Every time we get the idea that we have things the way we want them, something disrupts our plans and we are tempted by the illusion of our own self-importance to cry out at the injustice of it all and to claim our place as victims of oppression. The sad reality is that the things that disrupt our plans and spoil the happy endings to our lives have become increasingly trivial and trite. They are hardly the great burdens that the people of old lived with and more often the rather pathetic lament of feelings that are either hurt or not honored or ignored. How sad it is when we retreat into the myth of our self-importance and waste our time with the endless complaints of our bruised egos or wounded spirits at not getting what we want!
The message of Scripture counters this with profound truth. Joseph's trouble with his brothers which seem to end with his being sold into slavery ends up with this amazing conclusion. What was meant for harm, God used for good. In other words, it was not about me. It was about something far bigger than me. In the end Joseph could not even muster up hate for his brothers and welcomed them into the realization that this whole torrid event in their lives was being used by God for the good of many. That did not diminish Joseph in any way but ended up ennobling his life and setting him free from his pain, his anger, his bitterness, his resentment, and his pursuit of justice (otherwise known as revenge). Read it again in Genesis 37-50. It is a long story because it has a powerful truth to tell.
Jesus says the same thing -- the Son of God insists that the Father has plans of which He is not privy and though He is God in flesh, He does not strive for the equality that is His given. Instead He lays aside that right in pursuit of submission for the saving will and work of the Father. His words are not His but the Father's and His works are not His but the Father's. Jesus is not afraid of this nor does He hesitate to place Himself in the servant's form and place for the higher good of our salvation. It is the great mystery of humility that is content not to be the star of the story, to have every good line in the script, and to make all the action about Himself. In the end, it is this that the Father celebrates in giving Him the name above all names. Read the Gospels and see how this is characteristic of our Lord.
In the Book of Acts, read throughout the Easter season, we hear this over and over again. Pentecost and the thousands who come to faith through the one sermon of St. Peter gives way to several chapters of growth in which the apostles find it impossible to do it all and set apart deacons to aid them in the work God has given them to do. One of them is a shining star, Stephen, whose zeal for the Lord is not without notice amongst the enemies of the Church as well as those who placed him in office. In the midst of it all is another enemy shrewd enough to stand aside when the dirty work was being done and who then, in the miracle of grace, becomes a shining star to finish the work of Jesus in preaching the Gospel first from Judea to Samaria to the Gentile ends of the earth.
Philip heads to Samaria in fulfillment of Jesus promise but the work there must be completed with the requisite signs that connect this mission to Pentecost and the same will have to happen before the Gentiles are also sealed in the greater plan and purpose of God. But it happens amidst persecution, ethnic division, martyrdom, and conflict. Why would the Lord put thorns in the side of the Body of Christ with such things? Could it be even the Church needs to know we are not the stars of the story or the main characters in God's unfolding plan? Could it be that when it is about us, the same problems the world encounters become the mainstay of our life within the Church?
The main problem of the liberal and progressive Gospel and the evangelical focus on self-improvement or reaching your goals and getting what you want out of this life is that these feed the lie that we are the stars and the main characters in our stories. We do not need to be told that our feelings matter -- that is the default that sin has placed in us that must constantly be countered with the Word of the Lord that endures forever. We do not need to be told that we are the central and main characters in our lives -- that is the whispered prompt from Satan telling us that it is our story, that we matter most of all, and that we have to have the most lines and the best plots in that story. But the work of God is to daily confront this lie with the truth. We do not matter. Our lives do not matter. Christ matters and His life in us is what matters.
It ought to be the lesson of the pandemic as well as the fruit of our Christian experience in the faith. But too many have distorted and even hijacked God's narrative to substitute our stories. It is the great deception and probably the reason Satan's workload has been eased. We are so caught up in our own inhumanity that we have routinely accepted the lies that killing the life in the womb is health care, that feelings define gender, that desire is all equally good and valid, that the path to justice is different injustice, that science is the only truth that matters, that technology is always good and improves life, and so many more.
He who endures to the end shall be saved. In the end, we do not triumph. Christ does. Faith acknowledges that His triumph is our only victory. So what matters most of all is abiding in Him so that He may abide in us. We do this through our life together around and in His Word and Sacraments. By these means of grace our vision is turned to see Jesus when our feelings and reason see only defeat and obstacle and pain. The goal of the Spirit in our lives is to bring us to where Joseph was -- to the wisdom of faith that says ah, yes, now I get it; what was meant for harm God used for good. That is the most important chapter that gets written in your life or my life so far -- not what we think or have experienced or feel but God's mighty act of deliverance in Christ. Some of us get there sooner than others. I fear I am a late bloomer to this but it is my greatest comfort and I hope yours.
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