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 the blood-matted hair of his head for all passers-by to laugh
at! Now that’s not exactly how we
picture royalty! We are used to seeing kings 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!
However, 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 ready for 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, more 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 swallowed 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 teenager,
pregnant before marriage, away from home, after riding for miles on donkey
back for miles! 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, we see that God’s ways are not
our ways. Jesus was a layman, not a clergyman. He was 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 painful childhood lived out in an atmosphere of almost daily psychological rage. 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!
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!
