This past Sunday, I finished up my work as the lead pastor at Lockwood Community Church in Coldwater, MI. I have been in this role, in this place, with these people for 35 years. I did not end my service here because I wanted to move on to something better, nor because I was unhappy. I ended my work here because I believed the Lord instructed me to do so.
Below is a video of our Ministry Celebration. I was touched to hear friends, only and new, and our secretaries, administrative assistants, and especially our sons share. I hope you will find the video encouraging. If you only have a short time, watch our sons and they speak briefly (at 42:24).
35 Year Ministry Celebration
We will spend at least a year away from Lockwood, giving the new pastor a chance to get settled. Then, if he and the church’s elders believe it would be helpful, we would like to return. In the meantime, we hope to spend time with another church family, serving, encouraging, and being built up. I also hope to work on a novel set in the early 18th century Germany, England, and America – but more about that later.
Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:33-36).
Next Sunday I will preach my final sermon as the pastor of Lockwood Community Church. With only this and one more sermon to go, I am tempted to talk about our time here, to reminisce about all the good things, to warn you about the future, to laugh at the happy times and weep at our parting. I want you to know how we feel about you and how grateful we are to know you.
As I say, I am temped; but I’m not going to give in to the temptation. I will focus instead on the greatness of our God. Karen and I are finishing up. Our God is continuing on. He is the One you must love and trust. It is to him that your gratitude is due. I have made more mistakes than I know or could possibly recount. He has made none. So, I want to talk about him. I want to help you lift your eyes to him, and your hearts, to trust him and serve him.
Romans 9-11 is an extended parenthesis in the ongoing argument Paul is making for the goodness of God and the greatness of the gospel. There is a reason for this parenthesis. If God is so good and the gospel is so great, why do so few Jewish people – the covenant people of God – believe it? God made promises to his covenant people, many promises, based on his inviolable word. So, what happened? Has God’s word failed? That is, has God failed to keep his word?
It might look that way. Israel’s God had allowed them to be conquered and exiled from their land. And ever since they had returned, they had been a subjugated people. First, they had Babylonian overlords. Then Persian. Then Greek. Though there was a brief glimmer of hope, darkness closed in again with the coming of the Romans, who tyrannized and oppressed them for a hundred years.
So, how can it be said that God kept his word? If he had, would things have worked out like this? That is the objection that Paul feels compelled to answer in Romans 9-11. He lets us know that is what he is doing right at the beginning of this section when he writes, “It is not as though God’s word failed” (Romans 9:6).
But if that is the case, Paul, you have some explaining to do. What’s more, God has some explaining to do. Where was God when Israel went into captivity? You say that captivity was the punishment for idolatry, but if God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why did he allow his people to ruin their lives and corrupt their minds with idolatry? He could have stopped that before it started. Why didn’t he?
And as long as we are demanding an explanation from God, there are some things closer to home that we’d like to know. Where was God when a child, heart of his parents’ hearts and love of their lives, died? Where was God when our job got downsized and marriage troubles ensued? Why didn’t God stop our teenager from ruining her life with that drug dealing delinquent who got her pregnant? Where was God then?
Paul is not here trying to answer questions about God’s action (or inaction) in our personal lives, but what he says about God and his faithfulness to Israel speaks to our situations too. Paul’s answer – and this is an overly simplistic summary – is that God took the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness into account from the beginning and incorporated it into his plan. He did not stop them from selling their soul through idolatry, but he wove their redemption into his plan.
So, what about the drug dealing hoodlum – is he part of the plan? Yes. In ways that have nothing to do with you and your daughter and in ways that do. What about the failure of a marriage? God took it into account. He wove it into his plan. He didn’t cause it, any more than he caused Israel’s idolatry, but it did not stymie him for a second. Paul’s answer is that God is bigger than you know or can possibly imagine. His will is not something separate from us that we can be part of or not, like an optional excursion on a Caribbean cruise. We are a part of God’s will, whether we like it or not. His plan incorporates our choices, even our sinful, stupid ones, even our rebellion.
