When God does nothing

There is an awful story in the Gospel of Mark which relates the death of John the Baptist.  It is a very confronting story.  It’s confronting, because of the pictures it gives us of betrayal, debauchery, revenge, hatred, and death.  We have this terrible picture of Herod and his family, taking their revenge on John, because he dared to speak out against their moral discrepancy. It’s confronting because Jesus appears to do nothing to intervene. 

This is the story of one of the greatest juxtapositions in the whole bible: The Herald of the Lord sacrificed for the whims of a deceitful woman and her spineless husband.  It is a story of the risks we take  when we choose to follow Christ.

John, the cousin of Jesus;  the one whose voice in the wilderness, foretold of his coming. Jesus’ ministry starts after John is arrested.  While John is in prison, Jesus is about and about preaching and healing. Let’s press the rewind button a little bit, and go back to before John’s death. 

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

John is in prison, no doubt anticipating his own execution.  And he hears what Jesus is doing, and sends the disciples to ask Jesus this question. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?".  After his own glorious ministry, as the prophet appointed to proclaim the Christ’s coming, he is plagued by doubts, it seems. What has happened to the glorious vision of Isaiah, where the eyes of the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf are unstopped, the lame leap and the tongue of the dumb sings for joy?  It must seem to John, that having foretold these things, he wasn’t going to be around to see it. Instead, he’s captured and held on the whim of a woman with whom he had gone into battle on many occasions over moral issues.  It’s the old story of a good man to whom bad things happen.

Then we have Herod. Let’s look at him, his family for a minute. According to most scholars, the Herod that is spoken of in this reading is a son of Herod the Great, a cruel and hated despot who oversaw the entire Palestinian region.  When Herod the Great died (in 4 B.C.); Rome split his region into four areas and placed the Northwest area of Galilee under the rule of his son, Herod Antipas.

If Herod the Great was a maniacal, violent despot, then Antipas the son, was the cowering survivor who outlived his father.  A brief study of his character reveals that he maintained his position not with strength but by connivance and manipulation.  We know this because of his hesitation to have John executed immediately when John first insulted his wife.  He’s scheming for the way out of his predicament so he comes out of it unscathed.  The historian, Josephus, tells how he won his seat by sniveling before Rome and later lost it in like manner.  He’s an amoral “yes man”, whose first concern is always his own position of power and comfort. Scripture tells us that he stole his half-brother’s wife (she was also his cousin) and appeased her by sinking to her frivolous whims while also lusting for his stepdaughter (who was also his niece).  He is a sleazy man.  He, the manipulator, is also manipulated by his wife.  He is weakness personified. 

This is the man, who so abused his authority against the daring, devoted John the Baptist by ordering his beheading.  This is the picture we have of the strutting weakling Antipas, who was responsible for Christ’s death too.  He scorned and mocked and thought he would have the last word. 

All of this background is very interesting and helpful, but we might ask, “why was it included?”  Why does the death of John include all this detail about Herod and his family?  Why do the preceding chapters tell us of John’s question to Jesus from the gloom of his prison cell?  Where’s the good news in all this?

There is always the danger in religious circles to think that if you’re on God’s Team then everything will be great. You’ll be healthy, wealthy, and wise. God will heal every disease and conquer every foe.  Well…not if you’re John the Baptist. If you’re John you’ll be the victim of a little slip of a girl, her scheming mother, an ineffectual puppet ruler, and your head will be served on a platter.

The sobering reality is that even the very best of us can be victim to the very worst, and sometimes even to the very worst in other people. How many have heard of Clunes Mathison?  He was born at Stanley, near Beechworth, in 1883. His parents, had six children, but only Clunes reached the age of 10; moreover, when he was 12 his father, too, died of illness. The close experience of sickness and suffering influenced the young Mathison and he went on to be a brilliant doctor.  When the first world war came, he served as the 5^th Battalion’s Doctor on 25^th April 1915 at Gallipoli.  He survived the landing, and went from there to Helles where he set up a medical post in a creek bed.  After the 5^th charged towards, Krithia, Mathison returned on May 9 to the aid post he had established in a creek bed. He was getting dressed during the afternoon, when a Turkish bullet fired from far away fell to earth and struck him on the head.  He died 9 days later. He’d survived the hideous Gallipoli landing but was struck down by a freak bullet.  Not only did Australia loose a good man, but also a brilliant Doctor.  He was only 34. But I can’t help but think of his Mum.  She lost all her children, except this one;  she lost her husband and then her  only remaining child marches off to war and is killed by a stray bullet, way behind the battle front.  Life is not always fair. This story is confronting because it tears at the fabric of our belief that God will intervene, fix, heal, save.  But he didn’t save Clunes Mathison, or his mother from the crushing grief of multiple losses.  And he didn’t save John the Baptist.  That’s why it’s such a confronting story.

