18th Sunday after Pentecost
September 27, 2015
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; Psalm 124; James 5:13-20;
Mark 9:38-50
(Or watch/listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uBcgc-CdNE)
How many of us can identify with that opening line from
our psalm, “If the Lord hadn’t been on our side?” and know quite certainly that
we would not be here otherwise? If the
Lord hadn’t been on our side, we would have died in that car accident. If not for God, a disease would have gone
untreated and killed us. If God hadn’t been
watching out for us, we would have made a really bad decision. If the Lord hadn’t been on our side, we would
not be here. Can anyone attest to
that? It’s an interesting statement, and
certainly an unusual way to start a psalm.
“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let Israel now say, if
it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us,
then they would have swallowed us up alive, …then the flood would have swept us
away,…then the raging waters would have gone over our heads.”[1] And then the psalm goes on to say “Blessed be
the Lord, who has not given us over to our enemies… Our help is in the name of
the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”[2] If it had not been for the Lord, we would
have drowned in the raging torrent of water.
The summer before I went to Nicaragua my family went
white-water rafting in the mountains of North Carolina. We each had our own kayak, following the
guide down a river that began in Tennessee and ended back in North
Carolina. As we came to one set of
falls, the guide slowed us down, went down first, and had us follow. Just before my turn, a group of expert
kayakers came through, and crossed at a different part of the falls. I figured they obviously knew what they were
doing, so I followed them. It turned out
they had picked a harder part of the falls to navigate through, and I fell out
of my kayak into the churning water. I
remember fighting to get my head back above the water, and once I did, I
remember the guide yelling at me to swim over to him. I yelled back, “I can’t!” And he yelled back,
“You can! You remember how to
swim!” Of course, what I meant by “I
can’t,” wasn’t that I didn’t know how to swim, but that the white water was so
strong where I fell in that it was physically very hard to move against the
water and swim. But the thought I had
during that was God. God had clearly
called me and prepared me to serve in Nicaragua. I was weeks away from leaving. God wasn’t going to let me drown in this
rushing torrent of water, because I knew he had plans for me. And somehow, I managed to get my way from the
eddy of water to reach out to the guide’s paddle, who then pulled me in. Rushing waters up over your head? I’ve been there, and I remember struggling
against them, being unable to swim. I
don’t remember how I managed to gain any momentum to swim, other than God. If not for God, then the raging water would
have gone over me. I would guess that
each one of us has a similar story, even if not with actual water. A story where if not for God, then we would
have been washed away.
This is a
statement and a story that can only be told by those who are vulnerable. It is only when we recognize our own lack of
strength that we can then recognize God’s strength. When we recognize and come to grips with the
fact that we can’t save ourselves, then we know we truly rely on God’s power of
salvation. When we accept our lack of
ability, then we know it is not us doing anything, but all God. It’s only from a position of weakness that we
can sense that God is on our side. A position of strength had no need and no room
for God. At the church where my husband
and I worshiped when we first got married, the pastor used to pray before his
sermon for him to decrease and for the Holy Spirit to increase, that there
might be less of him and more of God.
God needs some room to work, and if we are strong and proud and full of
ourselves, there isn’t room for him. To recognize God at work in your life means to
also recognize an area of weakness in your life and the only control you have
over it is to let go and let God. If it
had not been for the Lord, we wouldn’t be here.
We only read the climax of the story of Esther in our Old
Testament lesson today, and so I encourage you, if you’re not familiar with her
story, to go read the rest of it some time.
In a nutshell, Esther is a Jewish orphan, who lives in Persia in the 5th
century BC. She rises to prominence as
the nation’s queen and uses her power to protect the minority Jewish population
from annihilation, or genocide.[3] The funny thing about the book of Esther is
that God is never directly mentioned, and yet Esther and her Uncle Mordecai are
obviously people of faith, which is part of why Haman wanted to get rid of all
the Jews! Esther is in a vulnerable
position; she knows the previous queen was deposed for refusing to come when
the king called for her. And yet her
people will die if she does nothing. Mordecai
tells her, “Don't think that you are safer than any other Jew just because you
are in the royal palace. If you keep
quiet at a time like this, help will come from another place to save the Jews,
but you will die and your father's family will come to an end. Yet who
knows—maybe it was for a time like this that you were made queen!”[4] Esther is in a vulnerable place, and yet she
can’t just stay there and cower in fear and bury her head in the sand. Mordecai implies that God made Esther the
Queen for just this reason and she has to use this vulnerable place to save her
people. If not for God putting Esther as
Queen and Esther acting, all would be lost.
