Spiritual Judo
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
Back in the old days, meaning before Computer Assisted Design (CAD), blueprints for a house were drawn on paper with a T-square, triangles, and a real pencil. A carpenter friend of mine used those tools to painstakingly draw each house before he built it. He'd have every wall, joint, and joist drawn in such a way that any carpenter could take those plans and build the house. Of course, he didn't draw it for others but for himself, and, as he said, when he'd finished drawing the plans, the house was half built. He'd thought through every step. The basics were laid down not just on paper, but also in his mind. You could consider the actual building of the house as the easy conclusion of the planning, the simple and almost automatic half of the building process.
Paul writes to the Christians in Rome that when it comes to our life with God, God has completed all the groundwork. God's ways might not be the methods we'd expected. But God has finished the gracious preparation that now awaits our half of the relationship. God has justified us, which means set us into right relation. God has granted us peace. Now, as Paul puts it, we have "access to this grace." Everything's ready for us to live with God again. We enjoy access to God's grace like the Berlin wall's coming down and allowing citizens after decades of being separated from family, friends, and neighbors to reunite.
It's not just that we can approach God if we want to. Through Jesus, God invites us: Please come. We could compare it to an invitation to a White House dinner or, for Roman Catholics, an audience with the Pope. In the ancient world, it was like entering the palace and being escorted into the emperor's throne room. Much more than that, through Jesus the ruler of creation seeks us out, waves and yells to get our attention, and invites us. Everything's prepared for us. Now almighty God summons us to come home to the palace.
Maybe we're reluctant just to barge in on God. We might hesitate in treating God like family, but God has treated us like family. That's the great news of the Christian faith. Paul explains the situation in verse 10, "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." God has brought us back from being enemies to being friends and family. That's what "reconcile" means. Through Jesus, God has said, after fussing with humanity, "You're wrong. I'm right. But I'm not going to just repeat myself that I'm right and you're wrong. I'll unilaterally fix this problem between us." And so God does -- God reconciles us.
We'd think God would be the one who'd need to be changed, somehow appeased or persuaded to become friends again. However, Paul is clear and consistent. Although God was the innocent party and we the guilty, God set out to reconcile us, to bring us back, and to overcome the obstacle between God and us.
Our relationship with God begins after God has performed this great act of grace. God has laid the groundwork right down to the precise moment. Even the time at which God demonstrates grace is beneficial. Paul writes, "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." God's grace reaches us at the right time, when we really need it, when we can't fix our problem with God. And God's grace continues to meet us at the right time.
A friend, to say the least, had experienced a bad month. He'd been phoned by the elementary school to come in and talk to the principal about his son (for the second time in three weeks). His father-in-law was 35 miles away, dying in a hospital. His mother-in-law was temporarily living with him and his wife. His mother-in-law was deeply disturbed as well as quite frail; thus he and his family spent as much time and energy caring for her as caring for his father-in-law in the hospital. When he'd left his house, his car had a flat. By the time he dashed toward the principal's office, his mind was hardly working. At the last intersection of halls before the principal's office, rounding the corner and coming toward him was his neighbor, Ralph. In about three minutes, he told Ralph what had been going on, how strung out he and his whole family were, and that they needed prayer desperately. Ralph listened, helped calm him, and offered a quick and quiet prayer for him. His family began to organize meals to be delivered to my friend's family. Ralph had appeared at the right time.
Think about your life with God. You probably can identify when God's grace reached you "just in time," those times that non-believers explain away as happy coincidences. God's grace is always ready for our real needs, not our wants, but our needs. The Holy Spirit brings God's grace out of past history into present experience right when we need it. Especially today, Paul wants us to understand how God's Holy Spirit helps us at the times we suffer.
As we reflect upon suffering, we need to think beyond the idea of pain. We all endure pain, but, to grasp the deepest meaning of suffering, we have to consider how we view our pain. Two people can experience the same kind of accident or loss, yet both of them might not consider their condition as suffering. Pain need not lead to suffering, because suffering includes how we respond to pain. But, if we do suffer, we must be careful not to waste our suffering. We can take our lead from Christ's suffering for us. Although God didn't prefer that Jesus suffer, yet God would use even Jesus' suffering for our benefit. God would twist the purposes of the evil people who killed Jesus, until even the cross -- that most horrific act of injustice -- would consequently enhance God's glory and work to our benefit. God is so great that God can use even suffering.
