Pentecost B Proper 08: God's Call to Dependence

The grace, mercy, and peace of Christ Jesus rest upon each and every one of you this day.

One of the biggest questions a pastor faces in ministry is "why?" "Pastor, why did this bad thing happen to me?  Why is God punishing me?  Why doesn't God help me?  Why doesn't God just take me home to heaven, pastor?  I'm old and ready to go!" Now, I know that many of you have the one-size-fits-all answer at the ready: "Because God has a plan for you."  I won't say that this is wrong, but this answer is definitely lacking.  I don't know about you, but I don't exactly find comfort in the thought that my misery is part of God's plan.  That certainly doesn't make God out to be very loving, does it?  That makes Him seem pretty angry and vengeful and sadistic.

I bring all this up because as our national holiday celebrating independence draws near, the old "why" question always seems to spring up in our conversations with more frequency.  This, in itself, should come as no surprise.  It's only natural.  Man has always looked to the past with a romantic sort of blindness and forgetfulness, longing for the "good old days," be it our good old days, or good old days that happened long before us and we can only fantasize about.

As Independence Day draws near, many people's thoughts naturally drift back to the founding fathers of this great nation and the courage and the resolve and the ethos that went into standing firm and fighting and forging this great nation of ours.  This is when the questions inevitably come up.  "Why can't we be like our colonial forefathers?  Why can't our leaders be like them?  What's happened to us?  How did we get so far off track?  Would the people who fought and died for life, liberty, and freedom condone what we've done with that life, liberty, and freedom?  Would the people who fought to earn their right to pursue their own happiness and prosperity approve of the overwhelming sense of entitlement that affects and infects us today?" Sound familiar?  It should.  I've heard many of you making these same laments; laments which inevitably lead back to the "Why, God?" questions.  "Why is God permitting these bad things to happen?  Why is God permitting sin to run rampant in our lives and be forced upon us in the name of tolerance and equality?  Why doesn't God do something?"

Here's a thought: God is doing something.  In fact, He's never stopped doing it.  He's been doing it since our first parents fell into sin in the Garden of Eden, and He hasn't stopped doing it since then.  What is this work of God I speak of?—His call to repentance; His call to cleave to and trust in Him alone, above all other things.

This is what I love about the Old Testament lesson for today.  The writer of these laments understands this.  If you read the portions of Scripture that surround this block of verses you discover that the writer of Lamentations is miserable (hence the appropriate title for the book).  Just like us, he laments over how bad things are.  The city of Jerusalem has fallen into Babylon's hands.  The Israelites have all been hauled off into bondage because they failed to listen to the repeated calls to repentance from God's prophets that He sent to them over the past two hundred years, starting with Amos and ending with Jeremiah.  The writer of Lamentations (more than likely Jeremiah) even says this of God, "He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; He has broken my bones.  He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; He has made my chains heavy.  He is a bear lying in wait for me; He has made me desolate.  He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is."  And you thought you had it bad!

But here's the thing: Jeremiah gets it.  He understands why God is doing all this.  He understands that all this is part of God's call to repentance.  He says in verse 40, "Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord!  Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven."  Jeremiah gets that God is doing all this because He is loving and merciful, disciplining and chastising because He loves.  He is faithful to His salvation promise.  Jeremiah says in the verse immediately preceding our lesson for today, "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope…" And what follows are the words of our lesson for today.  I want you to think about this for a moment.  Jeremiah had it pretty bad; far worse than any of us can imagine.  In spite of all that misery and pain and suffering, Jeremiah didn't lose faith/hope in the love and mercy and faithfulness of God.

The same can be said for all periods of history.  There has always been sickness, greed, corruption, perversity, war, death, and despair.  Adam and Eve are the only people in all of history who could honestly look back and remember truly better times.  Everyone else can only remember different, sin-filled, calamitous times.  And there have always been the proverbial 7,000 who remained faithful and didn't bow the knee to Baal.  There have always been those who cleave in repentant faith to the love and mercy and faithfulness of our steadfast God and Father.

So what does all this mean for us today?  Like I always say, nothing has changed.  God still desires the death—the eternal suffering and death—of no one.  He has always and will always desire that all men be saved.  For this reason God will turn up the heat on this side of eternity in the hopes that we will get it and, in turn, respond by turning back to Him in repentant, saving faith, trusting in Him above all other things and steering clear of the eternal heat and punishment that awaits all those who don't cleave to Him in faith.  It's not a vengeful, sadistic kind of thing that God does.  It's a loving, disciplinary, Fatherly kind of thing.  Remember: He does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.  That doesn't mean that He does not permit affliction and grief to enter into our lives.

