An Upside-Down World
Commentary
Søren Kierkegaard once wrote of a strange break‑in at a large store in his native Denmark where the thieves didn’t remove anything. When clerks opened up in the morning, all the merchandise was still there. Instead of stealing the goods, the thieves had stolen value. They had switched all the price tags, so that the worth of each item had no relation to its price: a diamond necklace valued at $2; a pair of leather shoes for 50¢; a pencil selling for $75, and a baby’s rattle with $5,000 on the sticker.
Sometimes it seems as if our society has been invaded by thieves like that. Just when we think we know the value of something the sticker price begins to spin. Worse still, the values placed on us can bounce like a stock market chart until we don’t know who we are anymore.
Shelley Rodriguez remembers the time she brought her grandson to a farm sale near their home in Independence, Kentucky. The boy was 8 years old at the time. Immediately he was captured by the magic of the auctioneer’s sing‑song voice. Yet something bothered him.
“Grandma,” he asked, “how is that man ever going to sell anything if he keeps changing the prices?”
That’s a good question for all of us.
The hardest thing for any of us to do in life is to maintain integrity. Even though most of us are not evil people, sin has a way of playing around with our hearts. On the outside we appear rather nice and respectable. In fact, much of we do is good and noble and kind and wise. No one can deny that.
The problem is that sin has a way slicing our hearts with perforated lines. Before we are aware of it we have torn off a piece here and a section there, till we find ourselves segmented. Fragmented. Torn apart in separate snippets of self.
It isn’t that we become blackened by sin in large strokes. Nor do we generally turn into some hideous monsters of greed and cruelty, dissolving the kind Dr. Jekyll’s of our personalities into dastardly Mr. Hyde’s. Instead, we keep most of our goodness intact while making small allowances in certain little areas. We shave our taxable income as we fill out our 1040s, maybe. Or we lose our peripheral vision when someone in need approaches. Or we compromise our communication so that we speak from only our mouths but not our souls.
The fragmentation of our lives makes us less than we should or could be. We strut on tiny legs, ants marching across the busy highway of life imagining that tires of destruction will skid around us.
In Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons Sir Thomas More stands at a moral crossroads. More has been a loyal subject of the English crown, supporting his king in both civil and ecclesiastical matters. Now, however, King Henry VIII is engaged in a devious plan that pits his own desires against that of the church. In order to pull off his scheme Henry requires that all his nobles to swear to him a personal oath of allegiance. Because the terms of the oath violate More’s conscience before his God, he refused and is arrested and jailed.
More’s daughter Margaret comes to visit him. She is his pride and joy, often thinking his thoughts after him. In their playful terms of endearment, she is her father’s “Meg,” and Henry knows that More will do anything for her. That’s why he sent Meg to plead with her father in prison. “Take the oath, Father!” she urges him. “Take it with your mouth, if you can’t take it with your heart! Take it and return to us! You can’t do us any good in here!”
In so many ways she’s right, of course -- how can More bless and protect his family if he rots in jail or dances with the executioner? And who will know if More coughs a testimony he doesn’t fully believe?
Sir Thomas, however, has felt the creases in his heart and knows what will happen to him if he finds himself rather than King Henry the betrayer in the mirror. So he says, “Meg, when a man swears an oath, he holds himself in his hands like water. And if he opens his fingers, how can he hope to find himself again?”
When our lives begin to fragment, as Thomas More knew, we are left like holding our souls as water in our hands. As the cracks between our fingers shift, even slightly, the water of our very selves dribbles away. We may look like the same people, but who we are inside has begun to change.
That is why in each of our lectionary passages today, the values of the world do not make sense for things that truly matter. Maybe, though, that is when divine sticker prices finally make sense.
Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22:1-15
Job was one of the wealthiest men in the ancient world, with houses and servants and treasures. He had more of everything than any person could covet. Job was also a devout man, careful to renew his relationship with God each day. It seems, in fact, that God was rather proud of Job. When Satan came calling one time, God bragged to him about Job. “Have you seen my servant Job?” he asked. “Now there is a man whose heart you will never own!”
Satan wasn’t so sure. He has cracked a lot of tough nuts in his time, and he took on Job as a special challenge. “Sure, Job loves you,” Satan said to God. “But that’s because you’ve bought his soul. You give him everything he wants. Why shouldn’t he serve you? Even I would do that!”
That’s when the wagering began, according to the Old Testament book. God gives Satan permission to take everything away from Job, stipulating only that Satan cannot harm Job’s own body.
So Job loses everything -- his children, his flocks, his buildings, his servants. He becomes as poor as a church mouse. Yet still Job loves God and serves him openly.
