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Text: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Luke 5:11-21
Shelly Pennefather was a basketball phenom. She grew up in a big Catholic family and played basketball with her brothers. By the time she was a teenager, she was unstoppable. Her high school team in Denver won 70 games without a loss in her first three years and won three state championships. When the Air Force transferred her dad to New York before her senior season, nothing changed. Utica's Notre Dame High went undefeated, too. She never lost a high school game and won four state championships.
Pennefather played college basketball at Villanova. Over her career she broke Villanova’s all-time scoring record for both women and men. This was before there was a 3-point shot, and her record still stands today.
In 1987, she won the Wade Trophy, given to the best women’s college basketball player. There was no professional women’s league in the US when she graduated from college, but professional basketball overseas offered good money. She signed with the Nippon Express in Japan, the place where her whole life would change.
The pace in Japan was much slower -- the Express played only 14 games in four months. Away from her college teammates and the chaos of her large family, she felt homesick and alone in a faraway city. Her second season there was especially tough. She did everything she could to keep busy, reading books, learning Japanese, teaching English. But she still felt a deep emptiness.
Until while doing volunteer work that next summer, at a soup kitchen run by the Sisters of Charity in Norristown, Pennsylvania. She went to a retreat and was asked to read a Bible verse that spoke of communion with God. And suddenly she knew that she was not alone, that God was with her and had always been with her, even in the lonely times. This experience of God’s presence led to her decision to become a nun.
But she did not join just any order. She joined the Poor Clares, one of the strictest religious orders in the world. They sleep on straw mattresses, in full habit, and wake up every night at 12:30 a.m. to pray. They never rest more than four hours at a time. They are barefoot 23 hours a day, except for one hour when they walk around the courtyard in sandals.
The Poor Clares are cut off from society. Now Sister Rose Marie, she will never leave the monastery unless there’s a medical emergency. She gets two family visits per year, but has to visit with her family through a see-through screen. She can write letters to her friends, but only if they write to her first. And once every 25 years, at a ceremony marking the renewal of her vows, she can hug her family.
That service was held this summer. The Mother Superior allowed her college coach and three teammates to sneak into the line of family who had the chance to hug her. Her mother, who is 78, will be able to hug her again is she lives to 103.
The Poor Clare nuns enter this radical way of life because they believe that their prayers for humanity will help the suffering, and that their sacrifice will lead to the salvation of the world.
But why would someone with so much to offer the world lock herself away and hide her talents? Who, looking at one of the biggest professional contracts in their sport and at the top of their profession, would subject herself to such strict isolation and sacrifice?
I read this story of Shelly Pennefather, now Sister Rose Marie, and found it fascinating and moving. (You can read it on espn.) And I thought of this story as I read one of the topics suggested for a sermon: “Prayer as a Way of Life.” Another wonderful suggestion.
When we think of prayer as a way of life, completely separating oneself from society and devoting one’s life to prayer like the Poor Clares is one way to do it. And to live that kind of life certainly shows an absolute devotion to prayer. You don’t just make that kind of choice on a whim.
For most of us, however, if prayer is going to be a way of life, it will have to be understood differently. To think about prayer as a way of life, we have to first think about what prayer really is.
The psalms offer us a picture of prayer. And it is a multi-faceted picture. People cry out on behalf of themselves, their loved ones, their community, their nation. They cry out for justice. In pain they curse their enemies. In lament they mourn losses. In joy they offer God praise and adoration. In worship they speak of God’s glory. In confession they ask for forgiveness. In confusion they try to discern the ways of the Holy. In hope they pray for the nation, for the future, for children. Pretty well every human emotion is shared with God.
We can sometimes reduce prayer to a kind of take-out order. “I would like this and this and this. And make that to go.” As it turns out, that is not the Biblical understanding of prayer. Prayer is much bigger than that.
Prayer is essentially a connection with God. An ongoing relationship and conversation with the Holy in which words may be used.
Toward the end of 1 Thessalonians Paul gives some assorted final instructions. In the passage that Rita read, Paul says “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.” How are we to “pray without ceasing?” I mean, you have to cease praying at some point in order to go about living, right? You can’t do your job, you can’t go to class, and you can’t have your Fantasy Football Draft if you are praying all the time, can you?
If prayer only means to close your eyes and bow your head and talk to God, then, no, you can’t do that 24/7, even if you are a Poor Clare.
In our scripture from Luke, Jesus is going about his ministry of teaching and healing. He heals a man with leprosy, and the growing crowds become even greater. For his part, Jesus seems to want to limit the crowds and tamp down his fame, telling the man he had healed not to say anything about it - but to no avail.
And then, what is most pertinent for us today, he goes away to a quiet place to pray. And it wasn’t just this one time; it was a regular practice. We see Jesus doing this in other instances; the verse says, “He would withdraw to deserted places to pray.”
For Jesus, there was a regular rhythm of prayer and action, of worship and service, and it was his life of prayer that made the action possible. Prayer was the fuel that got him through. He lived a life of prayer.
I had a weird thing happen this week. I’m working on this sermon about prayer on Thursday afternoon, and the phone rings. Janelle, our office manager, had just left for the day. I answer the phone and the person asks if there is a pastor around. I said, “You’re talking to one,” and she says she has a question about prayer. It’s about a verse in the Bible, 1 John 5:15: “and if we know that God hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.” But she had been praying and was wondering when those requests were going to be obtained – when her prayers would be answered.