His plan is not some single strand of divine will that might be severed. It is not a single strand but a network. It is not one line of action but a trillion trillion lines, simultaneously incorporating all the actions of his creatures and the accidents of nature. Think of the Russian nesting dolls, the Matryoshka dolls that you have seen. One doll conceals another within it, which conceals another, and another, and another. God’s will is like that. The very personal thing that happens to us is located within a larger aspect of God’s will, which is located within yet a larger aspect of his will. We live somewhere in the nesting dolls of God’s will and, if we are Christ’s, we are perfectly safe there.
That does not mean that bad things might not happen to us. In fact, in this terribly broken world, bad things will happen to us. It is guaranteed. But it does mean that nothing can happen, absolutely nothing, that God cannot incorporate into – has not already incorporated into – his good, gracious, glorious plan for us and for all creation. There is no obstacle that will prevent God from achieving his good purpose.
But what about Satan, our adversary, the devil? Satan himself is within the nesting dolls of God’s will. God did not make him rebel, but God incorporated his rebellion into his beautiful and perfect will. Satan cannot stop God. He is an ant in the way of a bulldozer. He is a wisp of fog that disappears forever in the blazing sun. He is not God’s rival – God has no rivals.
Satan is, of course, more than a rival to us – at this point in our development. But God has incorporated him and his opposition into the plan. What is the plan? The all-encompassing version of God’s plan is to sum up all thing under one head—Christ himself (Eph. 1:10). That will include transforming human beings into Christ’s image (Romans 8:29). And then all things will be wonderfully subjected to God and God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). Nothing can stop this plan. Not the devil and certainly not some drug-dealing delinquent. You can’t stop it, and neither can I.
But that is hard for us to believe when our daughter is going out with that hoodlum, when the future is threatening, and we are gripped by fear. It is so easy for us to panic, to try to wrench control and force things to go our way. We can see this dynamic at play in the history of Israel.
Near the end of Judah’s monarchy (you can read about this in 2 Kings) King Jehoiachin rebelled against the Babylonians, was deposed, and his uncle Zedekiah assumed the throne. Zedekiah vacillated between submission and rebellion, between seeking God and trying to take things into his own hands. Several years into his reign, Zedekiah also rebelled. The Babylonians attacked and laid siege to Jerusalem, which went into lockdown for two years. Food supplies ran so low that some people resorted to cannibalism. It was an unimaginably horrible time.
Just when the City reached the point of desperation, the Babylonians broke through the wall. The army fled out the gate on the other side of the city, but emaciated as they were, the Babylonians quickly caught up with them. It was a slaughter.
A ruthless Babylonian official was deployed to Jerusalem to finish the work. He ordered all the principal buildings destroyed and burnt to the ground. He had the city walls demolished. He took from the temple all its treasures, including the brass sea, the altar, all the sanctified serving utensils of gold and silver and sent them to Babylon. Then he set the temple ablaze. When he was done, there was nothing left. The temple, the pride of Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism in the world, was gone.
People had not believed this was possible. They did not believe God would ever allow the temple, his dwelling place on earth, to be harmed. Now it was gone. God was gone. Life made no sense.
Those who survived were forcibly removed from Israel to Babylon. Families were torn apart. The depth of anguish was too profound to plumb. There would be no more happiness. No more faith. Just hateful masters. Just slavery.
How could this happen when God had promised David that he would always have an heir to reign from his throne? The Babylonians forced Zedekiah to watch his sons, heirs to the throne, executed, and then had his eyes gouged out. The commander wanted the brutal death of his sons to be the last thing Zedekiah would ever see. David’s line was being decimated and God’s promise appeared to be in jeopardy.
But remember the former king, Jehoiachin? He had been deposed and taken to Babylon, where he was held as a political prisoner for more than three decades. But when a new Babylonian king came to power, Jehoiachin was released. He was given the status of a royal visitor and ally. His family flourished in Babylon.
