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 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, 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
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, 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 very painful childhood lived out in
an atmosphere of psychological abuse at home and in minor seminary, I remember the pain of it and I would
not want to go through it again. However, 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 going through those experiences, and the triumph over them, 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. Its
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!
No comments:
Post a Comment