But, these fates aren’t what define us, for even though we suffer and are cut down, we are still God’s.  It’s why we need to keep our lives aligned with the plumb line of our walk with the risen Christ, because sometimes, that’s the only thing that makes any sense.

John’s story challenges us to live with hope in the face of disappointment and the ending of our hopes and dreams. Is our fidelity to God only valid when everything turns out the way we want it to?  How do we understand this story in the light of all the promises God made about hope and joy and the desert blooming, and the afflicted being healed?  Can we step outside the boundaries of our own expectations and let God write his own will and expectations on our hearts?  The truths is, that God’s hope in us, actually becomes stronger, the less hopeful our circumstances are;  he himself becomes our hope, our strength;  we look beyond the things of this life, to a greater hope in the life to come.  And in doing this, we begin to live now, with hope and integrity, even when we are in our own particular prison, whatever that might be.

When the imprisoned John the Baptist queried whether Jesus was the promised Messiah or not - Jesus replied by pointing John to the transformation which was occurring in people's lives. How God's love for the world was being revealed through the way Jesus touched people's lives with healing, compassion, justice and love. So, in a way, John must have realized that his task was done.  He had foretold of such a One, and his prophesy had been fulfilled.  So take heart, because even our suffering, our acceptance of it and our trust in God through it, is how we discover that God is present in all our circumstances;  whether they be joyous ones like, say, the birth of a baby, or terrible ones, like John’s life sentence. God is the God of both situations.  The abundance of happy things, is no more a sign of God’s presence than the desolation;  the constant is God.  We tend to measure God’s presence in any situation by our sense of well-being, and fail to recognise that God is just as present with us in the dungeon, as he is on the mountain top.

Sometimes, like the story of Clunes Mathieson,  the very worst happens.  It’s then we can experience the presence of God.  And let’s remember, it’s not over until the resurrection.  The story of whatever has happened to us here, is not finished until God welcomes, recognises and renews us, on that Resurrection morning.

Self Esteem... a different approach

Many of you will be familiar with the traditional folk song “There is a ship”.  One of the verses goes like this:  There is a ship, and it sails the sea, it’s loaded deep, as deep can be;  but not as deep as the love I’m in;  I know not if I sink or swim”. 

There have been many times in my life, when I have been so desperate, so downcast, so despairing, that I didn’t know if I was sinking or swimming.  In fact, there have been years on end in my life, when I was only just keeping my head above water, in every sense of the word;  emotional, physical, spiritual and mental. And I want to tell you, very briefly, how I emerged from this dungeon into the sunlight of the best self-esteem I’ve had in my life.

A big cause of all this angst was my marriage breakdown.  God has created us all with a unique “self” – a blueprint of who we are, and it’s one of the most precious things we are given.  Lots of things build on that blueprint – life experience, parents, friends, even place.  To have that crushed and manipulated and denied, is a terrible thing.  This is what my husband tried to do to me over many years. He did it by alternate, deliberate episodes of carefully crafted apparent care, thoughtfulness and love, then terrible vengeance, deliberate hurting, rejection and dominating criticism. This emotional blackmail is a terrible form of control and destruction. It leaves the victim anxious, demoralized, bewildered. In those final, terrible days, before he left, there was only a fragment of my self left.  My ex husband took it, trampled on it and walked away.  It left a great hole in my inner being which was spent, empty, unrequited;  a wasteland of broken reeds; a mourning which was unsoothed and uncomforted. But I don’t want to dwell on that. To be fair to him, I don’t think he realized he was doing it.  He was acting out his own terrible form of selfish instability and rebellion.  I never understood why he felt he had to treat me in this way, or even more, why he went on to treat our children in this way too. I don’t care any more;  it’s no longer important.  But when he found, after 17 years of marriage, that he  couldn’t be the complete keeper of my soul, mind and spirit, he threw me away. After all that, one of the last things he said to be was “you were never good enough”.  Yet, here I am today stronger, self-reliant and with a much larger, more defined and healthier self esteem than I’ve ever had.  How can that be? So after all that rejection and anguish, how can I possibly stand here and tell you about self-esteem? There are many paths to self-esteem;  indeed self-esteem is a multi-layered thing, existing in our personal thoughts about ourselves, our ability to relate to people and our ability to perform our jobs. It’s influenced by many things, not the least of which is our experience in childhood, especially from our parents.

We tend to think these days that self esteem is given by how we look, the kind of job we do, the sort of car we drive, our place in the community, and especially by how much money we have.  The more of all these we have, the better we should feel about ourselves.  Thus says the media, the motivation gurus, our  society, even our friends.  

