Focus on God in Difficult Times

Easter 7 2013

Acts 16:16-34; Ps 97; Rev 22; John17:20-26

Father Adam Trambley

May 12, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

Focus on God in difficult times to help God work in difficult places

The theme for today is focusing on God in difficult times to help God work in difficult places. 

Let’s start with today’s reading from Acts.  Paul and Silas have come to Philippi, the first European city to receive the Gospel.  Some people have already received the good news from them, and Lydia is providing them a place to stay.  But they meet a girl with a demonic spirit who annoys them.  The spirit, which is the same kind of spirit as the spirits from the priestesses at Delphi, has the girl follow Paul around and say, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”   These words don’t sound so bad.  They are true.  But can you imagine if during every sermon, as I was about to make an important point that would change your life, someone stood up and yelled, “This preacher knows his stuff and is telling you important things, so you should all sit quietly and listen.”  In no time,  we’d all be wishing for the days when we only had a screaming baby or two to deal with.  Eventually Paul has had enough, finally loses his temper and casts the spirit out of the girl.

Now, just as an aside, we might like, when people annoy us, to turn around and cast a demon out of them.  The problem is that very rarely are we annoyed by demons.  Usually people annoy us because they are exhibiting the same qualities and behaviors that we don’t like so much about ourselves.  So unless we are being tailed by Greek prophetesses while we are evangelizing, if someone annoys us, instead of exorcism, we should probably pray for the person annoying us. We should ask God to remove any similar character flaws we have.  Then we should try to practice the opposite virtues in our own lives.  By focusing on God when we begin to feel annoyed, we give God the invitation to transform our character in ways that are good for us.

Now once the demon is gone from the slave girl, her masters cause trouble.  They stir up the anti-foreigner sentiment in the city, and bring together a mob to falsely accuse Paul and Silas.  The petty magistrates cave to the crowds and have them beaten and thrown in jail.

In the middle of the night Paul and Silas are in the inner cell, which probably means no windows, or airflow or any other kind of basic human comfort.  They also have their feet in stocks, keeping them from moving.  They are at best bruised and sore, and possibly have some broken ribs or serious internal injuries, and no one bothered to disinfect the cell before they were put into it, making their cuts and abrasions opportunities for infection.  The odds of them falling asleep that midnight are slim to none.  So in the midst of all their pain and disappointment, they do the only thing they can do.  They pray and sing hymns to God. 

They pray and they sing hymns to God, and, scripture tells us, the prisoners were listening to them.  On a day when nothing has seemed to go right, they are now given the opportunity to change some lives.  What kind of witness to a powerful and faithful God did the rest of the prisoners hear that night when these two Christians started praying and singing in the midst of their own trials?  What kind of hope was brought into that place of despair when the prisoners in the inner cell, with their feet in stocks, started praising God?   What kind of light was brought into that dark place at midnight, when the other prisoners didn’t tell them to shut up but were listening to them?  Paul and Silas focused on God during that difficult time, and God worked in that difficult place.  Lives were touched.  We’ll hear in a moment what else happened.

Before moving on, however, I want to stop and ask if sometimes we have been in similar situations. Probably not beaten up and in the inner cell with our feet in the stocks, at least I really hope not.  But sometimes life is physically painful.  Sometimes we can’t find a comfortable position to sleep in at midnight.  Sometimes we are unable to be at home, and those around us are not the first choice of companions.  Maybe we’re in a hospital or nursing home; maybe we are stuck in hotel off the freeway; maybe the judicial system has gotten a hold of us, justly or unjustly.  And maybe we want nothing more than to curl up in a ball and feel sorry for ourselves until people come and fix things for us.  And maybe such an attitude would be perfectly understandable.  

But maybe, just maybe, God has something else in mind for us.  Maybe God wants us to focus on him during our difficult times so that he can be at work in those difficult places. 

I have found that when I wake up in the middle of the night, or if I can’t sleep, God usually wants me to pray.  We can always lie in bed and get more and more agitated about why we are still awake, or we can call to mind the people and places that need our prayers.  We can picture God’s light brightening anxious situations.  We can feel God’s love encompassing people in need.  We can see God’s healing grace washing over the sick and dying.  We might even experience God’s presence filling our homes, or this church, or the entire region.  And, by the way, taking time to pray might just calm us enough to go right back to sleep when we’ve prayed what we were supposed to pray.   Now we may not want to start singing loudly at 3 a.m. if others are in the house with us, but the prayers we offer will matter, and we’ll feel much better in the morning than if we were just tossing and turning, or channel surfing, or reading the Facebook posts of everyone else who couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night and should have been praying too.

We also have opportunities to pray and minister to others in hospitals, nursing homes and other places of institutional residence, including, like Paul and Silas, prisons.  Every day, medical and other staff have life and death decisions to make, unpleasant duties to perform, a sometimes stressful environment.  When patients find ways to minister to them for the sake of Jesus, real witnessing can occur.  Additionally, other patients are continuously dealing with pain, taking new medications, and undergoing surgical procedures.  If you are a Christian in a hospital, your prayers may be the precise door God wants to go through to bring someone healing, peace and recovery.  A focus on God in those difficult times helps God be at work in that difficult place.

