Searching for Goodness

     Searching for Goodness

Psalm 146[1]

In some ways, it’s easy to see all that is good in this world. We don’t have to look any farther than the freshness of a beautiful morning, or the vibrant colors of a stunning sunset. The world of nature is so full of beauty we have to make an effort not to see the goodness all around us all the time. And then there’s our human family. Yes, relationships can be challenging, but if we direct our attention to what is right about our relationships, it’s not hard to find plenty of people in our lives who are good and kind and loving. You know, the ones who know us, flaws and all, and still treat us with love and respect. You know me well enough that it shouldn’t surprise you that I find children to be some of the most consistently beautiful people in this world. All of that and much, much more leads us to conclude with Louis Armstrong, “and I think to myself, what a wonderful world!”

But there is another side to life in this world, what one contemporary voice calls the “tragic” side of life.[2] Yes, there are a lot of good and kind people in this world, but there are also a lot of hurt people who hurt people. Right now, at this moment, there are perhaps more people in our world who are affected in some way by war than at any other time in history. So much so that it’s hard to accurately estimate just how far the violence of war extends. But perhaps an even more “tragic” side to our experience with this life is that most of us know that we live in a world where “bad things happen to good people.” Whether it comes from other people or simply from “life,” when this happens it can be hard for us to see any goodness in the world at all.

This can pose a serious challenge to our faith. We believe in a God who is loving and all-powerful. But for some of us, the pain and suffering in this world make it difficult if not impossible to believe in such a loving God. Surely a loving God would intervene on behalf of the innocent who suffer, especially the children. Of course, it makes much more sense to say that much of the suffering in this world is caused by people rather than blaming it on God. But we’re still left wondering, in view of all the pain in this world, whether God is either loving or all-powerful. Some would say God is loving but can’t do anything about the suffering in this world. I don’t think that helps very much. Others would take the darker option and conclude that God is neither loving nor good, precisely because he could do something but chooses not to. Either way, we’re left with a crisis of faith. And questioning God’s goodness can leave us wondering if there’s any good in the world at all! That’s a pretty dark place to be.

I’d like to be able to tell you that the Bible gives us a clear answer to this dilemma. But it doesn’t. What it does do is continue to insist that God is both loving and all-powerful. Take, for example, our lesson from the Psalms for today. The Psalmist affirms that God is all-powerful, saying, “joyful are those … whose hope is in the Lord their God. He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them” (Ps 146:5-6, NLT). Throughout the Bible, God’s creation of all the heavens and the earth, along with all that is in both the heavens and the earth, stands as the fundamental witness to God’s power. God alone is the one who had the power to create all the heavens and the earth, and everything in them. That means that God also has the power to “keep every promise forever,” so that we can find joy in life by placing our hope in God. That remains true even in the midst of the confusing mix of good and evil we have to contend with in this world.

I think it’s important here to sort out what God has and has not promised. God has not promised to give us everything we want in life, in the way we want it, when want it. What God promises us is, in a word, justice. That might not sound very appealing. We think of justice in terms of crime and punishment. We think God’s justice is the opposite of God’s mercy.[3] But listen to the promises of our Psalm for today: “He gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry. The LORD frees the prisoners. The LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are weighed down.     The LORD loves the godly. The LORD protects the foreigners among us. He cares for the orphans and widows” (Ps 146:7-9, NLT). What God promises is to right the wrongs, to provide for those who have no means to provide for themselves, to show compassion and mercy to those who are the least and the left out and the passed over and the shut out. That’s the kind of justice God promises.

This gives us one way to find goodness in this world. Wherever there is restoration for those who have been wronged, wherever those who suffer want have their needs provided, wherever those who endure oppression find freedom, wherever God cares for the last and the least and the left out, we can see God’s goodness at work in this world, right here and right now. But we have to have the right frame of mind to be able to see these things as the fulfillment of God’s promises and find joy and hope in them. And the frame of mind we need to see God’s goodness all around us is one of generosity, compassion, and mercy. That’s because the essence of the promises that our Scripture lesson says God will keep is generosity, compassion, and mercy. When our mindset is one of selfishness, or stinginess, or criticism, or we’re stuck in fear, anger, or envy, it’s hard for us to even see God’s mercy at work in this world, let alone rejoice in it.

