Justified By Complaint February 24, 2008

Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
Observing people this week, was like witnessing deer in our headlights, unable to move, watching as life continues to come at us, and we never seem satisfied, joyful, even happy. We have reached that point in LENT when it is hard to imagine EASTER will ever come. February 2nd the Ground Hog saw his shadow, yet according to the DOPPLER Forecasts we are still in for another 6 to 8 weeks of cold. The candidates are campaigning, the war continues, the economy has not changed.

The first week of Lent, we recited the story of Adam and Eve and their desire to be God.
The nature of our existence has been that there are LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES and there are PROHIBITIONS, All things are Possible, but not all things are GOOD!
The Second Sabbath of Lent, we recalled our ancestors Abraham and Sarah, who lived with the promise for over twenty years, who, worried from waiting, got a child by their own means, only to have God gift them with a miracle when Abraham was 100.

This morning, we remember another of the ancient stories from which we are challenged to hope to become the People of God, a RESURRECTION PEOPLE, ather than those who go through the motions of life like deer in the headlights.
Our ancestors were oppressed Hebrew slaves of the Pharaoh of Egypt, whose entire existence had become building mauselium pyramids for the Pharaohs' burial. The people cried out to God, and God not only appointed for them a leader: Moses, God set them free! God decimated the Egyptians to free the enslaved. God brought them into a wilderness, where they could live free in relation with God. BUT, where God intended the people to live free in relation with God, the people sought a utilitarian faith... We were enslaved and God set us free, when we are hungry God can give us food, when we are thirsty God can give us drink. Just as with ADAM, Just as with ABRAM, the people sought to SATISFY THEIR DESIRES, to act as if WE WERE GOD and Almighty God were our enslaved genie.

We do not mean to make light of their needs, Abram and Sarah had been with God, holding onto a promise for over 20 years. Moses and the people were in the wilderness without food, without water where people die of MALNUTRITION & DEHYDRATION. According to Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs, Humanity cannot perceive the need for God, for bettering our selves or improving the world unless our most basic needs are met.

We are a people, whose basic needs are met.
For 99 cents we can have a hamburger cooked our way, flame broiled never fried. By pressing a spot on the refrigerator door, by lifting lever, we can have fresh pure water when ever we desire. According to the ads in magazines, on television, even at the movies, if we buy this hair conditioner, this toothpaste, this suit, this breakfast cereal, our lives will be changed forever. Even if we do not buy, if we lease the latest car, at 0% interest after we pay $3000 plus taxes, title and fees, we can have beautiful companions, clear skin and the freedom to drive off into the sunset. You don't buy it?

How can we be satisfied? How can we be changed from a needy people of wants and desires, into a people of God? The first and most problematic step is whether we know and admit to ourselves, we sin? In a time in history when we are surrounded by messages that we can have it all, we can deny what bothers us, we can horde what we have, we can indulge and never grow old, Christian faith begins with the reality, we are human, mortal, finite, and as such we sin. By thought, by word, by deed, even by avoidance, we try to convince ourselves and the world around us, we are immortal and invincible, we are as God. But, we each come to realize, when the conditioner has worn off, when the car has become old and we continue to pay, when we have had the same breakfast cereal every day, when we feel isolated and alone, we need God to be God, it is hard enough just being human. That awareness is a gift of Grace.
How can we be satisfied, how can we be justified, how can we be changed?
While Martin Luther named 95 specific issues, THIS was the fundamental separation of Catholic and Protestant from the 1500s until 2000. Luther and the Protestant Churches emphasized that we are SAVED by GRACE, an unmerited gift from God, whereas the Catholic Church had emphasized we are SAVED by WORKS of FAITH, atoning for our sins. Ultimately, after 500 years of argument the two sides realized, “We are saved by Grace, which causes us to fulfill acts of Faith.”

Were Luther to pen his theses today, it seems the common belief is not that we are Saved by Grace or by Faith or Works but that we JUSTIFY our existence by COMPLAINT.
It is not enough for us to have our needs and desires met, we want them remembered and honored, as being ours. We live in a competitive world, striving to have more, faster, to win the game of Life. Yet how small a conflict or controversy, to turn us from a contest into a fight for survival, and survival not only for our position but for the memory of what we endured.

Yet the Apostle Paul, turned this idea around. He saw our COMPLAINT, our SUFFERING as being vitally important for the human condition. None of us would be so inhuman as to cause sufering, or to wish suffering upon another. But the fact of the matter is that SUFFERING produces not only PATIENCE but ENDURANCE and PERSISTANCE and PERSEVERANCE which cannot be known, which we could never intuitively deduce except through that purification process like steel being forged of alloy, a person becoming resolved.

There are times when life seems mundane. When we go through the motions of work, of relationships, even as parents and family to one another, complaining about existence. But for us to reach EASTER, is not simply a matter of waiting another 23 days, coloring eggs and hiding chocolate; this is a dedicated period for REFLECTION, for REDEMPTION, for questioning what do I truly want to believe and work to accomplish?

It almosts sounds like a bad joke, but several years ago, University Hospital invited a Rabbi, a Priest, a Muslim Iman and a Presbyterian Minister to address questions from Medical Students about the importance of SUFFERING. The address began quite benign as the Rabbi named the SUFFERING OF JOB questioning God, Why bad things happen. Then the Priest naming that Christ suffered and died for us on the Cross, that humanity never need suffer again. Then the Muslim Imman named that according to the KORAN suffering is redemptive, it is important for the one who is ill to suffer in order to get better. The Medical Students became alarmed, never wanting to allow the Imman into a patient's room for fear what he might do to them to help them suffer! Then the Presbyterian quoted this passage from Paul, interpreting that “YES, Sufering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and Character produces hope and Hope cannot dissapoint because God's love is manifest in all this.”

So often we believe we know who we are and what we are to do, because we have our routines. In Sudan, each morning and each evening we would turn on the generator for electricity, and as if a warning bell suddenly women and young children would come running with their buckets knowing that water could be pumped from the well.

On his journeys, Jesus walked through a village of the Samaritans. His Disciples went on into the village to find food to eat, but he sat by the well in the noonday sun. A woman came to fetch water as she had every day of her life, when Jesus asked her for a sip of water. She snidely cursed how no one had use for the Samaritans, looking down upon them as a race, but when they wanted a drink of water I guess we are good enough to fetch and carry. Persevering Jesus challenged her, IF you knew whom you were talking with, you would not be content to fetch water to satisfy a drink, you would ask from him the grace which is LIVING WATER and he would gladly give it. Do we want to go through the motions, attending meetings, doing busyness. OR can the business of what we do, the SUFFERINGS of daily life challenge us to endurenence that produces character, that creates hope, hope that can be overcome because God is in it.