And I’ve got no doubt, once everything is certified, whoever officially wins this election and comes into office next year, you’ll have folks angry and upset about that outcome. I get it.
If you care passionately about
something going one way, and it doesn’t go that way, you’re going to be
upset. But how do you deal with
that? How do you even find a way to move
past it? More crucially, how do we as a
country find a way to move past it? How
do we come together to respect our elected leaders even if we didn’t vote for
them or may not even like them? What if
those leaders even do things that anger us? How do you not let the anger get
out of hand or lead to actions or words that you regret? In
these words, God gives you a surprising answer, but one if you think about it,
frees you, frees us all in ways that nothing else can. What is that answer? Here God shows us the way. Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.
How did it come to this? That’s the title of the series of which this sermon is a part. And you might be asking that question about this election and all the unrest surrounding it, the charges and countercharges, the suspicions and rage. But hey, let’s look at the bright side. At least, where I am, Florida isn’t at the center of this mess. For once, I am glad that Florida is not one of those states that folks are fighting over.
But once the dust settles, someone will be President, and how do we come together then? How do we find a way forward? In these words, God shows you the way. How? Well, God is giving you some great news. God is telling you that this God, the one and true God is a God who gets really, really angry.
Now, lots of folks today get bothered by an angry
God. In fact, growing up, in school I
read the famous sermon by the great theologian Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Sheesh, that has
to be one of the scariest sermon titles ever (and a sermon let's say that doesn't fully represent Edwards' thinking) .
Yet, we all need a God who gets
angry. Isaiah, the prophet, who wrote
these words sure needed one.
Isaiah wasn’t even living in Israel when he wrote
these words. No, the Babylonian empire had conquered them, had ripped family
after family from their homes to take them to Babylon. Why?
That way, the Babylonians could put their own people there, people who
wouldn’t cause trouble or rebel. Can you
imagine losing your home, your homeland, to live as a virtual prisoner
thousands of miles away. So, what does
Isaiah pray? He prays for God to get
angry, to make the mountains quake with the power of it, to rip open the
heavens and come down.
He knows. He
and his people don’t have the power to overcome this empire, but God does. More
than that, he believes, God will. Why? Well,
has it ever happened to you? A friend
tells you of how someone did them wrong, and you get so mad. Heck, you may get angrier than they do
even. But why? No one did
you wrong. So why are you angry? You get angry because you care. You care about your friend. You get angry on their behalf. Your anger shows your love, your love for
them. And Isaiah knows God’s anger will
come because Isaiah knows that God loves them like that. And when you know God’s anger serves God’s
love, it frees you.
In the 1990s, in the aftermath of the Bosnian Civil
War, Miroslav Volf, a theologian from that part of the world as he grieved the awful
loss of so many friends and family in that brutal war wrote how God’s anger gave
him comfort, how it even freed him from the desire for vengeance. Why?
When you know God’s anger serve God’s love, you know that you don’t need
to do the vengeance, as if that would even work. You have a God whose love will bring justice
on your behalf, who will work where you cannot work and do what you cannot or
should not do.
And in these days, the loving anger of this God
reminds us of two things that we can forget.
First, as hard as these days might be.
No nation has torn us from our homes.
No war has killed our friends and family. We live in a time of deep division, yes. But we also live in a nation where we had the
opportunity to vote, to do it safely, securely, peacefully, to worship here without
fear of violence or arrest. We can be
grateful that we don’t need the anger of God that Isaiah did. And God forbid, we ever do.
But at the same time, we can know. We have a God who will get angry on our
behalf, if ever we need it. We have a
God who love us like that. And that God
will see us through this crisis as this God saw our nation through Civil War
and World War and Depression. And this God will bring justice as God did in
defeating slavery and Jim Crow, the wrongs done to women and children and
workers, who inspired all the movements that have made this nation a more
perfect union. And God will work here
too.