Once Paul and Silas started praying and singing, pretty soon an earthquake occurred, opening all the doors

and unfastening everyone’s chains.  Now I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that if I’m sitting in jail with my feet in the stocks, and God sends a big earthquake that unlocks the whole place, I might just take it as a sign to leave as quickly as possible.  But Paul and Silas don’t.  They aren’t focused on getting someplace more comfortable or going back to Lydia’s for a warm bath and something to eat.  Instead, they are focused on God.  And God has something else in store.  Paul, as a Roman citizen, knows what would happen to the jailer, and how hard it would be for the jailer’s family, if all the prisoners escaped. So he stays.  And Silas stays.  And somehow they convince all the other prisoners to stay too, which may be the biggest miracle in the whole passage.  And when the jailer goes to kill himself, Paul stops him.  Then after literally saving the guy’s life, Paul offers the jailer and his family an opportunity to save their souls, as well.  They jump at the chance and come to believe in Jesus.  Then the jailor washes Paul and Silas’s wounds and gives them a good Greek dinner.  In this unexpectedly good, but still difficult time, Paul and Silas stay focused on God and God brings salvation to an entire family.  Definitely worth sticking around the jail for.    

Sometimes we find ourselves with unexpected opportunities during difficult times.  Sometimes blessings manifest themselves such that we could escape from all trials, but if we are focused on God, we might find more productive ways to use those blessings for ourselves and others. 

Maybe finances are tight, or even terrible, when something breaks our way – a bequest, a raise, a new part-time job, or whatever.  We might be able to use that boon to get ourselves where we feel we want to be.  However, if we focus on how God might be able to use our blessing, we might find that we can be generous to those in need in some way, and still get to where we need to be.  If we are generous, we might have to be prudent and disciplined for a while, but we be able to open a door for God to be at work in the lives of others, as well as in our own.

Or maybe we have a strained relationship with someone, and we suddenly no longer need to regularly interact with them.  We could just say good riddance, or we could remain focused on how God wants to use us in that relationship.  We might find that stepping back a bit gives us the perspective to help minister to the other person and show them God’s love. 

Or, on Mother’s Day, we might think about the end of nine months of pregnancy and who knows how many hours of labor, and how, when it is all over, instead of running to the nearest spa for a long nap, we have a chance to love this newest child of God. 

So when we find ourselves in difficult situations – situations that are rarely as unfortunate as the one Paul faced in Philippi – we can choose one of two attitudes.  The first is to focus on ourselves, and the difficult situation usually remains difficult for us.  The second, however, is to focus on God.  Whether in a dark spot where we may be the only avenue to bring in light, or whether opportunities for escape are presenting themselves, if we stay focused on God during difficult times, we will help God work in difficult places.

Do You Want to be Made Well?

Easter 6 2013

Acts 16:9-15; Ps 67; Rev 21:10,22-22:5;John 5:1-9

Father Adam Trambley

May 5, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

Do You Want to be Made Well?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem for a festival, as good Jews would have done.  He comes to the pool Beth-zatha, sometimes called Bethesda, which where the Bethesda hospitals get their name.  The blind, the lame and the paralyzed are all there.  According to the thinking of that time, every so often the water would be stirred up by angels, and the people who entered the water while it was agitated would be healed.

Jesus walks by a man who had obviously been lying there a long time.  Gratefully, scripture does not describe in detail the symptoms Jesus saw indicating just how long he had been in that place, but if you ask a home health nurse, I’m sure they could tell you. (You just don’t want to ask them over lunch.)  Jesus, who is fearless when it comes to human infirmities, walks up to the man and asks, “Do you want to be made well?”

Simple question.  “Yes” or “no” answer.  Not hard to figure out, since the guy has been stuck there a long time.

“Do you want to be made well?” Guess what? The invalid doesn’t say “yes.”   “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”  Dude, you’re being asked if you want to be well and your only response is a list of reasons why you are still sick.  Jesus decides to heal him anyway, and says, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”  Immediately the invalid is made well, he picks up his mat and walks away.  Not surprisingly, Jesus doesn’t add, “Your faith has made you well.” 

Now maybe it sounds like I’m picking on this poor invalid who was stuck just far enough away from the water for who knows how long.  And maybe I am.  But the story continues after Jesus heals him on the Sabbath.  The Jewish leadership finds him and wants to know why he is carrying his mat on the Sabbath.  He tells them it was the fault of the guy who healed him, whose name he doesn’t know.  Then he stumbles into Jesus later, and when he finds out his name, he runs off to get Jesus in trouble for healing and telling people to carry their mats on the Sabbath.  The church has some great traditions about what happens to other unnamed Biblical characters.  The child who comes to Jesus is believed to be Polycarp, an early Bishop and martyr.  The Gerasene demonic with a legion of demons is alleged to become an early evangelist and Bishop.  But I couldn’t find any traditions about this guy, a whiner who we never read says “Thank You” to Jesus or gives glory to God for his healing.

