Sermon for the 23rd Sunday after Trinity, 2020
Homily for the 23rd Sunday After Trinity
November 15, 2020
Fr. Tony Melton
Flannery O’Conner is one of my favorite authors. She was from Georgia, a Roman Catholic, southern gothic writer. I love her short stories, though many would accuse them of being dark. I love her because she affirms the messiness and suffering of life. The settings and people in her stories are so broken, just like us. And things often end badly, just like now. Yet there is redemption in them, though often in ways that are confusing, even off-putting. There is one story called “Good Country People” where there is a woman named Joy, a miserable daughter, an atheist with a PhD in Philosophy. She lost her leg in an accident and lives a bitter life with her simple mother, her cynicism, and her prosthetic leg. She changes her name from Joy to Hulga. A young Bible-salesmen comes along and tries to seduce Hulga, helps her up in the barn loft. When he is rebuffed, he steals her leg and leaves her up there. The story ends.
The story is more like life than you might think. We coast along thinking that everything is going just fine, but then something happens. Things don’t work out. Someone makes a mess of something. Hulga could have considered her life a miserable mess made irreparably more miserable by this Bible-salesmen. But part of Flannery’s point is that God was at work here, invisibly, confusingly. Even in the shockingly terrible things that happen, He is working. Hulga’s prosthetic leg was the linch-pin to her cynical, ugly, self-loathing identity. God took it away, and He used a nihilistic, kleptomaniac Bible-salesmen to do it.
Life is hard. You might be going through a good time right now. That’s wonderful. But if you talk to enough people at the end of their life, they will tell you that life is full of tears and toil, that God’s redemption is messy and confusing, sometimes bewildering. Things don’t go according to plan. But God saves us in and through the mess.
Our subject today is suffering. The cry of mankind since Genesis 3 has been “How long must we suffer? Why are you allowing this, God?” This theme of suffering is so needed in our time. Modernity has taken dead aim at so many types of suffering, and conquered them. In times past, suffering was no great surprise. Plans rarely worked out back then. Now, when suffering comes, when things don’t work out, it is a great shock to our soul. It is easy to be tricked into believing that life was meant for our happiness rather than our holiness. Modern people are tricked into thinking they can make a plan, strive for it, accomplish it, and rest in the satisfaction of a plan well executed. But people near the end of their life know better. They know what Whittaker Chambers in the prologue of his book “Witness” told his children, that “life is pain.”
I’d like to walk you through the five passages of Scripture that are in the Liturgy. There are always at least four in the Liturgy: the Psalm, the Old Testament Lesson, the Epistle, and the Gospel. But today we have two psalms, so five passages. Our three Old Testament passages retrace the story of Genesis 2-3, and they ask the question, “Why is life so hard? Why doesn’t life work out the way it should? Why is there so much humiliation and affliction when God’s original intent was to give us glory and peace?” Our two New Testament passages answer the question.
As I said, Psalm 8, Psalm 138, and Isaiah 64 retrace the story of Genesis 2-3. Turn to page 5 in your bulletins find Psalm 8:4-6. “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visits him? 5 Thou madest him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and worship. 6 Thou makes him to have dominion of the works of they hands, and thou hast put all thing in subject under his feet.” Don’t you hear Genesis 2 in that? perhaps the highest note in the Old Testament. And yet on the next page we have Psalm 138, which is probably more indicative of man’s place within the world after Genesis 3. verse 7: “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, yet shalt thou refresh me…8 “The Lord shall make good his loving-kindness toward me, yea, thy mercy O LORD, endureth for ever; despise not then the works of thine own hands.”
Most of human history has been plea to God for help out of our troubles. The original plan was written in Genesis, but also embedded in our soul. We know that we were meant for glory, for shalom, for dominion. Things were supposed to go right. They didn’t. Now we suffer. We build things up, and then things come crashing down. This is where Isaiah is in our Old Testament Lesson. He knows that man has sinned and that God is angry. “Behold, thou art wroth, for we have sinned…we are as an unclean thing, and our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” And because of man’s sin, all of our efforts at fulfilling the Adamic mandate seem to crumble and fail. Isaiah says, “Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste.” And then, in the last verse of the Old Testament lesson, Isaiah issues the same cry as the psalmist does to finish Psalm 138: “Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O Lord? Wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?”
So man, who was meant for glory, suffers since the Fall. He is tasked with dominion, he longs for it, yet because of his sin, his efforts fail, his achievements crumble, he feels God’s affliction, and he is humiliated.
And then Jesus comes on the scene, and everyone is asking the same question as our Psalmist and Isaiah. “How much longer must we suffer? Will this man bring us back into glory, dominion, shalom?” But they do not receive the answer that they want, and it drives them crazy. Turn to page 11. In the Gospel, it says that the Pharisees and the Herodians team up against Jesus. A little background: the Pharisees and the Herodians NEVER teamed up. They hated each other! The Pharisees wanted the Romans out. The Herodians supported the government of King Herod, Rome’s puppet. These two groups were on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but they had one thing in common: they both spent enormous amounts of energy contriving ways to take dominion of the promised land and to end the suffering of God’s people ASAP, and they both hated Jesus for not joining them in that. So, they picked something that would make him choose a side, to fight for dominion this way, or fight for dominion that way? The Herodians needed the people to give the tribute tax to Caesar because that is how their puppet king stayed in power. The Pharisees hated the tribute tax because it showed that they were still under the thumb of the Romans. So they ask Jesus, “Should you give Caesar the tax or not?” And Jesus says the famous line, “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.” He refused to enter the fray. These men were screaming the same cry as Isaiah and the psalmist: “Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down…that the nations would tremble at thy presence! How long will you put up with the suffering of your people? How long till we return to shalom? How long till you remove our affliction?” And they killed Jesus because He did not say, “Now!” Or at least, not in the way that they wanted him to say it.
