Grace is Sufficient
July 9, 2006
Karl Ruttan
Ezekiel 2:1-7. 2, Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-6, Psalm 123
Sometimes God just won’t cooperate. Do you know what I mean? When you really, really want something, you can implore God, pray to God, plead to God, and God doesn’t seem to pay attention.
O my, don’t we want God to do our bidding! Or as Janis Joplin would say “Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz!” There is that great adage, God created man in his own image and man returned the favor. We figure God should know what we want and do what we say!
I remember as a young boy- I would pray to God and ask God to help me win a swim meet or do well in a test. I soon learned that if I hadn’t prepared well for that test or worked hard for that meet, my prayers seemed pretty ineffective. Sooner or later we all learn God doesn’t respond simply to every request or petition. As a child, the great Anglican writer C. S. Lewis, gave up on God who didn’t save his dying mother from cancer despite his prayers. It was only years later as an adult that he developed a more mature faith.
But of course, God doesn’t operate in such a simple way. God is not at our beck and call and we cannot put God into our little box. We put God in a little box and pull it out when we need something.. Indeed sometimes, when we most desperately need God, in times of great illness, or loss, or even in times of great sin or temptation, God seems so deaf to our pleas. I have heard this theology referred to as the pez dispenser theology. Remember pez- you push a button and out comes a pez- well, we want God to be just like that. We push a button and God responds.
Or like C. S. Lewis, we can give up on God because God disappoints our immediate desires. So when God does not serve us we develop a belief that there is no God or that God is irrelevant. A mature theology finds a different conclusion.
Today’s bible lessons points us to some different answers. The story from Mark’s Gospel shows a very human Jesus. In his home town he astonished people with his insight and knowledge. But he had no power. He could not do his marvelous deeds of wonder- he only healed a few people. This is the Christ, the God incarnate who is powerless. Seemingly God does not cooperate in healing. What can we make of this?
On closer reading, the text tells us “that he was amazed at their unbelief.” So perhaps it wasn’t so much that God wasn’t cooperating but rather that the people weren’t . This passage shows us that God, or certainly Jesus, in this story is not all powerful. Evil, or forces opposed to God’s will, thwart the good that God would accomplish. Mark is setting the stage for his theology. Time and again in Mark’s Gospel, the evangelist is trying to show us, Jesus’s ministry is not about miracles. It is not about the healings, or the nature miracles– the ministry of Jesus is about the cross. For that is the true miracle. It is God giving one’s self to us in love on the cross. It is God meeting us in human flesh in Jesus and overcoming its burdens- and healing the chasm between God and humanity. It is God defeating evil through the power of the resurrection.
In this story Jesus seems pathetically human- just like you and me. If we forget Jesus’ humanity we misread the Gospel. Jesus, as mortal, opens himself to the love and grace of God. He gives himself to it completely and ultimately on the cross. God’s grace does not always accomplish what we want but when we step into the flow of God’s power and it can do incredible things even bringing life out of death. The invitation of today’s lessons is to step into that flow of grace, and that is sufficient. Humans in their willfulness can thwart grace and God’s purposes- but God’s grace is sufficient. If we can trust it! It is always there for us even when it seems absent.
The lesson from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthian, also present a very human side of the apostle Paul. Paul has seen God’s miracles, he has seen incredible healings. He has tasted the exquisite delights of God’s grace and presence. In the third person he describes the delights of being transported in God’s love into paradise- perhaps in some out of body experiences in which God was powerfully revealed. He went to the “third heaven.” This week, Brenda Vanderford asked me what that was and would I explain it. I said I don’t know. Brenda’s response was- “Don’t they teach you that in seminary!” I guess I missed that lesson.
The reality is I haven’t been to the third heaven or I don’t think so. What we do know about it is that it is an exquisite connection with God. Most scholars suggest that the third heaven comes from ancient cosmologies, the first heaven is the sky above, the second heaven is the firmament, where the sun and moon and stars dwell, and the third heaven is where God is found. Paul knew he had been before the very throne of God and had delighted in this awesome wonder.
