Today (yesterday by now) felt much like Day Two, but this time we donated baby food to Safe Harbor, a non-profit that helps victims of domestic violence in upstate SC. You can click on the logo below to link to their homepage.
I know it may seem strange to donate food to an organization that combats domestic violence. But many times, when women contact Safe Harbor or come to the shelter, they have next-to-nothing with them. Escaping a domestic violence situation rarely provides an opportunity to pack thoroughly. So Safe Harbor is always in need of donations of food, toiletries, clothes, and - tragically - baby food and formula to feed their children, the most helpless of victims.
I have a special place in my heart for this organization, mainly because I won a sermon-writing contest they had during Domestic Violence Awareness month (October) a few years ago. It probably didn't hurt that it was the first annual contest and they didn't have anything to compare to from previous years. And I doubt there were many (if any) other applicants. Not to mention the fact that the Executive Director of Safe Harbor is a member of our church. :)
In any case, I ended up with the Working Together for Peace Award, landing me an appearance on The Peggy Denny Show, whose host is somewhat of a legend on local public access religious television (if there can even be such a thing...it seems ridiculous now that I type it out). So here's my shameless bit of self-promotion, titled "Gracious Submission."
Before
I read our scripture for today, let me begin by saying, It’s hard to preach a
sermon on a sermon. The author of the book of Hebrews, from which
our text for today comes, calls this epistle a “word of exhortation,” meaning,
basically, it’s a sermon. And it’s
harder than you might think to preach on that and make it meaningful and
personal and relevant. I mean, can you
imagine me trying to preach on one of Stephen’s
sermons and get something meaningful
out of that?! But I’m going to
give it a shot with Hebrews.
That
being said, the scripture for today is Hebrews 4:14 – 5:10.
As I read, I
invite you to listen for a good word from God.
[READ Hebrews 4:14-5:10]
See what I
mean? It even sounds like a sermon—quotations of scripture, lofty theological
ideas, and lots of religious rhetoric and persuasive language. But it had to be this way.
The epistle we
know as Hebrews was originally a homily written and delivered to a congregation
about 50 or 60 years after the death of Jesus.
And this congregation is tired—tired
of serving, tired of spiritual struggle, tired of education, tired of worship. Does that sound familiar to anyone? They are tired of following Jesus…and it can
certainly be tiring, can’t it? They are tired of walking the walk of faith,
and they might just walk away from
the faith.
I know that many
of us here today are tired. I can see it
in your faces on Sunday mornings, and I know it’s not just because of the sermons. We are tired of living in this-world
as opposed to God’s kingdom; we are tired of living in a world where pain and
suffering are realities of life, where war and disease ravage our planet, where
the earth is misused and abused, and where injustice prevails more than justice, it seems. It is hard, it is tiring, to be a
person of faith. It is hard to serve and
struggle and learn and worship.
So, it might
just be that the congregation here at Earle Street is not all that far removed
from the congregation of Hebrews.
But notice: to encourage and exhort his congregation, the writer of the epistle doesn’t appeal to group
dynamics, or conflict management, or the reorganization of administration, or
changes in worship. He appeals to Jesus, to the meaning of Jesus’ life and to Jesus’ role as the
“great high priest”—as our great high priest. He dares to ask and answer the question,
“What does Jesus’ life mean for our life of faith?”
For
the writer of Hebrews, the focal point of Jesus’ life is his role as
priest. Now, as Baptists, it might be hard for us to think of Jesus as a priest, but consider for a moment what
a priest does—a priest serves as a
type of mediator between God and people, with one foot in the sacred and one foot
in the secular, bridging the gap between the human and the divine, drawing God
to humanity and humanity to God.
In these ways,
Jesus is clearly a priest. What the priest does is who Jesus is. And because
Jesus—fully divine and fully human—serves in this priestly role, we have access
to grace and mercy and God’s timely help.
Fred Craddock paraphrased an ancient understanding of Christ in this
way: “He was as we are, and therefore
he will help; he was not as we are, therefore he can.” Because we “hold fast to our confession”—to Jesus as the incarnate Son of God—we
can draw near to God, just as God has
drawn near to us in the person of Christ.
It is a bit
strange, though, that our great high
priest is one who suffered and died a shameful death. Our great high priest is one who was made
low, like us. He experienced what we
experience, he faced what we face—pain, suffering, and even death—and so he
sympathizes with us. Whereas the human
high priest “deals gently,”
moderating his or her feelings, Christ sympathizes. That word is actually a Greek word, sympatheo, which means “to feel
with” or “to suffer with.” He is not
just addressing our needs in the midst of pain, but because he knows our pain,
he experiences it with us. German
theologian Jurgen Moltmann put it this way, “God suffers with us – God suffers from
us – God suffers for us.”
