When Bad Things Happen to Good People

By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner

Proper 12A/ Ordinary 17A
Romans 8:26-39

It’s amazing to me that despite all of our education, technology, and knowledge of scripture so many people, including Christians, still believe that bad things are supposed to happen to bad people and good things are supposed to happen to good people. So whenever something bad happens in our lives, we immediately assume that we’ve done something to deserve it, and when something tragic happens to the innocent, it throws not only our lives but our faith into a tailspin.

It’s not a question of if bad things will happen but rather when bad things will happen. In Matt.5:45 Jesus said, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” None of us are immune from difficulties or hard times. However, you can greatly increase your chances of having hardship if you choose to do evil instead of good. If you want to get mixed up with the wrong crowd, break the law, or hurt other people you will greatly increase the likelihood that your life will be full of misery, but that’s not what keeps us up at night. We don’t worry when troublemakers fall on hard times. We assume they brought it on themselves and maybe even deserve it, but when bad things happen to good people, especially ourselves, we have a crisis of faith.

Job dared to protest and take his case straight to the top. He said that this wasn’t right. It’s not how this is supposed to be, and he demanded answers, but he didn’t get an easy answer to the cause of suffering. Instead God answered Job’s questioning with questions of His own. In the end of the book of Job suffering is a deep, unfathomable mystery, and it is a part of life. Part of what makes us human is the ability to face suffering and overcome it.

So when you come to these verses in Romans, Paul is specifically addressing Christians who are suffering for their faith in Christ, but if you are looking for an answer to why we suffer, you won’t find it. You also won’t find a “how to” manual to end your suffering. These verses don’t teach us what we must do to end our suffering. Instead we find what God says He will do when we are suffering.

Three Promises to Cling to in Difficult Times:

1. The Holy Spirit helps us when we cannot help ourselves.

It is a lie that “God helps those who help themselves.” The Gospel is that God helps those who cannot help themselves. Jesus passionately took up the cause of the helpless and the marginalized… the least, the lost, and the lonely.

There are times when we feel so utterly helpless we don’t know what to do or even how to pray in those situations. We know that God is always present and always with us, but it is at those times when we are most alone and most helpless we are most aware of our need of God and His presence and His love expressed through others around us is often the only thing that sustains us.

This is a promise that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us and prays for us when we cannot pray for ourselves. There are times when words fail us and there are no words adequate to convey the depth of our pain or feelings.

Once Mother Theresa was asked what she said when she prayed. She answered that she didn’t say anything, she listened. When asked what God said to her, she said that God didn’t say anything; He listened back.

God listens to us. He hears us. He knows what we’re going through. Even though we may not see it in the moment, He upholds us and sustains us through the darkest hours. We are never truly alone, especially in our suffering

2. God can use any circumstance for our good and for His glory.

Romans 8:28 is really one of those “life preserver” verses in the Bible. It’s one of those promises you cling to when it seems like you’ve got nothing left. “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”

There have been occasions when my faith has failed and withered up to nothing, yet a promise like this becomes a stubborn refusal to accept the mess we’re in as the way things are. It was that kind of gut level faith that drove Job to persist through his suffering and refuse to accept it. This may be a defining moment in our life, but it will not define us. We are more than our pain, more than our suffering. In times like these we draw upon a strength not of ourselves to get through them.

John Maxwell talks about Failing Forward in his book of the same name. It’s all about learning from our mistakes and failures. He says when you’ve fallen on your face flat on the floor, while you’re down there pick something up so it won’t be a wasted trip. The idea is to learn from the experience and use it to make you better. I think the same should be said of our suffering.

Suffering should never be a wasted experience in our lives. It may not be pleasant and something we never wish to experience again, but at the very least use that pain and experience to propel us forward. When we look back on our lives, it is the hard times that really shape and make us into who we are. We all carry wounds and scars, so did Jesus. That’s what makes us human and being willing to show those to others makes us truly Christian.

