Having Peace in the Midst of Life's Worst Storms? Here's How It Happens

No doubt about it, we in South Florida have been lucky, really lucky.     I gotta admit.   I thought our luck had run out a few weeks ago with Tropical Storm Erika, but once again we dodged the bullet.  We’ve had ten years since Hurricane Wilma.    And I’ll be happy if we have ten years more. 

I didn’t always think so.   When I was younger, I thought such a storm would be exciting.    That began to change when I talked to my buddy, Ted.   His family decided to stick Hurricane Hugo out when it hit South Carolina.  They figured they were far enough inland that it wouldn’t be too bad.   They had no idea.   His family spent hours literally cowering in the closet, praying that the storm winds wouldn’t sweep their house away.  He said.  “Kennedy, it felt like the biggest freight train you could imagine passing right by you for hours.   We were terrified.”

A few years later, I was studying Spanish in New Mexico.   One of my fellow students, Rick, served with his wife in a little church in a place I’d never heard of before, Homestead.    As the week began, we heard about this hurricane in the Caribbean called Andrew, but it really wasn’t that bad.   Then that changed, terrifyingly rapidly.  It became a storm of monstrous intensity.   I still remember the haunted look on Rick’s face as he tried to reach his wife after the storm hit, when he saw the pictures of the damage, when he tried desperately to find any way home to help his family and his church.   I decided.  This excitement I can do without. 

Hurricanes are nothing to joke about, though we do.  It helps us to deflate the tension a bit as we wait to see if it will hit us.   But while we may not have had a hurricane hit us doesn’t mean we haven’t had storms.   In our life, storms, so to speak, hit all too often.   A routine visit to a doctor leads to a conversation that includes the word cancer.    Our marriage hits a crisis, as conflict overwhelms everything else.  Our child gets in real trouble, the kind that requires a lawyer.  Our job gets eliminated.   I could go on.   Life brings us all sorts of storms, including ones that threaten to sink us.   How do we make it through them?  How do we stay calm in the midst of the wind and the waves?    Instead of broken and weakened, how do we come out better and stronger than before?   In this story, Jesus shows the way.  Let’s listen and hear what he has to say.

Mark 4:35-41

Storms will hit us.   That is not the question.   The question is, how do we survive them? How in the worst moments, do we hold onto peace rather than get swept into panic?  How do we find ways not simply to make it through the storms, but to come out more than we were before rather than less?   In this story, Jesus gives us the key.   The key lies in seeing that Jesus and the storms of our life have a lot in common but with one crucial distinction, one that makes all the difference. 

But before we see that distinction, let’s look more closely at this story.   Some people like to think of these stories as legends.   It seems so unbelievable.  Could this really have happened?   Surely not, or if it did, it was exaggerated.  

But the story doesn’t let us go there.   It makes it clear. We’re not talking a legend here.  We talking about something that actually happened, that people remembered with startling clarity.  How startling?   In this brief little story, the writer Mark includes all sorts of little details.  He tells us that Jesus went into the boat just as he was.  What does that mean?   To figure that out, we need to go back to the beginning of the chapter, where Jesus rowed out from the shore to speak to the crowd.   Mark is telling us that after he finished speaking, Jesus didn’t go back to shore.  He just hopped from his speaking boat directly to another boat to take him across. He just went as he was.   Then Mark tells us that as the journey began night was falling, and some other boats accompanied them out.   Then he tells us that Jesus took a cushion and laid down in the back of the boat.   Why does Mark include all these details?  Because, the one who told him the story, probably Peter, remembered them.   Nowhere in ancient literature do we find a legend that reads like this.   No, the only thing that reads like this is history.  This actually happened.  And that’s important.   Jesus did real acts of power in a real world, our world.   And have no doubt, Jesus does an extraordinary act of power here.

The Sea of Galilee lies about 700 feet below sea level, and about 30 miles away, Mount Carmel, reaches a height of 2000 feet.   When the cool air of the mountains hits the warm moist air of the Sea, huge storms erupt literally within minutes.   And because the Sea of Galilee is relatively small, and shallow, these storms can whip up incredibly high waves.  Now Jesus’ disciples know that.  They’ve fished this water their entire lives.  But whatever storm happened that day was way beyond the norm.   They honestly thought they were going to die.   

A few years ago, I went night fishing with a friend in the Keys.   This man had fished for over 50 years, and he knew the water around him like the back of his hand.  We caught a lot of fish, a lot.  But then he saw a storm heading our direction, and we began to go in.  But the storm moved more quickly than any of us thought.   The rain began to hit us.   The wind began to whip up.  But I honestly didn’t think much of it. I’m not much of a sailor.  So I thought. Heck, what’s a little storm?   I noticed that my friend, Martin seemed unusually intent on keeping the boat headed in, and that our other companion, another fishing veteran was doing all he could to help him.  Only after we came close to shore did I realize what was going on.   The waves around us had grown very high.  And Martin knew that if he let those waves and wind turn the boat off the vertical, a wave would hit and capsize us.  One mistake and we would all die.  And we weren’t even really in the storm.  We were just trying to outrun it.  It still sobers me a bit when I think about it.

This storm that hit these disciples was far larger than the one we were trying to outrun.   And this boat didn’t have any engine.   It had nothing really.   And it had already taken on so much water that it would be a miracle if it didn’t sink.   And in that moment, the disciples, clearly panicking, wake Jesus up, who incredibly is sleeping through all of this. 

What Jesus does next blows them away, and it should blow you away too.   Jesus gets up, and yells.   “Be quiet and stay quiet.”  It’s like he’s talking to a kid whose noise is driving him nuts.  And the storm stops like that.   The winds cease.  The waves disappear.  The sea becomes like glass in a moment.   Do you see it?   Jesus doesn’t do any sort of magic incantation.   He doesn’t pull out a wand.   Jesus doesn’t even call on some higher power.   He is the higher power.   In just a few words, he stops the storm, like that.

In the ancient world, water symbolized the power of uncontrollable chaos, and for good reason.   No one can control a storm on the sea.   Such storms are pretty much the most uncontrollable thing in all of creation, even today.   Yet Jesus controls it with a snap of his finger.   As scared as they were in the middle of the storm, the disciples are even more scared after.  They’re thinking.  Who is this guy?  It is pretty cool, and all. 

