is a God who can take our emptiness and barrenness and bring fullness and new life out of it. According to the reading in Mark, when the absolute worst is happening, when the temple is destroyed, when there is desolation over the entire earth, when we think the end is coming, according to verse 26, "then the Son will come in the clouds with great power and glory." We believe and we pray so that we will be ready when that time comes.
Maybe the best example in the Bible is Job. Early in his life he had everything and he believed that God was blessing him for his faithfulness and good works. But then he lost everything and he had to rethink everything he ever believed. And he discovered that God was with him both in the good times and the difficult times. It is not about fairness. It is about trusting God through thick and thin to do what is best for us.
On Thursday, many people will gather around the table and offer thanks before filling their plates with bountiful servings of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and then finishing it all off with some pumpkin pie. At the same time there will be people wondering where their next meal will come from. There is nothing fair about it. So what are we offering thanks for: that God has blessed us more than others, that God loves us more than others? I don't think so. God loved Job when Job was rich and God loved Job when he had nothing.
I think we give thanks for a God who loves each and every one of us. We give thanks for a God who is continually at work to bring light out of darkness, good out of evil, life out of death. We give thanks for a God who we can trust is working our salvation out in the darkest times of our lives.
Let's not ask God to be fair. If God is fair not one of us has a chance, we are all sinners. Let us ask that God be gracious. God has already answered that prayer in Jesus.
In his life, death and resurrection God is saying to everyone, "I love you, I forgive you, I am working your salvation out. Trust me."