Bibliography: Willie Wonka, When God Interrupts - Craig Barnes, All You Really Need To Know About Prayer...-Louise Perrotta, Martin Luther King, William Barclay
The other night as we were channel surfing, we came across one of my favorite movies from my childhood, and the boys and I sat down to watch Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.
It’s the kind of movie, like The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz, that use to make my parent groan when they heard they were going to be on because they knew I would want to watch it, no matter how many times I have seen it, I always want to see it again.
But I just can’t help it. When Gene Wilder opens the door to the chocolate room - a room filled with colorful delights and fanciful “growing candy plants & trees,” and sings to us all... “if you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it...” Why can’t life be like that? Why can’t we all live in a place that’s as delightful and magical as the chocolate room?
Did you ever wish something like that? If only life could just be like living in the chocolate room of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory, then life would be grand. Life would be fine.
I’d bet there are a lot of ‘if only’s’ we wish for so life would be grand:
If only I didn’t have this credit card debt, everything would be fine.
If only I had a better car that wouldn’t break down all the time.
If only I could get that promotion at work.
If only my children would listen to what I’m saying and try harder.
These are all the kinds of things drive us crazy and take the perfection out of our perfect world. But some of these can seem rather simple compared to other concerns:
If only they could operate and get rid of this cancer.
If only this terrible illness would go away.
If only I could regain the use of my legs.
If only I could fix my child’s problems at school.
If only my teenager would stop using drugs and stay out of trouble.
If only my spouse and I could go back to the way things were when we first fell in love.
If only there was a way out of my financial crisis.
If only I hadn’t been laid off. If only I could find a job.
If only...
Paul speaks to our ‘if only’s.’
He writes: “What we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.”
Its as if he is saying, “Just wait. The chocolate room is in your future.”
He wants us to know that Christ Jesus has prepared a better place for us.
When Paul addresses suffering in these words to the church in Rome, I believe he had a particular kind of suffering in mind. Suffering and struggle comes in many forms but I think we could perhaps place them into two general categories. There is personal suffering we endure. Whether they are situations we create ourselves like drug use or incredible debt, or situations that happen to us beyond our control like illness or tragic accidents,
they are crisis that effect everyone of every walk of life.
But I believe Paul had in mind those whose suffering was faith based. I believe Paul was addressing those who are struggling with what it means to be Christian in a world that is not Christian friendly.
In the second or third century, and unknown author wrote to a gentleman Diognetus to attempt to explain the Christian way of life. For Diognetus Christians must have been allusive creatures.
The author writes:
Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humankind by country, language, or customs...they are not champions of a human-made principle, as some are. While they may live as Greeks or oriental, and follow the customs of the country in dress, food, and general manner of life, they display the remarkable and confessedly surprising status of their citizenship.
They live in countries of their own, but as sojourners. The share all things as citizens; they suffer all things as foreigners...They pass their life on earth; but they are citizens in heaven. They obey the established laws, but the outdo the laws in their own lives. They love all people, and are persecuted by all. They are not understood and condemned. The are put to death, and yet made alive...
Christians were different people. Often their beliefs flew in the face of custom and expected behavior. Rich people associated on an equal basis with poor people. Free people shared a common meal with slaves. Women were accepted as equal members of the faith community. It was radically different from the way in which the majority of the world operated and because of their frequent break from sacred but human-instituted customs, Christians were persecuted and suffered for their faith.
It is Christians who were being ridicules, tortured, and killed for their faith that Paul had in mind when he wrote of suffering we experience now in comparison to God’s future glory for the suffering.
Maybe you agree with those early Christians, that it is difficult to be a Christian today. Or maybe you are thinking we don’t face the same kind of tribulations those early Christians faced. I’d be inclined to agree with the latter point of view.
After all, we aren’t as ready to stand up publicly and proclaim our Christian witness as they were. In part, perhaps because we believe people would think we were looney to go around saying, “I follow Jesus. Who do you follow?”
