How do we recognise Jesus?

Luke 24:13-35. The familiar story of the walk to Emmaus. When it comes to the events surrounding the resurrection of Jesus, the gospel writers record very few of his appearances.  In fact, Mark records none at all.

Luke's gospel is a summary account of the women's visit to the tomb, followed by Peter's visit, Jesus appearance with the disciples in the upper room at which he provides evidence that he is actually alive, opens their minds to the scriptures and then commissions them, and finally they all go off to Bethany for the ascension.

In the middle of this summary account we have a detailed account of the Emmaus walk.  What then do we have in the story? We have two disciples, not apostles, just ordinary followers of Jesus, like you and me. When Jesus walks with them they don't recognize him, and when they do recognize him, after he breaks the bread, he disappears!  How very odd!.

Why didn’t the disciples recognise him?  Were they kept from recognising him? Was there something about his resurrected body that made him unidentifiable? The stories tell us that he was appearing in locked rooms and vanishing before the disciples’ eyes. Clearly, there was something different about Jesus’ flesh and blood. Does the fact that the disciples did not recognize Jesus point to the nature of the revelation of God? Could it be that God does not always make himself known to us in ways we think he will?

On the way to Emmaus those sad, deflated disciples mistook their Lord for a stranger, someone who wasn’t of their country. How did they make such a mistake? Maybe because he seemed to know nothing of what had happened recently. Who knows?

Is it something to do with the mystery of God.  Can we only really recognise Christ when he reveals himself to us?  Could it be, that he waits until the time is right.  They were grieving when they encounter Jesus on the road.  They were expecting Him to be the leader of the Jews;  they thought He was a political leader, a charismatic victor who would overthrow the Romans. Instead, he died an ignominious criminal’s death.  He was gone, and they were shattered.  I know one thing; if he’d come in pomp and splendour, they may have kept on believing, mistakenly, that He was a mere earthly figure.  They may never have grasped that he was the Messiah, the Saviour, the one whose death suddenly made sense, as he explained the scripture and the prophesies to them.  If he had come to them bedecked with jewels and trappings of an earthly King, the penny never would have dropped.

Did they fail to recognise him because they were looking for someone else; a political King. They lost an intellectual Jesus… he wasn’t who they thought he was, so they were downcast when he was taken away.  But when they finally realized He was the Messiah, their faith was transferred from a head knowledge of Christ, which was all out of whack, to a heart knowledge of who he really was, and what he had done for them and for us. They learned to see and hear with their souls.

Then he begins to expound the scriptures to them. He says to them vse 25 “How foolish you are and how slow to believe the prophets.  He tells them the Messiah had to suffer these things.  And then he explains all the intricacies and the fulfilling of the Scripture;  probably from the line of David and Isaiah through to John the Baptist.  So they’ve had the testimony of the women and then Jesus himself tells them “the Messiah will rise on the 3^rd day”.  They themselves have already told him at the start of the journey that “it’s now 3 days since he was killed. Nope. Still nothing.  They still don’t recognise him.  The lights are on, but nobody’s home. You can imagine if it was one of us, by now, we’d have a very smug look on our faces and we’d be saying “Hello, it’s me. I told you so!”

But he just keeps on, walking with them, patiently explaining to them.  I think he’s like this with us.  We live out our lives, so close sometimes to opportunities to see so much more of the Spirit things, the really important things, but we can’t quite see them.  We always see through a glass darkly;  we’re so taken up with earthly things – what holiday we’re going to take, what we’re going to cook for tea – what on earth is that silly driver going to do next!  And all the while, the Risen Saviour walks beside us. 

And that’s OK really;  if we were living in terrible circumstances, where day after day we had to throw ourselves on the power of God for strength to get through it, even the most stoic amongst us would long for a change to a more comfortable existence.

He came silently, gently. There were no recriminations.  He didn’t say “well a fine lot of disciples and followers you turned out to be!”.  He came to ordinary people – on the road – where they were.  But they didn’t recognise him.  Why didn’t they recognise him?  Was his body so different?  I think they were immersed in their own blindness.  They had failed to really grasp his mission and purpose when he was alive, and they weren’t expecting him to rise from the dead, even though he had told them, and explained the scriptures to them. 

We don’t see Jesus because we are looking for someone else.  We look for him as the one to solve all our problems and answer our prayers in the way we think , we don’t always see him as the tortured, dying Jesus who walks with us all the time.

Was it because he appeared as an alien?  Apparently the Greek word used to describe the appearance of Jesus in this passage is paroikos, which can be variously translated as stranger, exile or alien.

He came as an outsider to the disciples on the road, and sometimes he appears to us in this guise too.  He comes in the form of an alien;  an outsider;  an unlovely one  and an undeserving one. We don’t always recognise him in this form.  American singer/songwriter Paul Simon’s wrote a song called “Trailways Bus”.  It tells the story of a Spanish boy, riding silent and scared, on the bus to America from Mexico to what he hopes will be a more prosperous life.  It describes the countryside the bus passes through….over the crest of the mountains, the moon begins it’s climb and he wakes to find he’s in rolling farmland…the farmer and his wife sleep and he wonders what their life must be like.  A couple with a young baby….the bus is heading into Washington DC, and his heart is racing with the urge to freedom. The father motionless as a stone;  a shepherd resting with this flock;  the trailways bus is turning west.. Dallas via little rock. He’s leaving his family who mourn for him but he has to find a way to help them live.  The border patrol outside of Tucson boards the bus… “any aliens here?  You better check with us.  How about you son? You look like you got Spanish blood.  You mind yourself, you understand?” The boy says in his head “Yes, I am an alien from Mars;  I come to earth from outer space and if I travelled my whole life through, you guys would still be on my case”.    