The wagering in heaven heats up, and Satan gets one more shot at Job in round two. He
may touch Job’s body without killing him. Job begins to writhe in pain. And Satan touches Job’s mind so that he can no longer clearly hear God’s whisper of love. Job is all alone. His wife calls him stupid, his friends call him a liar and a sinner, and the world doesn’t even call him anymore. Outside Job’s horizons have collapsed. Inside he has become an echo chamber of despair. Where is God?
That is the hardest challenge in life, isn’t it? I remember sitting with a mother in a hospital corridor, praying for the life of her daughter. The young woman was just beyond her teen years, and only a dozen months into marriage to a wonderful man. When the doctor assisted her delivery of her first child he nicked something with his knife. Now she was turning every shade of yellow and gray and had been flown half-way across the country to get the best medical attention possible.
The mother was unconsoled. When we prayed she felt no peace and could not find God. And for three hours we watched her daughter’s life slip away.
The mother stopped going to church. The young husband grew angry and didn’t know how to care for his baby child. Where was God?
Elie Wiesel endured the horror of the Nazi death camps. He watched women and children herded into gas chambers. He cried with men beaten down by cruel soldiers. He saw a young boy hanging on gallows. “Where is God?” he cried.
The Armenians are one of earth’s oldest civilizations. They turned to Christ in the early history of the Church. Devout people. God-fearing people. Church-going people. Yet other nations have slaughtered them, nearly wiping them off the map. Where is God?
The question of Job is asked in every generation: “Where are you God?” And often, as with Job, the only answer is silence. The promises of scripture become dead fantasies. The Holy Spirit leaves and the heart grows chilly. The newspapers report events that make no sense. Where is God? Where is God when a child dies? Where is God when a mother is snatched from her family? Where is God when nuclear reactors melt down and airplanes crash and mines collapse? Where is God?
And Satan looks down from heaven with glee. He knows that he has Job now. He knows that we will never get out of this one. He knows the cards in his hand are the winning draw. Can faith remain when God is silent? Can trust carry on when there seems to be no one at the other end of the line?
“No!” shouts Satan. But he doesn’t have the last word.
“Yes!” whispers Job. “Even though I cannot see God, even though I do not understand what is happening, even though every human wisdom tells me God’s not there, I know that my Redeemer lives, and with these eyes I shall see him!”
Job loves God not for what he gets out of it, but because it is the only way life itself makes sense. We trust in God not because we always feel the wonder of his presence, but because, even in his absence, there is truly nowhere else to turn.
This is the patience of Job. It is the perseverance at the heart of the Christian faith. It is trust at its most profound level.
No one, of course, can explain it, at least not with words. Those of us who have struggled in that black pit can never really share the experience. We can talk about it later, when God seems closer again. But it is the awful agony of faith when we stand undressed and all alone.
Hebrews 4:12-16
The writer of Hebrews mentions the Tabernacle of ancient Israel on ten occasions (Hebrews 8:2, 5; 9:2, 3, 6, 8, 11, 21; 11:9; 13:10), and alludes to it almost as many times (Hebrews 3:2, 3, 4, 5, 6; 10:21; 13:11). It is obvious that both he and his readers know what the Tabernacle means for their faith, and can visualize its structure, even though it was destroyed over a thousand years before, when Solomon’s grand Temple replaced it.
In earlier allusions to the Tabernacle (Hebrews 3:2-6), the author described the relationship between Moses, the excellent steward over the house of God, and Jesus, the more excellent owner of the house of God. Now, however, the focus changes. Since Jesus, as God, is the owner of God’s house, Jesus is also the only one who can provide full hospitality in God’s house. In order to appreciate how the writer of Hebrews develops this, it is important to understand what God’s house was all about.
One third of the book of Exodus is given to explaining the meaning and construction of the Tabernacle. The divine intention for this structure follows from the covenant making-ceremony of Exodus 20–24, which establishes the unique relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Exodus 25–40 has three major sections. In chapters 25–31, preparations for the Tabernacle are made, and detailed plans are formulated. Then comes the intruding and jarring incident of the golden calf (chapters 32–34), in which not only Israel’s loyalty to Yahweh but also Yahweh’s loyalty to Israel are tested. Finally, the architectural initiatives of Exodus 25–31 are resumed in the actual construction of the Tabernacle and its dedication (chapters 35–40), almost as if the dark blot of the interlude had never happened.
This is why the Tabernacle was more than a religious shrine for Israel. It was different than a mere ceremonial place for offerings. It was, in fact, the home of Yahweh at the center of the Israelite community. When the sun settled behind the horizon and the cooking fires were banked to save wood as the people traveled through the wilderness, one tent continued to have a light on all night. In the heart of the camp the Lamp glowed in the fellowship hall of the Tabernacle; Yahweh kept vigil while the community slept. In the morning and evening, a meal could be taken with Yahweh (the sacrifices, burnt so that Yahweh might consume the divine portion by way of inhaling the smoke), and constantly the feasting room was made ready for the King to meet with his subjects.
