The Victory of Suffering Love

Text:  Matthew 16:21-28

Theme:  “The Victory of Suffering Love”

12^th Sunday after Pentecost

August 31, 2014

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Your worship folder left off one word from the title of today’s Meditation:  Love.  The theme should read:    “The Victory of Suffering Love.”  Our theme is a five-word description of Christianity.  My addled memory banks are going to try to remember this.  I want to have it in my mental Rolodex if someone asks me for a short explanation of the faith.  It is the victory of suffering love.

In that great chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13 (a passage most often used at weddings), Paul states:   “Love bears all things.”  He did not say: “Love bears all that we have decided it is going to bear.”  It says it bears all things, and that includes, but is not limited to, suffering. 

Oh, for goodness sake.   I’d much rather have our theme be “The Victory of Love.” Take the dadgum suffering out of it.   There’s enough of that in the world as it is, right? And isn’t church a chance to escape from that for a little while with friends and then have brunch afterwards?

Two thousand some odd years ago, they didn’t have a long Labor Day Weekend in that part of the world where Jesus did His thing.  Yes, they observed the Sabbath Day.  That, of course, was one of the Ten Commandments, and how you kept that commandment was covered in a smattering of lesser laws designed to help you keep the big ones. 

No, it wasn’t Labor Day and it probably wasn’t the Sabbath, but some scholars think that Jesus was on something of a retreat when he was way up North in Caesarea Philippi. That’s the place on the map where our text took place.

Jesus asked a big question:  “Who do people say that I am?”  The disciples gave Him the results of the polling question.  Then, He gets closer to home:  “But who do you say that I am?” 

Simon Peter replies:  “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  “Blessed are you, Simon son of John,” Jesus replies.  “For flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father who is in heaven.”  Give the old boy his props and creds.  He confessed his faith.  He got it right!  Bravo!

But hold on to your hat, mother!  Things are about to get real interesting., and I’m as serious as a heart attack about this.   It starts right where our reading does:  “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, and chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Did you catch it?  Did you hear the word “suffer” in there?  He suffered, specifically, at the hands of people who interpreted their religion in a certain way. 

I wonder:  to what extent does an interpretation of faith or religion, if you will, cause people to suffer today?  It’s a most interesting question.  And, brothers and sisters in Christ, I’m not just talking about ISIS or radical Islam.

Well, all this mention of suffering didn’t go over real well with the guy who had just affirmed his faith.  At one moment, it’s:  “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  At the next moment, Jesus pipes up about suffering, and then, from the mouth of Peter again, it’s:  “Never, Lord!  This shall never happen to you.” It says he rebuked Jesus.  Ouch. 

Jesus, however, didn’t leave that one dangling.  He didn’t say:  “There, there now, my friend.  Let’s use out best church language.  Take some deep, cleansing breaths.  Let’s just relax and go out to the prayer garden.  It’s a nice day.”  How well does that approach work with bullies, or, in this instance, with, apparently, the devil?

Jesus says direct to Peter:  “Get behind me, Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”  My mentor, Rev. Dr. Nagel, with this verse in mind, exclaimed:  “What greater victory for the devil than to turn Peter into anti-Christ!”  Ouch.

It’s time for some brutal honesty.  Sometimes I wonder if Jesus isn’t thinking much the same thing in view of a whole bunch of churches these days!  Here we are – and the Presbyterian Church (USA) and other ecclesiastical entities are included in this – and we are LOSING AN ENTIRE GENERATION of young millennials.  It’s a statistical fact.  Our liturgies, our sermons, our organs, our stained glass windows, our we/they, member or non-member thinking just isn’t cutting it.  Keep it up, and all we’ll do, if the statistics mean anything, is rearrange deck chairs on an ecclesiastical Titanic.   Somehow I think we have managed, in the last two or three decades or so, to turn Jesus in a new Moses, a new Law-giver, a fundamentalist, right-wing zealot who is going to return to earth some day with an AK-47 assault rifle and set things straight—as some decorated, retired general who now heads a “family research council” thinks.   We’re about God and country and decency and good order and rules and regulations and coffee and cookies and mints and nuts and finery.   But these young millennials see the world a bit differently – with its guns, pipes, needles, booze, bongs,  pills, debts, lack of job, lack of future, lack of hope, dysfunction as far as the eye can see, and what are they looking for? Should it really surprise us that they prefer a tune by Snoop Dogg versus a hymn by Isaac Watts?  I mean, who are we kidding?  What are they looking for?  I can answer it in one word:  mercy.  I can answer it with another word:  grace.  I can answer it with another word:  hope.   I can answer it with another word:  inclusion.  If they’re looking for a church at all, they’re looking for the one that behaves like this:  “Whatever you do for the least of these my brethren, you’ve done unto me.”