When the exiled ended, Jehoiachin’s family returned to Israel to be part of the resettlement. That family would live in and around Jerusalem for the next six hundred years. One branch of the family settled in Bethlehem.
You remember Bethlehem, right? What was it that the prophet had said about Bethlehem during the reign of good King Hezekiah, 140 years before all this horror? “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2).
God’s master plan was in full motion before anyone knew there would be a war, an exile, or a return. But God knew. He knows everything. Paul, some 700 years after Micah’s prophecy, wrote: “…when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law…” (Galatians 4:5). God preserved David’s line through Jehoiachin and sent his only begotten son to Bethlehem, just as he promised. This is the untraceable, inscrutable wisdom and knowledge of God.
But that was then. That was Israel. What about us? What about us when a child dies, when a marriage fails, when a teenage girl gets pregnant? What about us when our world seems as dark as night? Where is God’s wisdom? Why isn’t he doing something?
He is doing something, but we, like the Israelite exiles, cannot see it. Here is Romans 11:33-35 again in a paraphrase: “God’s resources are endless. His wisdom never runs out. He knows everything there is to know. His judgments are inscrutable. His ways are impossible to understand. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor?”
Don’t think God is not doing anything just because you can’t see or understand what he is doing. His ways are impossible to understand. Imagine taking a ride with Jesus in a 1965 Cadilac Coupe Deville from New York to Los Angeles. A road trip with Jesus? Wouldn’t that be great? Of course, you think you know the way the Lord will take: I-80 to the Colorado line, I-76 to Denver, I-70 into Utah where you will pick up I-15 almost to San Bernadino, where you’ll get on 210 and follow it to 605 and then take Route 10 into L.A.
That makes sense. It is the quickest route. But God knows about a billion things you don’t know. He knows there will be traffic jams in Hoboken, Stroudsburg, Youngstown, Chicago, Des Moines, and twelve other spots, so he avoids them. He bypasses the hailstorm in White Haven. He knows there is a wonderful state park just off I-76 near Uniontown, PA, which you are going to love. And there is an ice cream parlor in Wooster, OH that he particularly likes. They have a dark chocolate ice cream with chunks of fudge, which Jesus says is the best in the world.
He also knows that a 74-year-old man and his wife are traveling to see their son who, unbeknownst to them, will die later this year. They will blow a tire on the south side of Bloomington and the man will have a heart attack while he is trying to get the lug nuts off. So, Jesus takes an alternate route that leads through central Indiana so that you can change a tire. And then, there is a waitress in a diner in St. Joseph, Missouri, a single mom with bills that are piling up, and whose ex is suing for full custody of their only child. She feels like she is losing her mind and really needs someone to give her hope – as well as a big tip – and you are just the person to do that.
Then there is the cow that got through the fence outside Severance, Kansas. It will get hit by a teenage driver if someone doesn’t do something first. And there is a poet in a coffee shop in Oklahoma City who will overhear one line of your conversation that will set his creativity on fire and someday earn him the title of Poet Laureate of the United States.
If you were to see that route plotted on a map, it would make no sense at all. But that is because you don’t know what the Lord knows. All you know is that I-80 is the most direct route between where you are and where you want to go.
In your own life, you usually have known the most direct route between where you are and where you want to be. But why doesn’t God take that route? Your whole life seems to have been a series of detours. Sometimes, you forced your way along your perceived route, but that didn’t work out any better, and maybe it was worse.
God’s ways, Paul writes, are impossible to understand. You will never guess them beforehand. You have a better chance of guessing the winning Powerball Lottery numbers. But should you guess the Powerball, you will not be as happy as you would be if you trusted the Lord, his wisdom, and his love.
Do you really think you deserve to be God’s counselor? Lots of people have applied for the job; none have been qualified. I have often given the Lord recommendations and sometimes he has worked them into the plan – that’s pure grace! But I could not be God’s counselor any more than a preschooler could counsel Albert Einstein on the development of the Theory of General Relativity. I can’t see a trillion things at once, things present, past, and future. But God does.
