Genesis 29:15-28; Romans 8:26-39
As you’ve seen in the Messenger and in the bulletin this morning, Kansas City’s most
recent 100-year rain brought water into the building again. You’ll be happy to know the problem wasn’t with the recent fixes to the
drainage at the doorways below ground level.
Those fixes held, which is great.
Unfortunately, the water found a new way in, as the 7 inches of rain overwhelmed
the drains on two of our flat roofs, causing water to pool and then spill down
interior walls. We’ve been greatly
blessed by the quick work of junior warden Morgan Olander, our operations
manager Michael Robinette, and our friends from Haren Laughlin construction,
who were here anyway for the bathroom project.
We’re also blessed by the decision the Facilities Commission made, after
the last water incursion, not to put carpet back in the undercroft. So, the damage is being fixed, and we’re
exploring how to solve the drainage challenge on the flat roofs before the next
100-year rain comes next month. Just
call me Noah.
In the midst of it all, you can’t help but
ask the question, “What’s up with all this?”
We’ve wondered if maybe the church is sitting on some ancient burial
site, and the spirits of the dead are rebelling against us. But seriously, when you’re afflicted –
whatever the affliction – you look for answers.
Whenever and however hard times come, you can’t help but ask, “Where is
God in all this?”
So – rewind a couple of months to our
mission trip to Haiti. We tried something
we’d never tried before, taking youth and their parents to Haiti. Now, youth mission trips always bring the
possibility that things will go south, kids being kids. But add to that the uncertainties and
challenges of being in Haiti, no matter your age, and your mission trip becomes
a grand exercise in trust. Jean Long,
our youth formation coordinator, did a stunning job planning and executing the
trip – but it’s Haiti. There’s only so
much control you can exercise. In a place
with little infrastructure, where government is presumed to fail, where they’ve
had centuries of tension between social classes and precious little opportunity
for a better life, where simply disposing of the trash seems to be an obstacle
too great to overcome – in a context like that, you’re going to find challenges
even when you’re trying to do the right thing, even when you’re sent by God to
help build this holy relationship we share with our partners there.
So, driving through Port-au-Prince in the
late afternoon, we had a flat tire. Or,
I should say, we had a flat tire on one of our vehicles – a contraption that looked
like something from a Mad Max movie,
a vehicle we ended up christening “the Adventure Van.” And dealing with a flat tire in
Port-au-Prince doesn’t look like calling AAA.
Instead, four kids and I waited near the Adventure Van while a guy on
the sidewalk fixed the flat with some repurposed rubber and a blow torch. Remarkably, the patch held.
There were other dubious moments, too … such
as the food poisoning many of us got from the high-end resort where we went
swimming. And our truck got stuck in the
river at Maniche, a river swirling not just with mud but with the bacterium
causing cholera. Wading is not
advised. Put it all together, and it’s
enough to make you ask, “Where is God in all this?”
Listening to our reading this morning from
Genesis, I imagine Jacob might have been asking the same question about his
situation. As we heard last Sunday, Jacob
has traveled to Haran, in present-day Turkey, going back to his family’s land
to receive a wife from his kinsman, Laban.
Jacob strikes a deal with Laban for one of his daughters – that Jacob
will work for Laban seven years in exchange for Laban’s pretty daughter, Rachel,
the one Jacob loves. So Jacob fulfills
his obligation, and the time comes for the marriage. But Laban tricks Jacob and gives him his
older daughter, Leah, instead. Nothing
against Leah, but it’s a dirty trick – in fact, the same kind of dirty trick
that Jacob played on his older brother, Esau, to steal his birthright and his
father’s blessing. So Jacob the
trickster gets the poetic justice that’s coming to him, having to work for
Laban another seven years in order to
get the girl he loves, as well as Leah, which must have been interesting. And Jacob is not exactly pleased. I can imagine a few shouting matches between
Jacob and the Lord who had promised, “I am with you and will keep you wherever
you go” (Genesis 28:15). “Oh yeah?” says
Jacob. “Where were you when Laban
cheated me out of seven years of my life?”
Well, it turns out God finds a way to use
Jacob’s situation to bring new life out of manipulation and deceit. In a culture where children, especially sons,
meant wealth for the family as well as divine blessing, God gives Jacob 12 of
them. And those 12 sons become the
leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel. And
the last of them, Joseph, becomes the right-hand man to Pharaoh, saving all of
Egypt and the surrounding lands from famine.