On the walk to Emmaus, Jesus is first recognized as an alien. Jesus was always an alien;  someone not accepted by his own;  he is a true child of Israel; living in exile was in his blood, so to speak. His ancestors -- Abraham, Jacob, Jeremiah -- all lived as aliens at one time or another.  He was present when the world was created, yet was a stranger to his own people when he came to live in that world.  It seems fitting somehow that when he came back to life after the crucifixion, he would still seem like an alien. He is not bound by one country or culture – he is available to all people.  Perhaps this is why he comes in such an “un-Jewish” guise; an alien who was never really at home on earth.

Do WE sometimes not recognise him?  Is he just the one-dimensional cardboard Jesus we think about sometimes when we come to church or do we walk with him daily as we journey through our lives?

He’s sometimes comes to us in a guise we don’t expect;  as a tiny helpless baby;  as a tortured criminal;  as the Risen Victor, yet walking in the humble apparel of the ordinary man;  a paradox - with the knowledge of all things in his head;  the power of the whole universe at his fingertips;  but empathy with the grief of the common man. Perhaps this is the real essence of the presence of Christ.  He walks with us even when we don’t realize it;  even when we don’t listen to Him. 

I’m sure you are all aware of John F Kennedy, the second son of Joe and Rose Kennedy, who became the US President in 1961.  But JFK was not his father’s first choice for a son in politics.  We have perhaps forgotten Joe Kennedy and his story is as tragic as is his younger brother.  The V-3 “supergun” was meant to win the war for Germany. In 1943, for the first time since World War II began, Hitler was on the back foot. Allied bombs were devastating German cities and the Fuhrer was rattled. His proposed V-3 cannon would be the biggest gun the world had seen.

The V-3 was built in a truly enormous bunker buried deep in a chalk hill in northern France. Millions of tonnes of rock were excavated by hand and among the workers were hundreds of slave labourers. In its original conception, 25 barrels were to point at London – about 100 miles away – delivering up to one bomb per minute and to create an environment of fear that would turn the course of the war back in Hitler’s favour.

American Engineers were working on a secret “drone” mission to destroy the V-3.  Joe Kennedy Junior was piloting a B-24 Liberator on August 12 1944. He and co-pilot Wilford Willy were supposed to take the plane up to cruising altitude, arm the drone bomb,  set the correct course and bail out. The drone would then carry on and drop it’s bomb on the launch pad of the huge German rocket. But an electronics officer named Earl Olsen had discovered that there was an error in the arming mechanism;  a small solenoid in the contraption was faulty and would burn out too quickly, setting the bomb off prematurely.  He tried to tell his superiors of the terrible outcome but was not listened too.  The man in charge of the mission was the top Engineer;  the big brass.  He failed to listen to the younger man of much lower rank.  Olsen even ran to the airfield and begged Joe Kennedy not to take off, but Joe didn’t listen either.  Olsen was right;  there was a fault in the arming mechanism and so, completely without warning, the bomb exploded over Blythburgh in Suffolk only 20 minutes after the ‘plane had taken off. Kennedy and Willy were killed and their bodies never found.

We can be like this;  Jesus tries to tell us of the power which can be ours;  a road-less-travelled way of living;  a path of blessing and enrichment, with Him at the helm of our lives.  But we don’t listen;  we are too caught up in other things. We don’t recognise what He’s telling us.

How then, DO we recognise him? How did the disciples recognise him? He explained the scriptures to them. The word made sense, because he came as “The Word” to them.  He came to them as the word-became-flesh, not as a political King. He does the same with us. It is one of the ministries of the risen Christ to open scripture to us. When the scriptures become meaningful for us, it is because the risen Christ has met us in that word, has engaged with us through Scripture, through our life’s journey via the Holy Spirit.  I’m not asking for a show of hands, but I wonder how many of us actually read the Bible, at home, every day?

The disciples were downcast and low.  It was then, in the midst of their weakness that the risen Christ became real to them. This is absolutely at the heart of an authentic life in Christ.  He will always walk with us;  it might be at some hour of crisis, or at the behest of some awful news, or illness, or an anxious time;  the fog of the mundane clears away and the Christ walks with us, in the midst of our grief or bewilderment.  He explains the Scriptures to us;  he expounds the word to us, because He himself IS the word. He always wants us to enter a deeper recognition of Him but He will never intrude; He will never make us give him his proper recognition as the Lord of All. (pause) He never imposes where he isn’t wanted.  He waits until the time is right as he did with Cleopas and his friends.

The bible says that when we help the most unlovely, the lowest, dirtiest, poorest scrap of humanity, we are helping Him. There’s a pattern of Him appearing as something so unlike what we expect.  If He knocks on the door of our hearts as the delightful rich host who showers us with honour and gifts, it would be too easy to follow Him and we’d be led away by the glitter of the world.  A Jesus like this would be a fake Jesus. I believe this is at the heart of why His earthly appearances were in such humble guises.

This Jesus is so much more than the political hero the disciples thought he was.  This Jesus shares not just the gift of his immortality with us, but his presence with us on our journey to get there as well. Listen for His still small voice;  hear it through our own personal reading of the Bible. Amen.

Lord of Safe Harbours

It’s a very familiar story, the one where Christ goes to sleep in the boat in the midst of a terrible storm.  (Mk. 4:38) It is evening and the disciples are in the boat with Jesus. They are crossing the Sea of Galilee when a great storm arises. The boat is beaten by the wind and the waves; it is filling with water and ready to sink. All the while, Jesus is asleep in the stern untroubled by the storm, indifferent to their peril and unperturbed by their fear. We wonder why this story was included in the Bible, because it shows Jesus in almost an uncaring way.  But I think it’s a little deeper than that:  There are two significant things we could notice about the story.