If the Presbyterian Church is to survive, Satan is going to have to back up.  And it takes Christ alone to do that!  It takes the suffering love of Jesus to do that.  It takes people who REALIZE that and get out front with it. 

The good news is that Jesus DID go on to Jerusalem.  He did suffer much at the hands of a certain interpretation of religion.  He was put to death.  And He rose on the third day.  He didn’t do it as a victim of fate.  He did it on His terms, and He did it because He loved His people – all of them.  Christianity is a victory.  It is the victory of suffering love.  You may lose your life in the process, but Jesus promised that you will find it.

God bless the churches – and, please God, let it be ours as well – that take Jesus up at His Word.  More fully, more richly, they will know the victory of suffering love.  They may even discover – to their unexpected and pleasant surprise – church growth.

Amen.

Alright, How Do We Do This?

Text:  Romans 12:1-8

Theme:  “Alright, How Do We Do This?”

11^th Sunday after Pentecost

Christian Education Rally Sunday

August 24, 2014

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your[a] faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead,[b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of sermons in these eight verses alone, so I’m going to cut it down to size and focus on just one verse.  There are hundreds upon hundreds in this one verse, but I’ll give it a shot anyway.  It’s the first verse of the eight, and I’ll read it again:  Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

Today is Christian Education Rally Day.  Our session, the governing body of our church, decided on this Sunday, and that’s fine.   Special thanks to Carol Nance, our elder in charge of Christian education, for the good work she has done.   Rally Day, among other things, celebrates that very Protestant contribution of the Sunday School (or Church School) to American Christianity.  So, as children, youth, and young adults go back to school, head off to college or university, and experience this annual time of transition in life, I challenge all of you, as disciples of Jesus Christ, to learn more about your faith; to get more comfortable with your Bible; to share your experience, strength, and hope with your fellow brothers and sisters.  Yes, I challenge you and I challenge myself.

It is a day and a time when challenges seem to be popular.  I’m thinking, for instance, of the ice bucket challenge that has raised more for ALSA– the group on the front line in the fight against Lou Gehrig’s disease – in one month than all of last year.

But today, based on this one verse I just read, I present a challenge much older and far deeper.  For starters, it’s not my challenge at all.  I’m just here to give it a voice.  It is, again, the first verse of the text: 

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

“I urge you” – challenge you, appeal to you, exhort you, call you out – “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.”  That’s quite a bit different than getting called out to pour a bucket of ice on your head or pony up one hundred dollars, isn’t it?

Well, what exactly is a “living sacrifice”?  The noun is “sacrifice” and the adjective is “living”, so let’s start with the noun:  sacrifice.  Sacrifice here doesn’t mean cutting a check to a charity or giving up chocolates for Lent. 

Sacrifice means death.  Something or someone dies.  Sacrifice, most fully understood from the Bible’s perspective, meant the shedding of blood.  It isn’t pretty.  It doesn’t fit very well in “Better Homes and Gardens” or “Southern Living” magazine.  The New Testament book of Hebrews declares that “…without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.”  When body and blood are spoken of separately, it denotes sacrifice.  A body deprived of its blood is dead.  The Scriptures declare:  “the life of the creature is in the blood.”

The real kicker, though, in this verse, is the adjective:  living.  Offer your bodies as a “living sacrifice.”  The language here seems almost contradictory.  It certainly is mysterious:  a “living sacrifice”. 

“A living sacrifice.”  It doesn’t mean that your heart stops pumping blood, your lungs stop breathing, or your brain waves stop registering.  It means that you no longer live for yourself.  Let me repeat:  it means you no longer live for yourself.

You live for God, in faith, and for your neighbor, in love.  What you attempt to put to death is self-centeredness.  In the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous, it puts forth that “self-centeredness, we think, is the root of all our problems.  We have to be rid of it or it kills us.”  The difference between a typical person and chronic alcoholic is just that the self-centeredness is more on display. 

This past week, a friend of mine, and a Christian, said that with all this ice bucket challenge water flying around it almost seemed like baptism.  I got to thinking and it reminded me of the answer an old catechism gave to the question:  “What does baptism signify?”  The answer is:  “It signifies that the Old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise, who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

That’s a tall order.  Who is sufficient unto these things?  Or, more succinctly:  “Alright, how do we do this?”

How can we accept, in our day, this ancient and ever-fresh challenge?  The answer is that, in and of ourselves, we cannot.  The apostle is asking the impossible. 

But, you see, there’s this little, verbal clause in the living sacrifice challenge.  It’s almost like fine print that is so easily overlooked.  Depending on how you translate it into modern English, it’s three to five words.  The five word translation is “…in view of God’s mercies”.  The three word translation is “through God’s mercies.” 