If the Lord was not on our side, then we would not be here.
This is also a statement that is only
said by those who have been through some sort of ordeal. There’s an old
saying: there’s no testimony without
the test. And it’s true, when God brings you through
the fire, when he doesn’t let you get washed away in the flood, when Satan
threatens to break loose and wreak havoc but God keeps you safe, then you have
a story to tell about how God was on your side.
You have a testimony about the test that God brought you through. Isaiah 43 says, “Thus says the Lord, he who
created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have
redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through
the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not
overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the
flame shall not consume you.” God will
protect you through whatever ordeal you’re enduring. “If the Lord hadn’t been for us” is something
only said by people who are suffering and see no way out of it, except that somehow God acts and they don’t go
under. They can say with the psalmist
from Psalm 69, “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink
in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the
flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes
grow dim with waiting for my God.” Those
who say “If the Lord had not been on our side” know about waters up to the
neck, when then God says, “This far shall the water come, and no more.” Those who say “If the Lord had not been on
our side” know about sinking in deep mire, where there is no foothold, and then
God makes a way where there appears to be no way.
Our
epistle from James this morning says, “Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel
great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint
you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and
Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be
forgiven—healed inside and out.”[5] Are you hurting? Are you sinking? Are you overwhelmed? You should pray. It sounds really simplistic and the easy
answer to give, but it brings you closer to God and he is the one who can lift
you up out of the mire, who can tell the cancer this far shall you come and no
further, who can tell you that a little water isn’t going to hurt you. “James's call to prayer tells us that we can
and should share with God all our needs, feelings, hopes, and fears. Prayer is
not just saying the right words in the right way at the right time. It is
sharing honestly, simply talking with God about what is important now.”[6] And those are the kinds of conversations you
should be having with God, anyway.
What’s going on, now. What you’re feeling, what you’re thinking,
what you’re afraid of, what you hope for.
Have you taken the time to share all that with God. Yeah, he knows, anyway, but it makes a
difference coming out of your
mouth. I can look at a mess Isabel
created, like when she pulls the stuffing out of the couch and I know what it
is, but it’s different when she tells me herself what happened.
Finally, “if the Lord hadn’t been on our
side” is only said by survivors, who
are grateful for the Lord’s
protection. This does not say that God is always on our
side, or that God always champions our causes or is our special
possession. In fact, trying to put God
on their side only is what gets the disciples into trouble in our Gospel
reading. The disciple John says to
Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried
to stop him because he wasn’t one of us.”
The disciples forgot, what I have seen most recently put by the popular
young adult author John Green, that “there is no them, there are only facets of
us.”[7]
We are all in this together. We sink or swim together. And competing “for power in God’s name often
leads to abuse of the vulnerable, the weak, and the powerless. Better to choose
personal loss, as Esther risked, than break the unity of the kingdom of God
through our power plays. [A paraphrase of our psalm] puts it this way: If we
rely on anything other than God, we are lost. God is on the side of the
powerless, calling us to care for and to protect those who are in need.”[8] Sometimes those who are in need are
ourselves, sometimes it’s strangers whom we don’t know. In claiming God was on our side does not mean
that he’s not watching out for and caring for others as well. That’s why “if the Lord had not been on our
side” is not the same thing as “God is always on our side.” Instead, “If the Lord had not been on our
side” shows gratitude for God being on our side and helping us when we were
weak. Not so that when we are strong we
can trample on the weak but so that we can say thank you and share the story of
how God helped us.
A
Time magazine article that came out this week says that the most important
question to ask yourself when you’re feeling down is “what am I grateful for?”[9] This was the result of neuroscience research
looking at what makes people happier.
Being thankful is one of the top four.
And I’m sure somewhere in your list of what you’re grateful for is Jesus
and how he has saved you when the water was up to your neck. “If the Lord hadn’t been for us” is a way of
telling the story of how thankful we are that God saved us when we couldn’t
save ourselves. Because we all know that
if not for God, we wouldn’t be here.
It’s as simple as that. Thank
you, God, that you were for us, and did not let the water drown us or the fire
consume us or the mire overwhelm us. Thank
you…
No comments:
Post a Comment