The verse does make it sound pretty simple. I quickly looked up the passage and noted that the verse just before speaks of asking God anything according to God’s will. So it is not just a blank check. You don’t pray for a million dollars to arrive in the mail and it shows up the next day. The passage is speaking of praying in a way that aligns with God’s will. And then she mentioned she had been praying for a long time for another person to change.
That is especially difficult, and many of us have prayed those kinds of prayers. The Bible speaks of persistence in praying. But there is also the reality that God does not force any of us, even toward a good purpose. We all have free will.
The answers to our prayers might be yes or no, but a lot of times it is maybe or eventually or give it time. Or maybe the answer is, I want that as bad as you do, but it’s not entirely up to me. Or not infrequently, we’re not sure what the answer is. Or maybe there are those times when an answer, as we think of answers, is not the main point.
I asked this person how she had come to call our church, and she said she was new around here and didn’t have a church and just wanted to talk to a pastor.
Once in a great while I get a call like that, but the timing of it – while I was thinking and sermonizing about prayer – was really curious. But that short conversation was a reminder of how complex prayer is. And how important it is to us. And it was a good reminder that prayer is not so much a transactional enterprise.
Prayer is not a matter of we ask and God delivers. Prayer is much deeper than that. It is about cultivating a relationship; it is about immersing ourselves in the ways of God so that the things we hope for and dream about, and the things we work for and strive for – the things we pray for - are aligned with God’s ways. It is about transforming our hearts toward love and justice and compassion and truth and being aware and open to God’s work and presence in the world around us. It is about sharing the depths of our souls with God.
The spiritual writer Henri Nouwen captured what it means to think of prayer as a way of life:
To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God.
As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts into thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him in a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. Although it is important and even indispensable for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone (as Jesus did), prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts - beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful - can be thought in the presence of God. Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centered monologue to a God-centered dialogue. This requires that we turn all our thoughts into conversation. The main question, therefore, is not so much what we think, but to whom we present our thoughts. (Clowning in Rome)
Prayer is about thinking and living in God’s presence.
Now it is important to set aside time both for personal prayer and for prayer as part of a community. Nouwen also said that without community, individual prayer becomes self-centered, but without individual prayer, the prayer of the community becomes a meaningless routine. So we need both individual and community prayer - one without the other is problematic.
Both personal and corporate prayer are essential, and when we are mindful of God’s presence throughout our daily activities, then prayer become a way of life.
For me, a time when this happens more easily is as I walk our dog in the morning. Taking in the beauty of the morning, noticing the trees and flowers and sky and clouds and sunshine. It is a time to be mindful and grateful for the blessings around us. I may think about the day ahead or concerns that I have, or maybe I am totally in the moment, maybe I'm more focused on Rudy's adventures as we walk, but I can be mindful of God’s presence in the midst of it.
When we think of prayer in that sort of way, it can change things. We are able to simply be in the presence of God. This may be what Martin Luther had in mind when he said, “The fewer the words, the better the prayer.”
And so, our singing can be a prayer. Our work can be a prayer. Our activities can be a prayer. Our study can be a prayer. Our drive to work can be a prayer.
Anne LaMott wrote this wonderful little book that we used for a Lenten Study a couple of years ago: Help, Thanks, Wow. She says those are the three essential prayers. When prayer becomes a way of life, we go through our day in a kind of conversation with God, as Nouwen describes it, and as the day unfold, we can be quick to ask for Help, quick to give Thanks, and quick to exclaim Wow.
Most Sundays, we pray The Lord’s Prayer as a part of worship. Part of what we pray is, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” If that is truly our prayer, then we will also be working toward those ends. And those things we do to help our neighbors, to work for a more just society, to build community, to care for God’s earth, to visit the sick, to nurture children, all of these activities are a kind of prayer.
Prayer is more – it can be more - than periodically having a talk with God. That is very much a part of prayer, to be sure – it’s an essential part of prayer. But prayer as a way of life is an ongoing awareness and attitude of God’s presence with us – through the good and the bad, through the joys and pains of life and through our day-to-day living. May it be so. Amen.
Text: Genesis 1:1-28, 31
Can I talk about Fred Borgen this morning? Would that be OK? Fred is one of the most positive and encouraging people that I know. And he has a tremendous interest in people. You will often see him speaking to students after the service. He is especially interested in vocation and careers. I have noticed him putting students in contact with people out there who are working in the field that they are studying. Fred was into social networking way before there was an internet. Aside from the cat videos, Facebook is almost superfluous to Fred.
His interest in people is a good thing because as most of you know, Fred is a psychologist. His professional interests include personality and college majors and careers.
This is all background for today’s sermon, believe it or not. Our sermons this summer were requested by church members. Worshipers had the chance to drop their ideas into the sermon suggestion box. I’m operating on the theory that at least one person in the church will be interested in each sermon.
The suggestions were given anonymously, except for one (although a number of people have come forward to ‘fess up). One slip of paper just said “Borgen,” but I knew which one.
