Fortunately, I tend to be busy on Sunday mornings and so miss all the TV evangelists, but there are times when I accidently overhear some TV preacher…and I just want to scream!The awfulness of what some of them are spewing makes my blood boil.After 9-11 I recall a TV preacher was claiming that it was God’s punishment on the U.S. for some kind of immorality.It drives me crazy.
There are times when someone I am visiting with in line at the grocery store shares with me their belief or view of God’s will—and I just want to scream!Childish or ego-centric theologies that depict God as some cosmic vending machine, dispensing blessing or miracles according to our piety... or worse as a tyrannical monster who needs to be appeased… drives me crazy!(I really need to watch this sinful tendency of mine.It really is born of a sense of self-righteousness and pride).
Then, there are other times when I am sitting quietly and peacefully in my office reading a portion of Scripture and—I just want to scream!There’s awful stuff in there in places and the depictions of God are awful too at times.Some of it is just plain bad theology... or at least not the whole Biblical witness being presented.
An example is Paul’s words from I Corinthians today.He digs up the Old Testament story of the Exodus and shows how bad the people were in their idolatry, sexual immorality, complaining, and how “God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.”This makes me want to scream!Then, to cap it off, he says, “God...will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide a way out so that you may be able to endure it.”That makes me want to scream on two levels!
First of all, it’s wrong!Regardless of their having faith or not, I’ve seen plenty of people who were tested beyond their strength... they found no “way out” and were crushed by life’s harsh turns.Secondly, it is a teaching that is clearly contrary to Jesus’ teaching in today’s text.
Jesus was asked the proverbial “Why do bad things happen to good people?” question.A couple of 9-11 type tragedies are mentioned.“Did they deserve their fate?” they asked Jesus.“No” Jesus said it doesn’t work that way... “the rain falls on the just and the unjust” in other words.So much for God punishing those complaining Israelites in the wilderness!Jesus didn’t see it that way.So Jesus disagrees with Paul, and I’m going with Jesus on this one.I don’t believe God works that way.
But then I kept on reading.After Jesus said in essence, “No, God doesn’t destroy bad people” he says, “but, unless you repent, you will...perish as they did.”Now I want to scream for another reason entirely.
What is Jesus saying here?Is he saying that if they don’t change their ways and love the Romans they will all be destroyed (as they were in 70 A.D.)?We approached this text wanting to judge those caught in misfortune... claim they deserved it, or at least judge Pilate as evil for doing what he did... and what we get is Jesus judging us!
There was a lot of wailing and screaming going on this week in my sermon prep time!
Bishop William Willimon tells of being in Sicily and going into a large cathedral.At the front of the church was a huge beautiful mosaic depiction of Christ as “Lord of the Universe” with arms outstretched in blessing.This is known as Pantocrator.Christ seemed to loom or float in a sea of gold.He was overcome by the immensity of the work and the image of Christ, Lord of the universe.He left the church and was immediately met by a street vendor who was peddling religious trinkets—one of them a small medallion of the image inside the church—Christ Pantocrator.“Don’t you want to take Jesus with you?” he asked.
Bishop Willimon saw this as a representation of what we’ve done with Christ; we’ve exchanged the large vision of Christ, pantocrator, Lord of the universe, with Jesus the good luck charm we can tote around in our pockets and pull out when we need him.Christ pantocrator can’t be taken places—it takes us places!
Part of where it takes us is repentance.We tend to water Jesus down & domesticate him to the point where he’s our convenient good-luck charm, but here he’s judging and demanding... calling us to repent!To repent literally means to “turn around.”
He seems to be saying in this passage (and in the parable) that there are forces in play that will lead to our “perishing” unless we re-orient ourselves.“The wages of sin is death” is another way of putting it.Maybe the best use of our time here this morning would be for each of us to spend some time thinking about what needs re-orienting in our individual and corporate lives—before it leads to our perishing.Corporately we certainly need to repent... to re-orient ourselves in terms of our environment.If we don’t we will perish.No doubt about it.Perhaps part of what we need to repent of is the divisive politics going on in our country that polarizes and names the other as enemy.It is time to stop labeling government and corporations as pure evil.As individuals, each of us knows deep in our hearts that we are engaged in things that are destructive, wrong, hurtful... and yet we continue to do them.Any time we have to lie about something we need to consider it as something to repent of—turn away from.
What is interesting is that when Paul wrote that God “will not let you be tested beyond your strength”, the “you”s in his original Greek are all plural.It is our “testing”, our “way out.”It is a communal experience —not an individual one.
What I’m wondering is if the “way out” that God provides is our repentance, our turning around.The “way out” is not simply an escape route from a difficult spot so we can go back to life as usual, but rather, repentance is a genuine turning around, which brings life.
I think about those people in the wilderness—leaving slavery in Egypt.This was their exodus, their “way out.”We tend to remember it with rose-colored glasses.We remember it as some glorious event only.We gloss over the tough times that this Old Testament passage reminds us of; it was no picnic out there in the wilderness eating manna & quail.As I think back on my life, most of my exoduses, my “ways out”...they were in fact seasons of repentance and they were not welcomed wholeheartedly while I was in them.Afterward, I can see them as experiences of deliverance...at their core they were moments of turning... repentance in the best sense.
Back in the early days of the wall between East and West Berlin, a group of those on the East decided to send their adversaries in the West a little “gift.”They loaded up a dump truck with garbage, broken bricks, stones and whatever else they could find lying around.They drove the truck across the border, gained clearance and dumped on the West Berlin side.Needless to say, the Westerners were incensed and were going to “get even” with them.Fortunately, a very wise man intervened and offered a different course for their hot energy.As a result, they responded also with a dump truck, with food (scarce in East Berlin at the time), clothing (also scarce), medical supplies (even scarcer), and a pile of other essential items.They took the truck across the border, carefully unloaded it all, and left a neat sign on it that read, “Each gives according to his ability to give.”Repenting from revenge has got to be one of the most difficult things to turn from.
Maybe God does provide a “way out”... maybe I don’t need to scream when I read that passage... and the way out is the repentance that Jesus calls us to.But, we have to take the way out, to choose it when it is offered to us.Maybe I should save my screaming for those moments when I or we chose not to turn from that which leads to our death.Amen.