It is pretty arrogant of us to think that we know better than God. That arrogance is also displayed in the attitude that God owes us something. Paul will have none of that. Quoting Job, he asks: “Who has ever given to God that God should repay him?” There is nothing that you or I have ever done that has put God in our debt. There is nothing we could ever do to put God in our debt. He doesn’t owe us; he owns us. He made us. He bought us at a price.
But even though that is true, he treats us as his children, not his debtors. A child owes his parents everything. They have given him life, shelter, food, and love. They have worked untold hours for his benefit. They have sacrificed things they wanted. Yet, if they are good parents they don’t think: “Kid, you owe me big time—and I mean to collect.” They don’t treat him as their debtor but as their child, their beloved. That is how God treats us.
Look now at verse 36: “For from him…” He is the originator, the one who thought all this up, the one who made it – and us – possible.
“For from him and through him…” He is not only the idea person. He is the artist, the mechanic, the one who does the work. So, John could write, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3) Paul writes, “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities…” (Colossians 1:16).
“For from him and through him and for him are all things.” You and I were not only made by God; we were made for him. This does not at all diminish our value as human beings; it increases it exponentially. We will never be happy until we acknowledge this is true and are glad for it. You were made for God, not like a tailored suit for a businessman, nor even like a work of art for a collector, but like a beloved child for his parents or a bride for her groom. You belong. You are wanted. You are God’s.
I think I had the same preacher when I was younger. It seems like a crime to bore people with the most remarkable story ever told, so I have worked hard to keep sermons interesting. Nevertheless, when talking about selling our old pews, one of our church elders quipped: “We could advertise this way: ‘You’ve slept in them at church; why not take one home to sleep in? You won’t have all the annoying interruptions!” Then someone added, “We could sweeten the deal by giving away a CD of one of Shayne’s sermons.” Guaranteed to give you a good night’s sleep.
I might be biased, but I don’t think most people are bored because they sit through uninteresting church services. It is, I suspect, just the opposite: church services would be more stimulating if the people in the pews and the pulpit weren’t already bored. Boredom makes people easy prey to distractions and temptations. So much of what is happening on the church scene today is an attempt to capture the attention of bored people.
Before the eighteenth century, English did not even have a word for “boring,” yet boredom is the malady of our time. We could learn from Jesus, whose life was anything but boring. The same was true for his closest friends and those who have known him best down the centuries.
Jesus lived an adventurous, sometimes intense, and always meaningful life. Those who dare to follow him have similarly exciting lives. If someone is looking for adventure, I can think of no better advice than this: Start living life the way God designed humans to live, the way Jesus lived, and you will experience all the adventure you will ever need.
But do we really want adventure? As Oliver Goldsmith put it, adventures by the fireside with a good book are one thing, as are adventures in front of the television. Real adventures are another. The playwright Thornton Wilder was right: When you’re safe at home, you wish you were out having an adventure, but “When you’re having an adventure, you wish you were safe at home.”
Years ago, I was on a remote Canadian lake with friends from church. Another guy and I struck out for a different lake, five miles into the bush. We got lost a couple of times and fought mosquitos that were so thick we needed to cover our mouths to avoid breathing them in. We got caught in a thunderstorm, saw fresh bear tracks, and wrestled with a boat motor that wanted to stall every few minutes.
If I had known how uncomfortable that adventure would be, I would have avoided it. Now, I remember it with something like pleasure. That is the way it is with adventures.
The adventure of living the Jesus way is like that. When we need to forgive someone who has intentionally hurt us, the adventure is not fun. But having forgiven, being freed from the anguish of resentment is something like a pleasure.
Likewise, praying can seem trying and tiresome. We can lose heart when we don’t see any answer to our desperate requests. But after intense times of prayer, perhaps over weeks and months, seeing an answer is exhilarating.