One is the nature of the call.  Let us go to the other side, he says, in the boat. He calls them, off the solid land onto the storm-prone sea, at evening.  And he calls them to go to the other side, as though there is a purpose.  There are many images in this narrative about what following Jesus might mean.  He calls them out of their comfort zone, into peril, to an unknown place, for an unknown purpose.

And then he goes to sleep.  That’s the second significant thing.

Apparently, the Sea of Galilee is prone to these storms, because it’s shallow, is below sea level and is surrounded by hills, which act as a funnel, through which the wind whips up storms.  These storms are more likely to occur at twilight, because of the cool night air blowing down onto the relatively heated surface of the water.

Why did he do this at such a precarious time?  He must have had some idea that the storm would blow up. Why was the storm permitted to arise in the first place? He knew about all the mechanisms of nature (because he was there at its creation).  Did he do this on purpose?  It doesn’t seem to equate with a loving, caring Shepherd. Yet, he did seem to call them knowingly into perilous possibilities.  Humanly, we might even ask “If he really loved them, why would he put them at risk?”.  We believe that God loves each of us.  The Bible says he holds our tears in a bottle;  that he knows us completely – he knows us by name; he will provide for our needs.   But when storms strike, it’s sometimes hard to reconcile what we believe about God in our heads, with the emotional and practical reality of our existence.

In his book, A Restless Faith, Keith Mascord explains his journey to come to peace with this enigma. He tells of a terrible accident what prompted him to search outside his Moore-College trained, fundamentalist faith.  He was a Minister in the Sydney Anglican tradition at Wee Waa, and during his time there, one of his churchmen, a farmer, backed over his little toddler son and killed him, then 11 months later, his daughter was killed in a car accident, because she wasn’t wearing her seat belt.  The reason she wasn’t wearing her seat belt, was because she’d had a previous accident and would have been killed, if she’d been wearing her belt.  Keith Mascord questioned his fundamentalist faith, in the face of the unimaginable suffering of these parents, and pondered all the whys and the hows of God letting this happen.  He eventually came to re-evaluate his faith, from a very black-and-white Sunday school understanding of God, to one which embraced much more of the mystery of God, and a less rigid explanation of the suffering in the world. When we consider the personal tragedies that people face every day and the global crises that plague our world, we may also wonder if Jesus is asleep on the job. The cries of the disciples are our cries too: "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"

The verses in Job have wisdom to add here. Job was a man who seemed to be picked on by God;  it was as though God took bets with the devil over Job.  The devil said “I bet I can do this or that terrible thing to Job, and he will abandon his faith in you”.  And God said “you’re on”.  And when the terrible things happened, Job felt abandoned by God, just like the disciples in the boat. Yet, in the end Job came to realize that he was just part of a bigger picture… he was not the Centre of the Universe and he had no right to tell God what to do.  This seems harsh to us. It is harsh, but there is great victory and strength in it too.  When confronted by his Creator, Job, in spite of everything that has happened to him, grasps the greatness, the mystery, the goodness and the inscrutable wisdom of God.  He learns about God’s sovereign grasp on our world. In the midst of his suffering, Job declares, "I know that my Redeemer lives and at the last he will stand upon the earth...then from my flesh I shall see God." (Job 19:25). Job has found his way home the hard way--through the path of being reduced to nothing but his bare skin and wretched bones...he is raised by God's spirit to the soaring conviction that no matter what happens to him, he belongs to God, and God will bring him to the divine presence in glory”  We too, discover that when our Universe collapses, there is still God. We are humbled to discover that we are not the Centre of God’s universe;  at the same time, we experience the mercy and peace of the Christ who is willing to become like us and get into the boat with us.

It’s the involvement of God with us that is the great overcoming mystery.  Not the head knowledge;  not the doctrine, but the absolute certainty of knowing God is there.  And sometimes, we only really understand that fact, when the great billows rise and the wind howls. This is the wisdom of the Storm story. This is why Jesus calls them out in the boat, at evening.. He knows what storms will blow up in our lives and still bids US follow him into the boat. Otherwise, we’d stand alone, marooned on the rocky shore of our lifeless head knowledge. The sleet of life’s storms would still rain down on us, but if we never venture into the thrashing water, we will never experience the real Jesus;  the overcoming One;  the one who, even asleep, still knows the storm rages.  He wakes to our call.  Every time.

Perhaps that’s why the story is told the way it is – because we know Jesus even sleeping, is still with us, so the sleeping bit is like a metaphor which represents our interpretation of what we feel when he doesn’t stir and answer all our why questions and answer our prayers in the way we want.

The mystery and the blessing of the storms of our lives are all mixed in together.  It feels messy to us.  Life is messy, complicated, unexplained.  The blessing we finally learn from our wave tossed journeys, are the blessedness of the presence and therefore the peace of Jesus, even while the tumult rages.

It can be unwise to directly link God’s caring of us, with our circumstances.  I have a friend on Facebook, who has had a pretty comfortable life.  And I know, we can’t always see behind closed doors, but in the overview of life she’s got a lot to be thankful for… stable marriage, plenty of money, healthy kids, grandkids, a job she loves.  Sometimes her posting to Facebook will be filled with exclamation marks and big smiley faces…. Things like “I love my life.  God is so good”. Or, “flying out to Paris today, our God is wonderful!” There’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s giving God the credit for our many blessings.  But if we only count the good circumstances of our life as proof of God’s favour and love for us, then when the storm comes, we may want to abandon the faith life altogether. A head knowledge faith, can be a fair weather faith.

