Keeping Jesus' Promise for Him

Sermon for North Hill, April 2, 2011
Live presentation streamed at http://www.northhilladventistfellowship.org

from about 11:15a to 12:15p.

Twenty-one years ago I sat in the neonatal unit of a hospital in Akron, Ohio, holding my tiny, misshapen son while he died. He had a chromosomal defect that was incompatible with life. For hours he had been living at the center of a dizzying network of wires and tubes. Now, all of the wires and tubes were disconnected. He lay in my hands slowly losing his hold on life. I watched his chest rise and fall with his breathing. I could see his pulse through his skin. There was nothing I could do to change his chromosomes. There was nothing I could do to improve his future. So I did the best I could. I held him. I loved him. I kept him company while he died.

A doctor and a nurse sat with me. Their medical skills were useless. There was no technology, no therapy, no medicine that could change Douglas' future. The doctor and nurse could not change his chromosomes. They could not work around his defects. They could offer me no hope. There were no words that could improve the situation. So they did what they could. They kept me company. And the three of us, wordless and helpless, kept Douglas company while he died.


My favorite stories in the Gospels are the stories where everything turns out okay. People possessed by demons are set free. People who are paralyzed go leaping and dancing about. People who had been blind see the faces of their friends. People who were deaf carry on conversations with the people they love. Those are the stories I like. But for those who have eyes to see, these pictures of dramatic intervention and change are surrounded by a larger story, a story that teaches us how to live in the real world. In the world with earthquakes and volcanoes, cancer and diabetes, depression and suicide.

What can the story of Jesus teach us about how to live in this world? In a world where miracles are rare, where good people die and the earth shifts disastrously? What guidance does Jesus' offer for this world, the actual world of hospitals and Prozac, plane crashes and budget crises? What does the story of Jesus teach us about living in this world?

Matthew begins his story of Jesus with a genealogy. Matthew carefully structures this genealogy to highlight the people among Jesus' ancestors whose lives could easily be featured as cover stories for The Enquirer. This genealogy is Matthew's way of emphasizing Jesus' connection with the raw, messy, complicated realities of regular human life.

By birth Jesus was part of a regular dysfunctional family. A family whose history included incest, murder, idolatry. Jesus did not minister from some remote place of tranquil purity. He was one of us. He spent the first 30 years of his life as an apparently ordinary Palestinian carpenter's son.

Then at age 30 Jesus begins his ministry. His first step in that direction was to get baptized. Baptism was a dramatic statement of his connection with down-to-earth, real human life. Not only was he born into an ordinary, dysfunctional family, at the very beginning of his ministry, he publicly declared his full, voluntary acceptance of his membership in that family.

For the next three and half years Jesus threw himself into a whirlwind of ministry. He healed blind people, gave hearing to deaf people, resurrected the dead, set people free from demonic possession. He preached to and taught crowds of thousands.

His life was chock full of miracles and good drama. One of my favorite pictures is of him standing at the door of a house on a Saturday night facing a street jammed wall to wall with people wanting to be healed. He stayed there, working miracle after miracle until there wasn't a sick person left in the village.

Then came the grand climax of his life. Or so it seemed at the time. On a Sunday he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey welcomed by crowds of thousands who acclaimed him king. Five days later he was on his face begging God to excuse him from his assignment. There was no response from heaven. After a while in prayer he got up and went to talk with his disciples, hoping for some encouragement, needing some company. They are asleep. He begged them to stay awake and pray with him.

God said no to his prayer. The disciples said no to his request.

He was utterly alone.

I wonder if this was in his mind when he gave his disciples his final words before leaving Earth to return to heaven, "behold, I will be with you always even to the end of the world." They had let him down when he asked for companionship in the most intense struggle of his life. He promised them he would not let them down. Not that he would rescue them from every problem. But he would be there with them in every difficulty.

By all his miracles of healing Jesus demonstrated what he wants for people. He wants them to be pain free, torment free. He wants them to use their legs to run, their eyes to appreciate beauty, their ears to hear conversation and enjoy music. He does not want them to suffer hunger. He does not want them to live under the scowl of God. He wants them to know God's smile, to live with confidence and glad hearts. Jesus promises that someday all of that will be reality. But what about now? What does Jesus have to offer now?

This promise: I will be with you always.

And our mission as Christians is to fulfill this promise of Jesus with our bodies. Let us make sure that we keep each other company… Always.

This week one of our members had surgery for cancer. The statistics on this cancer are very poor. It's scary. There are others here in our congregation who are living far to close to the ogre of cancer. What can we do?

Naturally, the first thing we think of are the stories of healing. We want a miracle. We want the cancer to go away. Hope for miracles and prayers for healing are entirely appropriate for the children of God. And, for those who are mature, for those who take seriously their commitment to follow Jesus, there is something more. This something more is expressed in Jesus' words: "I am with you always."