There are so many adventures in the life of one of Jesus’s students. To bless those who curse you is an adventure. So is praying for those who misuse you. Sharing the good news of Christ with people who don’t yet believe it is risky. Giving generously to a person in need feels dangerous.
Simply living in obedience to Jesus’s instructions guarantees adventure. If a church were filled with such adventurers, its worship services would never be boring. They would sparkle with excitement not because of careful programming or skilled performances but because congregants brought their adventurous spirit with them when they came to worship.
My wife and I are with friends in Germany this week. We stopped in Nuremberg, where we visited St. Siebold’s Church, which dates back to the beginning of the thirteenth century. St. Siebold’s was remodeled in the seventeenth century in a Gothic Style. It is impressive with its vaulting ceilings, fourteenth century organ, and Renaissance art.
Among the pieces of art is one in the Memento Mori style, showing young children, bursting with life, alongside images of death-eaten bodies. Memento Mori is Latin for, “Remember: You must die,” and art in this style dates back to at least the fifteenth century. It frequently features images of healthy men and women alongside their presumably future self in skeletal form.
Artists have never stopped producing Memento Mori pieces. Van Gogh famously painted a skeleton with a burning cigarette between its teeth. Cézanne painted a “Pyramid of Skulls.” The contemporary British photographer Sarah Lucas did a self-portrait in which she sits on the floor with her arms resting on her knees and a skull between her feet.
This fixation with death seems morose. The artists who painted in this style must, one can only assume, have battled with depression. Yet the artistic roots of Memento Mori are certainly not planted in despair but in the soil of Christian belief. How is it that the religion of the resurrection produced artwork that focuses on human remains?
It would be a mistake to think that Memento Mori artists were all depressives. Memento Mori was not, at least in its Christian forms, a statement on the futility of life or the hopelessness of death. Despair does not enter the picture. It offers a reminder that we will all die, but Christians have never thought of death as the end of all things.
One source of Memento Mori art may be found in the psalms, and particularly in the 90th Psalm, known as the Psalm of Moses. In it, the author asks God to “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” The entire Psalm, as well as the Psalm that precedes it, is a testament to human frailty. We are mortal. To pretend otherwise is to deceive ourselves, and the self-deceived cannot live well.
Memento Mori does not call people to despair but to realism. It is true that human beings cannot in their own power transcend their mortality, but the psalmist pairs human impotence with divine ability. His prayer is for God’s majesty and power to be displayed to his frail children. Memento Mori teaches us dependence on God.
An awareness of death can enable people to live wisely and fully in the years allotted to them. People who refuse to acknowledge that death awaits them are susceptible to wasting the life they have been given. They spend time as if it were limitless. Then they wake to find they have spent minutes and days, and even years and decades, failing to live in a way that brings fulfillment.
Jesus told the story of a successful man who planned his future without regard for the fact that he would one day die. He invested his life in money rather than relationships with God and others. He spent his life accumulating riches, but never got the opportunity to enjoy them. He traded his hours and minutes for far too small a return.
In the Christian tradition of Memento Mori, death is not seen as a disaster because it is not seen as terminal. While death’s inevitability is never denied, the sure and certain hope of the resurrection is never forgotten. Yes, death will be our dance partner, and an ugly one at that, but it will be a short dance, and then the Beloved will cut in.
The Apostle Peter perfectly illustrates this calm assurance in the face of death. He says in his second letter that it is clear that he will soon die, but to him death is no more than taking down his tent so that he can move into a new home. Death is a “departure”, but it is not a terminus. It is a brief layover that precedes a glorious arrival.
St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian Church is one of the earliest books in the New Testament. Toward the end of the letter, the Apostle Paul throws in a list of instructions – a sort of church member’s checklist – which begins with the extraordinary command to “Rejoice always.”
In English, when we want to say that something happens in all places, we use the word “everywhere.” It’s springing up everywhere! Why is it that when we want to say that something happens at all times, we don’t say, “everywhen”? Ancient Greek-speakers did. The word translated above as “always” is composed of two roots: every and when.