Here is Fred’s suggestion: “A scientist (chemist) looks at life from a faith perspective.” While my undergraduate degree is in chemistry, I would not describe myself as a scientist or a chemist – that’s where the question mark in the sermon title comes from. But Fred, with more respect than I deserve, was calling me a scientist. Now I will say: it’s an intriguing subject. I took Fred’s suggestion as really asking for both something about my personal experience – of the journey from chemistry to ministry, and something about the relationship between the two – between science and faith.
Gerald Kirkman was my high school chemistry teacher. He was a big athletic guy with a sharp mind and a great sense of humor. He played college football at Indiana State and was a PE major, not taking it very seriously, until one day an assistant coach pulled him aside and said, “Kirkman, you are a decent player but you are not going to make a career of this. You are a smart guy and you need to find yourself another major.” (No offense to any PE majors out there.) That assistant football coach was also Indiana State’s head basketball coach, a guy named John Wooden. Yes, the John Wooden who coached UCLA to 10 NCAA championships.
So I can say that Johnny Wooden had an influence on my life, because Mr. Kirkman decided to become a chemistry teacher. He was a great teacher and was elected president of the National Science Teachers Association. North High School offered a second year of chemistry, Advanced Chemistry. We had to come in an hour early, before school started, to have time for the labs. Mr. Kirkman was a great guy and I loved it.
I went to college in my hometown, at Evansville, and majored in chemistry with a minor in environmental studies. I did well and became president of the American Chemical Society student affiliate. I worked two summers at Mead Johnson, a pharmaceutical manufacturer in town.
But other things were happening in my life through those years. I became involved in campus ministry and began to feel a call to ministry. And eventually that was the path I took.
I don’t think it really occurred to me that the scientific approach to life, if there is such a thing, could not mesh with a spiritual approach to life. And in fact, I felt like I was better prepared for seminary than some of the students who had gone to Christian colleges and majored in religion.
A background in chemistry helped me to think analytically. It helped me to ask questions, to consider possibilities. And if someone were so inclined I would encourage them as a pre-theology student to major in chemistry or biology or a similar field as a good preparation for seminary – and to take some psychology and sociology and religion courses along the way.
I also remember as a seminary student coming home and preaching at my home church. Sitting there in the congregation was my chemistry professor and research advisor, Dr. Beckman. Some of the chemistry faculty felt like I had squandered a promising career and kind of disowned me the spring of my senior year, after I had applied to seminary. I think this was Dr. Beckman’s way of giving her blessing on the choice I made. A progressive Presbyterian who came to hear me preach as a then-Southern Baptist seminary student, she had this sense that faith and ministry and science could all be toward the end of making for a better world.
Years later, after coming to this church, I earned a Doctor of Ministry degree at United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities. My thesis project involved university congregations. Basically what I was doing was Sociology of Religion – a scientific approach to a question about faith communities.
I’m kind of embarrassed by talking about myself so much this morning, but I guess you can blame Fred for that. But it strikes me that my background is similar to many of you. I think about our church - we have students and professionals in agronomy, soil science, chemistry, biology, biochemistry, genetics, neuroscience, plant science, agricultural science, forestry, food science, animal science, dairy science, veterinary science, computer science, and other sciences – I’m sure I’m leaving somebody out - along with all kinds of engineers. And then we have social science people in our church as well, including Dr. Borgen.
With all of these sciences represented, the question may be, which is the highest science? Which is the most “sciencey” science? You might think of a progression from less exact to more exact sciences – from biology to chemistry to physics to mathematics. But centuries ago, one science stood above all others. Do you know what it was? It was Theology. Theology was known as the Queen of the Sciences because it dealt with ultimate matters. And sciences – discovering natural phenomena, solving mathematical equations, working out the laws of physics – science was understood as thinking God’s thoughts after God.
Well, it has been a long time since theology has been thought of as the Queen of the Sciences. But some today go so far as to see faith and science as opposed to one another. This view comes both from secularists who see no place for matters of the spirit and from religious fundamentalists who see science as the enemy.
The Tom Troeger hymn we sang, “Praise the Source of Faith and Learning,” speaks of the way that science and faith need each other and complement each other. The hymn ends, “Blend, O God our faith and learning till they carve a single course; till they join as one, returning praise and thanks to you, the Source.”
Now, there are a number of folks here today more qualified than me to speak on “A Scientist Looks at Life From a Faith Perspective.” I found myself thinking about Bob McCarley. For those who did not know him, Bob was a chemistry professor and chair of the department chair at Iowa State. Five years ago, on the Sunday before school started, I sat with Bob and Jenna at a table during fellowship time. I remember Bob having this engaging conversation with a new student. And then, two days later, Bob was gone. I looked up something I shared at his funeral. I was talking about some of his family’s memories of Bob and I shared this:
Kyanne (Bob’s daughter) told about one of those epic family trips. They made a palette in the back of the station wagon and the four kids would lie down and go to sleep, but one was supposed to ride shotgun and keep Bob awake. One night Kyanne was riding shotgun. It was a beautiful night, the sky was filled with stars, and Bob talked to her about his work. Talked to her about chemistry. He described the intricacy of molecules and the beauty of the way things worked and fit together in the universe. He said that the world was so beautiful and so amazing, there had to be a higher power.
That is a chemist looking at life from a faith perspective. And interestingly, for Bob, science actually pointed toward faith.