The idea of being predestined here is not about some being “in” and others being “out” – too many theologians have spent far too much time on this idea, coming up with convoluted explanations of things like “double predestination,” where those who are doomed to Hell go there no matter what, and the Elect are chosen whether they like it or not. – John Harrison

Our “destiny”, i.e. God’s plan for our lives, is that we would know Him, that we would love Him and love others as He has loved us. In that sense we are all “predestined,” specifically God wants us to take on the likeness of His Son whom Paul called the first among many more to come. That is to say, God wants us to be like Jesus. He will use every circumstance in our life, whether good or bad, to shape us, to build us up, to encourage us, and to make us more and more into the image of Jesus.

3. Nothing and no one will ever separate us from the love of God.

God’s answer to our suffering is most clearly seen in the cross of Jesus Christ. God answered our suffering in the death of Jesus, “I will suffer with you.” Jesus did not come into the world to end all suffering and death in this life. He came into the world to suffer with us and for us. He came to redeem even our suffering, so that we do not suffer alone and never again suffer without hope.

So many people imagine that God is sitting on the edge of His seat waiting to strike us with lightning bolts every time we mess up. Ezekiel 18:23 says that God doesn’t take pleasure in the death of even the wicked. Surely, he doesn’t take pleasure in our failures or our suffering either. The Gospel says that God is sitting on the edge of His seat waiting to forgive us, to heal us, to restore us, to love us… not to harm us, not to punish us.

Even when Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem to facing death He said of those who would soon kill Him, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,” Luke 13:34.

God is stubborn and relentless in His love for us. The Bible is clear that He is on our side, on all of our sides. He is cheering for each us to be who He knows we can be. Nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever separate us from His love for us:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There is no sin that can stop God from loving you. No failure, no mistake so large that God will give up on you. There is no disease that can make you unlovely to Him. No distance you can run that His love will not find you. There is no pain so great that could numb His love from touching you. Lastly, there is no death that will ever separate us from Him.

These are the promises we cling to. This is the God who loves us, who suffers with us and for us, who upholds us when we cannot stand alone. May we rest in Him.

Simple Church: The Bride of Christ

By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner

Matthew 28:16-20

We’ve been talking throughout the month about what it means to be the Church. At its most basic level, what does it mean to be the Church? It’s easy to be caught up in trends and cultural definitions of what the Church is, but what does the Bible say?

We’ve identified dynamics that are characteristic of a Simple Church: Upward, Inward, Outward, and Forward. The images and names used in the New Testament give us insights into how these four dynamics work in the Church:

We grow Upward, as a House of Prayer. We grow Inward, as the Family of God. We grow Outward, as the Body of Christ. We go Forward, as the Bride of Christ.

The first three must be present in order for the church to go forward into growth and maturity. We’re not talking about just growing in numbers. Any organization can do that, but we grow in spiritual maturity together as a Church when we grow Upward in our relationship to God, when we grow Inward in our relationship to one another, and when we grow Outward in our relationship to our community. When we do all three, we experience spiritual maturity that enables us to go Forward to be a Church that God uses for His glory to make an impact on the lives of others.

The term the Bride of Christ isn’t used directly in the New Testament to describe the Church, but it is implied in several texts: “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready,” Rev.19:7. The Gospels also refer to Jesus as the Bridge groom, implying he has a bride, and in Ephesians Paul compares the union of husband and wife to Christ and the Church.

I think the Bride of Christ is the image that is most personal and most descriptive of the Church fulfilling the potential of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. All the preparations have been made, everything is in place to go forward into a deeper walk with Christ and experience the fullness of that relationship in the world.

I personally think that some weddings go overboard with pomp and circumstance, but you need a certain measure of decorum to signify what the importance of the occasion. I mean, if the bride showed up late for the wedding and came dragging down the aisle in sweatpants & a t-shirt like she just rolled out of bed, then got to the altar and said, “can we hurry up? I’m hungry and the game’s about to come on,” I think most grooms would be right to assume, “you know, I’m not sure, but I don’t think she’s really serious about this.”

Jesus told Peter, “if you love me, feed My sheep.” If you really love me, love My people. John tells us in 1 John, if you really love God, then love one another. We know from the New Testament that we can’t be selective in who we love and how much we love them. If we are serious about God and being followers of Christ, this is what it looks like.

Over the years, I’ve heard people make critical comments about churches and preachers, “All he ever preaches about is love, love, love… love God, love everybody. Let’s all just love…” as though that were a bad thing, as if there were any other message. If we could just get that one, we wouldn’t need any others. That’s exactly what Jesus said when they asked him, “What’s the most important commandment?” He said all the law and the prophets hang on these two: Love God, Love one another. That’s it. There is no other message.