What happened at Mt. Sinai? God formally claimed Israel as partner in whatever the divine mission was for planet Earth. Israel, in turn, owned Yahweh as divine King and Suzerain. In effect, Yahweh and Israel were married, and their starter home was built at the center of the camp.
Such is the theology behind both the Tabernacle and its later expression as the Temple. Both were different from mere cultic shrines. They were the resident of Israel’s true bridegroom and master. The destinies of God and Israel were inextricably intertwined.
At this point, the genius of the writer of Hebrews blazes again. He visualizes the movement of God’s people from the outer distances of the world and the camp toward intimate and personal contact with God. He then applies this same journeying imagery more specifically to his readers in their new and Christian context.
How did this psychological and spiritual and physical moving toward God take place in the Tabernacle days? There were a number of successive steps:
The writer of Hebrews takes the topographical locations of the Tabernacle and its surroundings, and sets the whole map on end, so that it begins in this world and ends in heaven. The scattered peoples of earth, including Jews, need to find and approach their loving creator. But God is not to be found in any earthly building today. Instead, God resides in heaven, ruling from the Mercy Seat (see Hebrews 10:19-22). And only Jesus, who is God, can come from that place to lead us back to that place.
Mark 10:17-31
One of the most widely viewed television programs of all time was the Fox-TV special “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” Fifty women from around North America were brought together for two-hours of interviews and beauty-pageant parading while a mysterious multi-millionaire sat cloistered in a booth observing by way of monitors. Friends and family of the tycoon assisted him in rating the ten semi-finalists and five finalists until the big moment arrived. With five women now clad in designer wedding dresses standing at attention before thousands in the auditorium and 23 million network viewers, the man who controlled all the shots stepped forward to grab one woman and wed her immediately before an authorized judge. The newly married pair danced their wedding tryst on a stage surrounded by 49 losers while credits rolled, signaling the end of the program.
There was a great deal of controversy in the days that followed. The woman quit her nursing job and disappeared from her family and friends. Investigators dredged up a woman-beating indictment issued years earlier against the millionaire. Moralists wrote columns about the scandal of television rating games, denouncing Fox for pulling off something the other networks wished they would have thought of first.
There was little said, however, about the strangeness of money itself that made this weird situation possible in the first place. An end-run was done around every element of courtship simply because one person had the financial resources to say so. While the marriage was arranged as completely as that of Isaac and Rebekkah, there was no wise parent or trusted friend who spent considerable time appraising the unknown person until a reasonable match could be made based on personality and values. Furthermore, the “winner” was truly a financial winner, with a great deal of wealth tagged to her new wedding ring. At the same time, the multi-millionaire was protected from financial ruin by prenuptuals that guaranteed no sharing of resources.
In other words, the woman was bought like a prostitute for a one-night stand and no relationship was secured by it. The only person capable of pulling off something like this was a wealthy man. A poor man would have had to actually court a woman in order to move toward marriage. Wealth insulated the multi-millionaire from the messy stuff of making a relationship work. One day he bought a mansion. Another day he bought a yacht. That day he bought a wife.
Some years ago June Fletcher wrote a perceptive article in the Wall Street Journal. “Behind walls, millions seek havens,” she said (February 2, 1996, p. B8). There is a mushrooming demand for “gated communities” in the United States, according to Fletcher. People put fences around their communities and push away those not like them. One of the main reasons, according to Fletcher, was outlined in a massive study done by Philip Langdon. He said, “Although people are motivated by concerns about crime and intrusion, there’s also prestige in walling yourself off from others. It says that you’ve risen in the pecking order.”
The insulation of wealth invades churches as well as neighborhoods. A friend of mine was director of a Christian social agency some years ago. He said that the goal of his organization was to connect those in need with congregations where the needs could be met. People were referred to Christians who had the resources to meet one or two small needs. Too often, however, said my friend, the deacons of those congregations would call him asking that no more referrals be made. They would like to take up an offering, or perhaps do a food drive for a few weeks. But they did not want to have to deal with people in need directly. One pastor told my friend that his congregation was not into helping people directly. “Why don’t you tell us how much you need to operate next month,” said the pastor, “and we’ll cut you a check. We’ve got a lot of money in our Benevolence account.”
Jesus seems incredibly hard-nosed about the destinies of wealthy people. Yet it is impossible to ignore the reality that wealth isolates some people from others, and insulates some hearts from true compassion. As the wealth of a congregation increases it tends to want to play the “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” game rather than invest time and effort in the courtship process of walking with those in need.