When I'm in trouble, I pray more. If our suffering turns us to God, we haven't wasted our pain. Christians across the ages have learned that being persecuted for their faith at least makes them take their faith more seriously. Chaos and problems can be the very crack through which God's grace gushes into our world.
We can think of the style of Christian suffering as spiritual Judo. In Judo, you turn your opponent's force to your advantage. You don't clobber someone directly. You allow the force of your opponent to defeat him. That's how Jesus lived and taught. He'd use little stories to throw his critics off balance. He'd twist stock story plots so that his opponents would walk away scratching their heads, "What does he mean?" Viewing Jesus' life from after the resurrection, it seems consistent that even Jesus' death would redirect evil's intentions. God didn't allow Jesus' suffering to come to nothing. God used it to a new purpose. That's spiritual Judo.
Joni Eareckson Tada was seventeen, in 1967, when her neck was broken in a diving accident. She's a quadriplegic, in a wheelchair, paralyzed from her shoulders down. She endured terrible physical, mental, and spiritual suffering. She experienced anger and deep depression. She considered suicide. But she continued to pray. Even if such praying only threw questions at God, she remained open to God. She slowly received and accepted the grace of God that awaited her, allowing her the strength not only to survive but to serve God and others with her limitations.
She learned to draw and to paint with a pencil or paintbrush in her teeth. She began to write and to advocate for the disabled. She's written over thirty books and received a presidential appointment to the National Council on Disability and served on that council when the Americans With Disabilities Act became law.
Her list of accomplishments, awards, and honorary degrees is long. To name just a couple, her organization, "Joni and Friends," trains congregations how to minister to people with disabilities. Through "Wheels for the World," over 30,000 wheelchairs have been collected in the US to be repaired and refurbished by inmates in correctional institutions and then donated to developing countries.
God's grace came into Joni's life at the right time. God had grace ready to help in that tragedy. Now Joni cooperates with God's grace by serving others. She hasn't wasted her suffering. We can learn by God's grace to redirect suffering, to not let it destroy us, but to grab it, to use its own energy to throw it, and to come out of the contest with some kind of victory.
I served for years on Presbyteries' Committees on Ministry. I remember so many nights driving home late after a meeting with a troubled congregation or pastor. With hours of driving to reflect upon church problems, I decided that, if I were going to hurt that bad because of their dysfunctions, I was going to learn how to avoid such problems in the future. If we learn from suffering, that takes some of the edge off the pain. We don't waste it. And we don't allow suffering to beat us.
As Christians, however, we need to be careful not to sound as though all suffering greets us smiling with opportunity. Millions of people endure horrible deaths, and their suffering is simply outside the limit of any possible meaning. We shouldn't slap disabled people with the expectation that they can be the next Joni Eareckson Tada. That's not the first or the twentieth thing you mention with a person who has undergone physical tragedy. But, if we hold onto God's grace through the pain, much of the time we can turn our suffering into learning or into a commitment to help others and to serve God. Don't waste your suffering. Do something with it, as God did.
When pastors take another call or retire, their congregations endure a time of chaos, reorganization, and confusion. It needn't be meaningless chaos. Nor is it doomed to be senseless confusion. That's the time for the congregation to pray. First they need to pray for God's leading and to understand what gifts God has granted them for ministry. Then they can discern what ministry God has prepared for that congregation today (not the ministry God had for them four or forty years ago). After they discern God's call to a specific service, they'll know the skills and abilities they'd need from a pastor to help them do their ministry. The interval between pastors can be one of the most creative times in a congregation's life, if they don't waste such a promising problem.
Paul's letter to the Roman Christians takes us through the process of using our suffering. He writes, "... we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." This is Paul's experience of having access to God's grace. Our Christian faith works, even in suffering. It's not easy, or automatic, but God's grace is prepared for us. We need to claim it, appropriate it, and use it in all things.