Paul believed that it was God’s will that people rejoice during every “when” of their lives. When they have landed their dream job. When they hate going to work. When they have completed their first ever marathon. When they can no longer cross the room without the help of a walker. When people applaud their accomplishments. When people ignore or even criticize their best efforts.It is God’s will that people rejoice everywhen.
But does that mean that I must be happy even when things go wrong? When I’ve been misused? When my spouse has died?
That is an odd question. Must I be happy even when things go wrong? Why do we think of it that way rather than, May I be happy even when things go wrong? Someone might object: “But if I’m not happy, I can’t simply tell myself to be happy. That doesn’t work. So, how can I rejoice? What does that even mean?”
The word translated “rejoice” has a range of meanings. For example, it is the common word used in greetings and is sometimes translated, “welcome.” When Jesus first saw the disciples after the resurrection, this is the word he used. Some older versions translate it, “Hail!” Others render it, “Greetings!” But it could be translated “Rejoice!”
Perhaps one component of rejoicing everywhen has to do with welcoming each new event in our lives. We do not run from them; we meet them head-on in the certain knowledge that God will see us through. He will use this, whatever this is, for good. Yes, we may hurt physically or emotionally or financially – we know that – but we cannot lose. God will use whatever is happening, even our deaths, to make us “mature and complete, lacking nothing.” He will conform us to the image of his Son. Our ultimate happiness depends on nothing else.
A high percentage of life’s miseries comes from the belief that this thing that may happen will be too much. We fear it. Dread it. Our anticipation of future pain makes the present miserable.
But if we were to welcome each new event in our lives with the attitude that we cannot lose, that we will be more than conquerors, that our capacity for happiness will be enlarged when this is over, our lives would be turned upside down. This is not the power of positive thinking; this is the joy of believing in the God and Father of Jesus Christ.
Some people not only don’t rejoice everywhen; they grumble everywhen. They complain about the presence of a vapor trail in a glorious sunset. They complain about the crying baby in an inspiring worship service. They find what is not right, even in situations that are full of hope and promise. Their attitude is inside out. They ask, “Must I be happy even when things go wrong?” It has not yet occurred to them to ask, “May I be happy even when things go wrong?”
The instruction to rejoice always will seem irrational to those who focus on what St. Paul calls “the sufferings of the present time.” But he, writing from a prison where he was unjustly incarcerated, knew that the present time is not the only time. His expanded view included the kindness and love he had already experienced, and the glorious future that God has promised.
The apostle was able to rejoice in painful and uncertain circumstances because faith in God had expanded his view beyond present suffering. From where he stood, seeing what he saw, rejoicing made perfect sense.
It has been said that the most quoted verse in the Bible is no longer John 3:16 but instead Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
That is not surprising. Personal freedom is the touchstone of the era. Everyone should be able to do what they want, and no one should judge them for it. In earlier times, what marked a person as genuinely spiritual was love, a positive thing. Now, it is the absence of judgment, a negative thing.
Even a quick reading of Matthew 7, with its famous verse about not judging, will reveal that Jesus did not approach this subject like a typical postmodern. His very next words affirm that human beings will be judged, and he clearly instructs people to acknowledge their own failures.
Jesus did not prohibit people from making judgments about what is right; he elsewhere urges his hearers to do just that. He was not silencing people on issues of right and wrong or saying that morality is a personal matter. Anyone who has read Jesus’s words knows that cannot be true.
The command against judging is clearly not an endorsement of moral relativism. That, however, does not mean that we can fulfill Jesus’s command simply by affirming absolute truth. Jesus was not giving his students a philosophical model. He was telling them to stop judging other people.
Judging others is so common that most people don’t realize they are doing it. It is a habit that develops early and often continues throughout life. Why do we do it? It is the easy way to feel righteous. To judge people is to use them, usually unbeknownst to them, to boost our own self-esteem.