Now, was God a fan of Laban’s deceitful behavior? For that matter, was God a fan of Jacob’s
deceit of his brother, Esau? I don’t
think so. But I do see God looking at those
situations, like a long-suffering parent watching headstrong children making
bad choices; and I imagine God saying, “Well, OK. We can work with this.”
You know, you can find Bible verses that might
lead you to think God scripts situations like this. We have one of those verses in our reading
from Romans this morning. In the
translation we heard, the New Revised Standard Version, it reads, “We know that
all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according
to his purpose” (8:28). Well, if “all
things work together for good,” many people would make the leap to say God must
be setting things up that way. But I
have to tell you, I don’t think that’s what this verse is saying. I don’t think God is a cosmic puppeteer,
pulling the strings to get Jacob to cheat Esau and Laban to cheat Jacob in
order to get to the outcome God wants. I
don’t believe God causes deceit or manipulation or suffering or pain. But I can tell you firsthand that God finds
ways to use them, like an artist piecing a mosaic together from bits of broken
glass.
On our trip to Haiti, plenty of things
went wrong … which meant there were plenty of opportunities for God to use them
for good. We found ourselves in the
Adventure Van with a flat tire in a poor section of Port-au-Prince as evening was
approaching – not exactly the situation I would have chosen. And yet, the flat happened literally right next
to a guy on the sidewalk whose microbusiness is fixing flat tires. That’s why he was there. Later, we found ourselves stuck in the middle
of a river full of bacteria, with the van unable to get traction to get to the
other side. And yet, people living
around the school came out of nowhere to push and pull the van onto dry
land. Our youth dealt with food
poisoning and seasickness and heat, to say nothing of inconvenience like they’d
never known. And yet, they came away
from the trip grateful for God’s abundance in their lives, and blessed by the
opportunity to play with kids at our partner school, and deeply aware that they
are part of a relationship much bigger than themselves, and able to take their trust
in God to a whole new level.
And that’s not all. The reality they saw on the ground in Maniche
only underscored the blessing our youth experienced: Our school has grown from about 180 students
with mediocre test scores to more than 300 students with the top scores in the
area. The church in Maniche used to have
a priest come every couple of months for Eucharist; they’ll soon be receiving
their own priest who will live and serve in that community – the church is
growing that much. So where is God? God is there,
bringing healing from brokenness, hope from despair.
Deep in the muck and mire of life, in all
the unfairness and tragedy and sorrow – we can count on God to be there. Think again about that verse from Romans I
mentioned. Romans 8:28 is one of the
defining, truly converting passages of Scripture for me, particularly if you
dig into the language a bit. In the
translation we heard, it says that “all things work together for good for those
who love God.” But if you go back to the
Revised Standard Version, the translation many say is closer to the original
Greek than the version we use, you find the verse given this way: “In everything, God works for good for
those who love him….” It’s not just
closer to the Greek; it’s closer to God’s mysterious truth. In everything, God works for good. Everything.
God isn’t necessarily causing those things, especially not the things
that bring us suffering and pain. But
God excels at working through them, even the things that cause us suffering and
pain.
From division comes healing; from darkness
comes light; from death comes life.
That’s our story because that’s God’s story. Whether it’s a flat tire in Port-au-Prince,
or food poisoning, or getting stuck in a river … or whether it’s receiving your
own challenging diagnosis, or having to leave the home you’ve loved for
decades, or feeling under assault by the water running through the church’s
hallways – no matter what, God is
there. And when God is there, God acts
for good. God can do nothing else,
because God is love lived in relationship.
God can’t help but bring healing out of brokenness, life out of
death. Even when, like Jacob, we shoot
ourselves in the foot and help bring on our own suffering, God looks at us like
a loving parent and says, “Ok … I can work with this.”
When we remember that in everything God is
working for good, we can rest in that promise even when we can’t yet see it
realized. For whether it’s a flat tire
in Haiti, or a frightening diagnosis, or water pouring in where it’s not
supposed to be, or “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness,
or peril, or sword … [nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God
in Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 8:35,39) Nothing.
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