Well I haven’t had such an experience, so I wonder, am I the less for it? Paul’s answers is an emphatic no! Paul makes it clear- that such experiences are nothing to boast about. All we can boast about is God- God’s grace made sufficient in the cross. Because despite his overwhelming experience of God, Paul still suffers and works and hurts and grieves just like you and me. Despite glimpsing God, Paul still knows how much he needs God every moment. The Buddhist writer, Jack Kornfield, has written a book- I love its title: “After the Ecstasy the Laundry.” Because even after we glimpse God, the on going challenge of living in our mortal flesh continues. Even after we see God, live goes on.
Paul had an affliction, he calls it a thorn in his flesh. We don’t know what that is for sure, perhaps some struggle or illness or pain, which he has asked God to remove. It serves as a reminder to Paul and he cannot control God. Paul says, his troubles remind him who is in charge and that he still needs God- always, everywhere, and at every time. It is not these spiritual experiences that count in God’s eyes, it is our faithfulness even when God seems absent. And if things were too good, he knows that maybe he would forget.
The great spiritual masters talk about consolations and desolations in the spiritual journey. Consolations are those great holy moments when God is so present and real. These are moments of beauty and inspiration and love that make life worth living. Desolations are those times of struggles or absence of God when life seems bleak and empty. The spiritual masters suggest that sometimes in the beginning of faith we are given consolations to encourage us in the struggles of our journey and that as we mature in faith the desolations comes so that we learn more and more to trust and depend on God. “My grace alone is sufficient for you, and your power is made perfect in weakness.” Our powerlessness before life’s trials, its desolations, remind us that we need God. The cross is our assurance that God is always there. Faithfulness is trusting that grace even when it seems far from us. And then surprisingly when we least expect we might glimpse God. But we need to let go of our own expectations of how God ought to appears to us or do for us. The key is to faithfulness whether God seems present or absent.
John Wesley, the Anglican priest who started the Methodist movement in the 18th century, learned this dynamic well. As a young priest he headed to Georgia to do God’s work among the settlers and the Indians. His work there was a complete failure. His ministry with the Indians went no where. He had an unsuccessful engagement with a woman that he ended suddenly in the midst of a scandal that caused him to sneak out of the colony by nightfall. He was miserable, thinking that God had let him down. On his way home across the Atlantic, a great storm came up and he thought he would surely die. He was terrified as the boat was blown about by the wind. During the storm, a group of Moravian Christians, gathered in prayer and song. He was amazed at their faith. As he cowered in his room, he heard them singing God’s praises, and was appalled at his own lack of faith.
As he returned to England, his ministry was no more successful and he doubted his faith. He describes reading Luther’s Commentary on the Letter to the Romans. He was at Aldersgate Chapel when he says his heart was strangely warmed. In that moment he trusted, he knew that God was there for him, that God loved hi- indeed saved him- and that this was what Jesus was all about. He knew in that moment that God’s grace was sufficient. He knew that God’s grace had been there for him in Georgia and on the sea. He knew that it wasn’t about some spiritual experience but simply trusting, trusting in God.
Wesley learned at that moment that it is not the experience of a warmed heart that saves us- it is God who saves us and our faith which receives it. When God seems far, ours is to trust. When God seems absent ours is to believe. If the cross means anything it’s that God is present when God seems most absent.
So if God doesn’t answer all our prayers and seems absent, what do we do? We keep the faith. As I have observed prayer, it seems an odd thing. Although, God may not answer all my prayer, sometimes God does answer my prayers. Sometimes a person is healed unexpectedly indeed miraculously. And sometimes a person, no matter how hard they pray or how great their faith is, suffer and even die. My theology has taught me that God’s will is not always done on this earth. But God does want us to be well and ultimately God will gives us gifts that we cannot comprehend or imagine Healing is not always of the body but it is most importantly of the soul. Jesus on the cross cried out why have you forsaken me. He faced the absence of God and yet believed. Like Jesus we face times in our lives when God seems absent. . And our job is to cooperate with grace. Give our lives to it- yield to it. Our prayers are our cooperating with God. By our joining with God’s grace, God will win the victory.