His views were essentially captured by the Psalmist who wrote, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.” If the ancient world had known what we know, the writer could have just as easily written, “The atoms are declaring the glory of God and the molecules proclaim God’s handiwork.”
Our bulletin cover artwork this morning is Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. It captures the wonder and awe of the stars in the sky. At its best, science and art and faith all involve wonder. Science is about being open to new possibilities. There was an article in the Des Moines Register recently about Parkinson’s Disease, which I took note of because of Elizabeth Stegemöller’s research.
Dr. Jay Alberts of the Cleveland Clinic was participating in RAGBRAI. If you are new to Iowa, this means riding your bicycle across Iowa for a week with thousands of other people - and eating lots of pie. Alberts was on a tandem bike with Cathy, a Parkinson’s patient. The ride was intended to bring attention to the need for funding for Parkinson’s research. But Alberts and Cathy stumbled onto an important finding: Cathy’s physical abilities improved after a day of pedaling, and then improved more after another day.
Alberts knew exercise was important, but how important was driven home to him on RAGBRAI. On a tandem, Cathy was forced to go at his speed, which was significantly faster than hers. On the bike, Cathy didn’t feel as stiff. She was pedaling faster, and her brain function was better. As she wrote postcards and mailed them to her family from across Iowa, her handwriting became more legible. “It was a serendipitous discovery,” Alberts said. “Science can happen anywhere, even in the cornfields of Iowa.”
Science is about trial and error, about experimentation and observation. It is about paying attention. And it involves being willing to change your assumptions. Basically, if you are doing science right, one needs to have humility.
There is something called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Heisenberg was a physicist looking at subatomic particles, and the Uncertainty Principle says that both the position and the velocity of an object cannot be measured at the same time. You can know exactly where something is, or you can know exactly how fast it is going, but you can’t know both at the same time.
I think it is awesome that science has a principle about uncertainty. Isn’t that beautiful? And my goodness, that certainly translates to faith. There is plenty that we don’t know. There is plenty we are not quite certain about. And an approach of humility is essential in faith, as in science. The notion that the way I interpret the Bible, the way I understand the world, the way I think about life and about God might need to change, that there just might be room for growth, that the Spirit might speak to me, that God might lead me in a new way, is essential to faith.
Our scripture this morning is the story of creation. God painstakingly creates the world, working all day, calling it quits for the day, looking over what had been created and calling it good. The light, the dark, the waters, the plants, the trees, the sun, the moon, the stars, fish and sea life, wild animals and cattle and creeping things of every kinds, and finally human beings. Human beings, created in the image of God. And then God said that it was very good.
It is a wonderful, powerful account of creation. It is beautiful and poetic. God takes great care with this creation and God regards it all as good. It tells us that the universe and this planet and all that is in it is created by God and loved by God. It gives us a sense of our place and our value in this world.
I don’t know about you, but I do not read the story of creation and think, “Oh – this negates carbon-13 dating.” To me it would be ludicrous to read this and understand this as a 21st century science text. Instead it inspires wonder and joy and gratitude and a sense of belonging in God’s world.
Science can answer the question of how, but we need faith to answer the question of why. Science can collect data and tell us what is, but faith has something to say about what should be. And so science and faith need one another.
Faith that ignores the world out there is shallow. We need the very best scientific understanding, just as we need the guidance of spiritual understanding. When faith tries to control what is true in the realm of science, it is never a good thing. The earth is not flat and the sun does not revolve around the earth, but the Church has a history of condemning people who did not believe those things, based on its understanding of scripture.
The world of science also needs the influence of faith. We need sensitivity and concern. We need compassion and integrity toward the end of applying science to help build a better world.
Think about all of the issues our world is facing:
- Nuclear weapons
- Clean water and equitable water distribution
- Natural disasters like flooding and wildfire and our response and prevention
- Medicine and new therapies and bio-medical ethics
- Artificial intelligience
- Cybersecurity and information systems and privacy
- Genetics
- The use of scarce resources and protecting the environment
- Energy policy
- Policies around natural areas and land use
- And looming over all of these, global climate change
In every single instance, science and faith need one another to address difficult issues. We don’t inhabit a world of the spirit, with another natural world out there. It is all one world. It is all God’s world. And God said that it is good.
Too much religion is concerned solely with individual salvation. Which is important - and very much a part of our Baptist tradition. We need lives committed to Jesus Christ. But when we are committed to the way of Jesus, we cannot ignore the world out there – the world that God loves.
These are some thoughts from a scientist, of sorts, viewing the world from the perspective of faith. Or maybe they are the thoughts of a person of faith viewing the world from the perspective of science. Or maybe the two are pretty well the same.
The word religion literally means to bring back together – re–ligio (think ligaments). Re-ligamentize. Your religion is the way you make connections with God and people and the world out there – the way it all holds together. At its best, our religion brings together scientific understanding and the power and understanding of our faith as we serve God and Love our neighbor and God’s world. May it be so. Amen.
Texts: Job 38:1-13, Romans 8:26-28, 31-39
Dion Green lives in Dayton, Ohio. His world has been turned upside down. In May, the Ku Klux Klan came to town, spewing hatred directed at people like Dion. Counter-protesters dwarfed those there for the Klan rally, but such open hatred was shocking.