But often I believe it is true that it is the sacrifice of our pride that holds us back from standing up for what we believe in, when Christians 1800 years ago were sacrificing their lives willingly for their faith.
Our writer, Paul, being one of those who endured imprisonment and execution for his faith in Christ.
I am afraid, that too often we seem to suggest that being a Christian, just having faith in Christ is an easy fix to all our problems and the assurance of a trouble free life.
Its simply not true. In fact, as I am often saying, it often means a life that is difficult, perhaps in different ways, because the Christian way of life is a life of commitment and self-sacrifice.
Even so, Paul’s thoughts appear to turn also to personal pain and suffering. He comments on how everything in the entire world is headed in one way, form, fashion, or another for death and decay.
Paul believed that God’s kingdom had already come. Belief at that time was that there were two ages - the present age and the new age to come, when God would bring about the redemption of the world, of all of creation and humanity.
Paul believed the new age began with the resurrection of Christ. Yet he also knew that even as believing Christians, we still face personal pain and suffering in this present world we live in. Our world can be shaken, or faith and our hope tried. Paul wrote these words, not to people whom he might convert, or to people were on the verge of making decisions for Christ. Paul wrote to faithful followers in Rome, facing difficult circumstances, who continued to need to hear words of hope of brighter tomorrow.
Craig Barnes is a Presbyterian minister. He wrote this book about suffering and the disappointments of life called “When God Interrupts.” Craig writes of his own personal painful experiences. Just before he turned 17, his parents divorce. His mother left his father, and then his father left Craig and his brother as well. In fact, Craig has no idea where his father is. He suggests that perhaps his father’s abandonment was out of personal anguish of a sense of failure. In any case, Craig and his brother found themselves basically on their own.
That first Christmas, Craig and his brother wanted to visit their mother, but they didn’t have bus fair. So they decided to hitchhike, thinking it would be easy to get rides along the way. It wasn’t. It was cold, dark, and snowing.
Craig and his brother found themselves doing something that came from their childhood. Their father, who had also been a minister, had insisted that the memorize Bible verses when they were young. It was like a drill, where there father would call out a reference and they were expected to respond with the appropriate verses. The brothers found themselves in a back and forth exchange that cold Christmas Eve, taking turns calling out corresponding references and verses such as:
Proverbs 3:5
Romans 8:28
Jeremiah 29:11
Isaiah 43:1-4
Craig comments on that experience:
“That night for the first time in my life, I heard those verses, maybe because I was ready to hear them. I was confused, frightened and grieving over the loss of everything that had once held my world together. I needed a savior.”
Paul writes in his letter to the Romans:
“It is not just creation alone which groans; we who have the Spirit...also groan within ourselves as we wait for God...to set our whole being free. For it was by hope that we were saved;...”
Paul’s message is now that we are saved, when life gets hard, when we suffer and things seem hopeless, when we are called to make some decisions and stand up for what we believe in...don’t lose hope.
And Paul provides us with a couple signs, or ways to know that our hope is real.
The first is the presence, power, and help of the Holy Spirit. Paul says that even when we don’t know what to pray for, the Holy Spirit prays on our behalf.
Louise Perotta writes of the incredible faith of the poor in the Caribbean and the spirit of those who work with them. One of those individuals is Sister Regina. She doesn’t look like Mother Teresa, but much of what she does in the same spirit. She has been so inspired and touched by the lives of those she works to help, that their lives have influenced her prayer life with God. She says,
“I’ll probably neve live at that level of misery, but to FEEL with them. I guess that’s what I keep praying for.”
One woman she has been working with is Sylvia. Sylvia is the mother of two severely retarded sons. Sylvia struggles to provide full time care for her physically grown children while trying to work to make a small income to support them.
Sister Regina tells us that her prayer life has been changed by her experience with Sylvia’s family.
