Message by Pastor John Culp : March 16, 2008
Behold, I Tell You a Mystery – Part 7”
Text – James 5:13-20
Most of us are old enough to remember well the concern a few years back, verging in some quarters on hysteria, surrounding the so-called ‘Y-2K’ crisis. You’ll recall that in the months (really, through the years!) leading up to January 1, 2000, a growing fear gripped not only these United States, but much of the developed world.
Then as now, our world was massively dependent on computers. The concern was that because of the way computer systems had developed back in the Dark Ages of the 1970s and even the 1960s, those computers would be unable to cope with the turn of the century. I guess the fear was that large numbers of the machines would explode after being unable to figure out whether it was January 1, 2000 – or January 1, 1900.
As it turned out, all the consternation seems a bit silly from this vantage point. I’m still not sure whether the crisis didn’t develop because there was no real crisis, or because all the hoopla led people to take the necessary steps that averted it.
In any case, the so-called crisis called attention to – and probably swelled the ranks of – the most fiercely independent group of people in our society. Some call them ‘survivalists.’ They thought that the looming Y-2K crisis was the societal meltdown they’d always known was coming. They expected that a massive computer crash would ignite a complete breakdown of all law and order. Since they knew that under such circumstances they could not depend on anyone else, they determined to be prepared to go it totally alone.
You can imagine this epitome of rugged individualism as he anxiously counts down the days and then the hours leading to the new millennium, hunkered down in his isolated compound, depending there on nobody and on nothing but his own wits. He’s surrounded by a chain link fence made from steel produced by workers in Korea and assembled by people at a factory near Pittsburgh. He’s well-supplied with food produced by farmers in twenty states and three foreign nations, freeze-dried by workers at a plant in Oklahoma. He stands ready to defend himself and his family with weapons and ammunition produced by craftsmen in Massachusetts.
My point is that even for the most fiercely ‘independent’ among us, any perception of real independence is pure illusion!
This somber season of Lent is an appropriate time for us to consider, as we have been doing, a somber topic – suffering. Not only is the whole matter somber; it’s also mysterious. Sin and suffering really raise for us some terribly deep questions: Is God not powerful enough to prevent such things? Or even worse, is there a dark side to God? Is our little exercise at the start of worship each Sunday just wishful thinking? What if it turns out that God is not really good, all the time?
The Bible, of course, is sure that neither is the case! God has His reasons for such mysteries, and through these weeks of Lent we’ve tried to find some in the pages of Scripture. We have noted already that the universality of human sin takes away any imagined right we might have to demand or expect nothing but good from our holy God. We’ve seen as well that there is surely a deep mystery to this whole subject, that there are truths here that we will likely never fully fathom, this side of eternity. We have also discovered that God uses hardship to draw us closer to Himself; to make us better; and ultimately, to bring glory to Himself.
Today we’re going to look at a truly redemptive purpose God has for adversity in our lives. It turns out that it’s not just the survivalist who imagines he can go it all alone. In the face of our cherished illusions of independence, God wants to accomplish in our lives something very good out of something that surely seems to be very bad:
God uses hardship in our lives to remind us that
we depend upon each other, and ultimately, on Him.
Let’s open our eyes and ears, as well as our hearts and minds, to grow further in our understanding of this life-giving mystery.
James makes it clear that hardship in our lives should draw us closer to one another. He speaks specifically of the hardship of illness. You heard his prescription for the sick. He tells them first not to call the doctor, or to rest and drink plenty of fluids. James urges them to call for the elders of the church, who will pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. James would surely agree that one good thing that can come out of our suffering is that it makes us realize how much we need one another!
Now James certainly does not claim that all sickness is the direct result of some specific sin. In that he’s merely following the teaching of his Lord Jesus, which Jan helped us see last week in the story of the man born blind (John 9).
At the same time, James knows that there is indeed a general connection between sickness and sin. So the thought of illness leads James to bid us to regularly confess our sins to one another and pray for each other. The major life principle James wants us to see here is that specific needs in our lives (in particular illness and the awareness of our own sin) should not make us turn inward, to draw on our own resources. Rather, those needs call us to look to the community of faith.
I’ve seen all of this at work countless times, and I trust you have as well. I want to tell you that my heart is genuinely warmed time and time again when I witness the many quiet acts of compassion sisters and brothers in Christ in this church do for one another – especially in times of sickness and other pressing needs. How many visits have I heard of; how many cards and phone calls; how many meals delivered to the home? At those times I find myself thinking: That’s the church being the church Jesus created us to be!
When we reach out to each other like this, as we so often do in times of illness and hardship, we’re meeting immediate, concrete needs. And that is a wonderful blessing! But on a deeper level, we are also providing a very helpful reminder: We really do depend on one another. That’s one tremendously redeeming value to whatever suffering or hardship God sends into our lives.
Ultimately, God designs all this to impress upon us how much we need Him.
You probably noticed the strong emphasis throughout this text on prayer. The elders who are summoned to a sick bed turn not to any healing remedies they may know. They cry out in faith to the Great Physician! True, they may anoint the afflicted one with oil. But they would surely acknowledge that even if God uses that oil in the whole recovery process, He is the one who gives the healing.
James bids us to confess our sins to one another. But as with all prayers, the object of our attention is always our loving Father God. You know as well as I do that sickness and hardship in general often drive us to our knees in prayer. That’s a good thing, because to pray is to acknowledge our dependence upon the God whom we address in prayer.