The truth is that we live in a world which is defined at times by injury, loss, illness and death.  We all face our own storms and this story tells us, not so much why they happen – I’m not sure we can ever know that – but about how we can behave in the midst of them.  Of course, the disciples were afraid.  We also are afraid when terrible things happen.  And I think, it’s OK to cry to God, as the disciples did “Don’t you care?” Maybe that’s why this story records their reaction.  It’s like God is reaching down the years, saying to us “it’s OK to ask me why, or even why not”. But in the end, Jesus is the voice of calm, and he calls us to trust him over our fears.

Can we cultivate so firm and deep a trust in the wisdom and sovereignty of Christ that we do not fear following Him into the boat at evening, to go to the other side? The paradox is that until we step into the boat and until the storm arises, our faith can never be that firm or that deep. When we are in the thrashing unsafe boat and realize that He is still in control, our faith in His ability to either calm the storm, or calm our spirits, becomes rock solid.

Finally, can I share a lovely image of this seaside encounter with Jesus.  In his book Letter to a Man in a Fire Reynolds Price tells of an elderly lady who wrote to him about her experience of seeing Jesus more clearly. She was facing her own “storm,” as she was going through exhausting medical tests in preparation for surgery. One day an image came to her mind’s eye. "I went out along the Galilee shore and came to a crowd gathered around a man, and I stood on the outskirts intending to listen. But he looked over the crowd at me and then said, 'What do you want?' And I said, 'Could you send someone to come with me and help me stand up after the tests because I can't manage alone?' He [Jesus] thought for a moment and then said, 'How would it be if I came?'" (Letter to a Man in a Fire, 30-31)

“How would it be if I came?" This is precisely what God has done in Jesus Christ. God has come to us in our suffering and pain, in our struggle to be human, in our fear and anxiety, and in our doubt and uncertainty. Jesus put off deity and put on humanity. He became one of us--one with us--one for us.”

He bids us follow him into the boat, without revealing where the other side might be – without giving us a travel plan or sea sickness pills or life jackets.  He calls us to follow knowing full well that the journey will involve setbacks and storms.  But we have to get into the boat with him, before He calms the storm or hands out the life jackets.  Sometimes, indeed, he waits until the storm is strongest before he acts. If we waited until all was prepared and ready and known we might never go.  And risk being stranded on the shore for all eternity. 

Lord of safe harbours.  We know we are forgiven for all manner of our frailty You are the same today as you were when you bid the waves and winds to cease in the midst of the storm at Galilee.   You understand our fearfulness;  you speak the same words of peace to us.  You hold the mystery to all which befalls us;  you always know the measure of our endurance and faith, and will always command the storm to cease, before we plunge beneath the waves.  We know that all things are under your control.  You can calm the storms we face;  you can give us peace while the storm rages. Blessed by your name O God.  

The Lord's Prayer

“Teach us to pray;  the Lord’s prayer”.  These are my thoughts on what the verses from Luke mean to me; it’s how I’ve applied these precepts in my own life.

*        The opening sentence is “Our father in heaven; hallowed by your name”.  It’s like in a nutshell of who God is: We have on the one hand the invitation to see God as a very personal God who is like a father, and on the other, the Jehovah God to whom all things owe adoration and worship, and who reigns in heaven which is the beginning and end of all creation.  “Hallowed” means “all holiness belongs to you”.  . Some people struggle with the image of a Father God, because their earthly father was a very flawed character, We can feel compassion for those whose fathers were strict and severe, or violent or abusive, or feckless or work-shy; Nevertheless, we can at least relate on an intellectual level, to the ideal of a loving parent who has our best interests at heart, and who will always be interested in our lives;  who will forgive  us no matter what, who provides for us and looks out for us..” Our father” speaks of relationship;  of being able to talk to God in our own language, confident that He is listening. So we are invited to be in relationship with the One to whom all sacredness and power belongs.  And it seems that this prayer teaches us how to get our priorities right.  To start with acknowledging who God is and what He deserves from us, is a good beginning.

*        The next bit is “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. This has absolutely nothing to do with our idea of earthly Kingdoms.  I confess, I’ve recited this bit since I was a child, not really seeing it’s significance, or knowing what it really meant.  But after my son died, it became more meaningful.  My son was a young policeman, and when we gathered at Wesley   for his funeral; as we walked up the aisle we could see that the church was absolutely packed;  everybody squashed into the pews, and the little slide out seats too, and outside, and in the vestry. As we bowed our head for the first prayer, I began to have a sort of mental picture of that packed church and I could see lots of slender soft ribbons floating down onto the heads of many of the people.  In later days, as I pondered and prayed over Ben’s death and where God was in all of it, I could still see the ribbons descending.  And I began to pray that whatever purpose God had in allowing Ben to die, that it would begin to be put into place on earth;  I began to pray, that in relation to Ben’s death, God’s will would be done on earth as it already was in heaven.  God’s will was done in heaven;  Ben was with him;  God had counted Ben’s days;  He’s counted all our days and he has the final word on what happens to us..  Now I prayed that this will and purpose would be done on earth too, for all those people on whom the ribbons settled.  I felt that in this one way at least, Ben’s death would help someone else find peace with God, as he himself had found. Perhaps this is fanciful to you;  the silly imagination of a grieving mother.  Maybe.  But this I know;  God’s will is a fact;  a force;  a divine energy;  the divine intellect and purpose in the shadow of which we can only stand in mystified awe.  I could never say that it was God’s will for Ben to die, but "in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28). Ben was called home to God according to God’s purpose and I have to believe it works for good in the big picture.  Jehovah and parent God, may your will be done for us, on earth, as it already has been done in heaven.