Later that same week, Dayton was hit by a total of 12 devastating tornadoes. One came right through Dion’s neighborhood, tearing the roof off of his house. Blue tarps cover roofs and missing siding on houses not yet repaired. Pieces of insulation from a neighborhood school are still on Dion’s property, and his house is not yet completely repaired.
Two weeks ago, another disaster struck. This was the kind that cannot be fixed. Dion’s family was celebrating a birthday when a gunman appeared and shots were fired. Dion’s fiancé tried to run but fell. So she played dead as the shooter stepped over her. A bullet hit Dion’s father. Dion, who had been getting tacos just a few feet away, held his father until he died.
In his grieving, Green said he wondered what he and his city did to deserve this. “I have questions for the person up above,” he said.
Dion Green voiced what countless people have felt. When we face suffering and tragedy – as we all do at some point – there is that question of why. Why did this happen to such a good person? How could something so awful, so horrific happen? Why do innocent people have to suffer?
“Why do bad things happen to good people?” was one of the questions that showed up in the sermon suggestion box. It is a question that people have been asking from the beginning of time. In fact, this may be the most difficult question of faith.
Last week a mother and little boy came up to our front door and rang the doorbell. Susan spotted them as they were coming down the street. “Jehovah’s Witnesses!” she said. Sure enough, she was right.
This boy was at most 7 years old. He wore a tie and had a little hat on. He was as cute and as sharp as he could be. And he was the one who did most of the talking. “Do you ever wonder why God allows so many disasters in the world?” he asked.
I said, “I actually wonder about that a lot.” I probably overstated how much I wondered about it, but I did have this sermon and this question in mind. And then he read a verse from the book of Job. I remembered the gist of it and looked it up in the New World translation – the Jehovah’s Witnesses translation of the Bible. It was Job 34:10: “So listen to me, you men of understanding: it is unthinkable for the true God to act wickedly, for the Almighty to do wrong!”
And then this kid asked if I would like to discuss this. His mom is standing there, of course. I said that I was a pastor and I would actually be preaching from Job next week. She said it was nice to meet somebody who believed the Bible and to have a nice day.
Job is essentially a drama with several characters. It begins with God and Satan having a conversation about Job. They agree that he is completely righteous and upright. But Satan says, “Job only loves and serves you because he is so successful. He would not serve you if his life were a mess.” So God and Satan strike a bargain – they kind of have a bet going. Satan can do whatever he wants to Job short of killing him.
In short order, enemies raid Job’s flocks, carrying off or killing his livestock and killing his servants. A storm came along and a house collapsed, killing his children. Job’s health is attacked and his body covered with boils. Job’s wife tells him to go ahead and curse God and die. But Job says, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”
That is the opening of Job. The majority of the book is made up of speeches by Job and his friends as they debate the ways of God. The general consensus on how life worked was that riches and good health and success were God’s reward for living righteously, while poverty and sickness and struggle were a sign of one’s sinful condition. And so his friends know that Job is sinful.
For his part, Job knows deep inside that he is not a bad person and that if this is punishment for some wrong he has committed, it is all out of proportion. He questions and complains to God, he wishes there were an umpire to judge between him and God, but he refuses to curse God.
Job’s friends lecture Job about his sinfulness and God’s judgment on him. It is Elihu, one of Job’s friends, that my little Jehovah’s Witnesses friend was quoting to me. That doesn’t mean that statement is wrong, but Elihu is not a completely reliable source. I could have told this boy, “Are you serious? You’re going to quote Elihu to me?" But that would have been really poor form. (And I didn’t actually know it was Elihu until I looked it up later.)
While his friends are sure Job is being punished, Job himself winds up feeling that God is so powerful that perhaps God doesn’t have to be fair.
Our reading from Job this morning is God’s response. It is an answer but not a very satisfying one. “Were you there when I created the world? Do you tell the sun to rise each morning?”
Does it mean that God is so powerful that God doesn’t have to give an explanation to the likes of Job? Or that our problems are not really that big a deal in the larger scheme of things? Or is it saying that God is so far above us and beyond us that we could not possibly understand? One Jewish commentator understands this as God saying, “You think it’s so easy being God – why don’t you try?”
In the end, Job’s fortunes are restored, and doubled. He has 14,000 sheep, 6000 camels, and ten more children. Job is vindicated.
Job is maybe the oldest reflection we have on the problem of evil. The story of Job argues against the idea that doing well is a sign of God’s favor and that trials in life are a sign of a person’s sinfulness. Beyond that, however, we don’t get a very satisfying answer. And what about his children who are killed just to make a point? – who are just pawns in a game? Well, it does help when you think of Job as a drama, a once upon a time story, a big parable. But still.
The problem of evil – the question of why bad things happen to good people – can be stated in this way. There are three statements we all want to believe, that can’t all be true at the same time.
1. God is all-powerful. 2. God is completely good. 3. Evil exists in the world.
If God is all-powerful, controlling everything, and God is all good, only wanting what is best, then how can there be evil?
Some deal with this question by denying evil. Suffering is just an illusion. Or what look like bad things are actually for our good in the end. Or there is a good and loving purpose behind it that we just cannot know or understand.