But here’s the question.  Why did Jesus wait so long?   Why did he let his friends almost die before doing anything?    Here’s the deal.    Jesus is a lot like the storm.   You can’t control him either.   And the story makes clear.   Jesus lets his friends go through storms.  In fact, he can even be sleeping in the middle of them.   Why?   Who knows?   If Jesus had this sort of infinite power, then even if Jesus explained his reasons, we probably wouldn’t get it.   Here’s the painful reality.  Jesus will let you go through some pretty hard stuff, and this side of heaven, you will likely never know why.    Like the storm, you cannot control Jesus. 

But here’s the difference.   The storm doesn’t care about you.   Jesus does.   Jesus loves you.   That’s why after the storm, Jesus doesn’t say.  “Sorry, guys, I’m really a deep sleeper.  Sheesh that was a close one.  Thanks for waking me up.”   No, he says.  “What is wrong with you?  Why were you so afraid?   Don’t you get it?”   But they don’t get it.  They don’t get it at all.  And you can understand.   How can they know, really know that, that they can trust Jesus no matter what? 

Still, what alternative do you and I have?   If the storm has the last word, then when the wind and waves rise, we’re pretty much alone.   Our existence is some weird quirk of nature.   And no matter how we fight, eventually a storm will get us, even if it’s the slow moving storm called old age. 

But if Jesus loves us, if Jesus ultimately controls every storm, then no matter how high the waves get, we can have peace.   When the wind roars around us, we can be calm.  Because we know that no matter the storm, ultimately we will be ok. We can live these words of Emily Bronté’s.  

No coward soul is mine, no trembler in the world’s storm troubled sphere;

I see heaven’s glories shine, and Faith shines equal, arming me fromfear.

But how does that happen?   How can we live, really live with this assurance?   We can look back at the story that Mark echoes here.    Mark echoes here a very similar story of another storm, even uses some of the same words to give us a clue.  What is that storm?  It’s the one in the book of Jonah.   That storm too threatened the lives of those in the midst of it.   And in that story also, Jonah is asleep.   And they wake him up to plead that he do something.   And after the storm ceases miraculously, they are also more terrified than they were in the middle of it.   But in that storm, there is one crucial difference.   To stop that storm, Jonah tells the sailors, you need to throw me into it.   For you to live, I must die.  For you to survive, I must perish.

And Mark remembers this story.  He remembers too Jesus’ story.  He remembers how Jesus compared himself to Jonah, saying that “one greater than Jonah is here.”   And he lifts up the profound parallel.  How can you know that Jesus loves you, really loves you.   Because Jesus became Jonah for you.   Jesus willingly threw himself into the ultimate storm to save you.  He died so you might live.  He perished so you might survive.   He jumped into the only storm that can really destroy you, the one that separates you from the God who created you.    He took on that storm, and unlike, Jonah he did die.   But in his death, he destroyed that storm.   He began a revolution that destroys every storm; that destroys death itself.       

When you are in the middle of the storm, don’t mistake the circumstances of your situation for the truth of your situation.   And the truth of your situation is Jesus sleeping calmly in the back of the boat   The truth of the situation is Jesus who with a few words controls the uncontrollable.  The truth of the situation is that Jesus loves you so much that he threw himself into the ultimate storm of evil and death to save you.    And if you know that truth, if you let its reality grasp you, then no matter the storm, Jesus will fill you with a peace that passes understanding.   You will know that no matter what happens, you will always be ok.  No storm will ever, ever have the last word.   Jesus has that.   And Jesus loves you.  Jesus loves you more passionately, more completely than you could ever comprehend.

Are you facing a storm?   Do you see one on the horizon?   Then know the truth of your situation.  Let that truth know you, hold you; assure you, that no matter what happens you will be ok.   How can you trust that?  Because Jesus guaranteed that assurance with his very life.  

How Religion can Devastate You

Did you ever hear a saying that just stuck in your mind?     In the 80s, it could have beenwhen Nancy Reagan said, “Just say no.”  Does anyone remember that?   Or maybe it was the old lady at Wendy’s asking “Where’s the Beef?”  Today, it could even be that duck, you know the one.  AFLAC!

Those sayings may inspire us or amuse us.  They may irritate us.  But we can’t forget them.  And every now and then, we hear a saying, and it does more than that.  In its words, we see things in a new way.  Years ago, a quote from the book, The Hiding Place did that for me.   This book tells the story of the Ten Boom family who hid Jews in Holland during the Holocaust.   The Ten Booms did it because of their Christian faith, but not all the church folks in Holland saw it the same way.   While the Ten Booms hid the Jews, other church folks helped the Nazis find them.   When one of the daughters, Corrie, asks her father, “How can this be?” Her father simply replies. “Corrie, just because a mouse is in the cookie jar, doesn’t make it a cookie.”   I heard that, and I never forgot it.

But the church folks who worked with the Nazis, at least some of them, must have thought they were doing the right thing.  How could they miss the boat so completely?  Here they were mice in the cookie jar, but they didn’t know that.  They honestly thought they were cookies. 

Strangely enough, this happens, and not just in Nazi Germany.  It has happened ever since the beginning of the church, and it is happening now.  People regularly attend worship, give generously, go to Bible studies, even lead them, heck, even become elders or pastors, and still don’t get it.  They believe all the right things, obey all the rules, and yet never experience the gospel at all.   They think they’re cookies.  They’re doing all the cookie things.  But they’re not.  They’re not at all.  

How can this be?  More importantly, what are the signs that show if you’ve truly become a cookie or not?   How can you know?  In this incredibly famous story, Jesus shows us the way.  Let’s listen and here what Jesus has to say.

As we take up the story, the younger son, who not only demanded his inheritance from his father, but then blew it all recklessly, has decided to come home and seek to make restitution for his mistakes.  Listen and hear how the story ends.

Luke 15:17-32      

When people heard the first part of the story, of how this Father welcomed this younger son back after his disrespect, his squandering of his father’s wealth, it stunned them.  But this second part stunned them more!   Why?  Because Jesus was making clear that the older son was lost too.   And Jesus ends the story with him still being lost.   The bad boy gets welcomed home to the feast of salvation.   But the older son, the dutiful one, the faithful one, the good one finds himself outside the door.