Because God
entered into creation in the person of Christ—knowing our weaknesses, feeling
our pain, and suffering with us—the
channels of grace and mercy are opened wide.
Jesus carries our needs and distresses, our pain and suffering, our
hunger for justice and cries for peace directly to the dwelling place of God,
and we can approach God with boldness—in Greek, literally, “saying everything.”
I
realize that this does not ease the pain we do experience. It doesn’t explain why we suffer. In fact, the
question of how a good and loving God
could allow evil and suffering has
plagued people of every generation. And
standing here today, I don’t have an answer to it.
In
fact, when I first read this passage, that question came to mind. In verse 7 of chapter 5, it says that Jesus
prayed to the one who was able to save him from death and he was heard out of his
reverent—his gracious—
submission.
But Jesus did
suffer and die. And although this might
sound like a theological contradiction, I don’t think it is. I think it ties us even closer to Jesus. He prayed,
“saying everything,” with loud cries
and tears, in the garden and on the cross.
Yet he remained completely faithful to God’s purposes, even in the face
of death, even though he did not necessarily have an assurance of deliverance—much like us.
We know this
kind of suffering. We know the
experience of never feeling safe, even in our own home; we know the bruises of
abuse that run much deeper than our skin, but go into our very being. We know what it is like to sit in a hospital
waiting room for hours, not knowing what the outcome might be. We know the pain of watching loved ones lie
in a nursing home bed, having forgotten where or even who they are. We know the sorrow of losing a friend, or a
parent, or a child. We certainly know
pain and suffering.
But so does
God…and not just in the Christ event.
People around the world suffer daily—from poverty and disease, from war
and hate. Christ is crucified every day. There are countless crosses that litter the
horizon of history.
So
why would we want to submit to that?
By speaking
about what Jesus experienced in the “days of his flesh,” his gracious
submission, his faithfulness, and the obedience he learned through suffering,
the author is encouraging the hearers—including
us!—to submit during our suffering and to be obedient to God. And I have to admit, I don’t really like that
submission language. It has always
bothered me. Why should we submit to
suffering, especially in light of our focus today on domestic violence
awareness? Still, I’m sure that many of
us have heard stories about people that hit rock bottom in their pain or
struggles, and finally gave in and turned to God. And that is certainly a good thing.
BUT…
Gracious submission is not simply accepting or giving assent to suffering because we think that to do so is to be
obedient. We have mentioned that October
is domestic violence awareness month, and this is one type of suffering in
which there is nothing to be gained by being submissive or
obedient. Domestic violence is not about a loving God, become incarnate
and suffering with us in our pain and struggles. It is about control and violence…and
that’s it. There is nothing redemptive
about it.
Gracious submission is not about submitting to violence, but about submitting to God’s grace,
trusting in God’s goodness. It is about
acknowledging—even in the midst of our pain—that while we can’t necessarily explain it or give meaning to it, we do have the “blessed
assurance" that God is with us.
It’s not that obedience is associated with happiness and disobedience with suffering. In fact, the
experience of Christ, if not our own experience, shatters that
view. But we are promised the
grace of God’s presence.
In
divinity school one of the catchphrases we talked about in pastoral care was
the “ministry
of presence.” The idea was: you
didn’t always have to know what to say, you didn’t even have to say anything at
all. Many times, simply being present with a person in pain is a
ministry in itself.
In a way, Jesus
is God’s “ministry of presence” with us.
In Christ, God stands with humanity—in our suffering, in our grief and
sorrow, in our pain and fear—and God calls us to do the same for each
other. Jesus is our great high priest
because of his gracious submission,
but, as Stephen reminded us a few weeks ago, we are all priests. We know each others’ struggles and pain and
weaknesses. We sympathize with one
another, by sitting together in the hospital waiting rooms, or by visiting the
nursing homes, or by shedding tears with those in sorrow, or by standing in
solidarity with victims of injustice and inequality and hatred. We sit
together, we cry together, we pray together, and we stand together.
And God is with
us, too. As Christians, we must descend
into the depths of humanity to be with those who suffer, in the same way that
God has descended to us in the person of Jesus, offering us grace and mercy,
even in our pain and suffering. We
experience pain, we suffer, our weaknesses are made known every day. But as Christians, our respite, our hope, and
our promise is that God is with us. And that
is the source of our salvation…
…if we
will submit our lives to God’s service.
May we have the grace
to make it so.
AMEN.
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