It’s easy to look down your nose at someone else and judge them. It’s easy to talk about sin and end times, and make ourselves look better than all those ignorant sinners out there. It’s quite another thing to look in the mirror and see ourselves as we are and to see one another as we are, warts and all, and choose to love each other anyway. Jesus didn’t live and die on the cross, so we could tell everyone how horrible they are and how God wants to roast them in hell forever, unless they believe like us, dress like us, act like us, worship like us… We’re NOT the insiders who have the inside track on eternal salvation. On our best day, we are beggars telling other beggars where we found bread. Jesus died to show us this is what love looks like. This is the message. That you don’t fight ignorance with arguments. You don’t overcome violence with violence. You don’t fix loneliness and heartache with orthodoxy. Love doesn’t come with limits. If it has limits, it’s not really love. This is what love looks like… “Greater love has no man than this, that you lay down your life for another.”

The goal for a New Testament Church isn’t to be big and have lots of people, lots of money, and lots of activity. That’s not what it’s about. The goal, the purpose of the Church, is to love God, love one another, love your community, and grow in grace with God and one another. When your heart is in the right place and your priorities are lined up with God’s plan, as found in scripture, spiritual growth and maturity are sure to follow.

The hard lesson that I had to learn over the years in the church is that a lot of people in the church aren’t really interested in spiritual maturity. They just like to see most of the pews and offering plates filled.

A lot of people aren’t really interested in reaching their community. They’re just interested in having a good reputation in the community.

A lot of people aren’t interested in loving one another and being church to one another. They just want people to think good things about them and stay out of their business.

A lot of people aren’t really interested in knowing God and growing closer to Him. They just want to be entertained and have some measure of peace that they’ll go to some celestial palace when they die.

I’m not being mean. I’m being honest, and not only have I met those kinds of people in the church, from time to time, I’ve been those kinds of people. My heart hasn’t always been in the right place, all the time. Believe it or not, from time to time, I’ve liked to think that it was all about me. There have been times when I wasn’t all that concerned with spiritual maturity, and growing closer to God and others. It’s not that we have ill intentions. Most of the time we’re just busy or distracted with bills, jobs, family, health, etc. that we lose our focus and take our eyes off the prize. For some of us those moments may last a few hours, a few days, a few months, or longer, but we need to be reminded. We need to re-commit to the purpose and plan that God has for us and for His church.

This is a picture of the potential that we have in Christ. It’s a picture of who Jesus knew the Church could be. It’s up to us to decide if we’ll live up to that potential. Are we going to be the person, the people, and the Church that honors God, loves one another, and loves the community and the world that God placed us in? Are we just going to make this all about us? We need to make that choice today… and tomorrow… and the next day…

Simple Church: A House of Prayer

By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner

Mark 11:12-21

An artist said that to make a sculpture he takes away everything that doesn’t look like the final product in his mind. To get back to a simple church we must take away everything that doesn’t belong, everything that preoccupies our attention and wastes our time and efforts, until we are focused intently on what God has called us to be.

A Simple Church is one that mirrors the holy dance of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, infused with the presence of Christ. There are four values that must be present and at work in a healthy church: Upward, Inward, Outward, and Forward. The church embodies the Upward dynamic as a House of Prayer. The Inward dynamic is experienced in the Family of God. The Outward dynamic is demonstrated as Followers of Christ. The Forward dynamic is realized as the Body of Christ. Today, we want to look at that first reality of the Church as a House of Prayer.

This encounter of Jesus in the temple follows his “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem on what we know as Palm Sunday. Some have said that this is Jesus having a really bad day or the one time that Jesus got really mad. I don’t think either of those are true. Jesus intended to do exactly what he did, and the incident with the fig tree on the way to Jerusalem is directly related to what happened when he got to the temple.

The first thing that jumps off the page as we read about Jesus coming to the fig tree is that “it was not the season for figs,” yet Jesus expected to find figs there anyway? That sticks in my mind and can’t be overlooked. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? Jesus knew what time of year it was. Even more shocking is Jesus’ reaction to the barren tree, cursing it to be barren. What happened to the kind and gentle Jesus? Who is this guy? What’s going on here?