In this story, Jesus makes a stunning assertion.   Jesus says that you can be far from God, not simply by being very bad.   You can be far from God by being very good.   How can this be?  Well, let’s look at the story. 

Can you imagine how happy this father must have been to have this son he thought was dead home safe and sound?  He must have been devastated at his absence. But now he has him back in his arms.  This homecoming means everything to him. The older son had to know this.  But instead of joining in his father’s joy, he angrily stays outside.  And why is he angry?   He is angry about all that the father is spending, especially that fatted calf.   All he can see is the costly meal, a meal he never got.        

Now we might have some sympathy for this older son, but in his reaction Jesus is making a profound point.   These two brothers are painfully alike.   They both want to get the father’s things.   They just go about it in two different ways.   One does it by being very bad.   And the other does it by being very good.    

And ironically Jesus ends the story with the bad boy being welcomed into the feast of salvation.  But Jesus leaves the older one outside, alienated from the father, absent from the feast.   Why does Jesus do that?

Well, first, let’s understand how this older brother is lost.   What is so wrong about his being so good?  Is it bad to be good?   Of course not.   But Jesus is saying, when it comes to your relationship with God, it’s deadly to be good for the wrong reasons.   If you come to God with the understanding that if I am a reasonably good person, if I do the right things, then God will be pleased with me, and will welcome me into heaven, that understanding will devastate you.   Why?   If that’s what you believe, then God may be your leader, your guide, your example, but he can’t be your savior.   You’re your own savior.   You think.  Your own goodness will save you.  And it won’t.  It can’t.   And that’s what this son is doing.  He is trying to earn his son-ship, as if it’s a transaction between him and his dad.   But you don’t earn your place in God’s family.   God’s graciously gives it to you.   

So that’s how the older brother is lost.  But still why does Jesus leave him outside?  Because it’s a lot easier for younger brothers to get saved than older ones.  Why?  Well, think about it.   If you go the route of the younger brother, you know you’ve screwed up, right?  If you’re lost like that, it’s clear that you’re lost.  But when you’re lost like the older brother, you don’t think you’re lost.   How can you be lost?  You’re doing all the right things.  And that makes you so, so, so lost.   After all, where do you find older brothers?   You find them at church.

Many years ago, I was teaching an evangelism course at the church I served on Long Island.  It turned out to be just two people, a woman who was our church’s biggest giver, and a man who led our mission work in El Salvador.   One night, I began talking about how we bring people into a relationship with Christ, how it is God’s goodness and grace that has to save us not our own.   And both of them had this puzzled look on their faces.   I asked them?  Am I not being clear?   And each of them said, “No, you’re being very clear.  It’s just I don’t think I’ve done that.”    To be honest, I couldn’t believe it.   I asked.  “Well, why are you so involved? Why do you give so much?”   Well, they said.  “That’s what God expects of us.  We want to do what God wants.”   But I replied, “You’ve never realized that none of that will save you.”    And they both said, “Yes”    So that night, both of these dedicated leaders of that church became Christians for the first time.    Now if you had asked me before that night, if these folks were Christians, I would have said.  “Are you kidding me?  Of course they are!”   Heck, they would have said the same thing.    But here’s the stunning truth.   Until that night, they weren’t. They weren’t at all.

So if this sort of lost-ness can be so hard to see, how can you see it?  In the story, Jesus gives us three signs.

First, Jesus tells us that this older brother is angry, and that’s key.   When you’re lost like this, that’s what you are.  You’re angry.   And the anger goes in generally two directions.  You’re angry at yourself or you’re angry at God.    Older brothers believe that if they follow what God wants and do what God says, then their life will go as it should.  But life never goes as it should does it?  Bad stuff happens, bad stuff that has nothing to do with what you’ve done right or wrong.  It just happens.   And when it does, older brothers get angry.   They either get angry at themselves, thinking, “Wow I dropped the ball with God somewhere.  Otherwise this wouldn’t be happening.”   Or they’re angry at God.  “God, how can this be happening?  I’ve done everything right!”   Now, older brothers may not always understand it that clearly.  They may even hide the anger, knowing it’s not good to be angry.  But that undercurrent of anger sits there nonetheless.

Second, do you notice what the son says to his dad in the story?  “I have worked like a slave for you.”   That’s says everything.   For this kid, it’s not about the beauty.  It’s about the duty.   What do I mean?    When I was in college, I took an art appreciation course.   I spent all this time looking at these pieces of art.  Why?  So I could make an A.  Why did I want to make an A?  To boost my GPA, so I could get a good job that would pay me decent money.  I looked at art to get money.  But now I spend money to look at art.  I go to an art museum and spend hours there.   I don’t do it to impress others or get ahead in my career. I simply love looking at the stuff.   It’s not about the duty.  It’s about the beauty.     But when you’re lost like an older brother, your relationship with God is all duty and no beauty.  So yes, you work hard, even sacrificially.      But there’s little joy in it.   It’s your duty.   When you’re lost like the older brother, you spend a lot more time in prayer asking God for things, then you do praising God or just talking to him as you would a friend.   You find God useful, but you don’t find God beautiful.   And that’s a profound difference.

Finally, do you notice how the older brother talks about his sibling?  He doesn’t even acknowledge they’re related.  He says; “this son of yours.”    And he talks about how the brother squandered the money with prostitutes.   And who knows maybe he did.  But the older brother doesn’t know that.   When you’re an older brother, you look down on those you think don’t cut the mustard, who haven’t worked as hard or faithfully as you have.    Now you may cover it up because you know such a sense of superiority isn’t right.   But in your heart of hearts you feel it.   You see folks who have blown up their lives or find themselves on the streets or who are doing things you find offensive or wrong, and it disgusts you.   At its worst, you carry this attitude into how you related to folks of different religions or political perspectives or lifestyles.  In a way, you have to have someone to look down on, who you know isn’t as good as you.   Why?   You’re insecure.  How can you not be?   After all, you’re trying to be good enough, to live the life God wants you to live.  But how do you know, really know?   So, you look over at someone else, and you go.  “Well at least I’m not that guy.” 

