POWER HUNGRY
Bad things happen. Bad things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. Bad things happen. Sometimes the cause is obvious: greed and hatred, poverty and ignorance, all cause suffering in greater or lesser degrees, and we can point to sin as the reason. But sometimes the deaths seem so random and pointless. The pictures of the devastation in Indonesia and Sri Lanka and Thailand, the 150,000 dead, tales of unspeakable tragedy and unimaginable loss have dominated the news for two weeks. Religious leaders around the world have been called upon to explain how belief in God can survive suffering on so massive a scale. Some people want to know why these things happen, some people look for ways to stop these things from happening, others look for someone to blame. And everyone feels helpless.
But the issue before us is the same whether the number is 1000 or 100 or 10, or even just one. Every day around the world children are killed, or kidnaped or abused. Every day around the world 150,000 thousand people die from accidents to old age, from famine to floods, from disease to disaster to war, and a hundred different varieties of random violence. It’s just that we rarely see them all at once, in one place.
But getting an answer to the question why isn’t really a whole lot of help, either. The Archbishop of Canterbury, writing in response to this tragedy, said “If some religious genius did come up with an explanation of exactly why all these deaths made sense, would we feel happier or safer or more confident in God? Wouldn’t we feel something of a chill at the prospect of a God who deliberately plans a program that involves a certain level of casualties?” That’s one of the problems with the classic Presbyterian doctrine of predestination, too. If God is in charge of everything, why doesn’t he make life easier?
Thomas Hardy thinks that suffering is random, and that he would feel better if God really was against him, getting his kicks from pulling wings of his hapless human flies. He wrote,
If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh:
“Thou suffering thing, know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”
Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half eased, too, that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. But not so.
People say, “things happen for a reason.” And there is comfort in believing that good comes out of suffering. It’s Biblical, too, to believe that. James tells us, “Brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy,because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. [Jas 1:2]
But you know what? That’s not really what we want. We want these things not to happen at all. We want the power to stop them before they happen. Or at the very least to have the power to fix things after they do happen. We want sickness and pain and grief and loss and disappointment and change to go away. We want power. We want to be in control.
But let me tell you, folks, power is not all that it’s cracked up to be. A n author named Ursula LeGuin wrote a marvelous story about a man whose dreams changed the world. He was so outraged and angered by racism that he dreamed it away. And the next morning, everyone was the same shade of gray.
And that was all very well until he noticed that people were now classed according to the shape of their ears - pointed or round, whether they stuck out or lay flat against their heads. So he dreamed discrimination away. And the next morning everyone was banded together like brothers and sisters - because hostile aliens had appeared in the sky and the earth.
Even if we had that kind of power, we just don’t know enough to make good choices. Rain in one country may mean drought in another; sickle-cell anemia, a genetic scourge that often comes with African genes, seems to protect against malaria. Which would you rather have?
No, power alone is not enough. You have to know what you’re doing - both short-term and long. And that is why Paul’s prayer is just what we need at times like this. Because both the power and the wisdom we need to make sense of our world and a difference in it are found in only one place - or I should say, in one person.
When I left for the Pillsbury Co to go to seminary I never thought I’d miss anything about the corporate world - except the salary. But after I left I realized that I had really enjoyed paying the bills. Our work comp costs ran about $2,000,000 a month, and I was the one who signed off on the payment requests. It was really, really fun. But of course, the money wasn’t really mine. The power was delegated from somewhere much farther up the food chain, and it was only sort of mine for a particular purpose. But that didn’t take away from it... because I was a key player in a really, really important process.
One of the key emphases in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is how different our lives are to be given that we are now God’s adopted children. But that’s a hard concept to grasp. And even if we kind of have a handle on what has been given to us, we mostly don’t have a clue about how to use it, how to appropriate the gift and be changed by it.
Some of the problem has to do with motivation, of course. Some of us became Christians out of guilt or fear, others out of a vague sense of restlessness, others simply because it was the thing to do when they were growing up. But those aren’t motivations that get you very far, or that last very long. They may work to get you in the door, but Paul wants more for his flock than that. That’s one of the reasons he keeps repeating the list of gifts: redemption, forgiveness, wisdom, hope, purpose...