*        Now we come to the petitionary part of the prayer;  “give us this day our daily bread”  This is the only part of the prayer which is for our physical provision.  Or is it?  I’m sure it  means we should be asking for the bread of physical life.  Notice that we are instructed to ask only for what we need today, on a daily basis, not for our sustenance and health in the days to come.  Tricky, very tricky.  It goes against our inclination doesn’t it? We want to know that we will be secure with food and money, long into the future. I don’t think many of us have any idea at all of what it would be like not knowing where our next meal was coming from.  But for the people of Jesus’ day, this was a real prayer, prayed for their survival.. And we are to ask for others too “give us”, not “give me”. And when we ask for bread, we probably should be mindful of all those who grow it and cook it and transport it, and especially those who are dying for the want of it.

This idea of a providential God, supplying everything we need and looking out for us, is a bit of a two edged sword and is never simple.  God is not a Father Christmas giving us what we think we want or even need.  We can’t say “God is good since he saves our children;  and we DO say this “God must have been looking after him or her because they walked out of the wreckage unscathed”. But where does that leave people like me, whose child was not saved?  Why was Peter freed from his prison cell by an angel, but Stephen was stoned to death? Why was John the Baptist allowed to be killed at the whim of a silly girl?  We believe in God’s providence when we get what we want, and we must also trust that providence when He allows things to happen which we don’t want. If I’m going to believe in a God who is absolutely good and always has my best interests at heart, then when Ben died, I couldn’t turn away and declare that God isn’t a loving Father.  This is mysterious stuff which we won’t understand until we get to heaven.  It’s all mixed up with our free will, and God’s absolute will, but at the end of the day, we are still the child, with the burdens and cares of our lives, coming to God’s door, saying “Give to me what I need and I’ll trust you for what that is;  let your will be done for me and all that happens to me”.  In the face of the death of my son, this is all I could offer God.

Could these verses about bread also mean, that we should be asking for God’s very heart to be shared with us;  the bread of Life;  the Spirit.  After all, the rest of these verses  go on to speak of the Holy Spirit, and God’s delight and desire to share his personhood with us, through the Holy Spirit. (down in vs 11-13 where he says that as earthy fathers know how to give good gifts, so the Father longs to give us the Holy Spirit)

*        And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.  We accept and embrace God’s forgiveness of us, but we aren’t always so energetic about forgiving others who have wronged us. It can be very hard to forgive people and our capacity to forgive is probably linked to how much they have hurt us.  Sometimes it can take a long time to forgive and it takes much prayer. Maybe this is why we are instructed to pray in this manner;  so that God can change us from resentful, ungodly people, into forgiving, Christ-centred people.   Prayer is not designed to change or persuade God; it is designed by God to change us! Prayer is a spiritual discipline through which we are formed into disciples of Jesus Christ. And a surprising shortcut to forgiving people is to pray for them. 

When my son had been dead for less than a year, I encountered a woman who took every opportunity to establish a pecking order, with me as the peckee.  She could have done me a good turn but she did me a bad one;  she could have shown compassion but she showed me veiled malice instead. In her defence, the things she said and did were petty, small-minded and if I’d been in a normal emotional state I could have flicked them off before they took hold. But I was in a very dark place, with a great wound on my heart and soul. It went on for months and as I drove home one rainy winter night, after another bad encounter with her, at a meeting during which I was not permitted to speak, I thought that I didn’t really want to be in the world any more. But after a few more months and with a skerrick more emotional strength, another way of escape presented itself. I began to pray for this lady.  I prayed for God to bless her;  I prayed that my attitude to her would change.  I prayed for God to love her and for me to love her the way He did. We can’t change how others treat us but we can change how we respond.  She had added to my burden of brokenness.  But prayer began to change the way I saw her and it allowed me to withdraw from the arena.  Her bossy pettiness began to fall on my deliberately-deafened ears.  I yielded her up to God and if that meant she always had the last word and the victory in the pecking order, then my reward was a healing emotional state. She began to seem like a little girl, always trying to prove how much she deserved praise and approval.  I began to see her with more compassion and understanding. Prayer did that. I’m sorry to be sharing something which is so personal, but I discovered that this praying for those who hurt us, actually works.

*        The next bit of this prayer is “And lead us not into temptation”. It’s no surprise that we are told to ask God not to lead us into temptation.  We could spend a month of sermons on this one.  Do not bring us to the time of trial.  Nobody wants trial. God knows how frail we are;  he knows we have need of confession. - We all of us have inclinations to wander to a particular area of sin;  for some it might simply be eating too much, or gossiping, or any type of natural appetite for which the human race is so prone to distort and adulterate. Temptation never strikes when we are strong and have the ramparts of our souls in place.  The evil one knows our weaknesses as well as the Christ does and he waits ‘til we are made vulnerable by any type of life circumstance through which he can fire an evil dart.  But with much praying and the help of the Spirit, we can overcome any temptation.  We have Christ’s example in that too.

*        We move on to the verses 6 to 13 and they are really about persistence;  the man who keeps knocking on his neighbour’s door, the verses about seeking and finding, asking and receiving.

In his classic book, The Meaning of Prayer, the great preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, puts it this way: Some things God cannot give to a person until he or she has prepared and proved his or her spirit by persistent prayer. Such praying cleans the house, cleanses the windows, hangs the curtains, sets the table, opens the door, until God says, "Lo! The House is ready. Now may the guest come in."