Now some of you may be thinking.   “Yep, I know someone like that.  That person is definitely an elder brother.”   But here’s the truth.   You don’t know.   Faith is like marriage.  The only two folks who know what’s really going on are the two folks in the relationship.   

And even if you’re not older brothers, and every church has some in its pews, you may have elder brotherish tendencies.   Your issues with God tend to be older brother one.   But wherever we find ourselves, how do we find our way out?   How do we free ourselves from these elder brother ways? 

We realize.   None of us were on the inside.   All of us were outside, good and bad alike.  So how did God bring us inside?  How did God draw us into the feast of salvation?   In Jesus, God became the outsider so that we might be brought in.   God, who was rich, for our sakes became poor, so that we might be rich in love, in grace, in acceptance, in the only stuff that ultimately matters.   God, who is love, endured hate, persecution, even death at the hands of his enemies so that his enemies might become his beloved friends.     And all of us, the good and the bad, were outside, were poor; were his enemies.   We were so lost that God had to die to bring us home.   But we are so loved that God was glad to die so he could.   And now, Jesus invites us to come, to join him at his feast of salvation, where the lost are found, those dead return to life.  And what we’ve done or not done, doesn’t matter.   The only thing that matters, that matters ever, is what Jesus has done for us.         

           

Finding Freedom From Regret

Are you a story repeater?  You tell your friends and loved ones the same stories again and again.  You don’t mean to.    You just forgot that you told them.  If so, I sympathize.   I’m a story repeater too.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t mind when Jack would tell the same story again and again.  But I’m not sure it was because he forgot that he shared it.  I just think it was something he couldn’t get past.  I worked with Jack back when I lived in New York City.  And every month or so, he’d tell me about the sweet penthouse apartment he used to own right off of Central Park.  He might even show me an old picture of it.   Then he’d come to the tragic heart of the story, how in a moment of weakness and financial stress, he sold it.  At the time, New York City wasn’t doing so great.  And he was happy to get what he got for the place, a few hundred thousand as I remember it.   But five years later, how things had changed.  If he had held on, he could have sold it for ten times that, maybe even twenty times.   But alas he hadn’t and the rest was history. 

But actually, it wasn’t history.  Twenty years later, he still grieved the mistake.  I don’t think it affected his life too badly.  If anything, it just meant anyone who knew him had to hear that story a lot.  But our past mistakes can affect our present far more deeply than simply repeating a story.  Instead, that past moves us to make those same mistakes again and again.   Or it haunts our present so powerfully, it paralyzes us.   The writer William Faulkner said it well.  “The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.”   

Our past can hold us back.   It can prevent us from moving forward.  It can shackle us to hurt and pain, to harmful patterns that we desperately need to let go.  It can capture us with the regret we feel, with the guilt we carry, with the resentments we find so hard to release.  But it doesn’t need to be that way.  Our past, even our worst failings and mistakes can empower us.   They can make us wiser and better than we were before.   Our past doesn’t need to hold us back.  It can propel us into exactly the places we need to be.  

But how does that happen?  How can our past failings become a resource for our future?   How can our past regrets lead to present healing?  In this story, one of Jesus’ most famous, he shows us the way.  Let’s listen and hear what he has to say.

Luke 15:11-24

In this story, one of the many that Jesus created to describe our relationship with God, we encounter a son whose mistakes have destroyed pretty much every relationship in his life.  By demanding his inheritance, he blew apart his family.   Making this request was like wishing his father dead.   Then what does he do with this legacy that came at such a cost?  He squanders it in the most reckless ways imaginable.  Then when it’s all gone, he falls even further away, taking a job that shames not just his family but his whole nation.  But then in just a few sentences, he begins to turn it all around.   In these few moments, this man takes his past, and uses it to propel himself towards healing everything he has destroyed, including himself.   How does he do it?  He repents.  

For many, this word has terrible connotations.   It doesn’t convey freedom from guilt but a deeper sinking into it.   It doesn’t mean healing, it just means a deeper wounding than before.  Repenting doesn’t mean freedom from your past, but something that imprisons you there.  And in truth, they’re right.

One way to grieve our past frees us, but another way actually kills us.  St. Paul put it thisway.  “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.”    Now what is the difference? 

The first key to understanding the difference lies in this particular phrase in the story. Here the son is feeding the pigs, and something happens.   Jesus tells us…”But when he came to himself he said…” When he came to himself?   How do you come to yourself?    Jesus is describing the first step in what repentance actually is.   The word repentance doesn’t mean that you feel badly for what you’ve done.   It doesn’t describe any feeling at all.    The word actually means a change of mind, a change of how you perceive everything, including yourself.

In our lives the flaws and failings that really hurt us and those around us aren’t the ones we know about.   They’re the ones we don’t.    That’s why they’re so dangerous.  But seeing these flaws doesn’t just happen.  You don’t decide to wake up from a delusion.  This sort of self-knowledge doesn’t come at our command.   So how do we see them?      The pain of consequences does it.  At some point, our failings catch up with us, and jolt us awake.   Now some folks when consequences wake them up just go back to sleep.  But if we really wake up, than we come to ourselves.  We come to see ourselves more clearly than before.   And that is a picture we desperately need to see.   

That’s what happens here, the son sees himself, really sees himself.   We know that because of what he says next.   He not only talks about going home, but what he will need to say.  He talks about he will tell his father the following.  “I have sinned against heaven, and before you.”  This son’s words cut right to the heart of the matter.  He doesn’t take any time to make any excuses for his mistakes, to talk about how his dad could have done things differently.  He takes on the full weight of the failure. Part of seeing yourself means facing up to the full weight of your failings.  Self-excusal is really a form of self-destruction.  And it will get you nowhere. 

And taking on that full weight means focusing on how you injured the relationships around you, including your relationship with God.   But here’s the problem.  We can think that we’re doing this, when, in reality all we’re doing is focusing even more on ourselves.    