When Clarence Jordan, the author of the Cottonpatch Bible, started a Christian community on a farm in the south, many who admired his spiritual wisdom came to apply. A very wealthy woman approached him one day, begging a place among the group. Jordan agreed to receive her on one condition. “First sell everything you have and give it away,” he told her.
She was willing to sell everything, she said, and then to give the money to Jordan’s Christian community. He refused. “Don’t you need money to run this place?” she asked.
“We certainly do,” he replied. “We would love to have your money. But if you gave us your money and you became a member of our community, your money would keep you apart from everyone else. We would all know that we owed you a lot, and we would never see you as one of us.”
He was right. Jesus is not begging for rich people to make a donation to the church. He is pointing out the same thing he did in the Sermon on the Mount -- money is a god and until we deal with its power we cannot find our place in the Kingdom of God.
Money doesn’t heal. Money doesn’t cure. Wealth can’t protect or assist. Only people can help people. Only God makes life work. And he will never appear on a television show called, “Who Wants to Marry God Today?” He values us far too much to ever do a silly thing like that.
Application
Years ago, Dr. Arthur Gossip preached a sermon he called “When Life Tumbles in, What Then?” He brought that message on the first Sunday he returned to the pulpit of his congregation after his beloved wife had suddenly died. This is how he ended the sermon: “Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely.…standing in the roaring Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of its terror, of its rushing, I… call back to you who one day will have your turn to cross it, ‘Be of good cheer, my brothers, for I feel the bottom and it is sound.’”
Somehow, by the grace of God, the perseverance of patience carries us through, and we know the end of the matter as did Job and Jesus and the writer of Hebrews. God will never leave us alone forever. He will answer our questions in time. He will resolve the problems of life and give us a future that Satan could never manufacture. It is the wisdom and hope of faith that carries us through, often in an upside-down world, until we know that better than we know ourselves.
Alternative Application (Psalm 22:1-15)
David overflows with thanksgiving in Psalm 22. We would never think so at first, especially if we only read the part assigned in today’s lectionary. The early verses of the Psalm are horrible. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he yells in verse 1. He’s surrounded by taunting enemies (v. 12), burning with fever (v. 15), exhausted and starving (v. 17), and facing the prospect of a violent death (v. 16). His experiences find a prophetic parallel in the screaming horror of Jesus’ death on the cross -- so much so that Jesus himself makes David’s opening cry his own (Mark 15:34).
How is it possible to end that song in praise and thanksgiving? We would like to separate the two, wouldn’t we? We would like to cut Psalm 22 into sections. We want to sing the song of thanksgiving when we’re in the mood for it, seldom as that may be. But we don’t want to sing the first twenty-one verses. We don’t want to know the tragedies of life. We don’t want to feel the lostness and the forsakenness that David knew. We don’t want his pain. We don’t want his problems. It is either/or for us. It is one or the other, the good or the bad, thanksgiving or curses.
But faith begins when we do keep the tragedy and thanks of Psalm 22 together, doesn’t it? Before another year is over, some of us will die, perhaps painfully. Some of us will find out we have cancer. Some of us will lose our businesses. Some of us will lose our spouses. Some of us will be betrayed by our friends. And some of us will pray, but after a little while, all we will be able to do is cry out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
That’s when we will need to remember Psalm 22. Thanksgiving and faith go hand in hand. My faith in God is not just some polite thanks for the goodies and trinkets that I think God has given me. No, it’s the other way around. My thankfulness to God is the cornerstone of my faith. I am not thankful just because I believe God has given me things. Rather, I believe because it is right to give God thanks, even when I cannot point to anything specific. Even when the chips are down. Even when I’m surrounded by trouble.
In 1637, Eilenburg, Saxony, was surrounded by the dark night of the soul. Europe was at war. Eilenburg was tossed back and forth by the armies. Three times during that year it was attacked and severely damaged. When the armies left, refugees poured in by the thousands. Diseases ran rampant. Food was scarce.
There was only one pastor in the city, a fellow named Martin Rinkart. His journal for 1637 indicates that he conducted over 4,500 funerals that year, sometimes as many as forty or fifty a day. Life was a constant death, and each morning stank of disaster.
Still, somehow, even today, 1637 is important for nearly every Thanksgiving celebration around the world. For Christians still sing the song Pastor Rinkart wrote that year. They sing it with gusto. They sing it with faith. They sing it, not because it catalogues a list of reasons for thanksgiving, but because thankfulness is all that is left when the bottom drops out of the world:
Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
Only the grateful believe!
1 Hebrews 1:3.
Sometimes it seems as if our society has been invaded by thieves like that. Just when we think we know the value of something the sticker price begins to spin. Worse still, the values placed on us can bounce like a stock market chart until we don’t know who we are anymore.