How does Jesus fit into the suffering of mankind? Everyone wanted him to bring back Eden. To usher in the Messianic Kingdom of Shalom. To rebuild Jerusalem. The take dominion over all the earth. And He says things that seem to suggest that He did! “I will rebuild the Temple in 3 days.” “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” Shalom I leave with you, my shalom I give unto you… not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” His Kingdom, His Shalom, His Temple looked nothing like they hoped for. Their city still laid in ruins. Their temple was still destroyed. They were still under the thumb of the Romans. The circumstances of life were still as messy and broken as they were before!
Listen, there are several of you that are going through some really hard things. In fact, as I look over you right now, I see the crosses that you bear right now. Some of you are out of work. There is financial stress. Marital stress. Physical suffering. Family problems. In-law problems. Political worries. Pandemic fears. Maybe you’ve made a mess of your life. Maybe your kid is making a mess in his or her life. 2020 has been a terrible year for so many. Isn’t Jesus King? Isn’t it 2020 Anno Domini? Where’s the dominion? Why is there still so much suffering in the world? Why don’t things work out like they should? Why do things fall apart so easily? “Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O Lord? Wilt thou withhold thy shalom, and afflict us very sore?”
There are those out there that would tell you that following Jesus is going to result in a great life. That things will go well for you. That your children won’t fall away. That you won’t get sick and die prematurely. That if the Church has enough faith then we will take control, have influence and dominion. These men and politicians are just like the Pharisees and the Herodians of Jesus’ day. They see the drama of salvation playing out in this life. They think that this life is where we receive our glory, and that the journey of life is a straight line on an ascending slope. Paul dealt with these types of people, too. Listen to what he says in our Epistle. Turn there on page 10.
These men to whom Paul refers “mind earthly things” whereas our citizenship is in heaven. These men to whom Paul refers “glory in that which is their shame” and by this he means that they seek glory and power in this life, whereas he describes this life as “the body of our humiliation”. Their end is destruction, whereas we will be conformed to the body of his glory, meaning His dominion, glory, and Shalom will be ours. He is able to subject all things unto himself. Paul said that the Philippians were to be followers of him, whereas these other men were “enemies of the cross of Christ”. Why enemies of the cross of Christ? Because the Cross is the one thing that can never fit into a prosperity gospel, or any way of living that sees the Christian life as a steady building up of a personal dominion, whether that is reputation, money, family, or church planting.
Listen, bad stuff is going to happen in your life. Things rarely work according to the plan. Since Genesis 3, life has been hard and Jesus didn’t make everything perfect for us. We still cry, “How long? When will you fix this?” If we are like the Pharisees, Herodians, or these enemies of the Cross of Christ, and we expect that we should have power, progress, possessions, then when we trouble comes we are crushed. St. Paul calls this world “the body of our humiliation”. Beware of those whose glory is in this life. Why doesn’t Jesus come and fix it now? I don’t know these things, but what I do know is this. The point of this life is not for you to show the world how how happy your home is, how godly your children are, how secure your finances are, how healthy your body is, how solid your friendships are. The point of this life is humble faith. Our psalm this morning, 138:6, “For though the LORD be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly.” So be lowly. Don’t fret because your life doesn’t look like how you planned. That’s what the Pharisees, Herodians, and the enemies of the Cross of Christ do. Rather, be like Isaiah, who in our Old Testament lesson looks out over the rubble of God’s holy city, a desolation, and even as he says, “How long will you withhold your Shalom and feed us the bread of affliction?” But he also says, “O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.”
We are not the potter over the clay of our life. God is. He is the potter. And making pots is a messy confusing process. God works in the mess. He saves in the mess. And through suffering He is conforming us to the glorious body of Jesus. So, don’t be surprised when things don’t work out according to your plans. They’ve never worked out. Life has never been clean, and God’s redeems His people in confusing and mysterious ways. You won’t always understand it. But trust that this potter is also our Father. He loves us. He will, through His Son, subject all things unto himself.
In closing, I’d like to read for you one of my favorite passage in all of English Literature. It is the last paragraph of the prologue in Whittaker Chambers’ book “Witness”. I referenced it at the beginning of this homily. He speaks to his children as I think God would speak to us.
“My children, when you were little, we used sometimes to go for walks in our pine woods. In the open fields, you would run along by yourselves. But you used instinctively to give me your hands as we entered those woods, where it was darker, lonelier, and in the stillness our voices sounded loud and frightening. In this book I am again giving you my hands. I am leading you, not through cool pine woods, but up and up a narrow defile between bare and steep rocks from which in shadow things uncoil and slither away. It will be dark. But, in the end, if I have led you aright, you will make out three crosses, from two of which hang thieves. I will have brought you to Golgotha—the place of skulls. This is the meaning of the journey. Before you understand, I may not be there, my hands may have slipped from yours. It will not matter. For when you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wise.
Your Father”
Amen.