Thepreacher Tim Keller tells of how early in his ministry, he got a call from a man desperate to save his marriage.   He had gotten his wife, who was about to leave him, to give the marriage another chance if they met with a pastor.    When they met, it became clear that this man had been an extraordinarily selfish and thoughtless husband.   But whenever his wife brought up a behavior he needed to change, he did.   Well, he did for a while.   For several months, he became a new man. But then when it became clear that the crisis had passed, what happened?   He went back not only to his old ways, but became worse than before.   So when he was crying in the pastor’s office, were those tears real?  Sure.  But he wasn’t really crying over how his selfishness had hurt his wife.   He was crying over how his selfishness had hurt him, threatening the end of his marriage.   He wasn’t becoming less selfish.  He was becoming more!  

We can feel badly about mistakes we’ve made, but not experience a change of mind at all.  Why?  Our pain is really about how our mistakes have hurt us.   And while we might change as result, our changes aren’t about ending the pain we have caused others.  It is only about easing the pain our mistakes have caused us.   And once the pain lessens, we fall right back into the same selfish patterns again. 

In the same way, we can grieve over how we have injured our relationship with God, but not really be concerned about God at all.   What are we concerned about?  We don’t want God to get us.   Now beyond the fact that this shows a false picture of God, our fears show not a liberation from selfishness, but a deeper sinking into it.  We’re not focused on God.  We’re focused on us.  This sort of repentance doesn’t transform our minds.  It doesn’t transform anything.  

So what sort of repentance does?   A repentance that realizes this.  Repentance can never find strength in your goodness.   It has to find strength in God’s goodness to you.   And that is where the son misses the point.   He says:   ^“I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”   A hired hand described a particular type of worker, one who lived not on the estate but in town and came in to work.  The son is planning to tell his father.   “Give me a chance to pay it back.   I’ll work for you, but I don’t want to even live here.  I’ll live in town.  And if it takes me my whole life, I’ll pay back what I took from you.”   He is saying.  Yes, Dad, I’ve been bad, but give me a chance to make it good.   Now, if Jesus was talking about a human relationship here, this approach has its merits.   But Jesus isn’t talking about that.  Jesus is talking about our relationship with God.  And in that relationship, this approach doesn’t liberate us from our failings, it imprisons us in them.  Why is that?

When you find your strength in your goodness, as if that is what keeps you in a right relationship with God, then when you fail (as you inevitably will) you lose your strength.   Acknowledging failings doesn’t make you stronger, it makes you weaker.   And this sort of repentance doesn’t bring self-knowledge just self-punishment.  Why?  Well, you figure if I feel this badly about doing something wrong, it must mean that I’m really a good person.  A bad person wouldn’t feel this terrible.  But this self-punishment doesn’t lead to any change in your thinking.   You don’t become better.  You become worse.   Self-punishing doesn’t inspire you to change.  It immobilizes you from making any real change at all.   At worst, you just become a self-hating, self-righteous prig, whose supposed goodness is no real goodness at all.  Next week, when we look at the second half of this story, we’ll see that more clearly.      

But this is not the repentance that Jesus is talking about.   That becomes clear as the son journeys home.  Do you see where the father is?  Is he sitting in the living room, stewing at how badly his son has treated him?  Is he thinking?   If that no good son of mine knocks on that door, I’m going to wait a long time before I open it, and when I do, he better have something good to say.  No.  The father is on the porch scanning the horizon.   And when he sees his son, he doesn’t wait.  He runs.  Now, middle-eastern patriarchs don’t run ever.   And if you think about it, you’ll realize why.  To run would mean lifting up your robes, which well, looks ridiculous.   But this man runs.  He falls on his son’s neck and kisses him.   He places beautiful robes over his dirty rags, and the family ring on his finger.   He kills the fatted calf so that the family might celebrate his return. 

In the end, it is not the son’s goodness that restores him to the family.  It is the father’s goodness, the father’s love that does that.   But this goodness and love of the Father isn’t some Hallmark card sentiment.  It costs him.   In the story, it costs him his dignity, no small thing in a culture where everything is about honor.   But let’s remember who is telling the story; Jesus, who is telling it as an answer to his religious critics, who is already sensing the end of his story.   He knows that when his end comes, no one will be there for him, but those calling for his death.   And instead of beautiful robes, they will place on him a crown of thorns.   And there will be no fatted calf slain.   Instead he will become the sacrificial lamb slain for us.    Yet even there, on that cross, in the face of human evil, what will Jesus pray?  “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”   

The cross proclaims even as this story does. It is never our goodness that saves us.  It is instead God’s goodness and love towards us, a goodness and love that came at infinite cost.    And as you grasp this, you will discover.   Repentance doesn’t weaken you.  It renews you.   It gives you power to change, to grow, to become the very person you yearn to be.  Why? Acknowledging your failings doesn’t separate you from your strength.  It draws you more deeply into it, the strength of a God whose goodness and love knows no bounds.   In that strength, you find the courage to face your faults, and become free from them.    In that strength, you find a repentance that doesn’t imprison you.  You find a repentance that sets you free.  

Where today do you need that freedom?   Where today do you need that change of mind that only this repentance can bring?    Let Jesus free you.   Let Jesus free you as only Jesus’ goodness and love can.  

  

Are You in a Stuck Place? Here Jesus Shows you How to Get Free

I truly hate them.   I try to avoid them any time I can.    If it costs me more time, I don’t care.   I just want to get away from them any way I can.  I’m talking about traffic jams.  And when I say traffic jams, I’m not talking about when traffic just slows a bit or putters along.  Heck, that’s every day in South Florida.  I’m talking about those monsters where the brake lights go on forever, when you have no idea when or where it will end.  All you know is you are stuck in your car and you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.   I know such jams often mean an accident.  I know whatever inconvenience I face is nothing compared to what those folks are going through.   I even say a prayer for them.   But the traffic still drives me nut.  I look for the nearest exit.   I do whatever I can to distract myself from how frustrated I am.

Still, eventually the jam will end.  The traffic will move forward.   I will get to where I need to go.  But that’s not so true when you’re stuck in life.  No traffic jam compares to that sort of stuck.   Do you know what I’m talking about? 