Shelley Rodriguez remembers the time she brought her grandson to a farm sale near their home in Independence, Kentucky. The boy was 8 years old at the time. Immediately he was captured by the magic of the auctioneer’s sing‑song voice. Yet something bothered him.
“Grandma,” he asked, “how is that man ever going to sell anything if he keeps changing the prices?”
That’s a good question for all of us.
The hardest thing for any of us to do in life is to maintain integrity. Even though most of us are not evil people, sin has a way of playing around with our hearts. On the outside we appear rather nice and respectable. In fact, much of we do is good and noble and kind and wise. No one can deny that.
The problem is that sin has a way slicing our hearts with perforated lines. Before we are aware of it we have torn off a piece here and a section there, till we find ourselves segmented. Fragmented. Torn apart in separate snippets of self.
It isn’t that we become blackened by sin in large strokes. Nor do we generally turn into some hideous monsters of greed and cruelty, dissolving the kind Dr. Jekyll’s of our personalities into dastardly Mr. Hyde’s. Instead, we keep most of our goodness intact while making small allowances in certain little areas. We shave our taxable income as we fill out our 1040s, maybe. Or we lose our peripheral vision when someone in need approaches. Or we compromise our communication so that we speak from only our mouths but not our souls.
The fragmentation of our lives makes us less than we should or could be. We strut on tiny legs, ants marching across the busy highway of life imagining that tires of destruction will skid around us.
In Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons Sir Thomas More stands at a moral crossroads. More has been a loyal subject of the English crown, supporting his king in both civil and ecclesiastical matters. Now, however, King Henry VIII is engaged in a devious plan that pits his own desires against that of the church. In order to pull off his scheme Henry requires that all his nobles to swear to him a personal oath of allegiance. Because the terms of the oath violate More’s conscience before his God, he refused and is arrested and jailed.
More’s daughter Margaret comes to visit him. She is his pride and joy, often thinking his thoughts after him. In their playful terms of endearment, she is her father’s “Meg,” and Henry knows that More will do anything for her. That’s why he sent Meg to plead with her father in prison. “Take the oath, Father!” she urges him. “Take it with your mouth, if you can’t take it with your heart! Take it and return to us! You can’t do us any good in here!”
In so many ways she’s right, of course -- how can More bless and protect his family if he rots in jail or dances with the executioner? And who will know if More coughs a testimony he doesn’t fully believe?
Sir Thomas, however, has felt the creases in his heart and knows what will happen to him if he finds himself rather than King Henry the betrayer in the mirror. So he says, “Meg, when a man swears an oath, he holds himself in his hands like water. And if he opens his fingers, how can he hope to find himself again?”
When our lives begin to fragment, as Thomas More knew, we are left like holding our souls as water in our hands. As the cracks between our fingers shift, even slightly, the water of our very selves dribbles away. We may look like the same people, but who we are inside has begun to change.
That is why in each of our lectionary passages today, the values of the world do not make sense for things that truly matter. Maybe, though, that is when divine sticker prices finally make sense.
Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22:1-15
Job was one of the wealthiest men in the ancient world, with houses and servants and treasures. He had more of everything than any person could covet. Job was also a devout man, careful to renew his relationship with God each day. It seems, in fact, that God was rather proud of Job. When Satan came calling one time, God bragged to him about Job. “Have you seen my servant Job?” he asked. “Now there is a man whose heart you will never own!”
Satan wasn’t so sure. He has cracked a lot of tough nuts in his time, and he took on Job as a special challenge. “Sure, Job loves you,” Satan said to God. “But that’s because you’ve bought his soul. You give him everything he wants. Why shouldn’t he serve you? Even I would do that!”
That’s when the wagering began, according to the Old Testament book. God gives Satan permission to take everything away from Job, stipulating only that Satan cannot harm Job’s own body.
So Job loses everything -- his children, his flocks, his buildings, his servants. He becomes as poor as a church mouse. Yet still Job loves God and serves him openly.
The wagering in heaven heats up, and Satan gets one more shot at Job in round two. He
may touch Job’s body without killing him. Job begins to writhe in pain. And Satan touches Job’s mind so that he can no longer clearly hear God’s whisper of love. Job is all alone. His wife calls him stupid, his friends call him a liar and a sinner, and the world doesn’t even call him anymore. Outside Job’s horizons have collapsed. Inside he has become an echo chamber of despair. Where is God?
That is the hardest challenge in life, isn’t it? I remember sitting with a mother in a hospital corridor, praying for the life of her daughter. The young woman was just beyond her teen years, and only a dozen months into marriage to a wonderful man. When the doctor assisted her delivery of her first child he nicked something with his knife. Now she was turning every shade of yellow and gray and had been flown half-way across the country to get the best medical attention possible.
