Sunday, June 27, 1999

Rev. Dale Ostrander

" Finding Hope"

GENESIS 22:1-14; ROMANS 5:1-5

I don't know about you, but I have some trouble with this morning's scriptures. The story of God testing Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, is said to be one of the more touching and endearing stories in the Bible. The emphasis is usually put on Abraham's obedience. But the testing part isn't the God I know and love.

And, then, there's the passage from Romans, especially the part about boasting in our sufferings. First of all, I have trouble with boasting in general, although I have been known to do it on rare occasions. I, like most of you, was taught that it was not a good thing to do - flaunting, congratulating oneself. Paul himself writes in I Corinthians that "love is not boastful." And when Paul speaks in this passage in Romans about boasting in our hope of sharing the glory of God because we have been justified through Jesus Christ, it smacks a little too much of the "I'm saved... where do you expect to spend eternity?" kind of talk.

But the part I really want to speak to this morning is the part about "boasting in our sufferings." I'm sure Paul really isn't talking about our going on and on about our difficulties, aches and pains and misfortune. How tiresome! He really seems to be saying that we rejoice in our suffering because it produces endurance, and endurance produces character.

Does anyone really rejoice in their suffering? Anyone who has dealt personally with serious illness, injury or loss, or has gone through that with a loved one, doesn't take pleasure in such things. And later in the 8th chapter of Romans Paul writes that "all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to God's purpose."

But what do we say about floods and famine; earthquakes and tornadoes (interestingly called 'acts of God' by insurance companies); and what about slavery, holocaust, ethnic cleansing and war; or cancer and Alzheimer's decease? What's good about such things? Are the victims called to God's purpose?

My early religious background had answers to these things. Somehow it was God's will - everything happens for a purpose. In college I left that faith of my youth.

Easy answers and fundamentalisms of all kinds can be enticing and touch a powerful inner need in most of us, especially when we're looking for answers in difficult and uncertain times. In the aftermath of Littleton, Colorado, Rep. Robert Barr of Georgia told a House hearing on gun control that if high schools were allowed to display the 10 Commandments, "we would not have the tragedies that bring us here today." Columnist, Richard Cohen reminds us that Joseph Stalin had earlier been a seminarian, and that as boy Adolph Hitler attended church regularly and sang in the choir. But I should add that we who call ourselves liberals also need to be mindful of our own fundamentalisms and easy answers.

But, back to this business about everything happening for a purpose. It reminds me of Candide, the satire written by Voltaire in 1759 attacking the religious and political orthodoxy of his day. You may recall that Candide's philosopher tutor, aptly named Pangloss, professed that this was the best of all possible worlds, and everything is for the best - indispensable and necessary. All manner of calamities happen for an end, and are a means toward the best end.

This kind of reasoning would suggest that had there not been ethnic cleansing, the long-standing problem of the Balkans would not have moved closer to a solution. Or, what happened in Littleton, Colorado may bring about more gun control. So, you see, everything is ultimately for the best.

Paul's letter, the Romans is probably the last he wrote to the churches, but it's the first letter in the New Testament, probably because it's the longest. He has been a missionary for more than 20 years, and writes to the church at Rome where he hopes to, but has not yet visited. This letter is perceived to be his legacy, his systematic theology, if you will, to the larger church. He is speaking and doing theology from his own experience and conviction, and out of his Jewish background with its emphasis on the Law, and from his experience in those gentile churches he founded. He is speaking to the two religious tendencies he has encountered: the legalistic tendencies of Jewish Christians, and the more libertarian proclivities of the gentile Christians in the Roman provinces. So, he fashioned a doctrine of justification (a legal term) through God's free and undeserved act in the death and resurrection of Jesus. His message is that we live under Grace, not Law; no longer in servile obedience to written codes. This is the good part. Then he speaks of the trials and afflictions of life that involve suffering, and require our perseverance. He certainly is speaking from his own experience of suffering and disciplined endurance. And, at times when he recounts all that he has been through, it does border on boasting. The implication for the reader is that these kinds of experiences are for testing and toughening us. And we endure because we can look forward to God's glory, which for Paul meant in the new age of the Spirit which was about to displace the present world.

In the Genesis story, this morning you'll recall there was also the reference to God's testing . In the aftermath of the President's admitting to his affair with Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Clinton said, "I've got to take this... I have to take this punishment. I don't know why God has chosen this for me... God is doing this... There is some reason."

I'm not sure we can attribute such things to God's testing us. What do we do with these stories of Paul's theology, or even that of Hillary Clinton?

The U.C.C. is not a doctrinal church. We are a covenanting body of people with an emphasis on the conscience of the individual. And we affirm with pastor John Robinson in his sermon to the Pilgrims as they left England, "God has yet more truth and light to break forth from his Holy Word."

Bishop Spong also reminded us that "the Christian faith is first and foremost the experience of God..." So, just as Paul's experiences and world views informed his thinking and theology, we too need to do theology in our own time, informed by our own history and experience. The feminist and liberation theologians have been especially helpful in reminding us that it is necessary / to do theology out of one's own experience, which is after all what we also have in the testimony of the scriptures.

Feminist theologian, Mary Hunt, speaks of theology as a reflection on ultimate meaning and value, and says that it is necessary for each of us to look at the patterns of meaning and value embedded in our own experience, and not merely that which comes to us from some other time, historical particularity, or another's personal experience and explanations of truth. Which is not to say that other's experiences and perceptions of truth do not inform and enlighten, provoke and expand our own thinking on such things. We must remind ourselves that we are also part of a larger faith history and tradition, connected even to that doctrinal and hierarchical church which led Archbishop Patrick A. O'Boyle in 1949 to order the integration of all Catholic schools and churches in the Archdiocese of Washington - five years before the Supreme Court's 1954 decision to end segregation in the nation's public schools.