The Religion of Self-righteousness with its sacramental condemnations and ceremonies of judgment is not limited to religious people, whether Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, or Muslims. It is open to all, including atheists. It is a religion anyone can join. More than that, it is a religion everyone has joined. We have all sacrificed someone else on its altar.
However, the Religion of Self-righteousness is one that Jesus rejected and wants his students to utterly renounce. Simply no judgment. No condemnation.
But don’t some people need to be condemned? What about pedophiles, rapists, and perpetrators of domestic violence? What about the Bernie Madoff’s of the world, who steal from the vulnerable? What about Adolph Hitler and the Nazis? Does justice not demand our condemnation of such people?
Justice demands that we condemn their actions, and it may require society to punish them for what they have done. But Jesus’s followers are not permitted to condemn the person. God alone is wise enough and loving enough to bear that responsibility.
Bolstering self-esteem is not the only reason people condemn others. Condemnation is also used to force people to modify their behavior. This happens all the time on social media, where people with itchy “Twitter-fingers” try to shame others out of what they deem to be socially inappropriate behavior.
Dallas Willard called this “condemnation engineering” and noted that it often happens in families. Indeed, it happens in families more often than anywhere else. Of course, parents only threaten their children with condemnation for their own good, but the result is never good.
How can people break free of the habit of judging others? First, they must intend to do so. Long-held habits don’t go away by themselves. Until a person says, “I will stop doing this,” the behavior will not stop.
But people cannot stop judging others until they become honest about their own failures. This is what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? … first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Until we are prepared to see the wrongs in our own lives, we are not ready to point out the wrongs in others. When we are looking for other people’s sins, we cannot help but be blind to our own.
A while back, our washing machine started leaking just a little, so after wash day, we would pull the machine out and use a rag to dry under it.
As time passed, the leak got a little worse, and then a little worse, and after a while, we needed a towel to dry the floor. So, I said the words my wife of 44 years fears most: “I can fix it.”
I went online and searched for “LG Washer leaks from bottom,” and found what I was sure was the culprit. I could follow the YouTube guy’s instructions and fix it for $20, or I could spend $150 to have a repairman come and do it. When I said that to Karen, she said, “But a repairman could get it done more quickly.”
Undeterred, I said I could get it done quickly, too. I would order the part immediately, even before I checked it out, and then I could install it on my day off. If it turned out that wasn’t the problem, we could send the part back, call a repairman, and would be no worse off.
I ordered the part on Thursday. On Friday night, I pulled the machine out further than ever and turned it sideways. Then I removed the access panel in the back, got down on the floor with a flashlight, and checked out the part. It was pristine. I mean, it looked brand new. Now what? I asked Karen to run a load of wash so I could visually inspect the source of the leak.
I was in my study when the machine began to discharge water. Our laundry room sounded like Niagara Falls. The water was gushing from a tear in the plastic drainpipe, which I had probably caused by pulling the washer out so many times without removing the discharge hose from the drain. So, it was worse than when I’d started. Now, I had to order a different part and take the front and top of the machine apart to install it. I’m pleased to say the installation was a complete success! We were back where we began with just a small leak … but, of course, I could fix that!
In my attempt to make things better, I made them worse. I was in a hurry and started repairs before I knew what was wrong. I was not patient.
When impatient people try to fix things – think of social injustice, mistreatment, or relational conflicts – they often make them worse. This reminds me of St. James’s first-century plea for patience. When his contemporaries in Israel tried to fix their society’s economic inequality, they initiated a civil war that became an international conflict that destroyed their economy, brought down their government, and brought an end to their nation.
The same thing happens on a much smaller scale in our everyday lives. We have a problem with a spouse, child, or coworker. We’ve been mistreated, and rather than praying and patiently seeking to understand how God intends such things to be handled, we rush in with harsh words and angry attitudes. Before we know it, we’ve made things worse. We’ve turned a minor problem into a major one.
