Our Turnaround God

July 8, 2012

Pentecost VI
Fr. Philip Eberhart
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“My strength is made perfect in weakness!”

 Have you ever noticed that something is always wrong??

 And I’m not a pessimist or a big complainer, but it just seems that something is always wrong!  Something is broken, or someone is sick, or something has gone wrong in life, physically or emotionally, financially or in some other way.  We identify with JOB and all his trials – actually we identify with Job’s trials, not Job, because he finally came to the same spot that PAUL came to – a place of trust in the midst of trials:   “Though HE slay me, YET will I trust HIM!”

 In our NT reading and in our Gospel we see this dynamic, even in the life of Jesus, and especially in the life of Paul.  I call it the TURNAROUND Dynamic – because we serve A TURNAROUND GOD!!

 In fact we serve such a Turnaround God, that it can almost be said that that is the chief way He works!  Paul put it this way:   “When I am weak, THEN I am strong!”

Huh?

No, when you are weak, you’re weak!!  I’ve been there – done that!!  Bought the tee shirt!!

But for Paul and even for Jesus, this dynamic was in place where the greatness of the power was in direct proportion to the depth of the brokenness.

Think if the desperation of the woman who had been suffering from illness for 17 years and came to just touch the hem of Jesus garment.

When I am weak, then I am strong!

Think of the desperation of the blind man on the roadside, hearing the party of Jesus walk past and crying out, clamoring for the Master’s attention, for just a moment:  “Lord, that I may see.”

When I am weak, then I am strong!

There can be no denying it … we serve a “turnaround” God!

The same word that Paul uses in this passage for “weakness” is used in his Magnum Opus on the Holy Spirit in Rom 8, just a few verses… listen:

And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don't know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.  And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God's own will.  And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

Or the same passage from The Message:

^26-28Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

^29-30God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.

You see, God has made and knows that we “are dust.”  He knows exactly how we are made, each one of us – Psalm 139 is one of my personal favorites:

My sitting … my rising … every thought from far off … my pathway … my lying down … all my ways … every word on my tongue …

Behold, O Lord, you know it all!  You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid your hand upon me!  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me … !!!

Have you ever thought you were invisible to God?  That your trouble is unique and separates you from God so He cannot see you?

 
Yeah, me too!!

And maybe its not just the trouble in your life, but the sin that caused the trouble!  Surely the sin separates us from God, hides us from His eyes… removes us from the scope of His love. ??

David asks these questions:   “Where can I go from your Spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there;  If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. …  If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light around me will be darkest night,” even the darkness is not dark to You – the night is as bright as day – both are alike to You.

When I am weak, then I am strong!

Jesus and Paul learned the secret of dependence.

“I can do nothing that I do not see my Father doing.”

“Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”

“So, Paul says, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

This is the ultimate attitude adjuster!

Jesus said it this way, “In this world you will [always] have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world!”

Paul ends the section we read earlier on the Holy Spirit in Romans 8, with a mighty crescendo:

What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one--for God himself has given us right standing with himself.

Who then will condemn us? No one--for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God's right hand, pleading for us.

Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow--not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love.

No power in the sky above or in the earth below--indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Just a few phrases from The Message to end…

“So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose?

Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture

None of this even fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

Repeat it after me:

When I am weak, then I am strong! …

When I am weak, then I am strong! …

When I am weak, then I am strong! …

Let’s pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you are the God of the second-chance, the fat-chance and the no chance!  We turn to You this morning and open our hands, releasing what we have been holding on to, that keeps us from your presence, and we embrace You, as you have embraced us.

Lord, we confess our weakness, our in-ability and we wait on your ability!  You are the one who equips those you have called – who IS our ability and our competency. You are able to finish what You have started in each one of us.  Come, Holy Spirit, as we wait with open hand and hearts.

We release what is wrong in our lives, our dis-ease, our sin, our shame, our habits and addictions to you – we release our circumstances, our pain…

Holy Spirit, come, and bring your peace.  Be strong in our weakness.

For the sake of your Kingdom and Your Name, Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

Commending Ourselves - God's Way

June 24, 2012

Fr. Philip Eberhart

4^th Sunday of Pentecost

Commending ourselves – God’s Way

As I read the lessons for this morning I was struck by the recurring theme of storms in life that are stilled by God, by the Lord Jesus Christ -  I was struck by the list of Paul’s hardships and then my eyes fell on the previous phrase, just before that list in 2 Cor 6:

Look at the reading with me for a moment:

“As servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way:”

Commend is to “represent as worthy, desireable – to recommend”

Paul’s point here, and I’ll make it right up front today, is that we “commend” ourselves in the service of God by pressing through the hardships and the terrible circumstances that come our way as well as by pressing into the character of Jesus that these hardships duly produce in our lives.

This and other sections of Paul’s letters paint a picture that is uncomfortable for us in our western form of Christianity – great endurance; afflictions; hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.  Paul is recounting in shorthand, the tale of his apostolic ministry of church planting!

