Faith at Home….At Home in Faith
NW MN Synod
Theology for Ministry Conference
Fair Hills
Resort, Detroit Lakes, MN
September 16,
2014
Philippians
1:21-30
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
“[God]
has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but
of suffering for him as well…” (v. 29)
Lately
I have been pondering the role of affliction in the
formation of faith.
My pondering was triggered by a presentation I heard
at a recent conference on “Rethinking Faith Formation” at Luther Seminary.
The speaker who captured my attention more than all
the rest spoke about “The Virtual Body of Christ,” how digital communications
and social media are reshaping the ways faith is formed.
This speaker (a young Lutheran professor at Hamline
University) made me rethink my assumptions about “virtual reality.”
But what really caught my attention was when early
in her presentation she quietly “dropped” the bombshell that several years ago
she’d been diagnosed with stage IV cancer.
When she uttered the awful “c” word—I sat up, tuned
in and could not be distracted. For, as intellectually stimulating as her
presentation happened to be, her personal
journey with affliction, her facing of a grievous, potentially-fatal
disease “transfigured” everything she said.
It was clear that this dreadful disease, rather than
knocking the wind out of her sails—had in an amazing way stirred her
imagination and driven her fresh thinking about how Christian faith is planted,
shaped, and formed.
It seems at first counter-intuitive, to imagine that
affliction could help shape or form faith.
Usually we assume that affliction, is an affront to faith—it calls faith
sharply into question—makes it hard to believe in or ponder the things of God.
Nowadays it seems that whenever something terrible
happens in the world—folks who may otherwise rarely think about God are suddenly
ticked off at God…wondering in the first place how a God of love could allow
such tragedies to take place…..and all too often, that’s about as far as anyone
delves into the topic.
But what about those souls all around us, not to
mention the soul inside of us, that experiences affliction not so much as an
affront to faith as it is a kind of flint or foil that sharpens our faith,
tunes our attentiveness to God and opens us to experience the divine life in
fresh ways?
A while back Rahm Emmanuel, when he was chief of
staff in the Obama White House, popularized the notion that a crisis is a
terrible thing to waste….to which I’m tempted to add that we in whom Christ is
being formed dare never squander our experiences of affliction, either.
Paul certainly seems to have thought so, as we over-hear
his musings in this text from Philippians.
The pallor of death and loss hangs over this passage. Paul is in prison….he anticipates the very
real possibility of death, his death, taking him away from this veil of tears. Paul speaks about feeling caught betwixt and
between, hanging on to this life in order to keep pursuing his ministry, or
letting go of this life, in order to live in the fullness of God, to be with
Christ and live by sure and sturdy sight rather than the blurriness and dimness
of faith.
Paul writes of affliction, not as an armchair expert
on the subject, but as one who is intimately acquainted with the precariousness
of this life, whether he was facing persecution for Christ’s sake (as was the
case here in Philippians 1) or whether he was wrestling with his famous “thorn
in the flesh” in II Corinthians 12. In other words, Paul ponders the existential
experience of suffering, whether it is suffering for Christ or
suffering in Christ.
Whatever the case may be, Paul writes here in
Philippians to people whom he regards as being in the same boat with him. Rather than assuming that affliction can
only attack or deconstruct faith, Paul takes it for granted that suffering
suffuses our whole life in Christ.
Indeed, suffering is a gift and a calling—“[God] has graciously granted you
the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him
as well…”
I realize we’re on dangerous ground whenever we
start talking this way. The reality of
domestic violence, physical or sexual abuse wherever it takes place, rightly makes
us reluctant even to seem as though we’re redeeming suffering in any way, shape
or fashion. We are careful, oh so
careful, to avoid “justifying” any pain one person might inflict upon another…and
we certainly don’t seek out suffering, in some weird, twisted hunt for meaning.
Our nervousness about giving any quarter to
suffering should not, however, deter us from pondering with fierce honesty the
affliction that will inevitably come our way.
Make no mistake about it, affliction will find us all. We don’t need to search it out—affliction will
surely knock on our door.
And then what?
Will we become embittered by our encounter with affliction? Will we seek to escape it, at any cost? Or will we “mine” the moment, trusting that
even when we’re falling apart, God is fashioning ways to do vital business with
us?
The great 20th century radio preacher,
Paul Scherer, named the nub of the matter when he declared: “Jesus never occupied himself with the way out….To [Jesus] it was the way through that mattered.”[1]
If experiencing affliction isn’t a matter of finding
a way out, but rather discovering
a way through….how might such
affliction contribute to the formation of Christian faith? Let me suggest three ways:
First, affliction
helps with faith formation by keeping us honest about ourselves.
Affliction, however it comes our way, always reminds
us that we do not possess life, have it under our control or within our grasp. We are sinful, vulnerable, fragile beings, whose
fortunes can change at the drop of a hat.
With all our Maker’s other creatures, we constantly look beyond
ourselves for all that we need.
So affliction aids in faith formation by piercing through
all our illusions of grandeur, self-sufficiency, invulnerability. Suffering removes our blinders so that we
see ourselves as we really are—beyond our denial and false pretensions.
Second, as
affliction yields recognition of our true condition, we are opened up to those
around us.
If Christian faith thrives only within a deeply
communal life, suffering helps us by transporting us out of ourselves. In her little book, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning,
Hope and Repair, Anne Lamott observes:
“When we agree to (or get tricked
into) being part of something bigger than our own wired, fixated minds, we are
saved. When we search for something
larger than our own selves to hook into, we can come through whatever life
throws at us.”[2]
What may begin as our own need to have others
help us through our affliction….will morph into a more profound
perception of how faith calls us to reciprocate the favor when affliction
strikes others. Again, from Anne
Lamott: “To heal, it seems we have to stand in the middle of the horror, at the
foot of the cross, and wait out another’s suffering where that person can see
us….ultimately we’re all just walking each other home.”[3]
All of this, we come to realize, transpires within
the economy of God….which is the third way that affliction feeds faith
formation. Suffering opens us up not just to ourselves and to one another—but to
God.
And the God we are opened up to by affliction is so
much more than a “fair-weather friend.” The
God we meet when affliction opens our eyes is the One who has already borne our
griefs and carried our sorrows. This
God is with us when we are happy and hopeful and bright-eyed. But the God we meet in Jesus “specializes”
(if you will) in encountering us in the darkest moments of our lives.
Affliction as it inevitably finds us….affliction
gives God something to work with, an emptiness and a longing God will give
anything to satisfy.
Or to put it another way: maybe God allows affliction to find us in
order to prevent us from low-balling God…and to seduce us into placing before
God our biggest, most bodacious requests:
a cure for the cancer, a second chance for a shipwrecked marriage, a
resurrection for every rude intrusion of death into our lives.
Just so, God addresses and heals our affliction,
shows us a way through it—actually, becomes the way through it!--and
enlists us to do the same for others.
“If there is a God,” writes Anne Lamott, “if there
is a God, and most days I do think there is, He or She does not need us to
bring hope and new life back into our lives, but [God] keeps letting us help…” thereby fashioning us into “people
who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness.”[4]
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
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