Many
years ago, when I was a curate in New London, I met an old woman in the
hospital. She broke her hip and went to live in a nursing home. I remember her
because she was the first person I ever met who was happy to live in a nursing
home. She had been alone all her life. She was an orphan who grew up in
institutions. She spent her whole life working in the hospital laundry room.
Now, in her old age, when she could no longer walk, she very much enjoyed
people serving her for a change. She didn’t have to clean or cook or make the
bed. She was delighted. Whenever I went to see her, she would play Christmas
carols on her harmonica.
My
more usual experience is that people feel that kind of care as a loss. They can
no longer do the things they like. They can’t have their own home or their own
things any more. People are sad when they can only see what they have lost and
not what they have gained. Sometimes the benefits take time to realize.
Today
we hear about the promise of the rainbow. We think of the rainbow as a
beautiful wonder of nature. In the Genesis story, the rainbow is a sign that
God will never again destroy the earth. We remember this story with great
fondness. We make little wooden arks for our children. We’ve remembered the
blessing. I wonder how we would remember the story if we were in that ark for
forty days and nights? What if we had lost all that we knew and everyone we
loved except for the few survivors in the ark?
We’ve forgotten the suffering and loss. We’ve
forgotten what we go through to get to a new place of blessing. We know we must
go through lent, but that’s how we get to Easter. We’ve forgotten that Jesus
was tempted in the wilderness before he proclaimed good news. There will be
holy week and Good Friday and death before there will be an Easter. We want to
embrace the promises of God but we forget that there is a cross in the way.
We
may be discouraged today because of the difficulties of life. We are used to
simple cause and effect. We say that successful people earn their success.
Therefore, those who suffer must have done something to deserve their suffering.
When we reflect, we know that there is more to it. God often calls the most
holy people into the most difficult situations. Noah was chosen because he was
faithful. God did not make it easy for him. God declares from heaven to Jesus,
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Immediately, God’s
Spirit sends Jesus into the wilderness for forty days.
We
long for blessing. We want it now. We know from the examples of scripture and
from our past that the best things come out of long struggle and loss. Still,
we want relief today. Even if I remind us that God is with the faithful in their
struggle – we still want to get out of the hard times as fast as possible. It
is difficult to see the benefit and easy to see what we are losing.
We
may be grieving the loss of what used to be true. The world we knew is changing
– sometimes faster than we can absorb the change. We don’t know what things
will look like at the other end. We have to live by faith and not by certainty.
When we lived in a time when we knew all the answers and when we knew how
everything worked, maybe we didn’t need as much faith. When church meant
putting together tried and true programs, we only had to repeat what worked,
and maybe we didn’t need faith.
Now
we have to live by faith whether we like it or not. “By faith” means two
things. We have to have faith in God: that God will do what God promises and
that all that we proclaim about Jesus is good news and true news. We also live
“by faith” in how we act. We are not called to simply believe things about
Jesus. We are to have his faith, that is, we are called to live like Jesus. We
are called to see others as Jesus sees them. We are called to love the world as
he loves the world.
This
is the hard thing we are called to do today. We’d like church to be a blessing
and strength for us. It will only be that if we live by faith and seek to live
as Jesus commands and as Jesus did. This is also the blessing. God does not
call us here simply to rest. We have been called to transformation. We have
been called to join God in the work of reconciliation. We are called here to
invite the world to God as we have been invited. We are called to love as we
have been loved.
I
wonder if we could live as faithfully if we were successful by the world’s
standard. If we had lots of people and lots of money - would that lead us to
trust, or to complacency? Perhaps because we need God we are a little more free.
Our loss of institutional identity helps us become a servant to the wider
community. We can be something greater than the best church on Route six. We
can be the people of God serving the world around us. This is hard now, but the
best work always is.
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