It might help us in reading this passage to know that the fig tree was a symbol for Israel. The prophets that came before Jesus and paved the way for His coming prophesied over and over for the people to repent and return to God in faithfulness, to stop trying to be like all the other nations and people around them and live the unique life as the people of God they were destined to be.

When Jesus enters Jerusalem he found that it was apparently not the season for prayer either. When He arrived on Palm Sunday, from first glance it appears that everyone is on his side, greeting him with a ticket-tape parade, but these same people would be the ones to crucify him soon thereafter. What they were really cheering for is someone to lead a revolution against the Romans and run them out of town, but Jesus came in peace riding on a colt as a sign of peace.

When Jesus came to the temple the next day, He did not find people prostrated in prayer and worship, welcoming in the stranger and the outcast. He found a big business going on, people being exploited by religious leaders, and people being excluded from worship. When people came worship and offer sacrifices, it was a principle that they should offer the first-fruits of their possessions not the worst they had. It was the duty of the priests to make sure the sacrifices were acceptable, that they were not sick or deformed. Others were very poor or only had produce and crops to offer as sacrifices, which were traded for animal sacrifices, even doves. This system had changed significantly over time and became very corrupt. When people came to offer sacrifices, they were met with the salesmen on the temple steps. People were forced to buy “temple-approved” sacrifices from the “church bookstore.” The prices were inflated and the trading was unfair. It exploited people who came to worship for money and excluded people who were poor and had no means to trade.

It was this corrupt system that Jesus walked into that upset him so badly, that the temple had become a big business and people were being excluded from worship. Likewise, the church has become a big business in many places. It has become an entertainment destination for thousands, and in many cases functions as anything but a House of Prayer.

We’ve all seen the televangelists crusades on TV. They bring the sick and disabled up on stage to pray for them to receive healing, and most of the time they claim to have some miracle take place, but what the cameras don’t show you are the dozens and sometimes hundreds of people lining the walls and back of the arenas lying on hospital beds, slouched over in wheelchairs hoping to receive a miracle. People are unloaded from vans on stretchers like a trauma unit desperately seeking a miracle. What they also don’t show you on TV are the buckets being passed up and down the aisles raking in piles of cash to pay for the tailored suits, luxury cars, mansions, and private jets of the “ministers.”

What grieved the heart of Jesus most was people going through the motions playing church, exploiting people’s desperation for profit. While we may take comfort in knowing that we don’t act like those televangelists, I think anytime the church functions as anything but a house of prayer it grieves the heart of God. This isn’t a civic organization. It’s not a country club. It’s not an entertainment destination. It’s not the place to score points with God and others. It is a house of prayer, first and foremost.

I remind myself often that people don’t come to hear me. They come to hear from God, to worship, to experience the presence of God. We should do our best to get out of the way and let that happen without interjection ourselves and our egos in the way.

The Upward value is the regular experience of God. The church works when people encounter Him; they fail when the church simply goes through religious motions, praying religious prayers. The kind of encounter with God is based on an authentic passion for Him, a desire to be with Him, and desire to share what He is doing with others.

The ultimate purpose of the Church is to know Christ, the Head of the church, becoming like Him. It is a place where the people of God participate with God and one another in His holy dance. Basic Christian community is not simply a method or an option for the Church. It is a way to experience and know who God is.

Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.” The presence of Christ is already in the midst of the Church. His presence is a gift to us and is what allows the Church to experience relationship with God and one another. Without the empowering presence of Christ in His body, the Church, it is just another non-profit organization and has no life. The presence of Christ is the only unique contribution the Church has to offer the world. It is what separates the Church from every organization doing good deeds all over the world.

The most important thing to look for when you come to church isn’t:

• Did they sing the songs I like?
• Did the preacher keep my attention and make me laugh?
• Did everything flow seamlessly without interruption?
• Was there good attendance? Was the offering good?

The only criteria for whether or not we have gathered in vain is did we experience the presence of God? Did we hear from Him? Did we encounter Christ today? Whether in a verse of a song, a Sunday School lesson, a sermon, or a hug from a friend.