“I begged the Lord to awaken in me a sharpened sense so that I could ‘taste and see’ a little bit of Sylvia’s suffering. I don’t want this to be just and intellectualized prayer, but something that’s in my blood - prayer with guts in it.”
It made a difference in Sister Regina’s life. Suffering and identifying with the poor in the way Jesus did has become a big focus in Sister Regina’s prayer life and her prayers have spilled over into action, where she is finding ways to meet the needs of those she serves. They have given her a pet name of FFF, because they say she is fanning flickering flames.
Its true she notes, that many have become hopeless and frustrated. They are ready to give up. Their flame is almost out. The Holy Spirit has led Sister Regina in prayers of new hope for these people, for a life for them and herself of living close to Christ, to be able to offer light in them midst of a dark future, to fan flames that are flickering. The Holy Spirit has led Sister Regina in her prayers.
Another sign of hope Paul points us to is God’s plan. God knew people long before we knew God. God chose us to be like God’s son. God chose us as family and through Christ, gave us the place of brothers and sisters to Christ. God calls us to come close, to be close, to live as family with God and with one another. And as God promised us redemption that is fulfilled in Jesus, God showers us with God’s glory, also as God has promised.
In other words, God had a plan and has from the beginning of time. When things go wrong, God’s plan isn’t thwarted, isn’t changed. In times of suffering, when we need a savior as Craig Barnes said, God plan provides for us, cares for us, looks over us, comforts us, and provides us with hope.
It reminds me of a scene from the movie Jurassic Park. All the dinosaurs are free and chaos has ensued. Doctor Grant and two children managed to escape from a man-eating dinosaur. Then there is further danger when they plummet with their car over a ravine and into a tree. They find themselves in the dark, in the midst of a rainstorm, with the obstacle of making it back to safety through was has become an extremely hostile environment beyond their wildest dreams.
They climb into a tree to get some rest in a place with some degree of shelter, and their the girl asks a very interesting question. What happens if the dinosaurs come back while they are asleep? To which Doctor Grant responds that he will stay up all night and watch over them.
That’s what God’s plan of salvation does for us. We find ourselves in situations that suddenly become extremely life threatening to our survival. Our problems become bigger than we can handle. But we need to remember, as Paul reminds us, that God’s plan of salvation is in place, watching over us when life is at its most precarious.
“We know,” says Paul, “that in ALL things, God works for good with those who love God.”
William Barclay says, “The key note of the Christian life is hope. The Christian waits for life, not for death.”
Paul goes on to finish out this 8th chapter with words I believe are the most important words for anyone, Christian or not to hear:
“There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God.”
Nothing you can do can make God stop loving you and caring for you. No situation you can find yourself in will be a place where God’s love cannot reach you. Not even death can triumph over God’s love.
In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, an innocent man finds himself spending 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Its a dark, lifeless, helpless place made of bars and stone. Prison - and there are all kinds - is a place where a person can give up on life itself.
ANDY: Here’s where it makes most sense. We need it so we don’t forget.
RED: Forget?
ANDY: Forget that, there are places in the world not made out of stone. That there are something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch, it’s yours.
RED: What are you talking about?
ANDY: Hope.
Hope is what we have. The love of God is what we have, which reaches out to us no matter how distant we may seem, how desperate we may be.
In the year 1900, an African American, Charles Tindley, who was the pastor of a Methodist Episcopal Church, wrote a hymn called “I’ll Overcome Some Day.” Some 60 odd years later, that hymn was the basis for the civil rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome.”
It is still symbolizing today the struggle for freedom - freedom from oppression, freedom from pain and suffering, freedom from everything in this world that attempts to pull us down and convince us that all hope is lost.
The words speak of triumph over life’s struggles, and it speaks of signs of the fulfillment of hope - people walking hand in hand, walking free, without fear, without being alone, we shall overcome.
The chorus reads:
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day
With God’s help, through the grace of Jesus Christ, I DO believe, we SHALL overcome.
In Jesus name, Amen.