Now, obviously, this man hadn’t met Jesus before.  He hadn’t read the gospels or heard the good news. Maybe there really had been no other way.  May he was that depressed because he had in fact tried everything he could think of.  But the Great Physician asked, “Do you want to be made well?” and all you’ve got is a long list of excuses.  It reminds me of story by Theophane the Monk:

“Why not?” that was the first thing he said.  He had never seen me before.  I hadn’t said a word. “Why not?”  I knew he had me.

I brought up excuses: “My wife…the people I have to work with…not enough time…I guess it’s my temperament…”

Illustration John O'Brien

There was a sword hanging on the wall.  He took it and gave it to me.  “Here, with this sword, you can cut through any barriers.” I took it and slipped away without saying a word.

Back in my room in the guesthouse I sat down and kept looking at that sword.  I knew that what he said was true.

But the next day I returned his sword.  How can I live without my excuses?

(From Tales of a Magic Monastery by Theophanethe Monk. Crossroads, NY. 1981.)

Now this gospel and this story matter to us this morning because Jesus is also asking us, “Do you want to be made well?” and he isn’t only asking about physical healing.  He is asking us if we want to be whole and happy and blessed.  He is asking us if we want to know his love and be able to share his love with others.  He is asking us if we want to live into the mighty purpose we were made for as sons and daughters of God. 

But so often, when we are asked if we want to be made well, our only answer is a list of excuses. Sometimes, Jesus heals us anyway, just like the invalid in our gospel.  But, just like our invalid, being made well in the short term doesn’t mean we are living into the Kingdom of God for the long term if we keep dragging our excuses behind us.  We can probably name any number of folks with every bit of health, wealth and advantage or seem nothing more than whiny, spoiled, brats.  Then we also know people who may not even be able to get out of bed who radiate God’s love to everyone around them.  Do we want to become the brilliant, radiant, beloved, loving people God made us to be before the world began?  Do you want to be made well?

Yes!  We do!!  But we aren’t going to make it to the love and wholeness Jesus wants for us without cutting through our excuses.  We want to say “Yes,” and follow Jesus with nothing holding us back.

Just what are some of our excuses?

Sometimes the excuses we hide behind are a false modesty or low self-image.  The invalid in the gospel uses these excuses.  “I would be well, but nobody wants to help poor old me.”  “I just don’t move fast enough to get down to the water when I need to.”  “I’ve can’t make the people mad who want me to stay sick.” Really?  What’s the psalm say, “I thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful and I know it well”…”you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  Each of us was made for an important purpose, and if we say “Yes” to Jesus, he will open that wholeness up for us.  Our life may still seem overwhelming. Our health may still be subpar.  Our love will probably still be less than we want it to be.  Nevertheless, Jesus will bring us with him on the path to the abundant life he wants for us.

Sometimes the excuses we hide behind come from a prideful ego.  “Don’t worry, Jesus, I’m Ok as I am.”  We don’t want to take the next step in love and discipleship, since we believe we should already be walking on water.  Obviously, cutting out all the ways we falsely build ourselves up is a pretty painful process.  But hopefully we can do it.  Mature Christian friends and God’s provision of the right crises generally also help if we are serious.    The key is to just say “Yes” to Jesus, then be quiet.  He’ll tell us what to do next, probably from the people we least want to hear instruct us.   

Then, sometimes, our excuses are all our attachments that keep us distracted.  “I want to be well after dessert, or after a cup of coffee.”  “I want to be well, but only if I can keep the stuff I worked so hard for.”  “I want to be well, but only after everyone else I know is well so that I’m not uncomfortable.”  But remember what Jesus told the rich young ruler, “Sell all you have, give to the poor, and follow me.”  Do we want sugar more than wellness, caffeine more than wholeness, worldly riches more than divine purpose, or social pleasantries more than divine love.  When Jesus makes us well, we’ll have everything we need, and we will be agents of his love and healing to those around us.

Now cutting away our excuses is not easy.  Even when we can figure out what our excuses are, the process is difficult.  Our difficulty in doing so is why Jesus asks us, “Do you want to be made well?”  We can say “yes” and hand him the sword.  Giving ourselves over to Jesus to cut out our excuses is an incredibly scary act of faith.  But, oh is it worth it!  This surrender is what people talk about when they say you have to want to want it.  If we want Jesus to make us well, even if we can’t really deal with all the transformations and implications of that process, he’ll lead us on the way to Eternal Life.  If Jesus is willing and able to heal the Gospel’s invalid with all his excuses and issues, just imagine what he’ll do for us.

So answer Jesus today, simply “yes” or “no”.  Do you want to be made well?