But hold on, God has more, more to tell us, and this
we may not like as much. Do you see how
Isaiah’s prayer changes? It does take a
turn! One minute he’s going. Put a hurting on those Babylonians God! Then he says.
Oh yeah, God, I know. We brought
this on ourselves. We messed up. Even our good deeds are nothing but filthy
rags.
Years ago, I remember listening to this song by the band,Dire Straits. I rarely remember the name
of the song. But I remember this
line. When you point your finger, you
have three more fingers pointing back at you. The truth of that line hit me
hard, first the literal truth of it. Because it is true. Point your finger and count! You do have three fingers pointing back at
you! But I got the deeper truth. We’ve all got stuff. Even the best things we do, have self-interest
in there somewhere. And Isaiah realizes that here. He knows.
He can’t lay this mess at the feet of the Babylonians alone. He has to own his part.
Our country is in a bit of a mess right now. And I’m pretty
comfortable talking about the folks out there creating these problems, these
divisions. But I’m not all that
comfortable talking about the divisions I create, the assumptions I make,
especially about folks who might vote or think differently than me, or the
sense of moral superiority that I can carry as if somehow God delivered the
pure and spotless truth only to me.
Don’t get me wrong.
If you’ve got a sense that something is wrong, stand up for what is
right. Isaiah prayed for God to bring
justice to Israel, to right the wrongs done by Babylon. But he didn’t stop there. He faced up to his stuff, his failings, his faults,
the faults of his nation.
In these days, it’s easier
to look only at the wrongs we think others have done, especially those with whom
we disagree. And you may even speak out
about them. But don’t do it without facing
your own faults or your possible blindness.
Whenever you point a finger, remember you always have three fingers pointing
back at you. Even our best deeds are like a filthy rag.
So, let’s choose to believe that everyone who voted, or even those who didn’t, love this nation, believe in it, want the best for it. But boy, did people vote. More Americans voted in this election than have voted in any election in 120 years! That is amazing, even wonderful news!
And speaking of news, God ends this passage with the best news of all. God’s anger doesn’t last. Do you see that last part of the prayer? “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter. We are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever.” That is awesome news!
My dad had a temper. And boy, I irritated him. Sometimes, I even did it on purpose. But no matter how angry he became, how disappointed at my behavior, his anger never lasted. Why? Even at his angriest, his love never left. Heck, often he was angry because he did love me. His anger served his love. But his love always stayed, and his anger always left.
And the potter, she might get frustrated with the clay, but she never gives up on it. She keeps working it and working it until in her hands, she creates something beautiful, the loving work of her hands.
This God never gives up on us, on any of us. No, this God loves us so much, he overcame our misbegotten anger, our twisted-up rage, our blindness and brokenness with his love. In Jesus, he died for the sake of that love, to save us from ourselves, from the justice due us. Years ago, I first heard the hymn Here is Love. And ever since it has remained one of the hymns l love the most. Its words go like this:
Here
is love, vast as the ocean, Loving-kindness as the flood,
When the Prince of Life, our Ransom, Shed for us His precious blood.
Who His love will not remember? Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten, Throughout heav’n’s eternal days.
On the mount of crucifixion, Fountains opened deep and wide;
Through the floodgates of God’s mercy Flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love, like mighty rivers, poured incessant from above,
And heav’n’s peace and perfect justice Kissed a guilty world in love.
That
is the end of the story, not the anger but the love. And in that love, God will heal everything,
create a new heavens and a new earth. In
that love, the former things (our screw ups in other words) will not be
remembered or come to mind. For we, God’s
people will be God’s delight. So, trust
in the loving anger of God, and let God work where you can’t or shouldn’t. Don’t ever forget that all of us have fallen
short, but God’s love has not and will not.
And remember that love holds us, holds our nation, holds our world, and
that love will always be the end of our story, of every story For God loves each of us, this entire world,
no matter what.
No comments:
Post a Comment