Help With Passing The Test

Hebrews 2:10-18
This is how the high drama of salvation began: With the birth of a child to a peasant family, a family not especially connected with the powers that be---a family so marginalized economically and otherwise that they had to flee across the border into Egypt to avoid having their infant killed by King Herod.
The fact that Jesus was born in a stable, that there was no room for his mother to give birth inside the Inn, is meant to illustrate how unlikely, by the standards of worldly power, it was that he would grow up to become the King of the Jews and the savior of the world.
The pure genius of God, who gave his only son to the world to save us from the fear of death, and the power of death, was meant to let ordinary people---people that are subject to abuse and exploitation---know that no matter their station or situation in life, they too would have a right to the tree of life. They too would know in no uncertain terms that God’s salvation through Christ was for the lowliest and the meekest.
People were accustomed to certain elements having special privileges. Class distinctions and the advantages that are reserved for the well connected is not a new thing, familiar only to those of us who live in a post-modern world. Such distinctions and preferential treatment are as old as human beings. But Jesus came to rescue, not the few, not the elite, but rather he wanted to be a liberator to the people living at the lowest rung of the social ladder. The forgotten people, the apparently powerless people were his aim. Because if he could reach them with the good news of new life, each and every person would be a candidate for his salvation.
And by being so totally identified with the people that he wanted to offer hope, he had a good chance of opening their eyes, opening their hearts, inspiring them to risk having faith in the new possibilities for their own, real lives.
The scripture says God elected to make perfect the pioneer, the forerunner, the exemplar of human salvation through suffering. Untold suffering. Brutal suffering. Suffering born of innocence. Yet, willing suffering.
And his suffering was a test. Suffering is always a test. When we suffer, our true nature is being tested; the limits of what we can tolerate and withstand are being tested---how much we can endure. When we suffer, and are pressed down to the very bottom, we learn (about ourselves) where we are inclined to turn for help. Jesus’ suffering was an illustration of how determined he was to hang on and to trust his fate to God.
Your suffering is a test, designed to perfect your faith too. When times are really, really difficult, when it appears there is no way out, will you be discouraged and lose all hope, or will you hold on to the unchanging hand to strengthen you and help you ride out the storm?
The popular question, “What Would Jesus Do?” is relevant here. For He is our guide in all matters of life and faith. He becomes Christ our Lord and Savior, because he was first Jesus, our friend and brother. Because we able to share in his suffering, we are able to share in his victory.
So when the hour is dark, and life trials put you to the test, you can turn to him and to his example to help you to past the test. Without him, it is likely that the test will wear you down, that it will break you up. That it will grip you with fear and leave you bitter. But if you place your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee, even though you may be tempted to buckle, he will give you wings and you will soar.
Who is holding up that wounded bird? Jesus! Who is healing that broken heart? Jesus! Who helps me to say yes, when the world says no? Jesus!

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving is a major family holiday in America. I mean major! Christmas, Mother’s Day and Easter are undoubtedly right up there, but I remember really hearing and having it sink in for the first time, on Thanksgiving eve in1984 on WCBS radio, as Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker and I were traveling back from JFK Airport, that “the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the most heavily traveled day of the year.” I think it still is.

Wherever we are in the world, most of us are doing what we can to make our way back to mother’s or grandmother’s kitchen. There, with family, we for just a day reconnect with what makes us human, over the most delectable comfort food we will ever eat. Not that we like turkey and the trimmings all that much, but there is something about its familiarity that anchors our spirits and allows us to enjoy the simple pleasures of fellowship and unvarnished conversation. Man, if every day could be like that. But that Friday, or certainly by Sunday afternoon, we go rushing back to our daily grind, having been refreshed for a minute as if retooled to dive back into the wilderness of our daily lives. But thank God for Thanksgiving Day, when our ordinary cares felt as if they had taken a back seat to the things that really matter.

The whole Pilgrim thing doesn’t really enter the picture very much any more, if it ever did. The day has been hijacked for equally noble purposes. And yes, some ignoble purposes too, like becoming Black Friday eve! (I read that some stores over my way will open at 5:00 a.m.!). For me, it opens the door to Advent, a sense of new beginning---a time of harvest, of reflection on what the year, now ending, has wrought.

Yet, like most special days, days that test the bonds of family, or maybe leave us exposed for not having the close-knit family the season seems to require, Thanksgiving for some can be a stressful day, a day of regret, a day of reminiscing about missed opportunities and losses. At our church, we often say as a customary farewell to folk we won’t see again until after the holiday, “Don’t eat too much,” Perhaps without remembering there will be those among us, our neighbors, who will hardly eat at all.

Bethany will restock its Food Pantry for Thanksgiving Week, where last week 377 persons were supplied with food. Those who contribute non-perishable items to the needy will receive the reward of having been of help to someone other than themselves, while the people who are hungry will experience the love of a caring community. Because of the way our society is constructed, too few people ever know the joy of selfless service, but are forced to witness instead the endless quest for self-gratification.

Food Pantry volunteers experience weekly the perennial quandary over the persistence of hunger in this land of plenty. Why are there so many hungry people? Is it because, as some simplistic ideologues would have us believe, they are lazy or without marketable skills? Or is the reason more unnerving and more rooted in structural inequities than we would like to admit?

As Fugitive Safe Surrender taught us just a year ago, many people in the line for food this holiday will be people who struggle to do the right thing, but no matter how hard they try, it is never enough.