I would have a hard time telling Dion Green that his father’s death is not really evil and that God has a good purpose behind it. We see terrible suffering in our world, and we can’t just can’t say that it is an illusion , or there is a greater purpose behind it all. What greater purpose was behind the Holocaust? No, evil is real.
And it is hard for me to say that God is not good. The scriptures tell us that God is love. We look at Jesus and we see one who is motivated by love. Speaking of the problem of evil and suffering, James Howell writes:
Here is a good starting point: God is not sadistic. God is love. A God who childishly gets even, lashes out, strikes back is no God. Such a god we should refuse to believe or serve… God could have created a perfect world, with perfect people, no illness, no evil, no flaws. But God is more interested in love than in perfection. Robots cannot love; love for God, love for each other, can never be ordered up. God runs the risk of pain and suffering, hoping for love.
To me, part of the answer is that God gives up some power and becomes vulnerable. I mean, God came to us in Jesus as a baby, and that is the picture of vulnerability. And you don't get much more vulnerable than being nailed to a cross.
God does not control everything. God does not control human beings. Without the ability to say no, our yes means nothing. We can choose good or evil. We can choose love or hate. We can make choices, and our choices have consequences.
One of the memories etched in my mind is of a time when I was a junior in high school. We were coming home from a church basketball game – we played at a gym downtown. The coach and a couple of players who lived near each other were in the car. We got close to home and the road by the airport was blocked off. We actually had a hard time getting home. And then came the news, the reason the road was blocked: the entire University of Evansville basketball team had died in a plane crash in the ravine just past our neighborhood. How could something so terrible happen? How could God allow this? The Aces were to Evansville like the Cyclones are to Ames. The whole community went into grieving.
Months later the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the plane attempted to take off with the rudder and right aileron control locks still installed. This was not God’s fault; somebody had failed to do their job.
A large amount of suffering and tragedy and evil can be explained by human choices. There is no other way; without real choices, we would all be programmed robots. But what about natural disasters? What about hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and earthquakes?
It is generally accepted that the existence of life on this planet depends on a very delicate balance. Scientist and theologian Andrew Pratt notes that if the structure of the earth’s crust was different from what it is - if it was not constructed of tectonic plates moving constantly and inevitably causing eruptions and earthquakes, then there would be no life here at all, at least not as we know it. The movement of the earth’s crust has generated mountains and valleys, which make for the possibilities of rivers and seas and oceans. It was in these seas that we believe life began. Somehow, the existence of life and the possibility of earthquakes are linked together.
Now, we certainly can’t find an explanation for everything. There is just a randomness to life. The tree in our front yard was struck by lightning last summer. It fried most of the electronics in our house. The power of the lightning strike was so great that pictures fell off the wall. One photo frame fell on our dog’s crate. It shattered and pieces of glass were all over the place in the crate.
We were gone at the time. Rudy is always in the crate when we are gone. 99% of the time. But this one time, we weren't going to be gone long so decided to leave him out, which saved him from serious injury or worse. Why did the lightning hit the tree in our yard? I don’t know. Why did we decide just this one time to not put Rudy in the kennel? I don’t know. It seems random.
You may have had the experience of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s random, it’s a fluke. Or maybe you barely avoided tragedy – if that car had pulled out a split second sooner, it would have been a catastrophe.
Why does cancer strike this person and not that person? Why does a good person suffer while a truly awful person seems to proper? I don’t know.
Rabbi Harold Kushner had a son named Aaron who was born with a condition called progeria, or rapid aging. When Aaron was 3, Kushner and his wife were told that Aaron would not grow much beyond 3 feet tall, he would have no hair on his body or head, he would look like a little old man and die in his teens. A couple of years after Aaron’s death at age 13, Kushner wrote a book on the problem of suffering.
I read it years ago and in my memory, the title was Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. But that wasn’t right. The title is When Bad Things Happen to Good People. And that is important. We can’t necessarily come up with a good answer to why. But we can talk about what happens when.
Our scripture from Romans is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. But the translation of Romans 8:28 is difficult and the Greek is not entirely clear. The more familiar translation – because at one time people grew up memorizing the verse in the King James - is “Everything works together for good.” Which sounds like, whatever happens, it is for the best.
Many translations, including the NIV, which I read from, have this as in all things, God works for good. This also fits the context of the passage, which speaks of the work of the Spirit on our behalf. To say that in whatever happens, God is working for our good is very different than saying everything that happens is for good. Because we know that is not the case.
As much as we would like to, we don’t get an explanation for everything. But what we know is that God does not send trials and tribulations our way. When they come, for whatever reason, God is working for our good. When we face trials, God can give us strength. When we are searching, God can give us wisdom. When bad things happen, God is there to stand with us and beside us.
In the face of pain and suffering, God can work miracles in our life. Sometimes it is the miracle of healing and sometimes it is the miracle of strength and fortitude and sometimes it is the miracle of community and love to see us through. And we have the promise that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Along with the question I found in the suggestion box was a follow-up question: is God still in control? Well, as we have examined, God gives us free will. And there is a randomness to life. Right now, God does not control everything. But ultimately, God’s kingdom will come in its fullness. The witness of scripture is that ultimately, love will win. For now, we can choose to follow Christ. We can make ourselves open to the leading of the Spirit. We can be a part of that coming kingdom.