The Rev. Dr. Charles Reeb, pastor of United Methodist in St. Petersburg, Florida, has expressed this attitude very succinctly:  “When we ask long enough, seek hard enough, knock loud enough, and pray persistently enough, something happens on the inside of us. The discipline of prayer begins to awaken us to the Holy Spirit inside of us, and our motives and desires begin to change”.

It’s been said (Peter Annet) that those who pray persistently are like sailors who have cast anchor on a rock. As they pull on the anchor, they think they are pulling the rock to themselves, but they are really pulling themselves to the rock.

This is what persistent prayer does. Especially, if God’s answer to us, is eventually “no”. It pulls us closer to the rock of God’s divinity. . And in that continual coming, God changes us;  in that persistent coming, we are changed into what God wants for us.  In that constant coming, He shares his Holy Spirit with us. When our temporal needs are foremost in our minds, it might seem that this isn’t what we need.  But it IS all we need in the whole of our life’s journey, and is what is at the heart of this passage. Teach us to pray Lord?  Yes, he teaches us to pray, but it’s not an easy learning; we are often on a different wavelength, with different values and different ideas of what we need.  Yet, as we move closer to God in prayer, we may not always get what we ask for;  instead,  from the wisdom of God, we get what we need. We get what God wants for us, for our spiritual and eternal good. We find that as we move closer to our Rock, we begin to desire what God desires, so that what we ask for, knock for, and seek after becomes what God so desperately wants to give us. Then the truth of Jesus' words come to life so that what we pray for we truly receive. This is the secret of how to pray.  In the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen

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.

Why are we waiting?

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

The account of the death of John the Baptist in Matthew 11, makes for gruesome reading. John, sitting in prison, no doubt anticipating his own execution, hears what Jesus is doing, and sends his disciples to ask. How sad. How sad that, having given his life to the task of preparing the way for the Messiah, having said to Jesus at his (Jesus’) baptism, "It is you who should be baptizing me," having seen and done all this, John is finally plagued with uncertainty as he watches the Messiah fulfill his ministry. He just cannot be sure that this is what God intended the Messiah to be and do

The Bible also contains the well known stories of Mary’s rejoicing when she realizes she will be the mother of the Saviour of all mankind.  

Both of these people are waiting;  Mary is waiting in the way all pregnant women wait;  my daughter is pregnant at the moment and she and her husband are starting to prepare for the baby’s birth.  I too, await with eager longing to see this little new life.  We wonder whether it will be a girl or a boy;  we wonder what the baby will look like;  what sort of person will it be?  But in Mary’s case, she is also waiting for the restoration of her reputation and for the fulfilment of God’s prophesy to her, because although she knows she is pregnant by the holy spirit, we can imagine that perhaps the people in her world found this very hard to believe, and would have been quick to condemn her has promiscuous - a very harsh judgement with terrible consequences, in Mary's culture.  People would undoubtedly have been very unkind to her.  She must have spent some anxious times when it became apparent she was not married but was pregnant, and even after the birth, Joseph married her of course, but down the years, she must have borne the taunts of people who never really believed that the child she bore was not just the child of a human father.

She waits as he grows, to see what sort of man he will become.  She waits to see evidence of his divinity, she waits while he begins his ministry. She must have worried about him. She must have wondered where his destiny would take him.;  indeed the bible says “she pondered these things in her heart”.  She waited and watched and wondered.  And finally, she waited at the foot of the cross for him to die.

Waiting is often very difficult.  Waiting even on worldly things can be a frustrating business.  How often have we fretted about how long we’ve had to wait in the supermarket queue?  In reality, it’s never more than a few minutes.  And just as an aside, I always use this time to pray for the people around me.  It’s my way of turning something with potential for frustration, into something much more pleasant and positive.

Waiting on test results is often very difficult.  In most cases, we find waiting difficult.

Waiting on God is also difficult.  What does God say to us about waiting?  He has, after all, been telling his people to wait, for thousands of years, from when he told Abraham he would be the heir of thousands of people of God, and impelled Abraham to wait until he brought this about, to this story in the new testament of Mary and her waiting for the Saviour to be born. 

In John's case too, he must have wondered why Jesus didn't come to the prison and save him.  He was his cousin and the messenger to Christ's coming.  

 We might spare a thought for John’s parents.  They must have also waited a very lonely and anxious vigil, to hear news of his death. They would be hoping for his release, but really, I think they knew in their hearts, this would not happen.

We too, in our waiting, hope for the best outcome;  we want the test results to be good;  we want our child to be healed;  we want our financial worries to be over. 

But life isn’t like that;  sometimes the worst happens.  God doesn't always rescue us.  We see that from the death of John the Baptist. But just as we must walk out into the dark to see the stars, sometimes we have to experience terrible darkness in our lives, in order to see the stars of God's presence in our lives. It’s then we can experience the presence of God.  Our anxious waiting can give birth to a new understanding of the peace of the Christ child. 

Whether we are waiting, like John, alone, with the threat of something dreadful over our heads, or like Elizabeth, expecting a child who will become the messenger of the Messiah, or like Mary, expecting the fulfilment of God’s promise to her, we can always wait, with the hope and peace of God in our hearts.

Sustain us, Father, with the power of your love on our journey to meet the One who is coming; strengthen our weak hands, make firm our feeble knees, and open blind eyes to the dawning of your kingdom; that our hearts may rejoice with joy and singing as we behold the majesty of our God. We ask this through your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen ( Prayer was written by Rev David Beswick, Uniting Church  website)

Job found treasure

Job

42 Then Job replied to the Lord:

² “I know that you can do all things;
    no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
³ You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
    Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me to know.

