Letting Go of the Rules and Raising the Kid We Actually Have: (a jaunty little sermon about the apocalypse)

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
November 17, 2024
Proper 28
Daniel 12:1-3
Psalm 16
Mark 13:1-8

So, having kids is kind of a crazy thing. We had our first over 16 years ago, and as much preparation as we put into having that little guy, it was still the absolute end of one age and the beginning of another once he was born. On the one hand, the instant I held him for the first time, I felt this burst of love suddenly happen inside of me. I loved him and found him more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen. At the same time, when the nurses said it was time for us to leave the hospital and go home with our baby boy, I thought they must be joking and that they might should be held liable for gross negligence for leaving us with this baby, when they obviously knew what they were doing, and we obviously didn’t.

Being at home with our infant son, we quickly found that freedom and time to rest without responsibility was gone. There were times I’d look on with nostalgic jealousy at our non-babied friends, thinking, “whatever happened to that life?”, while still loving our son more than anything.

Yes, having a child was the end of an age for my wife and me and the beginning of another age. We prepared, we read books, we got lots of unasked-for advice from lots of well-meaning people, and I remembered how my parents raised me, so I had some idea of what to do. We tried out all of the parenting techniques we knew and had learned. Some of it worked. Some of it really, really didn’t, and I found that raising this kid was a lot different than my parents raising me. The stuff they did with me, it didn’t work with him. 

That gave me a lot of anxiety because raising my son wasn’t going according to the rules I knew. So eventually, I had to let get go of some of those child-rearing rules and learn to raise this particular child. I had to trust him to be who he was, even if who he was didn’t fit into parenting rules that I knew. 

I bring this up because when Jesus talked about the end of one age and the coming of a new age, he talked about violent upheaval and he called all of that violent upheaval, “birthpangs.” “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” He paints a pretty frightening picture talking about wars and rumors of wars, but he likens the whole thing to giving birth. 

The whole giving birth process kinda sucks. Painful, body stretching in ways it just doesn’t fully snap back from, the baby kinda violently thrust out of its comfortable, safe home into this crazy world of ours…and then there’s new life. One age has ended, and a new age begins with new life. 

Daniel spoke of new life at the end of the ages in his prophecy which we heard today. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Again, part of that sounds awesome, part of it, kind of less awesome. Daniel writes of the end of the life that we know and the beginning of some new kind of life. 

What will that be like? What exactly does Daniel mean? Well, the most honest answer is, “we don’t exactly know,” but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to figure it all out. Looking at the passages from Daniel and looking at other parts of scripture which describe life after this life, the church and various groups within the church have come up with all sorts of explanations and rules. Explanations of what life after death will be like, and rules about how to end up with everlasting life, not everlasting contempt. 

You’ve got to believe in Jesus in just the right way or be baptized in just the right way. You’ve got to be among God’s elect, or you’ve got to choose Jesus. You’ve got to make sure you don’t backslide, or if you do, you’ve got to make sure to repent before you die. Many churches have gotten pretty exact in describing exactly how the eternal life rules work so folks can be assured that they have eternal life because they believe in Jesus and have done all these things. 

The problem with all of these explanations and rules is that they are based in fear and anxiety. The idea of being raised to everlasting contempt sounds awful, and we should take that judgment seriously. We should take seriously the cruelty and injustice, the selfishness and violence that lead to everlasting contempt. We should take seriously God’s call to turn from cruelty and injustice. We should take seriously God’s call to turn from selfishness and violence. 

What we might shouldn’t do is make absolute doctrine and rules about how precisely to avoid being raised to shame and everlasting contempt. The rules and doctrine may help alleviate our fear of God’s judgment, but what happens is, we end up with our faith in rules and doctrine, rather than faith in God. Having some notion of doctrine around the end times is fine, but eventually we’ve got to just put our trust in God. Let our anxieties go, give our anxieties to God, not to doctrine and rules, and trust God with any new age to come.

The same is true for what Jesus taught. Countless ages have come and gone since Jesus said these words about the end of the age, and every time, folks have said that the end of their age was the one Jesus was talking about. Folks have looked to many descriptions of the end times in the Bible, and they’ve picked them apart and analyzed them, and they’ve said quite confidently, “See! It’s all happening now. This is the end Jesus was talking about!” Well, so far, everyone who has said that has been wrong. There have been many ages of humanity that have come and gone in the last 2000 years, and none of them have been the end that Jesus was talking about. 

We’ve got lots of images and texts to analyze to try to figure out which end of an age will be the end Jesus was talking about, and the only thing we know for certain is that we’re never going to know, and we’re going to be wrong every time. Jesus said that he didn’t even know when that end was going to be, and we think we’re going to figure it out? 

That not knowing can leave us with a bit of anxiety…so we naturally try to figure it out, get right with God before the end, etc. Again, that ends up placing our faith in rules and doctrine before our faith in God. 

Like rules and advice for parenting, it’s helpful, but eventually you’ve got to learn to parent the kid you’ve got. 

Having some notion of doctrine around the end times is fine, but eventually we’ve got to just put our trust in God. Let our anxieties go, give our anxieties to God, not to doctrine and rules, and trust God with any new age to come, trusting that whatever else the new age of God’s ultimate kingdom will be, it will be an age of new life. Like a baby being born, the new age of life fully lived in God’s kingdom will be the end of the life we know, and this new life will more beautiful and more beloved than anything we have ever known. 

Trusting in God, Neither Tame Nor Tidy

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets

June 16, 2024

Proper 7, Year B

Job 38:1-11

Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32

Mark 4:35-41

“The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?’” (Job 38:1) Well, Job and Job’s friends were the ones who darkened counsel by words without knowledge. When things first went really badly for Job, his family had been killed, his land and livelihood destroyed, his friends sat quietly with him for days. At that point, they were being great friends. Then they stared opening their mouths, telling Job all the self-righteous platitudes that they knew. They kinda had to because without that, there wouldn’t have been a story. 