God's grace awaits us, even when we don't expect it. That's why Paul expresses such confidence in God, even in suffering. God could use Jesus' horrible suffering, so God can use even ours. That's the promise of God's grace, and just at the right time. Amen.
Paul writes to the Christians in Rome that when it comes to our life with God, God has completed all the groundwork. God's ways might not be the methods we'd expected. But God has finished the gracious preparation that now awaits our half of the relationship. God has justified us, which means set us into right relation. God has granted us peace. Now, as Paul puts it, we have "access to this grace." Everything's ready for us to live with God again. We enjoy access to God's grace like the Berlin wall's coming down and allowing citizens after decades of being separated from family, friends, and neighbors to reunite.
It's not just that we can approach God if we want to. Through Jesus, God invites us: Please come. We could compare it to an invitation to a White House dinner or, for Roman Catholics, an audience with the Pope. In the ancient world, it was like entering the palace and being escorted into the emperor's throne room. Much more than that, through Jesus the ruler of creation seeks us out, waves and yells to get our attention, and invites us. Everything's prepared for us. Now almighty God summons us to come home to the palace.
Maybe we're reluctant just to barge in on God. We might hesitate in treating God like family, but God has treated us like family. That's the great news of the Christian faith. Paul explains the situation in verse 10, "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." God has brought us back from being enemies to being friends and family. That's what "reconcile" means. Through Jesus, God has said, after fussing with humanity, "You're wrong. I'm right. But I'm not going to just repeat myself that I'm right and you're wrong. I'll unilaterally fix this problem between us." And so God does -- God reconciles us.
We'd think God would be the one who'd need to be changed, somehow appeased or persuaded to become friends again. However, Paul is clear and consistent. Although God was the innocent party and we the guilty, God set out to reconcile us, to bring us back, and to overcome the obstacle between God and us.
Our relationship with God begins after God has performed this great act of grace. God has laid the groundwork right down to the precise moment. Even the time at which God demonstrates grace is beneficial. Paul writes, "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." God's grace reaches us at the right time, when we really need it, when we can't fix our problem with God. And God's grace continues to meet us at the right time.
A friend, to say the least, had experienced a bad month. He'd been phoned by the elementary school to come in and talk to the principal about his son (for the second time in three weeks). His father-in-law was 35 miles away, dying in a hospital. His mother-in-law was temporarily living with him and his wife. His mother-in-law was deeply disturbed as well as quite frail; thus he and his family spent as much time and energy caring for her as caring for his father-in-law in the hospital. When he'd left his house, his car had a flat. By the time he dashed toward the principal's office, his mind was hardly working. At the last intersection of halls before the principal's office, rounding the corner and coming toward him was his neighbor, Ralph. In about three minutes, he told Ralph what had been going on, how strung out he and his whole family were, and that they needed prayer desperately. Ralph listened, helped calm him, and offered a quick and quiet prayer for him. His family began to organize meals to be delivered to my friend's family. Ralph had appeared at the right time.
Think about your life with God. You probably can identify when God's grace reached you "just in time," those times that non-believers explain away as happy coincidences. God's grace is always ready for our real needs, not our wants, but our needs. The Holy Spirit brings God's grace out of past history into present experience right when we need it. Especially today, Paul wants us to understand how God's Holy Spirit helps us at the times we suffer.
As we reflect upon suffering, we need to think beyond the idea of pain. We all endure pain, but, to grasp the deepest meaning of suffering, we have to consider how we view our pain. Two people can experience the same kind of accident or loss, yet both of them might not consider their condition as suffering. Pain need not lead to suffering, because suffering includes how we respond to pain. But, if we do suffer, we must be careful not to waste our suffering. We can take our lead from Christ's suffering for us. Although God didn't prefer that Jesus suffer, yet God would use even Jesus' suffering for our benefit. God would twist the purposes of the evil people who killed Jesus, until even the cross -- that most horrific act of injustice -- would consequently enhance God's glory and work to our benefit. God is so great that God can use even suffering.