The mother was unconsoled. When we prayed she felt no peace and could not find God. And for three hours we watched her daughter’s life slip away.
The mother stopped going to church. The young husband grew angry and didn’t know how to care for his baby child. Where was God?
Elie Wiesel endured the horror of the Nazi death camps. He watched women and children herded into gas chambers. He cried with men beaten down by cruel soldiers. He saw a young boy hanging on gallows. “Where is God?” he cried.
The Armenians are one of earth’s oldest civilizations. They turned to Christ in the early history of the Church. Devout people. God-fearing people. Church-going people. Yet other nations have slaughtered them, nearly wiping them off the map. Where is God?
The question of Job is asked in every generation: “Where are you God?” And often, as with Job, the only answer is silence. The promises of scripture become dead fantasies. The Holy Spirit leaves and the heart grows chilly. The newspapers report events that make no sense. Where is God? Where is God when a child dies? Where is God when a mother is snatched from her family? Where is God when nuclear reactors melt down and airplanes crash and mines collapse? Where is God?
And Satan looks down from heaven with glee. He knows that he has Job now. He knows that we will never get out of this one. He knows the cards in his hand are the winning draw. Can faith remain when God is silent? Can trust carry on when there seems to be no one at the other end of the line?
“No!” shouts Satan. But he doesn’t have the last word.
“Yes!” whispers Job. “Even though I cannot see God, even though I do not understand what is happening, even though every human wisdom tells me God’s not there, I know that my Redeemer lives, and with these eyes I shall see him!”
Job loves God not for what he gets out of it, but because it is the only way life itself makes sense. We trust in God not because we always feel the wonder of his presence, but because, even in his absence, there is truly nowhere else to turn.
This is the patience of Job. It is the perseverance at the heart of the Christian faith. It is trust at its most profound level.
No one, of course, can explain it, at least not with words. Those of us who have struggled in that black pit can never really share the experience. We can talk about it later, when God seems closer again. But it is the awful agony of faith when we stand undressed and all alone.
Hebrews 4:12-16
The writer of Hebrews mentions the Tabernacle of ancient Israel on ten occasions (Hebrews 8:2, 5; 9:2, 3, 6, 8, 11, 21; 11:9; 13:10), and alludes to it almost as many times (Hebrews 3:2, 3, 4, 5, 6; 10:21; 13:11). It is obvious that both he and his readers know what the Tabernacle means for their faith, and can visualize its structure, even though it was destroyed over a thousand years before, when Solomon’s grand Temple replaced it.
In earlier allusions to the Tabernacle (Hebrews 3:2-6), the author described the relationship between Moses, the excellent steward over the house of God, and Jesus, the more excellent owner of the house of God. Now, however, the focus changes. Since Jesus, as God, is the owner of God’s house, Jesus is also the only one who can provide full hospitality in God’s house. In order to appreciate how the writer of Hebrews develops this, it is important to understand what God’s house was all about.
One third of the book of Exodus is given to explaining the meaning and construction of the Tabernacle. The divine intention for this structure follows from the covenant making-ceremony of Exodus 20–24, which establishes the unique relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Exodus 25–40 has three major sections. In chapters 25–31, preparations for the Tabernacle are made, and detailed plans are formulated. Then comes the intruding and jarring incident of the golden calf (chapters 32–34), in which not only Israel’s loyalty to Yahweh but also Yahweh’s loyalty to Israel are tested. Finally, the architectural initiatives of Exodus 25–31 are resumed in the actual construction of the Tabernacle and its dedication (chapters 35–40), almost as if the dark blot of the interlude had never happened.
This is why the Tabernacle was more than a religious shrine for Israel. It was different than a mere ceremonial place for offerings. It was, in fact, the home of Yahweh at the center of the Israelite community. When the sun settled behind the horizon and the cooking fires were banked to save wood as the people traveled through the wilderness, one tent continued to have a light on all night. In the heart of the camp the Lamp glowed in the fellowship hall of the Tabernacle; Yahweh kept vigil while the community slept. In the morning and evening, a meal could be taken with Yahweh (the sacrifices, burnt so that Yahweh might consume the divine portion by way of inhaling the smoke), and constantly the feasting room was made ready for the King to meet with his subjects.
What happened at Mt. Sinai? God formally claimed Israel as partner in whatever the divine mission was for planet Earth. Israel, in turn, owned Yahweh as divine King and Suzerain. In effect, Yahweh and Israel were married, and their starter home was built at the center of the camp.
Such is the theology behind both the Tabernacle and its later expression as the Temple. Both were different from mere cultic shrines. They were the resident of Israel’s true bridegroom and master. The destinies of God and Israel were inextricably intertwined.