⁴ “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.’
⁵ My ears had heard of you
    but now my eyes have seen you.
⁶ Therefore I despise myself

    and repent in dust and ashes.”....
¹⁰ After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. ¹¹ All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.

¹² The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. ¹³ And he also had seven sons and three daughters.

I am acquainted with a youngish man who is a well-known face on my local news.  Recently his job was made redundant and he now has to find another job.  This could be very stressful, especially when he has a young family and a mortgage. When I talked to him briefly about this – asking him how he was getting on finding a new position, he was very positive and upbeat.  “I’m sure God has a plan” he said.

The very next day, I was speaking to another acquaintance, a freshly minted teacher, in her first school.  When I asked how she was going, during the course of the conversation, she said something like “Oh well, if I stuff up teaching these kids, I’m sure God still has a plan for them”. I think she was trying to say that even though she might be making mistakes in her first year out, God would be able to override that.

And then just through the week, another Christian and I chatted about retirement,  Super funds, the stock market, and his circumstances, and he also said “I’m sure God has a plan”.

These quirky coincidences set me to thinking about what Christians believe about the plans of God. Does God have a plan for our lives?  And does God still have a plan when we “stuff up”, as my young friend so inelegantly put it?  How does the plan work when someone else does something to us which causes profound and long-lasting impact?  Where is God’s plan when everything goes wrong? 

Let’s have a look at these few verses in Job.

Then Job replied to the Lord:

“I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Job says these words to God, not at the beginning of the story when everything is right with the world, but at the end of his terrible journey of suffering. A daring interpretation of the context would suggest that God’s hand, if not causing the suffering, allowed it to happen. 

The book of Job is played out against the fact that the devil makes a wager with God.  At the beginning of the book, the devil says to God “I bet if I take away all his good fortune, he’ll abandon you”.  And God says “You’re on”.  God consenting to such a wager is, in itself, hard to fathom. The book goes on to speak of Job’s terrible plight, his discourse with God and with his friends.  But in this final chapter, after all his tantrums, he says to God “I spoke of things I didn’t know or understand;  my ears have heard you now and my eyes have seen you. Speak and I will listen”.  We might interpret that as Job saying “I’ve been an ignorant man on these matters and tried to tell you, Almighty God, what to do and how to rule the world.  I’m sorry for my arrogant presumption”  Job has been on a very difficult spiritual journey;  a journey to spiritual honesty.

That’s the overview, but I wanted to explore the idea of “no plan of God’s can be thwarted”.

God does indeed have a purpose for our lives, but it’s not usually the one we imagine. Our ideas of perfect plans are tied to earthly outcomes, to bottom lines; to comfortable lifestyles.  

God’s ultimate plan is the one where He sends His own son to die for us, so that when we stand on that other shore, we can cross into God’s country;  into the presence of God, unblemished and blameless by what we’ve managed to mess up on earth.

This amazing purpose of God did not involve everything falling into place in a favourable and comfortable set of circumstances.

It involved humiliation, violence, hardship, malevolence and ultimately not just physical death but spiritual death – a trip to Hades itself - for our sakes.

God always has a plan but they are always geared to the spiritual values, rather than our earthly ones.

Does He then involve himself in our daily lives and decisions?  - who we marry, what job we do, what house we buy; how safe we stay?

I honestly don’t know.  If you’ve had a long and happy marriage, you might say “Oh yes, God planned it all”.  It was God’s doing.

But if, like me, you were damaged by an abusive, unfaithful spouse, then you may wonder what God was doing when he allowed that person to walk into your life. 

If you’ve spent a long and illustrious career in a job you loved doing, then I’m sure you will be first to say that God’s plan came to fruition for you.  But if your job has been back-breaking toil, with not much financial remuneration, and time spent in a caustic workplace, amongst ferocious workmates who bullied you, then where is God’s plan in all that?

We live in a free and prosperous country, but I wonder what Syrian Christians think about the plan of God for them?

But even here in our fortunate country, our lives are all flawed; things frequently don’t work out the way we think they should.  This was Job’s experience too;  He did not reap the harvest he should have had, for a life lived with integrity.  He got, instead, what he didn’t deserve.

I’ve puzzled over these things during the course of my own dark days, and I have concluded that God always has a plan for our spiritual well-being. And just as He used the terrible happenings in the life of Jesus, for his plan of Salvation, so He can use the terrible things in our lives too, to bring healing to our souls.  That is a paradox isn’t it?;  that terrible things, which should bring us undone, can just as surely bring us closer to God.  And when we are closer to god, we are actually healthier spiritually.

The betrayal of Jesus by Judas was a terrible thing, yet it was all woven into the plan of Christ’s death;  the Roman soldiers were the means of delivering the death of Christ.  Pilate also played His part.  These were all heinous things, but they were allowed by God because they were part of His plan for our redemption.

His glorious plan was achieved – the conquering of spiritual death was achieved through suffering and everything going wrong.

So it can be for us, if we have the good sense to keep following the Christ through all the brokenness and messy circumstances of our lives.  We too can be triumphant over even the things which impact us profoundly, even though they are terrible things.  I find that very comforting.

Some of you may remember the chorus “Something Wonderful”.  It goes “something wonderful;  something good.  All my confusion, you understood.  All I had to offer you was brokenness and strife, but you made something beautiful with my life. 

When I sing that at home though, I always change the middle line into “all you had to offer me was brokenness and strife”.  Because sometimes that’s what it seems like, when everything goes wrong.  God seems to offer us strife and then abandons us to it. This is exactly what Christ felt when he hung on the cross.  You’ll remember he said “My God, why have you forsaken me?” 

This was how Job felt too.