When I'm in trouble, I pray more. If our suffering turns us to God, we haven't wasted our pain. Christians across the ages have learned that being persecuted for their faith at least makes them take their faith more seriously. Chaos and problems can be the very crack through which God's grace gushes into our world.
We can think of the style of Christian suffering as spiritual Judo. In Judo, you turn your opponent's force to your advantage. You don't clobber someone directly. You allow the force of your opponent to defeat him. That's how Jesus lived and taught. He'd use little stories to throw his critics off balance. He'd twist stock story plots so that his opponents would walk away scratching their heads, "What does he mean?" Viewing Jesus' life from after the resurrection, it seems consistent that even Jesus' death would redirect evil's intentions. God didn't allow Jesus' suffering to come to nothing. God used it to a new purpose. That's spiritual Judo.
Joni Eareckson Tada was seventeen, in 1967, when her neck was broken in a diving accident. She's a quadriplegic, in a wheelchair, paralyzed from her shoulders down. She endured terrible physical, mental, and spiritual suffering. She experienced anger and deep depression. She considered suicide. But she continued to pray. Even if such praying only threw questions at God, she remained open to God. She slowly received and accepted the grace of God that awaited her, allowing her the strength not only to survive but to serve God and others with her limitations.
She learned to draw and to paint with a pencil or paintbrush in her teeth. She began to write and to advocate for the disabled. She's written over thirty books and received a presidential appointment to the National Council on Disability and served on that council when the Americans With Disabilities Act became law.
Her list of accomplishments, awards, and honorary degrees is long. To name just a couple, her organization, "Joni and Friends," trains congregations how to minister to people with disabilities. Through "Wheels for the World," over 30,000 wheelchairs have been collected in the US to be repaired and refurbished by inmates in correctional institutions and then donated to developing countries.
God's grace came into Joni's life at the right time. God had grace ready to help in that tragedy. Now Joni cooperates with God's grace by serving others. She hasn't wasted her suffering. We can learn by God's grace to redirect suffering, to not let it destroy us, but to grab it, to use its own energy to throw it, and to come out of the contest with some kind of victory.
I served for years on Presbyteries' Committees on Ministry. I remember so many nights driving home late after a meeting with a troubled congregation or pastor. With hours of driving to reflect upon church problems, I decided that, if I were going to hurt that bad because of their dysfunctions, I was going to learn how to avoid such problems in the future. If we learn from suffering, that takes some of the edge off the pain. We don't waste it. And we don't allow suffering to beat us.
As Christians, however, we need to be careful not to sound as though all suffering greets us smiling with opportunity. Millions of people endure horrible deaths, and their suffering is simply outside the limit of any possible meaning. We shouldn't slap disabled people with the expectation that they can be the next Joni Eareckson Tada. That's not the first or the twentieth thing you mention with a person who has undergone physical tragedy. But, if we hold onto God's grace through the pain, much of the time we can turn our suffering into learning or into a commitment to help others and to serve God. Don't waste your suffering. Do something with it, as God did.
When pastors take another call or retire, their congregations endure a time of chaos, reorganization, and confusion. It needn't be meaningless chaos. Nor is it doomed to be senseless confusion. That's the time for the congregation to pray. First they need to pray for God's leading and to understand what gifts God has granted them for ministry. Then they can discern what ministry God has prepared for that congregation today (not the ministry God had for them four or forty years ago). After they discern God's call to a specific service, they'll know the skills and abilities they'd need from a pastor to help them do their ministry. The interval between pastors can be one of the most creative times in a congregation's life, if they don't waste such a promising problem.
Paul's letter to the Roman Christians takes us through the process of using our suffering. He writes, "... we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." This is Paul's experience of having access to God's grace. Our Christian faith works, even in suffering. It's not easy, or automatic, but God's grace is prepared for us. We need to claim it, appropriate it, and use it in all things.
God's grace awaits us, even when we don't expect it. That's why Paul expresses such confidence in God, even in suffering. God could use Jesus' horrible suffering, so God can use even ours. That's the promise of God's grace, and just at the right time. Amen.