Without God’s mercies we cannot live for God or for the neighbor.  We cannot live in faith, real faith, or in love, real love.  The message of the Christian Gospel is that God, in Jesus Christ, is merciful to us.  That’s what the cross of Jesus Christ and His empty tomb are all about.  When those mercies are kept in view, well, miracles have been known to happen.

Most of the examples I’ve seen of the ice bucket challenge show people that don’t bring much with them.  In fact, all that they have on is usually a t-shirt and a pair of shorts.  There’s no luggage or excess baggage lying around. They don’t need it anyway. 

Similarly, when, through God’s mercies, you accept the challenge to become a living sacrifice, you leave behind all that spiritual, mental, and emotional “excess baggage” that only weighs you down.  Probably the heaviest and worst piece of baggage that we get to leave behind is what we call resentment.  The longer you carry a resentment over someone or over some thing that has happened to you, you’ll wake up one day to discover that you’re drinking poison.  You may even be entirely justified in that resentment.  But the more you hold on to it, the more it will eat you alive.  Why not, by the mercies of God, let go of that resentment!  Make, by the mercies of God, the amends that need to be made.  Then, by the mercies of God, offer yourself as a living sacrifice.

My own experiences of this do not constitute some dramatic testimony suitable for Youtube or social media.  But I will say this to the congregation where God has called me:  I’ve had just enough moments in my life, times of being a living sacrifice, to tell you that it’s the most incredible thing in the world.

For the person who, by the mercies of God, has accepted the living sacrifice challenge, what is it like?  In the ALS ice bucket challenge, you’re all wet on the outside.  In the living sacrifice challenge, you’re different on the inside. 

Here’s how one participant described it.  His name is V.V. Raman, and this is what he wrote after the Gujarat earthquake struck India in January of 2000:

When lightning strikes a praying crowd

And the pious burn and die;

When earthquakes bury decent folk

And orphaned children cry;

When sick and old are abandoned too

And people lose their mind;

Try not for these and disasters such

Answers clear to find.

There are times to ask if God indeed

Is fancy or a fact.

There are times at which we need to go

And soon begin to act.

With loss and pain and intense grief

We don’t have much to gain,

From arguments on heaven and hell.

They’ll all be just in vain.

Let’s search and see what we can do

For those who are in need,

How best we can console and heal,

How we can clothe and feed.

It does not matter if we do not know

Why there’s pain around.

What we need are helping hands,

Not learned views and sound.

Amen.

Persistence!

Text:  Matthew 15:21-28

Theme:  “Persistence”

10^th Sunday After Pentecost

July 17, 2014

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

If social media is all you had to go on, you can be forgiven for thinking that all your friends lead such interesting, fascinating, and fun-filled lives.  They have the best adventures, the best spouses, the best pets, the best kids and grandkids.  They go to the best bars and take their meals  at the best restaurants.  Then there are the reports about the best summer vacations.  There is Joe and there is Jane – frolicking on the beach at Cabo San Lucas.  There is Bob and there is Betty – sipping daiquiris in Destin, Florida.  All is well.  Their friends respond to such postings with a thumbs-up “like” and comments like this:  “Have fun, you guys.  Get back safely.  Hugs!”

But then, Robin Williams dies.  It’s a suicide.  Yes, it’s Mork of Mork and Mindy fame.  It’s the academy award winner from Good Will Hunting.  It’s Mr. Keating from Dead Poet’s Society. There was a suicide in that movie, wasn’t there? And didn’t he bring his comedic genius to our troops in so many USO shows? 

How can this be?  We are shocked.  The news shatters the narrative of all those interesting, fascinating, and fun lives.  “Oh yeah,” our cultures recalls, “didn’t he have issues with alcoholism and drug addiction?  Didn’t he say something about depression?  I seem to remember he did.   He was such a funny man.  How could he be so tormented?”

Maybe if he “gave his heart to the Lord Jesus,” as one “Christian” website suggested, then Lord Jesus would take those self-destructive impulses away.  This came after the assertion that his incredible ability to entertain was actually demon possession.  Why some so-called “Christians” turn Christianity into tabloid fodder is a mystery to me. 

USA Today, on the other hand, took the high rode with a couple of intelligent and intelligible articles on the reality of mental illness.  In the last decade, the incidence of suicide in Robin Williams’s age group went up by thirty percent.  If it were any other area of health concern, said one doctor, there would be a national outcry.  But there is no outcry.  Only stories, far less publicized stories, Robin Williams-like stories that happen every day.  Why the lack of outcry?  It’s because we’re not comfortable talking about mental illness. In fact, we can even stigmatize it.