I think Jesus embodies a mindset of generosity, compassion, and mercy. Of course, he was well aware of all the wrongs in the world. And it grieved and even angered him when he saw them. But at the end of the day, Jesus lived with an unwavering confidence in God’s generosity, compassion, and mercy. As a result, he went about extending that generosity, compassion, and mercy to others—even to those who opposed him, even to those who were trying to kill him! That’s what he was doing when he healed a gentile woman’s daughter, even though both of them would have been despised by most of the Jewish people of their day. Or when he cared for a deaf mute, who would have been very easy to overlook and ignore. When we look at people in need with a critical or judgmental mindset, it lets us off of the hook and makes it easier to just walk right past them.

But as our lesson from James puts it, “Mercy overrules judgment” (Jas 2:13, CEB). In our reading from the New Living Translation we heard that verse rendered, “if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you.” But most other versions translate it more like the Common English Bible: “Mercy overrules judgment.” That’s a principle that relates not only to God’s judgment, but also to our attitude toward being judgmental. “Mercy overrules judgment.” Always! One reason for that is because exercising mercy not only opens our hands so that we share with those in need, but it also opens our eyes to see how God is keeping his promise to show mercy and compassion to us all.[4] I think that’s the key to being able to see what is good in this world, even though a lot of bad things happen. When we learn to see God’s mercy at work in this world, we can also see the good all around us.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, PhD on 9/8/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church.

[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 1^st edition, 118-25, where he defines the “tragic sense of life” in terms of the question “Does anyone know or care that we are here?” (118), a question he suggests we must ask “In this world of time and happenstance, of good fortune and bad, of pleasure and pain, of surpassing joys and nightmarish cruelty and unhappiness” (119). In the context of this unavoidable dimension of human life, he defines faith as “faith that there is something that lifts us above the blind force of things, a mind in all this mindlessness” (125). It is faith “That there is something … or someone … who stand by us when we are up against the worst, who stands by others, the least among us” (125), which amounts to saying “yes” to life “for what it is, neither more nor less, without any additions or subtractions” (120).

[3] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, 127: “The opposite of God’s justice is not God’s mercy, but human injustice.” He goes on to define the “passion for justice” on God’s part reflected in the Hebrew Bible as directed toward human social structures that are “politically oppressive,” “economically exploitative,” and “religiously legitimated” (130). The answer to these unjust social structures is the Kingdom of God, which represents “what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of this world were not” (132)!

[4] Cf. Hans Küng, The Christian Challenge: A Shortened Version of ON BEING A CHRISTIAN, 295-97: “man [sic] can accept the identity, value, and meaningfulness of reality and of his own existence in particular only with a ‘basic trust.’ … if man [sic] wants to realize himself at all, if as a person he wants to gain freedom, identity, meaning, happiness, he can do so only absolute trust in him who is able to give him all this.” This basic trust is defined as “trust in God, inspired by faith, as it was made possible by Jesus Christ.”

Training

 Training

Ephesians 6:10, 13-21[1]

As I mentioned last week, anyone who’s made the effort to learn a skill knows that it takes practice. But those of us who’ve been serious about trying to learn that skill know that it also takes training. I’ve learned that lesson in my on-again, off-again career as an amateur guitar player. I started trying to play guitar back in 1979. I went off to college that year, setting about teaching myself how to play guitar. I learned some chords, and I could play well enough to lead camp songs, but that was about as far as it went. And it didn’t take long before my guitar sat in a corner mostly unplayed.

Twenty years later I decided to try again to learn to play guitar. This time I took lessons. I started with classical lessons, because I wanted to learn to play the notes on the guitar, not just the chords. I did that for about a year and a half. Life’s changes interrupted my classical lessons, but I kept at it. Several years later, I decided I wanted to learn to play an electric guitar also. The technique is quite different. So I started taking weekly lessons. I did that for about five years. I learned a lot about basic technique. I learned to play some solos, like the one from “Hotel California.” More importantly, I learned something about the music theory behind Blues and Jazz, and I learned to improvise a bit. I still have a lot to learn about playing guitar. But I know that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without some training.

We’ve been talking a lot lately about what it looks like to try to live the Christian life. In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul has urged us to “lead a life worthy of your calling” (Eph 4:1, NLT). And we learned over the last several weeks that we demonstrate the quality of our faith by the quality of our relationships. We saw that Paul gets uncomfortably specific about what that looks like. And we heard him encourage us to conduct our relationships in such a way that we seek to do good to others, and not to harm, we try to help others, not hurt them, and we look for ways to give to others, rather than trying to take from them. And last week we discussed what it looks like to “live wisely, and not foolishly” (Eph 5:15, CEB) by practicing things like honoring God, and gratitude, and respect for others. And as we have been discussing all along, this way of life takes constant practice.