It’s interesting!  When we here in our day “commend ourselves” it’s usually in the form of a resume, while we are job hunting.  We list our accomplishments – we list what we excel at, what we’re good at, in order to show how we might meet a need that the employer has that we can fill. 

How differently Paul approaches “commending himself” as a servant of God!  We think that he should have used the list in Phil 3 here, instead of the list before us!  You remember the list right?

Circumcised the eighth day…

Of the nation of Israel…

Of the tribe of Benjamin

A Hebrew of Hebrews,

As to the Law… a Pharisee;

As to Zeal, a persecutor of the church;

As to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless!

Sounds like a great pedigree – there is much to commend Paul to his fellows here!!

But before launching into the list he says this:

(reading from the New Living Translation):    We who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised.  We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us.  We put no confidence in human effort, though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could! Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more!”

Paul is contrasting the attainments of the flesh in his lineage and life accomplishments as a Jew, a Pharisee and zealot in persecuting the church, with what he now knows to be the true basis for any “commendation” of his ministry.

He says of all his accomplishments – of his Jewish pedigree – “now I consider these things as rubbish – worthless – because of what Christ has done!”  Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For His sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ!”

As we turn back to our reading in 2 Cor 6 we can see that there are three distinct sections in the listing that Paul puts forward here as “commending ourselves”:

The section we’ve mentioned above of hardships preceeds, but is then followed by a listing that is reminiscent of other listings of the FRUIT of godly life, in both Paul’s letters and in Peter’s second letter:

“In Purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine love,

In the word of truth, in the power of God, by the weapons of righteousness for the

Right hand and the left…”

Sound familiar?

Paul’s list in Galatians of the Fruit of the Spirit:

“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”

And the list we find in Peter’s second letter:

“In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God's promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.”

It seems that for Paul (and for Peter), the commendation that they seek arises from  hardship in the form of the character of Jesus -- produced by the hardships themselves.  Our commendation in life, comes in the form of character, that Jesus and the Spirit of Jesus produces in our lives through the diligence of pressing through the difficulties that come our way and into the character of Godliness and “holiness, without which no one will see the Lord!”

And another interesting thing then happens in Paul’s description in our reading:  a third section. Let me read now from the New Living again:

“We serve God whether people honor us or despise us, whether they slander us or praise us. We are honest, but they call us impostors.  We are ignored, even though we are well known. We live close to death, but we are still alive. We have been beaten, but we have not been killed.  Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.”

Can you see the progression here?

Stage 1 is just hardship – yuk, going through the hard things in life as we all do, but the message is GO THROUGH

Stage 2 is God’s grace to use the hardships of our life, the times we are “UNDER the circumstances,” to create a new kind of life in us – a JESUS LIFE.  So we are being formed, almost pressed, into His image and likeness, day by day.

Stage 3 is where we begin to see God’s purpose of fruitfulness and character in the circumstances of our lives and we begin to see that those things only matter, to the extent that they are forming us into His image!

Two chapters earlier in this letter Paul makes such a reference, beginning in Chapter 4, verse 7:

“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

And Paul ends that section of his letter with this thought:

“For our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!  So we don't look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

Friends, how can we fix our gaze on things that can’t be seen?  There are a lot of changes going on around us, a lot of people who are in difficulty or in transition, a lot of people who are ill or suffering in some way, in body or mind.  And that’s just here at REZ!  Not to mention all that is going on around us in our world, at our jobs and in our neighborhoods.   What would happen if we began to see it all differently?

What would happen if, in the midst of the storms of life, we realized that Jesus is right here in the boat with us!! 

We seem to think that when Jesus woke up and calmed the storm, the metaphor can be made to our lives, and that He will simply command all the bad stuff to go away!  Isn’t that what all that means?  Hmmm?

Isn’t this to be read as a metaphor for the storms of our own lives?

I think it wasn’t a metaphor – it was a real circumstance!  One in which the disciples were fearful and despairing of their very lives, right?  They were actually incredulous that Jesus could be asleep during such a storm!!  And they did everything they could in their own power until finally, they gave up, and woke Jesus, and appealed to Him for His input.

Now there’s the metaphor for our lives!  We row and row and row and row against the wind and the waves, our sail gets battered and torn and our boat is about to sink, and THEN we come to Jesus for His help.  THEN we cry out to Him, “Save us, LORD.” 

What would happen if we learned the lesson that Jesus is in the boat!  That all the authority and power of the universe is right here in the boat with us!!!

At that point, the storms can rage all they want.  Sure the boat will be tossed, BUT JESUS…

BUT JESUS!

Jesus Christ stands in our boat today, friends.  In your boat!  No matter what the storm you are facing, be it trouble or perplexity or being hunted down, or knocked down, or suffering or in danger of death. 

Jesus Christ stands in our boat today – in your boat – through troubles, hardships, calamities of every kind: being beaten, put in prison, facing angry mobs, working to exhaustion, enduring sleepless nights, going without food.

BUT JESUS!!

Jesus is creating in us HIS LIFE and HIS CHARACTER!!  So we look to what is unseen.

The writer of Hebrews put it this way:

“…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

In the Name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.      AMEN.