When I reached my 40s without marriage or family, I felt it.  I wondered.  Would that ever change?  Some days, it felt ok, but other days, well, it didn’t.  It didn’t at all.   But stuckness can go far more deeply than that.  Say you’re stuck in a marriage going nowhere good, or in family conflicts or problems with seemingly no solution.   Say you work in a job you hate, but feel you can’t leave or wish to God you had any job at all.    What if you find yourselves trapped in a body that has betrayed you or caught in a dark place that feels as if it has no exit?  You get the idea.  That sort of stuck can so wound you, even destroy you.   But how do you find freedom from that sort of stuck?   How does that happen?   In this strange, surprising even shocking story, Jesus shows us the way.   Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.

Mark 2:1-12

It can be so hard, to be stuck, to be caught in a situation or struggle that we desperately want out of. We want deliverance.  We want a way out.  But we can’t find it.   That’s why we’re stuck.   When our lives become paralyzed like that, how do we break free?  Here Jesus shows us the way with someone not just figuratively paralyzed but literally.  

You gotta admire the chutzpah of these man’s friends.  They do anything and everything they can to get their friend to Jesus.   They literally go through the roof for him.   Imagine you are standing there.  You feel the mud and straw from the roof start to fall on your shoulders.  You look up puzzled.  You see daylight breaking through.   You then see hands breaking up the roof.  You are wondering. What the heck is going on, especially if you are the homeowner?  Then you get it.  You see a man on a stretcher being lowered down through the air.   Talk about dramatic.

But what comes next, if you think about it, blows that shock away.   Jesus sees this obviously paralyzed man.  And what does he do?   He says.   Your sins are forgiven.   What?   I feel for this poor guy.   His friends have gone to all this trouble for this?   So this wonder-worker named Jesus can tell him that his sins are forgiven.   Hello, Jesus.   I don’t think this man is coming to you because of that.  What is Jesus doing? 

In these simple words, Jesus is making a profound point.  He is not only telling us what this man actually needs, but about what we all need.  And even more shockingly, he is telling us that he is the only One who can provide it. 

In these brief words, Jesus is saying to this paralyzed man.   Yes, I can cure your paralyzed legs, but in the long run, that won’t really help you.    Jesus is telling him.  What is really paralyzing you goes far beyond your legs.  

Last week, do you remember that study I mentioned?   Researchers looked at thelevels of happiness of two very different groups of people.  One had just won the lottery, and the others had recently become paraplegics.   After a year, what did the research show?   Both groups had pretty much the same level of happiness.   Do you get what that means?    Those who were unhappy before winning the lottery generally went back to being unhappy.   And on the other hand, those who were happy before their legs got paralyzed went back to being happy.  Don’t you see?  What messes up our lives has far more to do with what is going on inside of us than anything happening to us on the outside.   

Jesus knew that if he simply healed this man’s legs that it wouldn’t really free him from what truly paralyzed him.   For that he had to go deeper. 

In one of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia stories, this little boy named Eustache appears.  And he is a truly awful kid, self-involved, snotty, truly a jerk.   One day Eustache discovers this cave full of treasure.  He can’t believe his fortune.  He thinks how he will use his newfound wealth to make all those around him even more miserable.  But this isn’t any treasure, it’s a cursed dragon hoard.  So as he goes through the loot, Eustache falls asleep, and when he wakes he has become a dragon.   He hates it, the scales, the claws, the isolation.  He desperately wants to change.  One day, the God character in the story, a great lion named Aslan appears.  He brings Eustache to this pond.   Aslan tells Eustache.  Take off the dragon skin and dive in.  And Eustache realizes.  Hey, this skin comes off.  So he begins tearing with his dragon claws.  But when he tears the dragon scales off, underneath he just finds more scales.   As many times as he tries, Eustache can’t get free.   Then Aslan looks and says.  “I see.  I will need to do it.”  And with that Aslan leaps and with his lion claws tears deep into Eustache’s skin.  For Eustache, the pain felt as if it tore into his very heart.  But the more Aslan clawed, the more the scales came off.    And then Aslan took him, and threw him into the pond.  And the water stung.  But when Eustache came out, he was changed.  He was not simply a little boy once again, but a far different boy than before.

     

Often when it comes to our stuck places, we go to God so God can change our situation, but God says to us.  That’s your whole problem.   You somehow believe that if your situation changes, then you’ll change.   But a new situation can’t heal you, only I can.   And for me to do that, I need to go deep.  I need to go to your very core.

And that is what Jesus does here.  He goes to the heart of the matter, to the brokenness that paralyzes this man far more than his broken legs.    Yet when Jesus does that, something very important is missing.  Do you see it?   It may not be so obvious, but something big is missing.

This guy never asks for forgiveness.  He never expresses that he has any need for it.  Again and again in the Bible, God makes clear.   Forgiveness only comes to those who ask.   But this guy never asks.   Or does he but only in a way Jesus can hear?  

Do you see where the writer Mark tells us how Jesus sensed what the religious leaders were thinking in their hearts?    In the same way, Jesus must have sensed what was happening in this man’s heart.  He sensed his yearning for release, how he hungered to be freed from his guilt and inner brokenness.   And that was all Jesus needed.   Do you see how aggressively Jesus loves us?

Jesus doesn’t need to wait until we say the right words.   All Jesus needs is the cry of our hearts.  No matter how inarticulate or partial that cry is, it’s enough for Jesus.   I love the words of this prayer that I often use at funerals.   O God, who gave us birth, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray.   You know our needs before we ask, and that often we don’t even know what to ask for.   If you and I come to Jesus, that is enough.  We don’t even need to know the right questions.   Whatever our true need is, Jesus is eager to answer. 

Still, what Jesus does here with this act of forgiveness really offends the religious leaders.   And they have every reason to be offended.   In those few words of forgiveness, Jesus is making a shocking claim.  Jesus is saying.  “I am God.” 

Only God can do what Jesus does here.   And if you think about it, you’ll see why.   Let’s say.  Tom, Dick and Harry are hanging out together.   And Tom goes off and decks Dick in the mouth, lays him out right on the floor.   Then Harry says to Tom.   “Tom, I forgive you.”   Dick is going to be like, “What?  You forgive him?  He didn’t hit you.  He hit me!”   But God can forgive. Why?  Because whatever wrongs we do are ultimately acts against our creator, against God’s intention for our lives.   So when Jesus offers this man forgiveness, Jesus is saying.  Whatever wrongs you have done against others, even yourself, they were ultimately acts against me.   And I forgive you.