For me, it is through being in relationship that something is disclosed about the ultimate meaning and value of existence, and that informs my experience of God. My own experience of a deeper truth has come through those relationships that have touched my life, through which I experienced what Paul Tillich called "the power of acceptance," where love appears to us and transforms us. For me it has come through parents, mentors, therapists, colleagues and friends, and the love of wife and family. It also has come in my own role as minister, therapist, friend, husband, father and brother. And more recently as grandfather. And.I can look back and say that even in that fundamentalist boy's club and church group of my youth, with all its scriptural literalism and rigid moralism, I experienced caring and connection and a compassion for the world. So, it is primarily in relationship that I experience the love of God.

Last Tuesday our staff here at CCC met for a day-long planning retreat. Linda Carder led us in a warm-up exercise. She handed to each of us a sheet of newsprint and spread out some crayons in front of us. Now, I don't know about you, but whenever I'm in a group and someone does this, I get nervous. I'm going to be asked to draw. And then I'm going to have to exhibit it and talk about it. Sure enough, Linda asked us to write or illustrate how we experience God and the Holy Spirit, as well as a couple of other questions. As each of us did our show-and-tell and described our responses, to a person we emphasized the importance of our relationships in our experience of God and the Holy Spirit. As it turned out I liked the exercise. Each of us was doing theology out of our own experience and learning more about and from each other.

But the question remains, "How do we deal with suffering and tragedy?" The truth is, life is not easy. We all must face difficulty, pain, and sorrow. And bad things do happen to good people.

Boast or rejoice in it? I don't think so. For me it has been the love of family and friends and that special community of people I have known through the church that helped me to hold on to some sense of meaning in the midst of my own struggles and loss - a little over ten years ago in the loss of a spouse; and most recently in the loss of my mother. Although I've been here but a short time, I've been deeply touched by the response of this church to my loss.

Paul says that we can boast or rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Well, that certainly was true for him, and most of us could point to things we've learned having gone through difficult experiences. Going through such things can foster growth and resilience, a different perspective and appreciation of life, a new sense of priorities. Some have even referred to their cancer as their friend for this very reason - it changed their life.

And maybe you read as I did the recent story in the Post about the mother and her 12 year old daughter both dealing with cancers. The daughter has leukemia, currently in remission. The mother has breast cancer and has just gone through a second mastectomy. Both speak of another year of survival and the hope for new treatments. Edlyn, the daughter said, "I'm very intensely interested in everything that happens every day... Because you never know what to expect." Her mother, Deborah, and husband, David, speak of the struggle they've been through: "If it doesn't tear you apart, it's got to bring you closer. We've been through a battle together...We knew we weren't alone That was key."

If there are any rewards in suffering, I think they are mostly retrospective, , hardly felt at the time.

And I still think cancer is the enemy. No one wishes for it. Do these experiences produce endurance and character? Yes, but I think this is over time and is a cumulative experience. And do endurance and character produces hope? This reminds me of an Eleanor Roosevelt quote I keep on my desk: "You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived though this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." But we must also remember that for some, suffering can result in trauma, depression and serious mental illness that stays with them.

I think that going through such experiences changes you. Things are never the same again.

In William Saroyan's delightful little novel, "The Human Comedy," was written in 1943 during the Second World War, the setting is in the central valley of California. Homer is a telegraph delivery boy, and he has to deliver a telegram from the War Department to a Mexican woman in town. It's informing her of the death of her son. As Homer rides his bike back to the telegraph office after delivering the telegram and experiencing the woman's sorrow, tears are coming out of his eyes. " When he got back to the office, the tears had stopped, but everything else had started, and he knew there would be no stopping them." That night Homer cries himself to sleep, and in the morning he talks to his mother about it. "I thought a fellow would never cry when he got to be a grown-up, but it seems that's when a fellow starts finding out about things." Mrs. MaCauley, his mother, says, "It was pity that made you cry, not just for this person, but for all things - for the very nature of things. Unless a man has pity, he is inhuman and not yet truly a man... a good man ; weeps at the world's pain... And a good man will seek to take pain out of things... None of us is separate from any other....Last night you cried because you began to know these things... and having known the world's grief, you are now on your way."

Jean Houston, in "The Wounded Healer," writes that "wounding opens the doors of our sensibility to a larger reality" beyond the boundaries of what we had previously been conditioned to see and hear. And it is those who have been wounded who seem to be most able to help others to see and to deal with the world as it is.

So, what we're really talking about here is not right answers or correct theology. If we do theology at all, it must be done from such experiences - experiences which touch us so deeply, beckon us and move us, and allow us to go on. I believe that it's love, that upon experiencing it, touches us so deeply and profoundly that we find ourselves responding to it and manifesting this same Spirit in our own lives. There is a timelessness in the life and message of Jesus. In spite of the tragedy of the crucifixion, his death was not the end. The love he revealed and lived called forth the church, the community that at its best echoes that love and calls attention to it.

The Apostle Paul sees the divine community of love as least partially present and realized in the church. And for him the Christian life is essentially life within that community. And within Paul says are to be found forgiveness, restoration to the joy of fellowship, and the experience of being at peace with God.

I see it also as a community of mutuality, and the caring and sustaining power of others. Life isn't easy. We need one another. We are made for loving and being loved. We need for others to be there with us in our joys and our sorrows at each stage of life, helping us to face things as they are; helping us to find meaning and purpose; and working together to build community and to act on behalf of the common good.

I think this is the experience of being held in, supported and growing in God's love. Sustained in that love, we have hope, and find the faith and courage to go on. Amen.

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