Undercover Pastor

There are some hard questions you have to deal with when you start trying to understand God, which is what theology is all about. What has to be the hardest question is how a loving and powerful God can let people suffer. There are lots of easy answers that people use to try to explain it. One is that it’s all part of God’s plan and God intended it to be that way. One is that God doesn’t act in the world and just has to sit back and watch. Both of these explanations have serious shortcomings and are pretty easy to prove false. So instead of dealing with the hard questions, every so often, someone invents a new theory to try to avoid the issue.

The latest is “open theism.” In this theory, God doesn’t know the future because it hasn’t been determined yet. God is still all-powerful and all-knowing, but God doesn’t know the future because it’s undetermined.

See any problems yet? I do. God is the creator of the universe and part of that universe is time. Jesus even said it himself, “Before Moses was, I am.” God is not stuck in the flow of time with us. And if God exists outside of time, there’s not such thing as “not yet.” God can see all of human history simultaneously.

Looked at that way, “open theism” doesn’t even make sense. Try again, guys.

What’s my theory? I don’t think God ever answers the question “Why?” What the Bible and Jesus himself tell us about God is that God loves us unconditionally and wants the best for everyone. We know that God will provide for us. We also know that human beings can temporarily mess up God’s plan but that God’s will will be done in the end. (See the “parable of the tenants” in Luke 20:9-18 for an example.)

We’re never going to understand the “why” question this side of eternity, but God asks for our faith and trust and promises us love and protection. Living in the tension is harder but much more satisfying than seeking after easy answers.

OK. Still catching up on things that have been on my mind here.

I’m going to try another preaching log post but a shorter one – just one idea instead of all of them.

Last Sunday, I preached on Acts 1:1-11. The book of Acts is really the story of the Christian Church and those who helped it to grow. This passage talks about Jesus ascending into heaven after his resurrection. He’s spent some time on earth teaching those he would send out – his apostles. But as he gets ready to go, he finds that they still don’t understand the plan. “OK, Jesus, are you finally going to fix the political situation around here and restore the kingdom to your Chosen People?” they ask (paraphrased, of course).

He answers that when he restores the kingdom isn’t really any of their concern, but… but they will receive power from above. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

Jesus wasn’t going to come in and unilaterally bring in his kingdom. Could he have done it? Sure. But he decided to let us play a role in his work. It’s like the times that I let my son John help me with home repair tasks like patching stucco or fixing the fence. Do I need his help? No. But he takes such great joy in helping his daddy and learning to do the things that his daddy does. It’s wonderful for me too. Sure, it takes longer, but I feel the same joy that he does. And we build our relationship.

That’s what happens when we work with God on the things he cares about. We learn, we find joy, and we get to know God better! And the work gets done, bringing the kingdom nearer.

It’s not quite like working with my son, though. Because Jesus promised his apostles power – through the Holy Spirit. We have that power too. I’ll be preaching (and hopefully blogging) about that over the next several weeks as I preach a sermon series called, “Sunday Words – Monday Power.”

Until then, God bless you, and may you find joy working with your Father too.

I thought I’d take a shot at sharing what I preach on Sunday mornings… If I can’t condense it to fit in the blog, I must have said too much anyway.

General I preach what the academics call “textual sermons.” That means that the message is primarily an interpretation of one part of the Bible. I think that’s a good way to preach, since it make it less likely that I’ll just put my own agenda out there and back it up with one-liners from the Bible.

Anyway, on February 27, 2005, I preached on John 4:4-42. Now you can’t preach in detail on something this long – at least not within the attention span of 21st century Americans sitting on pews! But this is a story that has to be read as a whole. So we read the passage as “readers’ theater” – with different people reading each part.

Anyway, the scene opens with Jesus entering Samaria. Now Samaria is what used to be the Northern Kingdom of Israel. I’ll tell you about this some time, but for now, know this: In Jesus’ time, the Samaritans were not well-loved by the Jews. So Jesus is entering a region where – according to Jewish customs of the time – he really wasn’t supposed to have much to do with the people.

So what does Jesus do? He strikes up a conversation with a woman who is getting water from a well. “Will you give me a drink?” he asks.

She’s shocked! From his dress and his accent, he’s obviously a Jewish man. But he’s talking to a Samaritan woman. She responds to him, asking him how he can possibly be talking to her.

Then Jesus tells her that if she really knew who he was, she would ask him for a drink and he’d give her “living water.”

Living water usually means water that came from a flowing spring rather than a well. She still doesn’t understand who he is.

The conversation continues as Jesus reveals more and more about who he is and she asks more and more important questions until she is convinced that he may be the Messiah (the coming anointed one who was supposed to set the world aright.)

In church, we went through the exchanges between the two of them, but here, let’s cut to the chase. Jesus offered this woman “living water,” saying “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” When she eventually figures out that he’s not trying to offer her indoor plumbing or a new water delivery service, she’s overcome and leaves her water jar there to go tell her friends.

What we didn’t talk about is who this woman was. I told you she was a Samaritan woman. That’s one strike against her. Then she had been married five times. Generally, three times was the limit of the number of times a woman could be married except under very unusual conditions. Strike two. Then told Jesus that she wasn’t married to the man she now lives with – at all! Strike three. By the standards of his culture, Jesus shouldn’t have been relating to this woman at all.

Why did he go to her? Of all the people in Samaria, surely there was someone who would be a better ambassador for Jesus than this woman! But no. Jesus comes to us as we are. He doesn’t see us as the world sees us. John’s gospel tells us that everything in all creation was made through Jesus. So have to fugue he sees us as we really are. But he’s not afraid to offer living water to an outcasts or someone who feels like a fraud, or someone who has a dark secret, or someone who’s angry at God… The list goes on and on.

There are as many problems as there are people. But Jesus comes to each of us, offering his living water. Will we take a drink?