Here I am;  someone with none of the generally accepted requirements for self-esteem.  I have no status (in fact, I have what I call anti-status, because I’m a single parent).  I perform an essential but mind-numbingly ordinary job; I have no wealth;  I drive a fairly  old car and up to a few years ago, I lived in a fibro house.  In the world’s eyes, I have failed at marriage.  I should feel bad about myself.   But still, despite these things, there has been this rising of self-worth, like a clear calm stream; an awareness of true self-worth, falling on my battered senses, with the cadence of a beautiful and serene melody.

How can it be that my sense of worth increased, rather than decreased? Let me share with you just a few things I’ve learned:  And we could spend ages on this topic but let me give you just two.

1 Bring all that happens to you, to the cross of Jesus. I had to try and understand why it was that this man could treat me like a doormat.  It was not a pleasant process and it took years of prayer and pondering and ploughing through my life, my attitudes, my Christian beliefs. I knew I had lots of very good qualities in my character, but I also learned how vulnerable I was to people who would bully and hurt me.  To be absolutely honest, one aspect of the Christian ethic, (ie wives should be submissive to their husbands) if taken the wrong way, can breed a terrible sort of man, and they will always be drawn to a woman who takes the “treat others better than yourself” verses more to heart. But I don’t want to dwell on these verses, but rather on our working with God, to  achieve all that he wants for us and for his glory.

What is important is to be honest before God, and bring him all that’s happened to us, and ask him to help us cope with it.  Some people find this difficult and perhaps if we didn’t have times of suffering, we would never be forced to look deep into our own hearts and discover all the imperfections there.  People who are not self-aware are the worst kind of selfish people.  They deny their faults and blunder through life, hurting anyone who gets in their way.  Jesus loves us no matter what faults we have, and when we become aware of them, he is able to heal us.  One pitfall of examining ourselves is that we can get stuck in it and become too introspective and become overwhelmed with what’s happened to us.  If you only look at this aspect, you’ll trudge down the steps of self pity and it will become harder to trudge back up again into the light of healing.  You need to be kind to yourself but not self-indulgent.  You have to be willing to get to know yourself, warts and all, and in the presence of God, allow him to begin a healing process. God’s strength is made perfect in weakness.  Listen to 2 Cor 12:9-10. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2  Make God’s precepts your own value system and stick to them, no matter how others treat you. The getting of true self-esteem involves more than just pampering ourselves, and stroking our own ego;  it has nothing to do with positive self-talk (although that has it’s place);  it has nothing to do with retail therapy;  it has nothing to do with power over others;  it has nothing to do with the house we live in or our address.  It has nothing to do with “things” at all. Rather, it requires a personal resolve to stay true to our own value system, when it would be easier to cop out and behave with no personal integrity.  It requires digging deep into who we are, building a set of values, and living according to those values.  It requires conviction, courage and tenacity to stay true to our value system, when life’s unkind face would have us compromise and behave less gallantly. 

When we resolve to face the ravages of life with goodwill and a strong desire to do the right thing, as dictated by our own value system;  When we behave with personal integrity despite the injustices, the hardships, the terrible jostling of our souls;  when we  endeavour and endure with our own set of ideals when it would be far easier to give in and become lesser people,  we reap the reward of a quiet, growing confidence that we matter, that we can achieve; that we are people  who can face some of the storms of life and emerge stronger. We like who we are.  We have earned our own respect. This is why God commands us to live this way.  Priceless treasure.

For the Christian, this goes against all the worldly advice about self esteem.  Bless those who curse you.  Forgive those who wronged you.  Pray for those who spitefully use you.  Can you imagine the corporate world giving this advice to their people?  But, when we do this, we are changed;  we learn to value what’s happened to us less, but value ourselves more. Where’s the sermon I did about as we do God’s precepts we are changed? 

The other less travelled path to self esteem is the old fashioned notion of living with regard to how we treat others.  This goes against all the modern preaching about demanding MY rights, pursuing MY dream, protecting MY interests, grabbing as much money and status for MYSELF as I possibly can.  Could it be that this kind of thing actually encourages bad self-esteem?  Depression, which has connections to self-esteem, is almost to epidemic proportions in this country.  Could it be that we’ve lost sight of a nobler belief system which values how we treat others and nurtures  our own personal self respect at the same time?

What if the very fabric of our self-esteem has nothing to do with money or class?  I mean the very deep-down blueprint of what makes us who we are and how we value ourselves.  Money, status, power;  these are outward things, imposed or gained, or given or worked for, or even taken.  These are open to decay by shifting fortune, illness, chance even.  These things… status and power are so closely linked to wealth.  And wealth is such a fickle, deceitful thing.  Wealth is fool’s gold.