Of all my uncles and aunts, the one I knew the least about was my Aunt Ruth.  There was little said about her.  Few inquiries were made.  Eventually, we learned that she had been institutionalized in a mental hospital and had undergone shock treatments.  Her daughter, my cousin Carol, a recovering alcoholic, replapsed during this time and died of an overdose in a motel room.  It has been said that we are only as sick as our secrets. 

We can talk about allergies, back pain, heart disease, and even cancer.  Mental illness?  We’re not so ready to pipe up about that.  We’re not comfortable talking about it.  Yet how can this lack of comfort provide any help to the fifteen to thirty of you, here this morning, statistically, who know the pain of mental illness, anxiety, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and/or suicidal ideation?

A long, long time ago, there was a woman who set out to get some help, some comfort, some healing.   There is a determination in her – a persistence, if you will – that is running at warp speed.  Eventually, that determination is going to run into Jesus!

We just heard about her in today’s Gospel, and what was her motivation?  Love.  She was a mother; she loved her daughter.  Her daughter was “suffering terribly”, we are told, with demon possession.  Another translation has it that this daughter was “tormented night and day” with her condition.

This is the point where the skeptics tend to speak up.  Obviously, the people in Jesus day had yet to learn what we know now about mental illness.  Scientific and psychological inquiry has taken all the religious superstition out of it, so it was probably a severe depression that this daughter suffered from. 

Sure, we have taken the superstition out of it – to a degree.  But it’s full-steam ahead with the stigmatizing of it – even in Christian circles.  On the matter of demonic possession (and there are several accounts of such in the gospels), if you’d like further ready and study, pick up M. Scott Peck’s People of the Lie.  The follow-up volume to that is called Angels and Demons.  Peck’s writings are as fascinating as they are difficult.  Most noteworthy is that he went into his experiences very skeptical of possession.  He was something of an agnostic; he paid little attention to Christianity in his field of study.  But then he had some experiences with patients that changed his mind, and the books are about those experiences. 

The mother’s chances of securing help, quite realistically, were pretty slim.  First, she was a woman.  That was bad enough in Jesus day.  Second, she was talking in public, and that was essentially a no-no.  Third, she was a Canaanite woman, and that introduced the whole matter of racial tension.   In a way, she was like an American Indian under President Andrew Jackson’s administration:  she was best kept on a reservation.  Fourth, her daughter was being tormented by a demon.  The basic view, back then, was that such a person like this daughter suffered because his/her parents had committed some sin. 

She had all those strikes against her.  I can completely understand why she might, if she could have, done a “Thelma and Louise”:  she would take her daughter and drive the car of her miserable life right over the cliff.

But that’s not what happened.  Instead, she speaks up:  “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”  Jesus said nothing.  Oh my, that had to be another slap in the face to her.  Not to be deterred by a Jesus who appeared to be rude, she persists.  Then she has to deal with the disciples who don’t want Jesus to be bothered by this poor, unfortunate soul and her tormented daughter. 

Somewhere in that mix of events, Jesus declares:  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  Again, that’s seemingly another strike against the woman.  The implication being:  “There will be no comfort for you, ma’am, because you are not of the chosen race.”

Still she persists.  “Lord, help me.”  You can almost feel the determination in her voice.  Jesus replied:  “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”  (I think, when Jesus said that, that he may have sounded like “The Church Lady” from old episodes of Saturday Night Live!)  But, if taken seriously, there is no middle ground with that statement.  It’s either the most terrible, awful thing that Jesus ever could possibly say, or it’s Jesus poking fun at the ostracizing and stigmatization of her and her daughter’s condition by making it seem that he was perpetuating it. 

The woman sensed the latter.  She stuck it right back to Jesus and said:  “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” 

She had Jesus right in the palm of her hand.  Our Lord said:  “Woman, you have great faith.  Your request is granted.”  And her daughter was healed.

This isn’t a story about healing, or depression, or demon-possession, or race, or gender, or religion, or spirituality.  It’s about faith – determined, dogged, persistent faith.  It’s a faith that actually draws strength from every setback.  It’s faith that there is God in this world, there is goodness in this world, there is mercy in this world even when all the evidence seems to suggest otherwise.  It’s a faith that walks with God, gets angry with God, laughs with God, knows with God, depends on God. 

It’s a faith that expresses itself not so much through social media postings but through love – love for those who suffer, love for those who are ostracized and stigmatized, love for those who are too weak to speak for themselves, love for those battered by the world of self-righteous religion. 

It is this kind of faith that can get people – and even congregations! – out of neutral and into gear. It is the faith of the cross and the empty tomb.  It is the faith that Jesus marveled at.  It is the gift of God.

Amen.