Now how does Jesus response to their offense at his words?  He gives them a riddle.  He asks.  “Which is easier to say?   Take up your mat and walk or your sons are forgiven you.”   And if you think about it, it’s kind of a tricky question.   In some ways, it is easier to say your sins are forgiven.  Heck, I can say it right now.   Your sins are forgiven.   But hey who knows if it actually happened.  But to say to a paralyzed man, take up your mat and walk, well the truth of those words are going to get tested immediately.    And in that distinction is where the answer lies.   The word Jesus uses for say here also means do.    Jesus is not talking about just any words, but the sort of words that actually make something happen, like when a jury declares a defendant innocent or a general gives an order. 

But to say words like that, to say your sins are forgiven, and actually make that happen, that is infinitely harder than making a paralyzed man walk.   Why?   Because when it comes to forgiveness, somebody always has to pay.  

Let’s say when I pull out from the church today, I run into John’s car, and put a big dent in the side.    Well, John can say to me.  “Kennedy, that’s ok.   Accidents happen.”   But is that going to take the dent out of his car?   No, somebody will have to pay, either I or John or our insurance companies.   

And when we forgive, we’re paying.  We’re saying.  You hurt me, but I’ll absorb the cost of that hurt.  Now maybe you absorb it to restore the relationship or to free yourself from the burden.  But whatever the reason, you take a hit.   You pay a price.   But to do that, not simply for an individual mistake but for the accumulated brokenness and pain of the whole human race, the entire planet?   

That’s paying a price.    And who is the only One who can even do that? Only God.  Because whatever wrongs we have done against others, even ourselves, they were ultimately acts against God, against his intention for our lives.  So only God even has the right to absorb the cost.  

In Jesus, that’s exactly what God did.  God took the hit, the hit for everything.  In Jesus, in the brutality of that cross, God paid that infinite price.   How can Jesus free us from our stuck places?  Because he was stuck on that cross. On that cross, Jesus proclaimed.   Whatever wrongs you have done against others, even yourself, they were ultimately acts against me.   And I forgive you.  I free you from the ultimate stuck place.   The infinite pain that I offer up here has paid that price. 

Don’t you see?  Jesus was utterly broken so that you might be made whole.  He was totally abandoned so that in our darkest moments, you would never be.  Because Jesus went that far down, even to death, there is no pit we face so deep that Jesus is not deeper still.   . 

 

Are you stuck?   Do you yearn to be free?  Then Jesus will free you, but it probably won’t happen the way you want.   But it will happen the way you need.   And he will do it, no matter how partial, how confused the cry of your heart might be.    How can you know he’ll do it?  Because he answered his own riddle with his very life.  He paid the price.   Indeed he is the only One who ever could.          

What Is The Path to a Happy Life? The Answer Might Surprise You

What is happiness?   How do you get it?  How do you experience a truly fulfilled life?  Getting an answer to that question doesn’t come so easily.   I know.  I tried.   I went to that font of all information, Google to find out.  It gave me 128 million results and an advertisement for Scientology. 

Still, I did learn some things from my little search.   I learned that pretty much nothing around us will bring us happiness, or at least a happiness that lasts for any length of time.   In a famous study researchers looked at two different groups of people.   One group had won millions of dollars in the lottery.   The other group became paraplegics, sentenced to a wheelchair for the rest of their lives.   Now a year after both these things had happened, guess which group of folks were happier?  

When you averaged it out, both groups experienced the same level of happiness.  Study after study has shown similar things.   Nothing we do or acquire or experience can bring us happiness.   So what does?   Interestingly enough, in the words we’re about to hear, Jesus tells us.   How do we become happier, truly fulfilled?   In some of his most famous words, Jesus shows us the way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.  

Matthew 5:1-11

Likely like me, you’ve heard these words of Jesus’ many times.  But do you really understand what they mean?   They sound nice, even poetic.   But what in the world was Jesus trying to tell us?   Jesus was telling us, telling the crowds.   You want happiness, a fulfilled life?  Then let me show you how such a life comes.   Jesus isn’t describing a series of different people here.  Jesus is describing in these beatitudes, the characteristics of one person, the person who is truly happy. 

Essentially that’s what the word blessed means.   It means happy.   And in these words, Jesus is giving us a map to happiness.   No, let me take that back.   Jesus isn’t giving us a map.  That would imply that somehow it’s up to us to get to happiness.  And at the beginning, Jesus makes it clear.  Happiness only happens when you realize there is no map; when you realize that not only do you not have a map, you are already on a dead end road.

That’s why he starts with those words happy are the poor in spirit.   Jesus is saying that happiness comes to only those who see how utterly spiritually bankrupt they are.  Happiness only comes to those who realize that when it comes to their spiritual bank account, they have nothing, nada, a big goose egg.  

But doesn’t that seem a little harsh?   A lot of folks would acknowledge that maybe their spiritual bank account has insufficient funds, but to call it empty?   Their internal conversation might go like this.     Sure, I need God’s forgiveness.   I’ve done some bad things.   I’ve made some mistakes.  But it’s not all been bad.   I’ve done my share of good things.  I’ve got something in the bank.  It may not be enough to cover my debts, but it’s something.   But is it? 

Jesus is saying that happiness only comes when we realize that whatever our something is, is actually nothing.   How does that happen?   It happens when we realize that even our good deeds were done with mixed motives.

If we’re honest, can we say that any good deed we performed came without any mixed motives at all?  Sure.   We had genuine desires to serve others, to love and care for them.  But was that all of it?   Did we also do it because we wanted others to like or approve us, or because it made us feel better about ourselves?   When have we ever done a good deed without having a bit of ourselves in the mix, some degree of self interest in the midst of our motives?

What happens is you realize how utterly bankrupt you actually are, that even the assets you have, your good deeds, are essentially junk bonds with no real value at all?  And when that happens, what do you do?  Well, you grieve.  You mourn.   But paradoxically, it is this very mourning, this grief that opens the door to true happiness.  Because our grief changes us.   Another word for this grief of which Jesus speaks is the word repentance.  That is the sort of grieving we are doing here.  And what does this word repentance mean?  It literally means a change of mind, to the way we think.   Our realization of our poverty leads us to a grief, a grief that transforms our minds, our very thinking.

