Perseverance. Love. Forgiveness.
July 12, 2009
Mark 6:14-29 and 2 Samuel 6:1-15
There are simply some moment in our lives that are harder to get through than others. Sometimes our rough patches last for a few months. Other times there are simply single weeks or days that are emotionally heartbreaking and spiritually troublesome. It seems to me that these past few weeks and months have been one of those terrifically challenging times for many of us.
Globally we are experiencing the pains of living in a diverse world. Diversity is an absolute blessing that allows us to understand different points of view, helps us to taste different experiences, and encourages us to visit new places and make new friends and learn from folks drastically different than us. But diversity is incredibly difficult as well. How do we get along in our world with ideologies ranging from communism to democracy? How does the spectrum of belief, from religious fundamentalism to atheism, get along together, without killing each other in the process? Why are we, as the children of God, so different? Why do we not like each other very much?
In the past few weeks these questions have been rather burdensome for me. As part of my pastoral responsibilities I feel it is necessary to be knowledgeable not only about what is going in our congregation, but also what is happening around us God’s wider world.
If you’ve been keeping up lately with global news you perhaps, too, have been deeply concerned about the state of the world. In China during the past week the Uyghur people, who are of Turkic descent, have been battling the ethnic majority Han in dozens of street fights and riots, where thousands have fought and hundreds have been killed or injured.
While news from Iran has died down in our media the past week, tensions are still boiling. Reports now tell us that hundreds of protesters have been captured and imprisoned—leading Iran further down an almost inevitable path of pain, heartache, injustice and future turmoil.
Almost removed completely from the vision of the mainstream press as well are the battles and tensions in Iraq and Afghanistan, where clouds of foreboding cling to each person as they rise in the morning, not knowing how violent their life will that day.
And all of this violence—religious, political, ethnic—is on top of the frayed financial system which has reaped and harvested the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, regardless of nation, or ethnicity, religion or history.
While it would be easy to sweep these problems under the rug as political issues, not related to our faith, it would also be dishonest. In fact, it is in troubled times like these when we must, more resolutely than ever, ask “Where is God?”
Because our perspective of God at the global level is also our perspective of God at the local level. The same God who loves the world, loves us individually and when our lives are hurting we are asking the same questions of God as when the world is hurting: “Where is your love, O God,” “Where is your grace,” “Where is your mercy,” “Why, O God, have you forsaken us.”
And the pains we feel are not just the pains that ravage the globe. They ache in our hearts and in our own personal lives: We ask, why O God, has my job been taken away? Why, O Lord, is my body deteriorating? Why, O God, is my loved one sick and dying? Why, God, Why?
Many of us are perplexed with these questions. Many of us are looking for signs of God’s grace and mercy, and are finding them hard to come by. And while for many of us there are slivers of hope and stability and love and nourishment, for others our faith has taken a beating. So we turn to the scriptures to hear encouragement from the Word of God. We hope to find solace in stories of redemption and power. We search for ways God has worked in the past to understand how the Spirit might once again move in our own lives. So we come to church for a word of encouragement, to hear Bible stories of glory and wonder.
And what is waiting for us here this morning? We hear two stories from our lectionary readings on pain, death, heartbreak and sadness. We hear of two people, righteous and well-intentioned, struck dead: one by the apparent anger of God and one by the whims of people.
God kills. People kill. Those are the passages of text we have today.
And neither story is really fair. The story found in 2 Samuel is particularly difficult to hear. Uzzah, a man whose family had taken care of the Ark of the Covenant for generations, tries to steady the Ark after the oxen pulling it stumble and shake it. Yet right as he touches the Ark with his hand, trying to do a good deed, trying to prevent the holy box from falling, he is struck dead by God’s wrath.
We can try to do our best to find consolation for our faith in this story. Uzzah was a protector of the Ark. He knew he wasn’t supposed to touch it. He knew that he wasn’t ritually clean. He should have had faith that God would have righted the Ark, that God would have steadied it.
We even try to avoid this story all together. In fact our lectionary actually skips these verses. The suggested text for today conveniently leaves out this middle portion, instead only having us read the verses before and after. We don’t really want to hear this story of what the author describes as God’s anger. By our standards today, God acted absolutely unfairly! David himself recognized this and named the place where it happened Perezuzzah—God “Bursting Out Against Uzzah.” What kind of God is this who destroys faithful followers? And is this same God who’s got the whole world in his hands?