Today of course is Palm Sunday. Janice read the story for us earlier (Mark 11:1-11). Now we can view that ancient story from any number of perspectives. We might concentrate on the symbolism of the way Jesus chose to enter Jerusalem. We might focus of the striking actions of the crowd who greeted Him: waving leafy branches and humbly making a ‘red carpet’ for Him with their own garments. Or we could consider the horror of the way a very different crowd in just a few days will cry out for the blood of that same Jesus.
But in light of our focus today, I would encourage you to think seriously about what the people specifically say to the Messiah as He rides into the city. They invoke the 118th Psalm as they cry out, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD! . . .” (Mark 11:9; cf. Psalm 118:25-26). In the Psalter that psalm is the last of six associated with the celebration of Passover.
Look in particular at that word Hosanna. It’s the Greek transliteration of Aramaic words for ‘Save now, O LORD!’ No doubt it is true that there were serious political overtones in the crowd’s plea for salvation as they quoted the psalm. We do well to come to Jesus with the very same appeal – but to take the perspective of eternity as we do. Fundamental to any plea for salvation, of course, is the recognition that one needs to be saved! Never forget that you desperately need – as do I – to fall before Jesus Christ making just such an appeal, because we have precisely that need. Let the palm branch that you take from worship today remind you both of that great need, and of the even greater provision God has made for that need in His beloved Son.
In big ways and small, we really do tend to imagine that we can make it on our own. God uses a number of tools to correct that foolish error. Suffering and hardship are among His most powerful! Jesus says to us: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). If your illness or my hardship of whatever type make us realize how desperately we really do need God; if they make us ‘poor in spirit,’ be sure of this: we are truly blessed.
This homeland of ours has known no time of national crisis to match the perilous days of the Civil War, when the very survival of the union hung in the balance. In the midst of that boiling cauldron, in 1863 President Lincoln designated April 30th as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. Think of that for moment: National humiliation, fasting, and prayer. Here is a portion of his proclamation on that occasion:
It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, who owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by a history that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. The awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has grown, but we have forgotten God.
(quoted by Richard Halverson in “The Question Facing Us,” Preaching Today, Tape 46.)
One New Year’s Day out in Pasadena a number of years ago, the Tournament of Roses Parade ground to a halt. A beautiful float that was part of the parade suddenly came to a stop. Its problem was really quite simple: The truck that was underneath all those gorgeous roses was out of gas. The whole parade was held up until someone could run and get a can of gas. And the ironic thing about it all was that the float represented the Standard Oil Company. With all its vast oil resources, its truck was out of gas. And without that vital fuel, the beautiful float dead in the water.
(Steve Blankenship, in Leadership, Vol. 6, no. 1.)
Without God in your life, you’re not going anywhere either. Time and again, God uses suffering and hardship in our lives to remind us that we depend in large measure on one another, and ultimately that we depend on Him for all things – even for life itself.
You probably know that we witnessed another ‘parade’ of sorts here in Grove City just last Saturday. The solemn procession of fire trucks that wound its way down Broad Street last week was a very fitting tribute to Brad Holmes, Eva Holmes’ grandson, the young man who lost his life serving this community.
But that ceremony did something more than merely honoring a fallen hero. It gave powerful testimony to the tremendous solidarity of the nationwide community of firefighters. When one of their own is struck down in the line of duty, you can be sure that they will be there for each other.
But that sense of community, that reliance upon one another is not something on display just in times of tragedy. It’s woven into the very fabric of who they are. Every time a company is called to a fire of any significant size, they immediately put in place a tight accountability system. Each firefighter is on a team, of two or more. Each firefighter has two tags. At the fire they have an accountability officer. Each firefighter keeps one tag, and he gives one tag to the accountability officer, who always knows where each team is. Every twenty minutes or so, the accountability officer calls ‘Par;’ at which point every team’s leader radios in to confirm that all are accounted for. There are always some firefighters assigned to what’s called the Rapid Intervention Team (RIT), with the specific assignment of standing by, prepared to rush in if any team turns up missing.
Any fireman who wanted to be a Lone Ranger, who insisted on working alone would be told in no uncertain terms to stay back at the station!
Greg Merkle, one of our elders, explained all this to me. You may know that Greg has been a volunteer firefighter for many years. He knows firsthand the grave danger inherent in any fire. Back in the summer of 1986, Greg was injured severely when the chimney of a burning building fell on him. The ferocious destructive power of the enemy they battle makes firefighters pay such attention to accountability; it forces them to realize how much they depend on one another.
The enemy with whom we do battle day in and day out is no less powerful! In the fight of our lives, we need to rely on one another. We do depend fully on God – whether at any moment we recognize it or not. If God uses suffering and hardship in our lives to impress that lesson on us, we are blessed indeed in Him.
Let us pray: Thank You, Father God, for placing us in this wonderful community of faith, this glorious Body of Christ, so that we can depend on each other and care for one another. Thank You that we do depend fully upon You, and that You are always willing and able to deliver us. Please forgive us when we foolishly forget any of this! Help us to see that You often use the hard times in our lives to remind us of our need for each other, and of our ultimate dependence on You. Please draw us closer always to Jesus, as we cry out to Him to save us, and as we grow to realize more and more that He is just the Savior we need. We ask it in His strong name. Amen.