"It Ain't Over Till It's Over"
Yogi Berra
Above him was an inscription that read,
“This is the King of the Jews.” The
rulers
sneered at him. The soldiers jeered at
him.
One of the criminals reviled him.
LUKE 23:35-43
Surely, you have heard the expression “God’s
ways are not our ways!” It means that God thinks differently from the way we
human beings think and God does things differently from the way human beings do
them. We see the most dramatic example
of just how differently God thinks in today’s feast of Christ the King. Christ our King is presented to us, stripped and
naked on a cross, dying in agony between two common criminals, spit running
down his face, a sarcastic note nailed above his head, a “crown” of thorns mockingly
hammered into his skull for all passers-by to laugh at! Now that’s not exactly how we picture
royalty! We are used to seeing them powerful, pampered and pompous! Our King is different, very different! “He bore our infirmities. He endured our sufferings. He was pierced for our offenses. He was
crushed for our sins. His chastisement made us whole. His stripes healed us.”
Without doubt “God’s ways are not our ways!” God does not think the way we
think!
But this unusual king thing is only one
example. God has always done this kind of stuff! Centuries ago, when God began to prepare a people from whom he would
send a savior, he chose Abraham and Sara, two childless senior citizens with
one foot in the grave! After choosing
this people as "his" people, they end up enslaved in a foreign
country. Even when they are led out of
slavery, God picks a man with a speech impediment to lead them. Even his
messengers, the prophets, were often than not hesitant, even whiny sometimes.
One had a dirty mouth. One tried to beg off as being too young and
inexperienced. Another tried to run and had to be chewed up and spit out on the
beach near Nineveh. Their most famous and beloved king, David, was a murderous
bigamist! Even when the birth of the
Savior of the world came, he was born not from among the rich and educated, not
at a state-of-the-arts birthing center with the best of doctors, but in a barn,
to a teen-ager, pregnant before marriage, away from home, after riding for
miles on donkey back! It just keeps going and going! Even before his birth, Mary predicted that
God’s ways would not be our ways. “The rich are pulled from their thrones and
the poor are lifted up from their manure heaps.” Again, in his ministry, God’s ways are not
our ways. Jesus was a layman, not a clergyman. He is kicked out of the
synagogue, rejected and hounded by the religious establishment. His closest
companions were a personnel department’s nightmare: a hated tax collector, a
liar, two mama’s babies, an agnostic, a former terrorist, and a petty thief, to
name a few! His closest friends were a
motley collection of the marginal type: prostitutes, lepers, the un-churched,
women and children, and the dirt poor of every kind. The gossip about him was that he “welcomed
sinners and ate with them,” helping him earn the reputation of being a “glutton
and drunkard.” That’s certainly not what
most people expect of God! But, “God’s ways are not our ways.” Even his final “big entry” into Jerusalem was
not in a gleaming chariot with white horses or on a golden throne carried by
slaves. No, he enters on the back of a jackass as people chanted, “Blessed is
the king who comes in the name of the Lord.”
No wonder most people missed this king. They
were looking in the wrong direction. They thought they knew how God would act.
They thought he would act as they would act.
As one preacher put it years ago, “In the beginning, God created us in
his own image and likeness and ever since we have been trying to create God in
our image and likeness!” Instead of thinking as God thinks, we try to make God
think the way we think. No wonder we experience God as absent, more than
present, in our lives! We keep trying to make God reasonable, we keep looking
for God among the rich, the beautiful, the self-righteous and the
powerful! No wonder Christianity is dead
in countries where power, prestige and money are prized, but alive and well and
growing in countries where the poor, the powerless and the suffering live. The
latter understand how God thinks! The former
is still trying to get God to think as they think! The rich and powerful and
beautiful and so-called smart people think they can do without God. The poor
and powerless know that they need God!
One the most common ways we do not think as
God thinks is when we think that God is absent when things go wrong and present
only when things go right. Looking back
over my own life, I can say with confidence that it was during those times that
God seemed most absent is when God was actually most active! I could not see it
at the time, but it is crystal clear from hindsight! (1) As I look back over my
life, especially over a sometimes very painful childhood lived out in the terror of what we would call today, psychological abuse. It was very painful and I would not want to
go through it again, but I have come to realize that God was certainly using it
to prepare me for helping hundreds of others as a priest. I can say with
certainty that that experience, and the triumph over it, has helped my
effectiveness as a priest more than any other thing! (2) When I was sent to the
home missions right after ordination, I certainly felt at the time that God
seemed to have abandoned me. In reality, looking back, God was extremely active
at that time in my life. God was preparing me for my life’s work as a preacher,
as a "revitalizer" of parishes and as a person sensitive to religious
prejudice. Looking back, I have realized over and over again, that that period
of my life was preparing me for what I have been doing ever since! (3) When my
beloved mother died of breast and brain cancer before my distant abusive
father, I felt that God was unfair! I felt that she deserved to have some time
of peace, some time to do the things she never got to do! Looking back, I
realize that God had a plan even there. Her death first gave me an opportunity
to be reconciled with my father, an opportunity that I took. If God had done
things the way I thought he should do them, I would not have had that chance
and I would still be carrying the anger and hate that I carried most of my
young life! It was an unexpected gift for which I am truly thankful!
On this Feast of Christ the King, a feast in
honor of the king that is the reverse of how we think of kings, we are
challenged to think differently about God. It’s message is simple: God’s ways
are not our ways, it is precisely when we feel God most absent, is when God is
most present! So I say to all of you who have things going on in your life that
you don’t like, things that make you feel that God is absent, just wait! Trust
God! I believe that you will someday realize that, even in times of loss and
tragedy, God is very active. Scriptures
tell the story in a million ways: God’s ways are not our ways! Contrary to
popular opinion, breakdown is a sure sign of a breakthrough, there is a crown
on the other side of every cross, resurrection on the other side of death! That heart attack may just wake you up to
what’s really important! That relationship breakup may be the best thing that
ever happened to you! That firing may just take you to the best job you ever
had! That unexpected death may bring you closer to others! Ugly ducklings today may just turn out to be
swans tomorrow! Getting what you want may turn out to be your worst nightmare!
That child that disappointed you most may just turn out to be the child that
makes you most proud! That feeling of God being absent, may be the beginning of
feeling closer to God than ever! Never underestimate the value of a so-called
tragedy! God’s ways are not our ways!
The official blessing and partnership handshake. 