How does it transform our minds?  It makes them meek.   Now our word meek doesn’t come close to what Jesus is telling us here.   Our word meek typically means timid or fearful, but Jesus doesn’t mean that.   The word Jesus originally used actually means a humble and gentle attitude that comes through a loss or time of difficulty.  This humility and gentleness comes because through our loss, we have submitted our lives to a larger reality.  The Greek word, Praus that the gospel writers use for Jesus’ Aramaic word points to this.   The Greeks used this word praus to describe a number of things.  It could mean a soothing medicine or a gentle breeze or a broken colt.    Now each of these things have one element in common.  Do you see what it is?  They all describe a great power under control.   Meekness isn’t weakness, not at all   It’s rather our strength acting under the authority of a strength greater than ourselves.   It is a giving up of our power that actually makes us more powerful than ever before.  Why? Now our power is given over to God, a power infinitely greater and wiser than ourselves.    We are a horse that now has a rider. 

This is what develops from the inward experience of poverty and loss Jesus describes.  This is the first fruit we bear, a fruit that becomes evident not only inside of us but to the people around us.   We become less angry, less reactive.   We become more patient and forgiving.   When something unjust happens, we stand up against it, sure.  But we come from a different place, one where our strength flows through a strength greater and wiser than our own.   We are a horse whose rider leads us where we really need to go. 

And from that place, we realize what truly matters.   Instead of hungering and thirsting after success or money or the approval of others or any of the other false ways to happiness that the world offers, we hunger and thirst for something profoundly different.  We hunger and thirst for a deeper, more intimate relationship with God, with our rider so to speak.   That’s what righteousness means.  It simply means a right relationship with God.

This past week, I heard from an old friend, who first came to this church to get his daughter baptized.  But the baptism was about more than his daughter, it was a desperate act to save a floundering marriage.  Somehow he thought that this ritual might restore the relationship.  It didn’t.

And over the next years, this very accomplished man saw his life collapse.  In the space of one week, he hit bottom.  His relationship with a woman he planned to marry crashed and burned. He lost his job with little prospect for another.  And he wondered how he was going to provide for himself much less his daughter. That’s when he came to me, broken and bereft.   And in that pain, he was ready.   He was ready to face his poverty, to begin the process of grief that facing that poverty would mean.   And literally overnight a man who had been full of arrogance, a jackass by his own admission, transformed into a man of gentleness and humility.   But that transformation didn’t become apparent to me for a while, what showed me just how profoundly God had changed him was a text message I received a few days after we had first met.  At our first meeting, I told him that he needed to read the whole Gospel of Luke by the next time we met which was about a week away.  He looked at the Bible and said to me.  That’s like 30 pages.  That’s a lot for me.   Then three days later, I got this text.  I finished Luke.  I’m thinking John would be next.   Then two days after that, I got another text.  I finished John.  What’s next?  I told him Acts or Matthew.    Do you see what was happening?  This man was hungering and thirsting.  

Think about those words.   If you are hungering and thirsting, how do you deal with it?   Do you go?  Wow, I need to plant a garden so I have some food.   Or sheesh, I need to find some work so I can buy something at the grocery store.  No, when you are hungering or thirsting, you seek nourishment wherever you can.  You beg for it.  You look for anyone who has it.  You are desperate for it.   This guy had that hunger, and he hasn’t lost it.   He is now once again quite successful but as he texted me this week.  He wrote.  I still hold God’s hand daily.   This man at one time was the famous chef GordonRamsay’s boss.  He had reached the pinnacle in his profession, but was he happy?  No.   But when he faced his poverty, when he felt that grief, it changed him. It led him to hunger and thirst for what ultimately mattered.  And when he did, God answered. God filled him up.  God opened the way to true happiness in his life. 

All that follows this beatitude is simply Jesus describing what this happy, fulfilled life looks like.  It means you don’t hold grudges, that you are filled with mercy towards others.   Why?   You know how merciful God has been to you.   You see things clearly, with a purity of heart that enables you to see God even in the most difficult of places.  You become a person who brings greater wholeness and peace to the world, someone who knows in their heart of hearts that they are a child of God.  So even if hard times come, even persecution, it doesn’t destroy you, it only leads you to hold God’s hand more tightly, rely on his strength more deeply.  Your happiness doesn’t diminish.  It simply grows deeper and stronger than before.

So this is the path to happiness.   This is a fulfilled life.   But how does it happen?  How do we face our poverty, enter our grief, submit our power, and get filled with God’s presence.  We realize.  Jesus didn’t just preach these words.  Jesus lived them. 

 

How can we inherit the kingdom of heaven? Because Jesus gave it up.   Jesus, who was rich became poor so that through his poverty we might become rich.   How in our grief can we be comforted? Because when Jesus cried even tears of blood, no one comforted him.   How can we give our power over to God and inherit the earth?  Because Jesus, gave up every bit of his power, even his life, in order that we might.  How can we, when we hunger and thirst, be filled?  Because Jesus hungered and thirsted first, even emptied himself for us.    How can we receive mercy?  Because Jesus didn’t.    How can we see God?  Because Jesus in the purity of his love for us, lost sight of God so that we who were blind might see.   How can we become peacemakers? Because Jesus became our peace through his dying for us. 

Do you see how Jesus, the truly blessed one, lived out these words for you?  The more you see that, the more you and I will see how profoundly poor we are.  The more you see what Jesus did for you, the deeper your own grief will be.  And in that grief, you will gladly submit your lives to the one who give up his for you.  When he says, ²⁸ “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. You will trust the truth of those words.  You will hunger and thirst for them.   And in doing so, you will be filled like never before with the grace, the favor, the utter fulfillment that only Jesus can give.

Where today do you need to face up to your poverty?   Where today do you need God to fill you?    This is the way to happiness, because Jesus is the way to happiness.  Let Jesus love you.  Let Jesus fill you.  Let Jesus give you life as only Jesus can.