See, Job was written as a story meant to be told to give lessons. It’s probably not a true story. So, the story is set up with God and Satan, “The Adversary,” making a wager about whether or not Job, who was a righteous man, would curse God, if all he had was taken away. Satan figured he would, God figured he wouldn’t. This opening to the story shows right off the bat that the tragedy which happened to Job was not because he was sinful. He was absolutely righteous, and tragedy still struck him.

A prevailing thought among some religious folks is that if you’re bad, bad things are gonna happen to you, and if you’re good, good things are gonna happen to you. Right off the bat, the story of Job tells us that ain’t true. 

There was also the question of praising God, and why wouldn’t Job praise God? He’d been blessed beyond measure and never had the slightest reason not to praise God. In the end, with everything taken from him, Job didn’t curse God, but he did put God to the test. Job’s question was basically, “How could you possibly let this happen to me, God? Do you have any justice at all?”

With God’s reply, Job realized that his simplistic view of the world didn’t hold water. As Moshe Greenberg points out on the website, “MyJewishLearning.com,” Job had been so fortunate his whole life, he had never even considered why people who had suffered tragedy might praise God. Before tragedy struck him, Job had been right there with his friends claiming to understand God and God’s world. They all figured Job was blessed because he was righteous, and others who weren’t as blessed as Job were obviously less righteous than Job. Through Job’s experience of loss, Job, his friends, and we the readers see that the world is not so simple as good people are blessed and bad people are cursed. We are shown the fact that there are terrible things that happen to people, and it is not necessarily God’ will or the people’s fault that those tragedies happen. Bad things happen. Period. Through the story of Job, we’re able to face the reality that the world and God’s actions in the world are far more complex than we like to imagine. 

God’s favor is not always seen in life going well. Tragedy is not understood as God’s punishment for sin. We might shouldn’t boast too greatly about our knowledge of how exactly God works in this world, lest like Job and his friends, we darken counsel by words without knowledge. 

As I’ve said before, our brains crave certainty and for things to fit in nice, tidy categories, with everything making easy, understandable, rational sense. Unfortunately for our poor little brains, God doesn’t tend to fit into our comfortable little boxes of easy, understandable rationality. We want God tame and tidy, and God just isn’t tame and tidy.

So, here are some of the tame and tidy platitudes we like to use for God. “Something bad or good happened because God needed it to happen.” “They were bad, so God was judging them.” “God has a reason he put you through that tragedy.” “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” 

All of these platitudes point to some aspects of truth about God that we’re given in scripture, and all of these platitudes are darkening counsel by words without knowledge. These simple statements we use to define how God works in the world are ways we try to make sense of our world and try to make sense of God. Unfortunately, these platitudes are also ways we try to control God, to keep God tame and tidy so we can keep some feeling of control over a world we neither control nor understand.

Defining how exactly how God works in the world according to our understanding is ultimately a form of rebellion against God, because we aren’t admitting our lack of knowledge and our powerlessness. By claiming to know how the tame and tidy God works, we’re seeking power and knowledge over God which we do not possess. 

Then, as if that isn’t enough, we often claim to know how God’s judgment works not only on earth in this life, but into eternity as well. 

How often do we hear people talking about who will be going to Hell when they die? We’ve got whole doctrines in the church defining who goes to Heaven, who goes to Hell, and exactly how that all works. That work is darkening counsel by words without knowledge. Scripture specifically tells us not to ask such questions, Romans 10:6.

See, the thing is, we don’t know exactly how God’s judgment and mercy work, and we don’t need to. We aren’t taught to understand exactly how God works. We are taught to trust in Jesus and follow his ways. 

Why? Why are we taught to trust in Jesus? We see in today’s Gospel story and our story from Job, why we would trust in Jesus. At the end of Job, Job is reminded that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about because he wasn’t there when God made the seas and determined just how far they would stretch, what their limits would be. The seas obeyed God’s voice in creation.

Then, in our story from Mark, we hear about the seas obeying the voice of Jesus. A windstorm arose as Jesus and his disciples were in a boat on the sea, and Jesus basically said to the seas, “Shut up! Quiet down. Be at peace,” and the seas obeyed Jesus’ voice.

“Were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God asks Job. In our Gospel reading, we find that Jesus’ answer to that question is “yes.” “Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Jesus’ disciples asked. He was the one who laid the foundations of the earth and told the seas, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,

and here shall your proud waves be stopped.”

We’re taught to trust in Jesus because unlike all of our tame and tidy versions of God, Jesus actually is God and actually did lay the foundations of the earth. So, rather than try to keep God in our tame and tidy boxes of understanding like Job and his friends did, we are encouraged to marvel at God with awe and wonder, as Jesus’ disciples did. 

Rather than trusting our tame and tidy understandings of God, we are asked to trust in God, to trust in God’s goodness, as unfathomable as that sometimes is. We’re called to trust in God’s love which extends far beyond and is much wilder than we can conceive of. 

We are called to accept our limitations. We’re called to accept our lack of knowledge. Rather than put our trust in doctrine which is often used to explain why we are right and others are not, rather than put our trust in that tame and tidy doctrine, we are called to put our trust in God who is neither tame nor tidy. We are called to put our trust in God who is good and loving. 

Who is this Jesus, that even the winds and the seas obey him? I can’t tell you exactly, but I can tell you that I trust Jesus. I trust him for being there when the foundations of the world were laid, and I trust him for his goodness and his love.