Bad News,
Good News
I
would encourage you all, in this coming week, to find someone who you disagree
with politically (not your Pastor, by
the way), and exchange smart-phones, or tablets, or computers, or whatever
you use to look at your Social Media.
Take a look at the stories they read,
the pictures and comments they are exposed to.
I imagine they will be the complete opposite of what you see and are exposed to.
Is it any wonder that for the first
time in our nation’s history every state that voted for a Republican for
President also voted for a Republican for Senate and vice versa with Democrats?
Is it any wonder that on a whole no
one split their ballots this year.
It’s like we’re not breathing the
same air,
singing the same songs,
or living in the same realities.
It’s
sort of like that famous picture of a duck… or is it a rabbit?
The same reality can be seen through
two very different lenses.
And
so too the Word of God
—it is Law and Gospel
—When Lutherans read the Bible we
experience it as a two edged sword. It kills us and makes us alive. As is said
so often it “afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.”
God’s word afflicts the comfortable and
comforts the afflicted.
Prayer
God’s Word afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.
Think
of fire—it’ll warm your house, or burn it down.
Or,
this “Great and Terrible Day of the Lord” Malachi speaks of as he warns his
people, people returned from Babylon and already growing complacent, warns them about their impurities. The Day of the Lord
will be an oven, burning up everything and leaving nothing.
Yet,
this “Great and Terrible Day of the Lord” is also the sun around which we
circle, giving heat and light, allowing all things to grow.
I
think of those horrible forest fires we get out west—everything is burnt, the
underbrush swallowed up, trunks blackened
—and strangely it is necessary.
Pinecones only sprout seed when
heated in hellish inferno. Growth can only occur when all is burnt.
Or
think more carefully of Malachi’s message—impurities in metal are removed in
flame, and the sores and sickness of a wound can only fully heal when exposed
to the open air.
We
can only see our savior when we’re face to face with our sins—only in our
deepest need can we find redemption.
God’s Word afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.
You’ve
been saved by Jesus acting on your behalf—no work of yours can win salvation—he
is the Resurrected one and shall Return. Wait for the Lord!
Not
a bad message by any measure
…though I think we can all agree here
today… by the mere fact that we are here today… 2000 years later
—the nearness of Christ’s return that
Paul preached has more to do with personal accountability than chronological
immediacy
—in other words, the Return of Christ
should encourage us to measure our actions in light of Christ present with us,
not throw us into unhelpful speculation.
Would you really do that to someone else if
Jesus was looking over your shoulder?
“Wait
for the Lord.” Not a bad message
—but a message badly heard by the
Thessalonians.
Some in the community appear to have
thought, “Gee, Christ is coming, I’ll just wait around and do
nothing—nitpicking the people in my church who work hard, and I’ll even live
off their work.”
This
of course doesn’t work, for if Christ acts on our behalf, how can we not act in
imitation of it, not for salvation, but out of gratitude? “Do not weary of doing right!” Paul proclaims.
Think
of the meaning of those words for the people who were nitpicking and not participating—weary, I’m afraid of
being weary.
But
think too of what those words meant for the nitpicked
—don’t be weary,
what you are doing is right!
In the face of all the obstacles of
being a Christian in the Early Church,
persecution by the government,
factionalism within the faith,
a painful split with Judaism,
in the face of all that do not weary in doing what it right!
God’s Word afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.
Look
at all this grandeur, one of the greatest edifices upon the earth—the temple in
Jerusalem
—a Religious Disneyland at times
—nothing will be left.
All these great things you helped put
together will be ended, destroyed.
If
you are faithful all that awaits you is:
the lure of leaders who are not
leaders,
wars, insurrections, geo-political
rivalries,
natural disasters and man made
disasters,
horrifying sights you would never
have expected in your wildest dreams,
arrest, persecution, betrayal by
friends and family
—you will be exposed and have to explain your faith in Jesus.
That
sounds horrifying, right? This is affliction without comfort!
We wouldn’t want to live in such
interesting of times, we’d hate for this to be our lot in life—even less so the
reality for our Children.
No gospel there, right?
Except that was exactly what the
early church was facing.
-The Destruction of the Temple, the
center of Religious Life, at the hands of the Romans.
-Violent revolutionaries claiming the
same title as Jesus.
-Infighting between Emperors,
Mount Vesuvius exploding killing
everyone in Pompeii
and covering everything within 750 miles with ash.
-Famines throughout the Empire that
shaped birth patterns for a generation,
-Formal and informal persecution—led
by soldiers or led by peasant with pitchfork—neither very nice.
-Christianity seen as unfriendly,
unsocial, and against family values.
-Christians drug before people in
power, forced to repent of their faith, or at least explain it, often at the edge of a sword.
Yes,
I believe to those afflicted Christians…
Being advised to trust Jesus’ message
and testify to it.
Being reminded that their stand, in
the face of opposition, was faithful.
Being turned from terror.
Being reminded what kind of Messiah
Jesus is.
To
those afflicted Christians these words are utter comfort.
God’s Word afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.
As
for us, in our highly polarized country, so many sure of their positions,
firmly entrenched, unwilling to see the other side, confident to the point of
idolatry and dehumanization
—We duck people and rabbit people
—if we are honest with ourselves and
with our God,
Humble enough to each entertain, as I suggested last week, the hardest of ideas that
“maybe I’m wrong.”
We ought to pray for ourselves and
for our kin, that God will afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
Amen.
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