At this point, the genius of the writer of Hebrews blazes again. He visualizes the movement of God’s people from the outer distances of the world and the camp toward intimate and personal contact with God. He then applies this same journeying imagery more specifically to his readers in their new and Christian context.
How did this psychological and spiritual and physical moving toward God take place in the Tabernacle days? There were a number of successive steps:
- People recognized the central place of God in their existences and sought to commune with God.
- So they came to God’s house with gifts.
- At the entrance to God’s house, those entrusted with its care washed themselves so that they might be ready to receive these gifts on behalf of God.
- The gifts were quickly turned into meals that God and God’s people shared together in front of the Tent.
- The keepers of God’s house would regularly enter the front section of God’s tent to express rituals of deepening hospitality symbolically:
- A table was set there, always ready, indicating God’s delight in sharing a meal with God’s people.
- The Lamp was lit, providing light in these more intimate and darker places.
- An Altar of Incense softened the mood and scented the air for deep companionship.
- And then, once a year, a representative who stood for both God and God’s people (the High Priest), communed deeply with God in the sacred private space (the Holy of Holies) where God’s merciful throne (the Ark of the Covenant) stood.
The writer of Hebrews takes the topographical locations of the Tabernacle and its surroundings, and sets the whole map on end, so that it begins in this world and ends in heaven. The scattered peoples of earth, including Jews, need to find and approach their loving creator. But God is not to be found in any earthly building today. Instead, God resides in heaven, ruling from the Mercy Seat (see Hebrews 10:19-22). And only Jesus, who is God, can come from that place to lead us back to that place.
Mark 10:17-31
One of the most widely viewed television programs of all time was the Fox-TV special “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” Fifty women from around North America were brought together for two-hours of interviews and beauty-pageant parading while a mysterious multi-millionaire sat cloistered in a booth observing by way of monitors. Friends and family of the tycoon assisted him in rating the ten semi-finalists and five finalists until the big moment arrived. With five women now clad in designer wedding dresses standing at attention before thousands in the auditorium and 23 million network viewers, the man who controlled all the shots stepped forward to grab one woman and wed her immediately before an authorized judge. The newly married pair danced their wedding tryst on a stage surrounded by 49 losers while credits rolled, signaling the end of the program.
There was a great deal of controversy in the days that followed. The woman quit her nursing job and disappeared from her family and friends. Investigators dredged up a woman-beating indictment issued years earlier against the millionaire. Moralists wrote columns about the scandal of television rating games, denouncing Fox for pulling off something the other networks wished they would have thought of first.
There was little said, however, about the strangeness of money itself that made this weird situation possible in the first place. An end-run was done around every element of courtship simply because one person had the financial resources to say so. While the marriage was arranged as completely as that of Isaac and Rebekkah, there was no wise parent or trusted friend who spent considerable time appraising the unknown person until a reasonable match could be made based on personality and values. Furthermore, the “winner” was truly a financial winner, with a great deal of wealth tagged to her new wedding ring. At the same time, the multi-millionaire was protected from financial ruin by prenuptuals that guaranteed no sharing of resources.
In other words, the woman was bought like a prostitute for a one-night stand and no relationship was secured by it. The only person capable of pulling off something like this was a wealthy man. A poor man would have had to actually court a woman in order to move toward marriage. Wealth insulated the multi-millionaire from the messy stuff of making a relationship work. One day he bought a mansion. Another day he bought a yacht. That day he bought a wife.
Some years ago June Fletcher wrote a perceptive article in the Wall Street Journal. “Behind walls, millions seek havens,” she said (February 2, 1996, p. B8). There is a mushrooming demand for “gated communities” in the United States, according to Fletcher. People put fences around their communities and push away those not like them. One of the main reasons, according to Fletcher, was outlined in a massive study done by Philip Langdon. He said, “Although people are motivated by concerns about crime and intrusion, there’s also prestige in walling yourself off from others. It says that you’ve risen in the pecking order.”
The insulation of wealth invades churches as well as neighborhoods. A friend of mine was director of a Christian social agency some years ago. He said that the goal of his organization was to connect those in need with congregations where the needs could be met. People were referred to Christians who had the resources to meet one or two small needs. Too often, however, said my friend, the deacons of those congregations would call him asking that no more referrals be made. They would like to take up an offering, or perhaps do a food drive for a few weeks. But they did not want to have to deal with people in need directly. One pastor told my friend that his congregation was not into helping people directly. “Why don’t you tell us how much you need to operate next month,” said the pastor, “and we’ll cut you a check. We’ve got a lot of money in our Benevolence account.”