When bad things happen, we are called to stand with each other and to care for each other. At Dion Green’s father’s funeral, his uncle, Jeffrey Fudge, was the first family member to speak. He begged everyone to practice more love and togetherness because love, he said, is undefeated.
When bad things happen to good people, God is there, and God calls us to be there, in love. In this world God has created, that is our choice to make. Amen.
Text: Genesis 1:26-27, Galatian 3:26-28
("By Request" series of sermons requested by the congregation)
How many grew up in a church that had clear limits on a woman’s role in the church? (Perhaps women were not deacons or ushers or didn’t pray in church.)
How many grew up in a church where women were not allowed to teach men in Sunday School?
How many of you grew up in a church with a female pastor - at least one ordained woman on the ministerial staff?
Well, I’m just asking. Just curious. Both society and the church have changed over the years, but change can come hard. And the Church has 2000 years of tradition behind it. But tradition can become traditionalism – holding onto tradition just for the sake of tradition.
One of the very interesting topics suggested by members for this series of messages was “Feminism and the Bible.” Of course, like many of these suggestions, it is a pretty broad topic. But as a way of getting at it, it seems like maybe we need to talk first about what feminism is before we talk about what the Bible has to say about it, and then perhaps what it all means for us and for the church.
So: what is feminism, anyway? Marie Shear famously said that feminism is “the radical notion that women are people.” I have to say that I love that definition. A basic understanding of feminism is “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.”
Shouldn’t everybody have equal opportunity and be treated equally? Why wouldn’t everybody be in favor of that? Well as it turns out, there are those who want to paint feminism in dark and diabolical tones. Rev. Pat Robertson, for example, has argued that feminism leads to the destruction of the family and indeed the destruction of our entire society. He said, “Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” That’s Pat Robertson for you, but there are plenty of people who oppose feminism in more subtle ways. Hence, the need for us to consider this question today.
Let’s just think of feminism as the idea that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. What does the Bible have to say about that? And how are women viewed in the Bible?
The answer, as usual, is that it depends on where you look. To begin with, the cultural setting of the Bible, which was written over hundreds of years and reported on a span of over 1000 years, is thoroughly patriarchal, whatever time and culture a particular book of the Bible might have been written in.
Legally, women were essentially property, controlled by the male head of household. Women generally could not own property, testify in court, or make legal decisions. A daughter belonged to the father and was then given to her husband. There were all kinds of rules regarding ritual purity, and many of these rules focused specifically on women.
Polygamy was common in the Old Testament and some of the patriarchs had multiple wives. Jacob, for example, married the sisters Leah and Rachel and also took Rachel’s servant Bilhah and Leah’s servant Zilpah as concubines. The extreme, of course, was King Solomon, with 700 wives and 300 concubines. A lot of people talk about Biblical marriage, but it is hard to think of a marriage in the Bible that anybody would actually want to emulate.
There are, however, other voices and other stories in the Hebrew scriptures. Among these are Jochebed and Miriam, the mother and sister of Moses, who work against the power empire to preserve Moses’ life. Later Miriam leads the Israelites in worship after they have escaped from Egypt. There is the story of Naomi and Ruth, a mother and daughter-in-law who face long odds but work together and overcome the customs of the time to secure a future. In the Book of Judges there are strong and independent women including Deborah, who is the Judge and ruler of Israel. There is the woman of Proverbs 31 who not only takes care of the home but invests in real estate. There is the prophecy of Joel, who proclaimed that through the power of the Spirit both sons and daughters would prophesy.
By the time of the New Testament, these examples of women as leaders, as taking on roles that were far beyond what was common in the culture, are found quite frequently. There are Philip’s daughters, who all prophesied – in other words, they were preachers. Several weeks ago we looked at the church in Antioch, as reported in Acts. Paul and Barnabas started this church, and it was there that followers of Jesus were first called Christians. Lydia, a merchant in purple dyes, was the key person in the church. After Paula and Baranabas moved on, she is in charge of the church, which meets in her home.
In Romans chapter 16, Paul mentions leaders in the church, beginning with Phoebe, a deacon or minister, and including Junia, who is called an apostle. There are a number of other women listed here who are significant leaders in the church.
In a more philosophical and theological framework, in the very beginning of creation, In Genesis chapter 1, both male and female are created in God’s image. There is equality and partnership. And through the scriptures, there are both masculine and feminine images of God. As we know, there are a preponderance of male images, perhaps in part as a contrast to the gods of Israel’s neighbors, which were often related to fertility and were generally feminine. But to call God Father, for example, is metaphorical language. God is not a gendered being. God is not a boy. The Holy Spirit in particular is sometimes represented as feminine, as in the hymn we sang a moment ago, and the Hebrew word ruach, or spirit, is grammatically feminine.
In the New Testament, one of the great texts regarding the role of men and women is Galatians 3:28 – “there is no male and female, for you are all one on Christ Jesus.”
The role of women in the early church was radical by standards of the day. Particularly in the life of Jesus – he counted women among his good friends and followers and there was a group of women mentioned in Luke who provided for Jesus’ ministry out of their resources. Women were funding the whole operation. Jesus’ public conversations with women, which would have been considered completely inappropriate, and the way that he listened to them and took them seriously was nothing short of radical, and at its best, this openness extended to the early church.