We cannot make pain disappear in this world. We cannot reverse all diseases. But we can make sure people do not suffer alone. With our bodies we can bring Jesus close to those who suffer.

When bad things happen, some Christians go crazy blaming God. I have read multiple statements from Christians in all kinds of denominations including Seventh-day Adventists arguing that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan were the handiwork of God. It was a message sent from God to wake us up.

This kind of talk is nonsense or worse. It is false. God is not so clumsy that he sends earthquakes that destroy 10,000 or a hundred thousand people in some far-off place vainly hoping we will get the message and repent. When God has a message he sends a prophet.

Most of the stories in the Gospels are stories of healing, stories of success. Dead people rise to life. Paralyzed people dance. Deaf people hear. But there are a couple of instances where Jesus specifically addresses the issue of people in trouble who are not delivered. In Luke 13 Jesus was asked about some people who were killed when a building collapsed on them. Jesus did not resurrect these people. What he did do was defend their reputations. He emphatically declared that those people did not die because they had defective characters. Jesus also defended God's reputation. God did not make the building collapse.

Matthew 11 recounts a conversation between Jesus and the disciples of John the Baptist. John the Baptist had been put in prison by King Herod. Being in his prison was a dangerous business. He was a notoriously murderous tyrant. John had been for some time and Jesus had done nothing to get him out. Finally John the Baptist sent some of his disciples ask Jesus what was up. "Are you really the one we were waiting for? Are you really the Messiah?"

Early in his ministry, Jesus had announced that part of his mission was to set the captives free. John the Baptist couldn't help but wonder, "Hey, what about me? What about springing me from prison?”

It didn't happen. Jesus did not release John the Baptist from prison. John the Baptist was executed.

But notice the one thing Jesus did do for John the Baptist. He defended his character. When John's disciples were there with Jesus, Jesus spoke to the crowd about John the Baptist. "There has never been any human being greater than John the Baptist."

John the Baptist was not in prison because he had failed. John the Baptist was not in prison because there had been something wrong with his ministry. John the Baptist had not made a mistake. In fact, John the Baptist was in prison precisely because he was a great man, because he was a good man.

So in these two instances of unrelieved suffering, what does Jesus do? He defends the reputation of those who suffered.

In the one other picture where we see Jesus deliberately allowing suffering to happen, we see Jesus weeping. It's the famous story of Lazarus. Jesus was alerted that Lazarus was sick, but he did nothing about it. He showed up at Lazarus' house only after Lazarus had been dead for four days. Jesus went with the sisters out to the grave. And there he demonstrated his identity, his empathy with the sisters by weeping. And I don't mean to suggest that Jesus was weeping for the purpose of making a statement. These were not the tears of an actor. Jesus was weeping because he felt the pain of the sisters and was himself deeply wounded by their pain. Jesus' tears were powerful evidence of his connection with the women.

Lazarus' story does not end there, of course. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. But first he entered deeply into the pain of those who loved and lost Lazarus.


So what should we do in the face of human suffering? First, resist the impulse to blame someone. Sure, if someone has been smoking three packs a day for 40 years and they get emphysema, the cause-and-effect relationship is pretty clear. But what good does it do to talk about it? Will it reverse the 40 years?The time to talk about cause-and-effect is before people get sick not after. And most of the time the cause of our illnesses is not nearly so obvious and direct. Even when it is there is little to be gained from us talking about it.

Our first call in responding to trouble in the life of our friends is to defend their reputations. We don't imagine that God is punishing them.

Second, we defend God's reputation. We don't imagine that God is sending us a message by giving them cancer. Or allowing them to have an automobile accident. Or allowing them to suffer depression. We don't blame God for trouble.

Third, we do something for Jesus. We go and keep them company. By keeping company with those who suffer, we are keeping company with Jesus. We're doing what the disciples failed to do for Jesus that last night before he died. We keep Jesus company by keeping company with those who suffer.

In that neonatal unit 21 years ago the doctor and nurse nurse who sat with me while Douglas died were helpless as medical professionals. But in their role as human beings – by keeping me company through suffering that they could not change – they were acting truly in the role of Jesus. With their bodies they were living out the promise of Jesus, I am with you always.

I am sure that God would rather heal disease than keep us company through it. He would rather cure our grief than keep us company in it. But for whatever reason, disease and death, disaster and catastrophe have not vanished from the world. For now, they are an essential part of the human experience. So what does the story of Jesus teach us to to do, given this reality? Certainly to do what we can to heal, to cure, to prevent disaster. But there are decided limits to our capability in these efforts.

What can we do most most constantly? What can all of us do? Keep one another company. Defend one another's reputations. We can step into one another's lives in the dark times, with our physical presence carrying the spiritual presence of Jesus, making real with our bodies the promise of Jesus, "I am with you always, even to the end of the world."