Jesus seems incredibly hard-nosed about the destinies of wealthy people. Yet it is impossible to ignore the reality that wealth isolates some people from others, and insulates some hearts from true compassion. As the wealth of a congregation increases it tends to want to play the “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” game rather than invest time and effort in the courtship process of walking with those in need.
When Clarence Jordan, the author of the Cottonpatch Bible, started a Christian community on a farm in the south, many who admired his spiritual wisdom came to apply. A very wealthy woman approached him one day, begging a place among the group. Jordan agreed to receive her on one condition. “First sell everything you have and give it away,” he told her.
She was willing to sell everything, she said, and then to give the money to Jordan’s Christian community. He refused. “Don’t you need money to run this place?” she asked.
“We certainly do,” he replied. “We would love to have your money. But if you gave us your money and you became a member of our community, your money would keep you apart from everyone else. We would all know that we owed you a lot, and we would never see you as one of us.”
He was right. Jesus is not begging for rich people to make a donation to the church. He is pointing out the same thing he did in the Sermon on the Mount -- money is a god and until we deal with its power we cannot find our place in the Kingdom of God.
Money doesn’t heal. Money doesn’t cure. Wealth can’t protect or assist. Only people can help people. Only God makes life work. And he will never appear on a television show called, “Who Wants to Marry God Today?” He values us far too much to ever do a silly thing like that.
Application
Years ago, Dr. Arthur Gossip preached a sermon he called “When Life Tumbles in, What Then?” He brought that message on the first Sunday he returned to the pulpit of his congregation after his beloved wife had suddenly died. This is how he ended the sermon: “Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely.…standing in the roaring Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of its terror, of its rushing, I… call back to you who one day will have your turn to cross it, ‘Be of good cheer, my brothers, for I feel the bottom and it is sound.’”
Somehow, by the grace of God, the perseverance of patience carries us through, and we know the end of the matter as did Job and Jesus and the writer of Hebrews. God will never leave us alone forever. He will answer our questions in time. He will resolve the problems of life and give us a future that Satan could never manufacture. It is the wisdom and hope of faith that carries us through, often in an upside-down world, until we know that better than we know ourselves.
Alternative Application (Psalm 22:1-15)
David overflows with thanksgiving in Psalm 22. We would never think so at first, especially if we only read the part assigned in today’s lectionary. The early verses of the Psalm are horrible. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he yells in verse 1. He’s surrounded by taunting enemies (v. 12), burning with fever (v. 15), exhausted and starving (v. 17), and facing the prospect of a violent death (v. 16). His experiences find a prophetic parallel in the screaming horror of Jesus’ death on the cross -- so much so that Jesus himself makes David’s opening cry his own (Mark 15:34).
How is it possible to end that song in praise and thanksgiving? We would like to separate the two, wouldn’t we? We would like to cut Psalm 22 into sections. We want to sing the song of thanksgiving when we’re in the mood for it, seldom as that may be. But we don’t want to sing the first twenty-one verses. We don’t want to know the tragedies of life. We don’t want to feel the lostness and the forsakenness that David knew. We don’t want his pain. We don’t want his problems. It is either/or for us. It is one or the other, the good or the bad, thanksgiving or curses.
But faith begins when we do keep the tragedy and thanks of Psalm 22 together, doesn’t it? Before another year is over, some of us will die, perhaps painfully. Some of us will find out we have cancer. Some of us will lose our businesses. Some of us will lose our spouses. Some of us will be betrayed by our friends. And some of us will pray, but after a little while, all we will be able to do is cry out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
That’s when we will need to remember Psalm 22. Thanksgiving and faith go hand in hand. My faith in God is not just some polite thanks for the goodies and trinkets that I think God has given me. No, it’s the other way around. My thankfulness to God is the cornerstone of my faith. I am not thankful just because I believe God has given me things. Rather, I believe because it is right to give God thanks, even when I cannot point to anything specific. Even when the chips are down. Even when I’m surrounded by trouble.
In 1637, Eilenburg, Saxony, was surrounded by the dark night of the soul. Europe was at war. Eilenburg was tossed back and forth by the armies. Three times during that year it was attacked and severely damaged. When the armies left, refugees poured in by the thousands. Diseases ran rampant. Food was scarce.
There was only one pastor in the city, a fellow named Martin Rinkart. His journal for 1637 indicates that he conducted over 4,500 funerals that year, sometimes as many as forty or fifty a day. Life was a constant death, and each morning stank of disaster.
Still, somehow, even today, 1637 is important for nearly every Thanksgiving celebration around the world. For Christians still sing the song Pastor Rinkart wrote that year. They sing it with gusto. They sing it with faith. They sing it, not because it catalogues a list of reasons for thanksgiving, but because thankfulness is all that is left when the bottom drops out of the world:
Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
Only the grateful believe!
1 Hebrews 1:3.