Chapter 19: "He has blocked my way so I cannot pass;
he has shrouded my paths in darkness.
⁹ He has stripped me of my honour
and removed the crown from my head.
¹⁰ He tears me down on every side till I am gone;
he uproots my hope like a tree.
¹¹ His anger burns against me;
he counts me among his enemies.

Chapter 13:24: Why do you hide your face
and consider me your enemy?

And consider these verses from the Psalms:

I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?' "

And this from Paul in  2 Corinthians 1: 8-9:  "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,^[a] about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself." Paul, the great Apostle despaired of life itself. 

The bible is full of verses about the Saints of God grappling with the awful stuff, and wondering how it fits in with the idea of a loving, providential Father God.

We don’t want the strife – we want it all to be rosy.  Anthony Warlow, Australian Tenor with a glorious voice, starred in a Musical a few years ago, called “Jekyll and Hyde”.  Not sure it was very long-lived, but it had a song in it called “This is my moment”, and it part, it goes :

"Every endeavour,
I have made - ever -
Is coming into play,
Is here and now - today!

This is the moment,
This is the time,
When the momentum and the moment
Are in rhyme!"

But sometimes, nothing is in rhyme;  the stars don’t line up, the Universe isn’t in harmony….. it all goes wrong… and we  want a plan B.

I’m afraid there is often no Plan B. Awful stuff happens.

Why does God allow the awful stuff?  If we read Job, I’m not sure we should ask that;  God is God;  it’s not up to us to tell Him what He can and can’t do.

I know one thing though – God is still in control in the terrible stuff, just like He was when He allowed Judas to betray Jesus and when he allowed the devil to make bets on Job’s life.  He works within the terrible stuff. He can always bring good out of bad.  Romans 8: 28 “All things work together for God for those who love Him and are called according to his purpose”.  He can always offer us spiritual sight.  He can always give us gladness for mourning, even in the face of tragedy. And ultimately He will always give us strength to endure.

It may take a while;  it may take some soul searching and honest conversation with God.  But He’s never been averse to that.  If we go back to the book of Job, we see that Job really gives God an earful – he really has a go at God, but in the end God doesn’t reproach him for that.  After all, God realizes it’s an honest tirade and part of the journey of Job’s grief. God rebukes the self-righteous friends who are untouched by tragedy but have so much know-it-all advice to give the suffering Job.

Ultimately, God says to Job “I am God and it’s not up to you to make the plans.  I created you;  you can’t dictate my purposes”.

Job’s heart and soul are big and he repents of his railing and ranting at God.  He admits he is not God and that he spoke of things he didn’t understand.  The relationship between himself and God is restored, because Job remains in touch with God; and is humble before God; and is honest with God. Job finds peace.

The hope in this message is tangible.  This can be our experience too, in whatever tragedy or failure has occurred in our lives.

And there is a peace, finally, after all our conversations with God and our anger and our cries of “it’s not fair”.  .. when we have hurled our accusations and puzzlement and raw grief at God;  in the end, we find He is not angry with us for that. 

But He IS God and who are we in the end to question what He does or allows?  This is how Job coped;  this is how he processed his grief and his affliction.  There is no plan B where God intervenes.  God’s plan is always to be present with us and to bring triumph out of tragedy;  to bring eternal spiritual values to the disquiet of our suffering;  to bring us finally to acceptance of what’s happened and to bring peace to our sorrowing heads.

His plan is always to be present with us no matter what happens and to make us more like himself. 

So we come to the final chapter of the book of Job and find that God restores his fortune. 

That’s actually not the good bit and I’ll tell you why.  The good bit is the journey Job has taken to spiritual wholeness and a deeper understanding of God. Job emerged stronger and wiser and humbler than he was before.

And if you are tempted to think that isn’t the good bit, let me tell you of a little story I heard on Radio National the other day.  The topic was poker machines.  Poker machine revenue accounts for 10% of state income in NSW.  Australians lose 12 billion a year on the pokies.  In a club in Fairfield, of the 39 million revenue this club makes, 37 million of it comes from poker machines. The machines are geared for the player to lose.  They are designed to let you win little amounts, so you keep playing and they can be played with credit cards. The venues have no clocks, so you lose track of time. 

So a lady was interviewed as part of this programme.  She began playing them after her son took his own life.  She explained that the appeal was the hypnotic soothing state playing the machines induced in her.  She was grief-stricken and floundering and this became her escape and her coping mechanism. I’m sure none of us would judge her for that.

But she became addicted.  This was a well- educated, well-incomed woman, who had something terrible happen in her life, and all she had were the pokies.  She eventually kicked the habit, but was then overtaken by alcohol abuse.  She finally found the strength, with some professional intervention, to kick both things.

But not everyone has the resources to see a health professional every week… and they lose everything.  They become irrevocably broken.

How much better it would have been if she had cried and raged at God, in her grief, as Job did.  Indeed, as some of us have.

Job’s way of coping was much to be preferred and that’s why I say that the end, where Job found peace and healing, after his very honest interaction with God, is the good bit.

God’s plan is always to keep us from falling.  I cannot tell you why God chose to take bets on Job’s life;  I cannot tell you why he doesn’t have a Plan B.  I cannot tell you why he allows terrible things or why He sometimes seems to abandon us or is silent in the face of our suffering. 

But I can tell you that God’s plan IS always to keep us from falling.

And it’s not over, ‘til it’s over. The mystery of our redemptive suffering will one day be explained on that heavenly shore, by the Risen Lord who has kept an account of all our tossings, who holds our tears in his bottle and who has written our names in His book of Life.

I’d like to conclude with those lovely verses from the book of Jude, vs 24-25:

²⁴ Now unto him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,

²⁵ To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.