Jeremiah understood this.  And that's where I want you to look square in the mirror this morning.  It's easy to look everywhere but at ourselves, isn't it?  It's easy to get caught up in the foolishness that honestly believes that we're alright, but everyone else is messed up and needs to repent.  And if you're hoping that the other guy is hearing this right now because they need to, you are exactly the person I'm talking to!  How often we lament about how bad things are in our life, how unfair it all is, how we always get the shaft while the other guy gets ahead, and yet we fail to recognize these hurdles and crosses as God's call to us to repent for our sin.  We foolishly see ourselves as innocent victims rather than the sinful perpetrators that we are.  Jesus died because you are sinner.  Does the other guy need to repent?  Did Jesus die for the other guy's sins?  Absolutely!  But change begins here—in your heart.  Repentant change begins with you.  You are to love and forgive and live because God first loved and forgave and died for you.  That's true saving faith in action.  It's not a response to what the other guy does.  It's a response to what God has done for you.

And that's where the whole concept of independence comes into play today.  It's ironic when you think about it, especially during this holiday time, but God never calls us to be independent.  That's a man-made delusion.  Man is the one who constantly seeks autonomy.  From the Greek, to be autonomous means to be "a law unto one's self."  Man is constantly seeking to call all the shots and be in charge.  Man still desires to be like God, independent and equal to God.  God, on the other hand, desires that all men trust in Him above all things, above all things for all things; trust in Him and have life and peace and true freedom that surpasses all human understanding.

So…when this doesn't work out and man's heart stands in opposition to God's heart, God does take action.  Notice how I worded this, using the language of the heart.  God knows your heart.  Even though we can fool everyone else with our pious words and actions—our "genuine" cares and concerns—God knows what's in our hearts.  He knows our plans, our desires, and our agendas.  He knows the truth.  When our truth stands in sinful opposition to His truth, He does take action.  He does put crosses in our lives.  He does cause grief and affliction in our lives, not out of sick, willful joy, not to punish us, but to call us to repentance; to call us back to the life and peace that is found only in Him.  The punishment was paid for—in full—by Christ on His cross.  "It is finished."  God's wrath was sated with the blood of His only-begotten Son.  God punished His Son so that we would not have to bear His wrath and punishment.  He punished His Son so that we could have life, and have it to the fullest.

This is precisely why Jeremiah says that it is good that we experience these things.  It is good—Garden of Eden, six days of creation, God declaring it good—that we experience these loving, disciplinary calls back to Him.  We may not see these things as good when they happen to us.  In fact, we don't.  We feel like we are being crushed and punished.  We feel like we've been forsaken and forgotten.  We feel like we're being taken advantage of and given a raw deal.  And when we experience these bad, trying things in our lives, we lament.  It's inevitable.  It's part of who man is.

Believe it or not, but lamenting isn't necessarily a bad thing.  It can be.  Our laments can become quite sinful and slanderous and "gossipy," but lamenting, faithfully, is precisely how God created us to be.  The real question is: Who do you lament to?  Who do you cry out to for mercy?  Where do you look for deliverance and peace?  The very fact that we all have belly buttons shows that we were never created or intended to be autonomous.  From the very get-go, we are dependent on someone else.  When bad things happen in life, Jeremiah puts it best: "Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid upon him.  Let him put his mouth in the dust—there may yet be hope."  Basically, don't go lamenting to everyone else.  Turn back to God, not to blame God, but to open your mouth in repentance to God.  Call upon your Lord in the time of trouble, and He will deliver you.

Before we end for the day, I will close with a couple of questions for you: Are we living in rough and sinful times?  Is our nation perfect?  Could it be better?  Is our congregation perfect?  Could it be better?  Are you perfect?  Is your household perfect?  Is your life perfect?  Could things be better in your life; not in man's eyes, not materialistically better, but better in God's eyes, theologically and faithfully better?  My fellow redeemed: God's loving call to repent goes out to all of us, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Repent and turn back to the cross of Christ.  Let your focus, your worries, your doubts and despairs, your laments, your life, and your faith be bound up in the cross; a cross which was bloodied with the guiltless Lamb of God for your sin, my sin, and the sin of all the world.

Turn back and cleave to and depend upon the righteousness that is found only in God's grace and mercy, which He bestows upon us only because of Jesus' all-redeeming death and resurrection.  Yes—on this Fourth of July holiday week I am calling you away from sinful independence and autonomy, calling you back to saving dependence and trust above all things in your loving and gracious and steadfast heavenly Father.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear…and turn and live!  AMEN.