Tag: Vineyard One NYC

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Suffering that Leads to Hope

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Day 8 of my 30-day writing challenge / Summer in the Psalms (sermon series and reflections from Vineyard One NYC, based on the Psalms and linked readings from the Revised Common Lectionary) . 

Read: Matthew 9:35-10:8

 . . . But the one who endures to the end will be saved (v.22).

Reflect

I kind of hate passages like this one in Matthew. They start off great: Jesus healing people and casting out demons, then empowering his disciples to do the same.

But then the other shoe drops. Jesus tells the disciples about the terrible price they will pay for their mission. They’re going to be arrested and beaten, betrayed, hated, and even killed. Their lives will be spent fleeing from town to town, perhaps finding temporary refuge in one or two, before leaving for the next.

Jesus is blunt with his followers about the suffering that they can expect. He doesn’t soften the blow by saying, “Oh, it won’t be so bad.” Instead, he tells them to endure – that they will be rewarded in the end.

I don’t know how Jesus’ disciples took this news, but I think it stinks. If I wanted to go through pain in the moment for the sake of long-term rewards, well, then, I’d . . . exercise.

If I’d heard Jesus’ teaching at the time, I’m pretty sure I’d have been tempted to run screaming in the other direction. Sometimes I still am. Sometimes I wonder why anyone would buy what Jesus is selling here.

There are two main reasons that I’ve learned to reconcile myself with Jesus’ teaching about persecution and pain for the sake of the Gospel. The first is that, without persecution, the Gospel would probably only be known in a small part of the world. When the Christians in the early church faced persecution where they lived, they left for other places. They took their faith in Jesus with them, faith that had been tested and strengthened by fire. That’s how the Good News spread. Does this make it okay that Christians are even now being killed and driven out of their homes in different parts of the world? No, it doesn’t. And I really doubt it helps the people it is actually happening to. But still . . . it tells me, on the basis of factual, recorded history, that the persecution of Christians actually does result in more people knowing who Jesus is.

The second reason is that, while we live on this planet, we are going to suffer. People get sick, lose their jobs, fall pray to accidents and natural disaster, or get hurt by other people who are damaged or infantile or just plain mean. There’s no way to avoid pain, or to choose not to experience it. But each of us can choose to suffer for the sake of Christ, rather than for some other person or cause. We can ask for the grace to see suffering as Jesus did: as redemptive in the end, as bearing fruit in ourselves and in other people, and as motivated by our love for Christ and the people that he gave his life for.

The Apostle Paul was no stranger to pain and persecution. The wisdom and encouragement he shared with the early church in Romans 5:1-5 was hard-won:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

The hope we have in Christ is neither facile or naive. It’s not as Karl Marx accused, pain meds for the masses, there to dull our emotions and make us into mindless puppets of a higher power. Instead, it’s the very real, historically demonstrable love of God for us, a love that continues to spread and change the world.

Respond

Pray for Christians who are suffering persecution, whether in small or life-shattering ways. If this describes you, ask someone to pray for you.

Thank God for how he uses even the worst circumstances to bring more and more people into his family. Pray for Christ’s redeeming love to be ever more present in our lives.

 

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“But Some Doubted”: Matthew 28

Day 4 of my 30-day blog challenge / Summer in the Psalms

I’m sneaking in today’s post just under the chime of midnight. (I went to see “Wonder Woman,” which was awesome. Then it took us almost 30 minutes to find parking reasonably close to my home, because clubbing season has started in our neighborhood. Not so awesome.) This reflection is from my friend Mercy Perez, one of the writers for my church’s Summer in the Psalms series, which I am editing. Mercy’s reflection doesn’t directly reference this past Sunday’s Psalm, Psalm 8, but instead focuses on the passage from Matthew that was also on the lectionary for Trinity Sunday.

Read

Matthew 28:16-20
28:16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.

28:17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

28:20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Reflect

The disciples have just suffered the loss of their beloved teacher and long awaited Messiah. They were enveloped by all the pain and sorrow the loss of a loved one would cause. With Jesus’ death, they had also lost their expectations of a physical Kingdom of God on Earth.

Then there was a turn of events! The women met and touched a very alive Jesus, and he gave them a message: “Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

The women delivered Jesus’ messages, and the disciples immediately set off for Galilee. Just as Jesus promised, he was there to meet them.

When the disciples finally saw Jesus,”they worshipped him; but some doubted.”

The phrase “some doubted” intrigues me. Why would someone doubt what is right before them? Did this doubt come from unbelief?

One commentator (Benson) suggests that the disciples “desire that it might be [Jesus], made them afraid it was not.” They wanted so badly for Jesus to be real that they suspected they were imagining him, or being deceived in some other way.

Yet their doubt did not keep Jesus from coming to them. Instead, the revelation of his presence strengthened, empowered and prepared the disciples for their commission “to go and make disciples of all nations” (v.18). Jesus followed up by promising to be with them always, to the very end of the age.

Respond

As a follower of Jesus, his promise that he will always be with me encourages me and gives me hope. Have I experienced moments of doubt, fear, confusion, trepidation? YES! And am I grateful for the strength and guidance of the Holy Spirit through those moments? YES!

If you experience moments of doubt or fear or need direction, take a moment to remember you are not alone. He will be with you always, to the very end of the age.

Mercy Perez

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Like a Woman in Labor

God will say, “I have long been silent;

yes, I have restrained myself. But now,

like a woman in labor,

I will cry and groan and pant.

I will level the mountains and the hills

and blight all their greenery.

I will turn the rivers into dry land

and will dry up all the pools.

I will lead blind Israel down a new path,

guiding them along an unfamiliar way.

I will brighten the darkness before them

and smooth out the road ahead of them . . . 

Isaiah 42:14-16

 

For Lent 2017, my church focused on the Lord’s Prayer. When we explored the first line, “Our Father, Who are in Heaven / Hallowed Be Your Name,” we asked what it means to be invited to embrace God as Our Father, someone who is intimately close to us and yet unimaginably holy: someone infinitely other and set apart.

This passage in Isaiah, however, imagines God not as Father, but as a Mother who is by turns fearsome and tender. God is in labor, but giving birth to tremendous destruction. There’s an almost primal rage in his statement that he has restrained himself until this point, but now gives himself over to his world-unmaking cries and groans. He will raze the enemy’s land to the ground, leaving nothing behind but famine and desolation. No regrets and no mercy. (Note: Pronouns are tricky things. Even though I’m writing about God as Mother, I find myself defaulting to the “he” and “him” I grew up with and feel most comfortable with. But I don’t believe God can be contained or constrained by any one pronoun, or indeed, by any human category or experience.)

Yet in the very next line, this same God displays nothing but tenderness towards “blind” Israel. From his words, I picture a mother leading her child by the hand through a dark night, stopping periodically to clear the path of pebbles or dust, shining a flashlight ahead of her to light the way.

How to connect these two images of God, two very different sides of what is apparently the same coin? I’m not a theologian, but here’s how it makes sense in my head and heart: I imagine what God is offering his people in this passage is permission not to look back, not to remain hostage to the land in which they were held captive. He’s destroying the specter that could haunt them, that could keep them imprisoned in their minds and spirits even as their bodies are newly free. Maybe what God is birthing here – and let’s remember, birth is a violent, messy business! – is a way out of the trauma of the past. Look ahead, God is saying. I’ve made sure there’s nothing behind you that can harm you or keep you trapped in regret and shame. Walk with me into the new life I’m preparing for you. You don’t know what it is yet, but it’s welcoming and full of light . . .