But I would suggest that living the Christian life also takes training. It’s not something that we can just teach ourselves. We learn to live this way over time, over years and even decades of training and practice. St. Paul alludes to this training in our lesson for today. He uses the analogy of a soldier equipped for battle, with armor, a shield, and even a weapon. These days, using military analogies for the Christian life can be troubling. Unfortunately, throughout the ages too many Christians have taken the “battle” image Paul uses here too literally. And that makes it hard for us to compare a life that seeks to follow Jesus with warfare. But I think the main point of this passage is that it takes training to prepare for living the Christian life.

If we recognize that Paul is using the image of a soldier to encourage us to engage in training, perhaps we can learn something from this passage without endorsing any kind of violence in the name of Jesus. Take, for example, his encouragement to “Let the truth be like a belt around your waist, and let God’s justice protect you like armor” (Eph. 6:14, CEV). I think this suggests one area of training for the Christian life. It has to do with learning to discern and follow God’s will as you understand it. That’s something that takes training, and even discipline. We have to commit to it like a learning a musical instrument, or developing athletic skills, or following a fitness regimen. We commit to seeking to determine the right thing to do, in so far as it is humanly possible. And we try to do the right thing, again in so far as it is humanly possible.

A second line of training may be suggested by Paul’s call for us to “Let your faith be like a shield” and to “Let God's saving power be like a helmet” (Eph 6:16-17, CEV). The good news about our salvation by grace and the hope of the coming kingdom of God is not easy to understand. This suggests another area of training for the Christian life. We have to make an effort to dig into what the gospel means for us and for our lives. That includes Bible study. And Bible study starts with reading the Bible on a regular basis.[2] I think that’s what Jesus was talking about when he called people to “eat” his flesh as the bread of life. He was talking about ingesting his words, meditating on them, internalizing them, and remaining attentive to God’s voice. But we all need help understanding what we’re reading and hearing in the Bible. That’s where organized study comes in. We can participate in a group Bible Study. We can also read books that help make the gospel more understandable and more real to us. I find that helpful after 40 years of study. There are some authors who make it all “come to life.”[3]

Paul suggests a third focus of training in the discipline of prayer. I like the way Gene Peterson renders it in The Message: “pray hard and long” (Eph 6:18). Prayer keeps us connected to God.[4] It’s a source of strength and wisdom. Prayer opens us to the resources that God provides to help us live the Christian life every day, especially when life gets hard. But prayer also opens us up to other people, especially when we pray for them. And we need to pray especially for the people who may be the most difficult for us to love. When we do, it opens our closed hearts and helps us to understand where people are coming from, even when they may do something we find hurtful. Prayer opens us up and helps us live the Christian life.

It takes practice to live the Christian life. I’m still practicing, still trying to learn how to get it right. But more than that, it takes training. When we try the do-it-yourself method of learning to live the Christian life, the results may be just as unreliable as when I tried to teach myself to play the guitar. We need training to learn how to discern God’s will and put it into practice in our lives, in so far as it is humanly possible. We need training to figure out what the right thing to do is, and to figure out how to try to do it. We need training to understand the good news about Jesus that is the foundation for living the Christian life. And we need training to learn how to “pray hard and long.” The Christian life is not a do-it-yourself project. It’s not something we can successfully achieve on our own. Just as I needed a teacher to learn to play the guitar, so we all need to look to those in the body of Christ who can train us in the disciplines that enable us to live the Christian life in the face of the real-life situations we deal with every day. And part of the good news about this is that every day is a day when we can start again to learn how to live our lives more like Christ.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 8/25/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol 5, 59-60: “brief passages cannot and must not take the place of reaching the Scripture as a whole. … The full witness to Jesus Christ the Lord can be clearly heard only in its immeasurable inner relationships, in the connection of Old and New Testaments, of promise and fulfillment, sacrifice and law, Law and Gospel, cross and resurrection, faith and obedience, having and hoping

[3] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 72: “Reading in a spiritual way is reading with a desire to let God come closer to us. Most of us read to acquire knowledge or to satisfy our curiosity. … The purpose of spiritual reading, however, is not to master knowledge or information, but to let God’s Spirit master us.”

[4] Cf. Nouwen, Here and Now, 68: prayer is “the discipline that helps us to bring God back again and again to the center of our life.”