But motivation alone isn’t enough. Even the best of intentions often fail . . . as many of you may already be experiencing with your New Year’s Resolutions. And that’s especially true of living for Christ, or more correctly living in Christ. It just isn’t something we can do under our own steam. We can’t even find Jesus without the Holy Spirit leading us by the hand, much less bond with him. Even Christians who are doing pretty well with the basics of faith and love, as the Ephesians were, needed regular reminders that we need something more than head knowledge to come into our true inheritance.
What Paul asked for was that they might know Jesus Christ better. And that is exactly what we need, as well. Not just with our heads, not just by memorizing the parables and the miracles and the sayings, but by being intimate with him, by spending enough time with him to let his world-view rub off on us. Now, mind you, we can’t be intimate with Jesus without spending time on those dusty Judean roads, but what also needs to happen is for our hearts to be opened. Like the two disciples who walked with him on the road to Emmaus after the crucifixion, we need the Holy Spirit to open our eyes. “So that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” [v. 18-19]
How clear is your vision of what God has planned for you? How sure are you of your inheritance? How convinced are you that you are held in God’s almighty and perfectly loving hands? Unless we seek and receive the gift of enlightenment that only comes through the Holy Spirit, we cannot have a clear vision, a compelling conviction, a secure confidence in our privileged position. We’ll begin to compromise, to hedge our bets, to divide our attention between the things of God and the things of the world. And that will only impoverish us in the end.
There are three parts to the gift that Paul wants all of God’s children not only to understand, but to possess and to experience.
The first is hope. What is the hope God has called you to? Are you sure enough of your identity in Christ that tragedy - whether it’s right next door or half way around the world - cannot shake your conviction”that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose”? [Ro 8:28] We do not know exactly what God has in store for us, for you, for me, for this church. None of us do. But what we do know is that the God who holds our future in his hands has no limit on his resources, no gaps in understanding, and no intention of letting the enemy win.
Because the second thing we need to understand about this new position that we hold is that we are God’s inheritance. Yes, that’s right. The “glorious inheritance” that Paul talks about isn’t dollars in the bank, stocks, bonds or real estate, it’s you and me, it’s the church itself. And God himself is the administrator of the trust. This is one investment that isn’t going to lose value. God is not going to post a loss on his final balance sheet. We - and the things we do in Jesus’ name - are going to increase in value at a rate that makes the 90's tech bubble look like hiccup. And that is because of the third point that Paul emphasizes.
The power that protects us is “incomparably great.” Paul’s letter to the Ephesians emphasizes power more than any other NT letter. The same power that raised Christ from the dead and placed him on God’s right hand is there for us, limitless and trustworthy.
It’s not like the power I had writing those $2,000,000 checks - yet in a way it is. Because I couldn’t see the money flow, I didn’t know for a fact from my own knowledge that when I sent that little piece of paper through the mail that money would get to people who had been injured on the job... but I believed that it would, and so I did what I had been empowered to do. I did the work I had been called to do - and without my seeing the end, all the little gears hummed and whirred and the whole complex beautiful system accomplished what it had been designed to do. People got their checks, they paid their doctors and their mortgages and got on with their lives. And I couldn’t have done any of it if everyone else in the system hadn’t been doing their parts, too, from the bank tellers to the postal clerks.
And that is what Paul wants us to understand. We have been given the power to do what God has called us to do. If we step out and believe that the things God calls us to do are worth doing, are not only effective but necessary, as we get on with our tasks the gears and wheels will hum and whirr and a whole mighty organization bigger than any Fortune 100 company in history will continue doing its thing, to bring all things at last into subjection to Christ: where there is no pain, no fear, no dying or disappointment or tears.
If we know Christ, we have the power to live in hope. If we know Christ, we have the power to live to the praise of God’s glory. If we know Christ, we have the power and the wisdom to do what is right in the midst of a broken and confusing world. If we know Christ, we are ready to walk out with him with a cup of cold water and the good news. We may not see the results. But we do know that when we write checks of good will, of mercy and kindness, of the truth of Jesus Christ, of hope beyond despair and life beyond death, that they will not bounce.