If the presence of God is present in our churches, if we lift Him up and keep our focus, you won’t need gimmicks, bells, and whistles to get people to come there. He will draw people unto Himself.

This is first and foremost a House of Prayer. We bring our burdens here to Christ and to one another. It is a sanctuary, a refuge, a safe place to be yourself, to be honest, to be authentic, to be real about who you are. This is not a place to parade our accomplishments and boost our egos. Leave them at the door. The ground is level at Calvary. We all come to this table just as we are.

We’ll Work Till Jesus Comes

By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner

Proper 28A/Ordinary 33A/Pentecost +22
Matthew 25:14-30

The Bible has been misused and taken out of context for a very long time. Jesus Himself often had to correct misunderstandings about Old Testament scriptures. Hopefully, it has been misused mostly out of ignorance and not from ill-intention. I certainly have made mistakes over the years in how I looked a particular passage and now view some things differently than I did when I first started preaching. However, some people intentionally and maliciously twist scripture to fit their own agendas.

This particular passage is one of the more commonly abused passages in the Gospels. It has become quite popular with preachers of the “prosperity Gospel.” You know, the tv preachers who say God wants all Christians to be millionaires, to inherent their “divine destiny,” “name-it-and-claim-it,” etc. Of course the path to achieving that success begins with a donation to their tv ministry and signing up for their audio message of the month club.

They like to use a text like this to prove that God wants us to be wealthy. The implication is that if you’re not, something is wrong with your faith. They want you to read this passage literally and take away from it that God wants us all to do well with our 401k’s and stock options. If that were the case, we don’t need pastors. We need financial planners and hedge fund managers. We don’t need sermons. We need seminars on how to manage your money.

Too many people see God as a divine slot machine. “If I put X in, pull the religious lever correctly, I will get Y out.”  Many people see Christianity as one big transaction. “If I’m a good person, God will love me and take me to heaven when I die.”

Whenever Moses went up the mountain and stayed gone too long, the people took to their own devices and made it up as they went along. After Jesus ascended and left the Church behind, some people decided to follow the Israelites example. While we may not be worshipping golden calves these days, we have taken to worshipping personalities, power, and money, even in the church, especially in the church.

This is another parable in a series of those that Jesus told that talks about the kingdom of heaven. “The kingdom of heaven is like…” Jesus is trying to prepare the Church for his physical absence from them. The Gospels were written decades after Jesus left by a faith community that had begun to question whether would Jesus return, when He would return, and how. Most of them were written even after A.D. 70 when the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. These were bleak times for this community, and they turned to the words of Jesus for comfort and hope.

When they heard the parable again after Jesus had left, they heard it differently. “Like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them… After a long time the master of those servants returned…” They knew who the Master was when they heard this parable retold in Jesus’ absence.

In the parable of the 10 virgins waiting for the bridegroom, we were told to be vigilant in watching and waiting for His return, even though He tarry. Keep on watching, keep on waiting.  Be on watch for the kingdom to appear in every moment.  In this parable we are told what we are to be about while we are waiting, what kind of business we should be engaged in. We are not to dig a hole and hide our treasure. We are not to find a safe little place to hide, hold hands, and sing kum-ba-ya till Jesus comes. We are supposed to be about our Father’s business, just like Jesus.

The real currency of life is not money. The real currency of our lives is time. We must be careful how we spend it. We must wisely spend our lives in our Father’s business, even though Christ tarry in His coming. We should not become lazy. We should not be fearful. We should live to please ourselves, but we should love God and love one another. Use everything we have: our time, our bodies, the strength of our hands, the skill of our minds… use them all for God’s glory.

Annie Dillard said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our life.” It’s what we do in the little insignificant moments that matters, not just on those really big important moments where everyone is watching. What are you doing with the life God gave you? Are you just going to wring your hands in despair? Are you going to spend it on your own pleasures, going from one to another trying to find happiness? Are you going to use your life to glorify the God who gave it to you and to love the people God has placed in your life? That’s the real question.

Jesus is coming. Jesus is always coming and is always here. He comes to us each and everyday in big and small ways. Jesus comes in our acts of kindness and words of love. As we spend our lives on behalf of others, Christ comes to us and to those we love in those moments, and we get a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.