And the story from Mark is no less comfortable. John the Baptist, who preaches a gospel of repentance and righteousness, is struck down in a strange play of incest, power, lust, and spinelessness. One of God’s own prophets, killed by the foibles of humans, and where was God to protect him? Where was the anger of God that killed Uzzah? If God should strike dead anyone shouldn’t it be Herod, Herodias, and Salome, who not only had John killed, but gruesomely beheaded him, and then paraded the severed head on a platter at a dinner party?
Who is this God? Why are God’s actions so inscrutable? Where is the goodness of God? Where is the God of love? Where is the God of healing and comfort? Where is the God of our Sunday school years—the God of simple love, of hugs, of certainty? Where has God gone?
Perhaps one comfort we can draw from these perplexing passages today is that our questions about God are not unique to us. King David questioned God’s action in the killing of Uzzah. And I can only imagine the doubts that ran through the heads of John’s disciples as they carried his lifeless, headless body through the city, to lay him in the tomb. Surely some of the same thoughts and doubts that pound upon our faith during our difficult times are the same ones that troubled the disciples of John, that mystified the great kings of Ancient Israel, that bewildered the forefathers of our Christian faith.
Life, inherently, is not fair. Life is not perfect. Tragedies occur. Bad things happen to good people. Bad actions are unfairly rewarded. Earthquakes tremble, hurricanes blow, and violence shakes our souls.
In life, you see, we all face death in one way or another. The death of a job. The death of our health. The death of a relationship. The death of peace. The death of love. Death is a part of life; it is the natural order of God’s created realm. But still we ask ourselves, where is God in the midst of the unfairness and troubles and death?
A good friend and mentor once told me that it is not the cross of Jesus that should hold our attention the longest, but the resurrection. But how exactly do we experience the God of resurrection in the midst of death? How can we feel the power of resurrection in the depths of despair?
Each of us has a different way of persevering through hardship, of holding steady in pain, and most of the time our levity is found in that we do not endure pain alone. We are surrounded by loved ones; we are cared for by others. And in this human element we are granted the grace of God. Our resurrections in life are found when we keep searching for beauty in the world despite clouds of the deepest black.
The true power of God is not found in dying, it is found in resurrection. In resurrection there is hope. In resurrection there is God.
Both of our biblical stories today have resurrection in them, but it is a subtle resurrection. And this is appropriate because our hopes and our new beginnings are often found in the subtlest of ways. After John the Baptist was killed, his disciples, hearing of the death, went and gathered his body and carried it to the tomb.
And what is special about this? Those simple words “his disciples.” John’s death was not the end of his ministry. His disciples, surely mortified at this tragic turn of events, still found the strength and courage to continue to serve in the manner John taught them. They continued to be “disciples.” They persevered, not alone, but together. As John’s body processed through the streets, the disciples found the blessings of God in the fellowship of each other, of not suffering alone. In each other, God provided stability and support for their lives. In each other they were granted resurrection.
And in 2 Samuel, after David’s friend Uzzah was struck dead for touching the Ark, David mourned his loss, sending the Ark away and ranting against God. But then something miraculous happened. The death of Uzzah was not the end. The ark was carried to house of Obededom, where great blessings rained down upon his family. And then, David found the strength to return to the Ark, to take up again this symbol of death and power, and to carry it to the city of Jerusalem, not alone, but with the entire house of Israel. And, we are told, “David danced before the Lord with all his might,” resurrecting his faith in God by forgiving the parts of life he couldn’t control.
How striking are these texts in their similarities. John’s disciples carrying his body of death to the tomb. David and the house of Israel carrying the Ark of the Covenant, the instrument of Uzzah’s death, to Jerusalem. And in the midst of this procession of death there is yet hope and resurrection. David dances with all his might. John’s disciples are recommitted to their cause. They are testaments to the power of perseverance through God’s grace, to the love of a fellowship of faith and to forgiveness for the unfair turns of life that we can’t control.
Perseverance. Love. Forgiveness. In our own times of pain and sorrow if we can turn to these three elements of faith we can find the path to our resurrection. Perseverance through hardships. Love from others and love for the world. Forgiveness for the things we can’t control. Perseverance. Love. Forgiveness. Perseverance. Love. Forgiveness. Perseverance. Love. Forgiveness. Amen.