What if true self-esteem grows out of something less tangible, yet more within our control?  We can choose our own value system;  we can choose to follow it.  It’s the following of it when it would be easier not to, which ploughs the ground of our character, and produces a great crop of the beautiful flowers of self-value.  For me, there will always be a little wasteland of barren ground inside me, which is my divorce and other painful things. We all have these patches of wasteland inside us. But there is also a verdant garden of these beautiful flowers, and they will always self-seed, as long as I continue to water them with the living out of my personal value system. 

This holding on to God and His precepts in times when the world wants to kick our heads, is what makes us strong;  it’s like a quiet, life-changing journey… I call it a low miracle.  God is able to take something so negative and so destructive and turn it into an unbreakable confidence in His power;  a sense of self which is not selfish, but whole and  strong and nourished;  it’s this kind of self esteem which can put others’ needs first, without feeling down trodden;  it can develop healthy relationships with others because it’s not super sensitive to criticism.  It can assert it’s right to be treated properly, without feeling guilty.  It doesn’t come from asserting our rights, it comes from living out God’s precepts in the face of what others do to us. 

If someone says to us “you were never good enough”, what would God have us do?  The easy answer is hate that person and use every means available, even our children, to get back at that person.  It’s would be very easy to plunge into recrimination and self justification.  But what does God bid us do?  The answer is one of the hardest things you’ll ever be asked to do.  It’s Bless those who curse you and spitefully use you;  it’s “do not return evil for evil”, it’s “turn the other cheek” and most importantly, it’s “forgive those who’ve wronged you, as Christ as forgiven you”.  This is not easy and there will be hills and vallerys;  the road will be rough and stony, but I guearantee, when you obey God’s word in the face of what people do to hurt you or dominate you, it will be a road that leads to a new confidence, a sense of self-worth which is deep and powerful , not based on the world’s fake, skin-deep offering sof “Your’re worth it” or “it’s all about me”.

Guess who's moved? Oh trite saying, you offer me no help!

I went to a Lenten Bible Study last week.  It was called "Finding God in dark places" and was run over a series of weeks preceding Easter.  I went twice but found the experience a bit unhelpful.  I've known a lot of dark places in my life, and when confronted with questions about how and where is God at such times, I found that I talked about my own dark times a little too much.  And I found that some people didn't understand why I thought God was hard to find during times like this. I also discovered that speaking these demons out loud connected me with them and exposed me to some sad thoughts about them.

For example, when I said that I sometimes felt far away from God, because of some of the things which I've experienced at the hands of others, an older lady piped up straight away and said "if you feel far away from God, guess who's moved!".  I thought it was a trite and indifferent way to answer someone who has just confessed to being unable to feel close to God because something terrible has happened.

Bible studies like this are always swayed a bit by who else goes.  I went 3 times in the end and  in the three times I went, this trite answer was expressed twice.  Each time it was expressed from someone from the "religious" group of people who are in every church.  They are the ones who turn up for church with a puddle-deep faith and social-club enjoyment of the gathered congregation.  They are often comfortable people with black and white, nailed-down Christianity which has never really been put to the test. (ie they believe that God provides and honours us by making us prosperous, and they are prosperous so they never have to question why God would allow all their money to be taken away).   So the trite answer fits them but it makes me very disquieted, because all of those nailed down values I used to have have been tested and tried in the furnace of suffering and loss. The "religious" among us are always ready with the trite answer which mostly implies that it must be something you have done wrong which has caused you to fall away from God.

The fact is though, that there IS truth in that phrase.  I am happiest and closest to God when I make a conscious decision to follow him for the abiding peace He gives.

But it means offering up, over and over, the mortal death blows of suffering and puzzlement at the adverse and strife-filled situations and circumstances I've experienced.  It means offering these up to the Suffering Jesus on a regular basis and saying

"Here, take my wounds;  take my circumstances.  I will never understand in this life, why you allowed them for me.  But I acknowledge you as Lord of all of them.  I accept them.  Have mercy on me because I keep wanting to criticise your dealings with me.  Help  me to trust you anyway."

It's when I make  the conscious decision to look  up from the wreckage of my fallen and crushed dreams;  look beyond my self-pity and see the Crucified one and the light of heaven in His face, that I know peace and contentment, even in the midst of loss.

My vision has shifted from earthly values to His heavenly ones, and I know it is me who HAS moved.

Yet, despite all this, there are still times in the very practical and harried and impacting day to day life, and I battle with these unanswered big questions, when heaven's door remains shut and silent to my strained and puzzled prayers.

Perhaps it's God's way of telling me
"You cannot know these things yet.  Wait and follow; look over the wreckage of all you hoped for.  To me.

I will always have abundant peace to offer you, despite the ruined buildings in your journey and the broken ground which has marked your way.

Keep coming.  Keep coming, with faith, not with sight;  keep coming with heavenly values and treasures, not earthly ones."