What is interesting is that those texts that speak of women keeping quiet in church and not exercising authority over men come in Paul’s later letters. The same Paul who commends women as deacons and apostles later says women should keep silent in the assembly. It seems that the leadership exercised by women in the early church caused a huge stir – I mean, nobody had seen this before. In the wider society, the church was accused of antinomianism – of lawlessness – and of trying to ruin society, which to be honest sounds somewhat familiar (if you still have that Pat Robertson quote in your head).
There is this balance between freedom and order, and at times Paul comes down on the side of order. He encouraged churches to tone it down and for women to adhere more closely to cultural norms. Which was easy for him to say, of course.
So, we have various models and various teachings in scripture regarding the role and place of women in church and society, often in response to very specific local situations. But for me, what is most important is Jesus.
Dorothy Sayers was writer known for her detective stories. She was also a lay theologian and Christian apologist and a contemporary and friend of C.S. Lewis. She was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford University, but she didn’t really talk a lot about feminism. She was more interested in just being human and pursued her goals whether or not they were considered feminine. To give you an idea of her point of view, she wrote,
I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction “from the woman’s point of view.” To such demands, one can only say, “Go away and don’t be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle."
Sayers wrote a wonderful little book called Are Women Human? And she talks about Jesus and women. She said,
Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them”; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious.
There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.
Jesus encouraged the full humanity and full possibility of every person, man or woman. He taught that we were to love God and love our neighbor. He encourages us to serve others, to act in love, to make a difference, to share the Good News. To put up roadblocks to keep a person from serving in a particular role or vocation because of their gender was not Jesus’ style at all.
Our text says, “There is no male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.” God does not call us as groups or classes of people; God calls us as individuals. The question is not whether a woman can be a doctor or lawyer or engineer or pastor or stay at home mom; the question is whether that calling and that choice is right for any individual.
The world of the Bible is vastly different to our culture. But scripture gives us examples of leading the culture, stepping beyond the culture, transforming the culture, as well as conforming to the culture.
American Baptists are not generally thought of as wild-eyed radicals, but at our best we have been a part of leading the culture. The first woman ordained in America by any denomination was Clarissa Danforth, ordained in 1815 by Freewill Baptists in New England, a group that is today part of the American Baptist Churches. You probably wouldn’t have guessed that Baptists were the first to ordain a woman. In 1921, Helen Barrett Montgomery was elected president of the Northern Baptist Convention, the first woman to so lead a denomination in the U.S. An educator and social reformer, in 1924 she was the first woman to translate the New Testament from the Greek, and I read from her translation this morning.
In our own church, we established the office of deaconess in 1936, which in time merged with the board of deacons. We happen to have a male worship leader and male preacher today, but women serve in all areas of church life. A year ago, our region called Jackie Saxon as the first woman to serve as Executive Minister for Mid-American Baptist Churches.
Now as I said, this is a broad topic, and we can’t address everything in one sermon. But let me say just a quick word about language. When it comes to feminist concerns – and we might just call that concerns for equity and fairness and wholeness – language is a huge issue. Anna Sarkeesian, a media analyst and critic, said that when she was 10 years old she had to campaign for months to convince her parents that the “Game Boy” was not in fact just for boys. Words matter.
In many cases, English translators of the Bible have used the word “men” when the original Hebrew or Greek in fact has the meaning of “humanity.” In other words, some of the male language in the Bible is there because male translators put it there.
Our hymns can be particularly difficult in regards to inclusive language. Newer hymnals are better at this, but I often find myself substituting words as I sing older hymns. We sang “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” a couple of weeks ago. A beautiful hymn, a wonderful hymn, but if you had never heard it before, walking in off the street and singing “Brother love binds man to man” just doesn’t sound right. We can talk more about language another time but it is an important concern.
One other thing: feminism is not just a thing for women. Men also benefit from a world in which all people are free to use their gifts and in which all people are valued equally. And as a parent, I certainly want a world in which our daughters are valued, just as our sons are valued.
I began by asking a few questions about the church you grew up in. I am one of those people who grew up in a church in which women’s roles were limited. In fact, women’s roles are more limited in that church today than was the case when I was growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s.
But it is interesting. Many years ago now, that church’s minister had left for another position and so the church elected a pulpit committee. According to the by-laws, a woman could not be a deacon and by tradition only men were ushers. But pulpit committees did not come along that often and they had no set rules about it. And so my mom was chosen to be chair of the pulpit committee. At that point, this was the most important office in the church. Even when the tradition may limit who can serve in what way, I think we implicitly know that God is more interested in all of us employing the gifts we have been given than in limiting our opportunities because of our gender or age or background or anything else.
This reminds me of one of my favorite church stories. Many of you know Molly Marshall. Molly has preached here and is president at Central Seminary in Kansas City. While she was a seminary student in Kentucky she was pastor at a little rural church, Jordan Baptist Church. The kids in the nursery liked to play church – one would be the preacher, one would be the song leader, and so forth. One Sunday they were playing church in the nursery and a little boy wanted to be the preacher. The girls, who had only known Molly as their minister, knew better than that. You can’t be the preacher,” they said. “Only girls can be preachers.”
I think that is all I need to say today. Amen.
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