We need patience. But patience is not a manufactured good. A person cannot order it; it must be grown across the various regions of a person’s life, which is why the Bible describes it as a “fruit.” Some people ask God for patience and expect it to drop out of heaven on them. That’s not how it works. Others say, “Whatever you do, don’t ask for patience because God will give you troubles.” That’s wrongheaded, too. Of course, we can ask the loving heavenly Father for patience, but we must understand that he doesn’t just hand it to us ready-made; he helps us become, through interaction with him, a patient person.
It is hard, and perhaps impossible, to be patient without faith. Patience is only enabled when faith is active. People with faith don’t need to rush; they can afford to be patient. They don’t carry the weight of the world, but they know who does. This is why the prophet Isaiah wrote, “Whoever believes will not act hastily.”
There is a wonderful story in the Gospel of Luke. Peter, who would later become one of Jesus’s apostles, was at the time a commercial fisherman on the Sea of Galilee. He and his coworkers had been out all night – Galilee fisherman worked the night shift – and were now washing, repairing, and stowing their nets before going home to get some sleep.
Jesus was only a few yards away, standing on the beach, teaching and Peter listened as he taught. Because the crowds were right on top of Jesus, he wished to teach from Peter’s boat and asked him to push it out a few feet from shore. He didn’t demand; he asked.
The rule of Jesus’s kingdom is to ask, and he follows his own rules. He tells us to ask – “Ask and it shall be given to you” – but he asks, as well. And when he asks, he lets us choose for ourselves whether we will respond to his request. If people wait for Jesus to make them do the right thing, they may wait a long time. We have choices to make, and our choices really count.
Peter made the choice to respond to Jesus, to do what he asked. It wasn’t a big ask, though it meant it would be a little longer before he got home and into bed. But when the teaching time was over, Jesus “said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.’”
This was a bigger ask. The nets were already clean and stowed. This meant a time investment, and hard work at the oars.
That is the way of faith. People start in small things and move on to bigger things and then on to yet bigger things. We don’t start big, which is why people who are always looking for big experiences to sustain their faith do themselves a disservice.
Jesus commands but he doesn’t beg. He doesn’t, like some parents, repeat himself over and over in an effort to coerce or guilt people into doing what he wants. He doesn’t say to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets. I’m not telling you again. If you don’t put out into deep water right now, Simon Peter, you’re going to regret it!”
Peter had been out all night. For the last hour he had been stowing away equipment and washing his nets. It was time to go home. It was certainly not time – only a carpenter would think so – to go fishing.
Readers need to try to hear Peter’s response the way he said it. “Master, we’ve worked hard all night. . .” He pauses, waiting for Jesus to say, “Oh, you’re right. How thoughtless of me,” but Jesus says no such thing. “…and haven’t caught anything.” Another, longer, pause. He wants Jesus to know that he’s tired and that he thinks this is a bad idea. He doesn’t want to say no, but he is hoping that Jesus will change his mind. But Jesus does not change his mind. Now comes a big sigh: “But because you say so … I will let down the nets.”
The result was a miraculous catch of fish. Peter may or may not have understood a studious exegesis of the Hebrew text of Isaiah, but that’s not what Jesus gave him. He may not have understood a philosophy of ministry course, but Jesus didn’t give him that either. He did understand fish, and that’s what Jesus gave him.
God knows how to speak to people in ways they understand. He speaks to the poet in meter, to the architect in blueprints, to the child in games and laughter, to the wise in wisdom, to the fool in folly. He speaks to Isaac Newton in mathematical formulae, to Francis Collins in ribonucleic acids and to fisherman in fish.
This is one lesson of the incarnation: God comes to people where they are and speaks to them in a language they can understand. There is no language that God cannot speak, but everyone must choose whether they will listen.
This message was preached in March of 2020, during the pandemic. It celebrates God’s power and his love. I hope you will be encouraged by Paul’s great prayer as you listen to this sermon. (Listening time: 20:10.) Feel free to comment below.
The Way Home 