Asking the Right Questions

The scriptures referred to are Ezekiel 2:1-7, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10. and Mark 6:1-6.

I loved my mother-in-law. I'd always gotten along well with her but what I'm about to tell you made her just about my favorite person in the world. Shortly after I had been ordained, while my wife was talking to her mother on the phone, she interrupted herself to scold me for leaving the Sunday paper spread all over or some other breach of domestic etiquette. My mother-in-law, overhearing this, said to my wife, “I don't think you should yell at him anymore: he's holy!”

I need to see what I can do about having her canonized.

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone cut you some slack just because you were a Christian? Well, don't hold your breath. Nobody gave Ezekiel, Paul or Jesus a break just because they were doing God's business. And odds are people won't extend any tolerance to us either, especially if we are focused on certain things people don't want to hear about.

Take Ezekiel. Now he was one weird dude. Besides having the most bizarre visions this side of John's Revelation, Ezekiel's specialty was to act out God's messages to the people of Jerusalem. So at one point he stays in his house, mute and tied with a rope. He also draws a picture of the city of Jerusalem on a clay tablet and then lays siege to it. He lies on his left side for 390 days and on the right for 40 days, symbolizing the number of years God has put up with the sins of the northern kingdom of Israel and of the southern kingdom of Judah. He takes a sword and shaves his head and beard and weighs his hair, dividing it into thirds. A third he burns in his little drawing of Jerusalem, a third he strikes with the sword, and a third he throws into the wind, saving a few in his garment. This symbolized the fate of God's people when the Babylonians eventually attacked.

And the response of God's rebellious people to this message of justice? Not much. Ezekiel, perhaps because he is a priest, doesn't suffer the persecution of his contemporary, Jeremiah. Instead he is pretty much ignored. He goes into exile in Babylon with the cream of Judean society. There he receives a vision of the restoration of God's people after the punishment is over. But nobody responded to his message of judgment. Unfortunately, if you want to be heard, you have to tell people what they want to hear.

Jesus went back to his hometown and instead of welcome, appreciation and acceptance, he finds astonishment, offense and disbelief. Despite his powerful preaching and his acts of healing, his neighbors cannot believe that someone they grew up with, one of Mary's kids, has become anyone special. They reel off the names of Jesus' 4 brothers and remember his sisters still living in sleepy little Nazareth and they can't see anything extraordinary about them. So Mark tells us that Jesus couldn't do any great deed of power there except a few healings. (Mark 6:1-6) He couldn't do much because people weren't receptive. Jesus wasn't a magician who could change people against their will. God will only work on you if you are responsive, just as a potter can only work with soft malleable clay. Once it is dry and set, it can't be changed; it can only be broken.

Finally, we come to Paul, who, in 2 Corinthians, is forced to defend himself to one of the churches he planted. Corinth was the “Sin City” of its day and the church there had a lot of problems. Paul spent 18 months there at one point. Now he has gotten bad news about that church from his spiritual son and colleague Timothy whom he had sent to resolve things. On top of the other problems, he finds that rival “apostles”are questioning his credentials. So he feels forced to brag about his qualifications, though it goes against his judgment to do so. Do his rivals have visions? Paul's could top theirs. But he speaks of himself in the third person because he doesn't like to brag. In fact, despite his vision of paradise, he would rather talk of his afflictions. (2 Corinthians 12:2-10)

Paul speaks of a thorn in the flesh that keeps him humble. We do not know what his problem was: epilepsy, malaria, or some disfiguring ailment. A good guess might be a painful eye condition because Paul says that the Galatians would have given their own eyes to him if they could. (Galatians 4:13-15) Perhaps he saw auras preceding migraine headaches. The word translated “thorn” could also mean “sharp stake.” Anyone who's had a migraine knows it can feel as if a nail or spike was being driven into your head. Whatever it was, Paul wanted it gone. But God did not remove his affliction. Instead he gave Paul the grace to deal with it. It was not what Paul wanted. It was however what he, a brilliant man and church leader, needed to keep him from getting arrogant.

We often encounter some problem or difficulty that we wish were removed. We may tell God that we could do his work better if our life was problem-free. I remember seeing a T-shirt that read, “O Lord, let me show you how humble I could be, even if I won the lottery!” But God is smarter than that. And I have read articles about lottery winners who blow through all of their winnings and end up poor. Because if you can't manage a modest amount of money, you won't be able to manage millions. The fault lay not in their bank account but in themselves. More money only increased their problems.

What we want is an absence of problems. But God doesn't deal in avoidance of trouble. And telling people the truth rather than what they want to hear can make them ignore you, as in the case of Ezekiel, or persecute you, as in the case of Jesus. According to Luke, during one of his visits to Nazareth, his preaching in the synagogue so enraged his neighbors that they almost threw him off the cliff that the town was built on. (Luke 4:28-30) Nobody was neutral when it came to Jesus. They either recognized the truth that he spoke or tried to shut him up. But that didn't stop Jesus. And it shouldn't stop us.

While Hitler was rising to power, the reporters of the Munich Post warned the German people of his party's use of intimidation, blackmail, and even murder to move ahead of political rivals. Their relentless exposure of Nazi hypocrisy and criminality won them Hitler's epithet of “the poison kitchen.” The Munich Post continued to tell the unpalatable truth until Hitler at last achieved power and had the newspaper destroyed and its editors and writers imprisoned. They may not have stopped Hitler but they did the right thing. And you can't say that the German people had no idea of the caliber of the man who destroyed their democracy and seized control of their country.

Why do such people get power? A psychology experiment instructed people to lie about something to a person they were about to meet. Then those same people were put in a group and given a task for the group to accomplish. The disturbing observation that came out of this experiment was that the most convincing liars were often made the leaders. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

The problem, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, is that we classify information in the wrong categories. We ask if something is liberal or conservative, progressive or reactionary, a fad or traditional, popular or unpopular, politically correct or offensive, expensive or cheap. What we ought to be asking is whether it is true or false, right or wrong?

The man who headed the FBI's counter-terrorism unit and who had prevented a wave of bombings on the New Year's Eve of the new millennium warned our government about Osama Bin Ladin. But he was considered an alarmist. Nobody asked whether what he said was true or false, only if such news was welcome in the White House or not.

And then, when the planes hit the twin towers on 9/11, two preachers, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson, said it was divine punishment for America's tolerance of feminists, gays and the like. They faced a firestorm of criticism. The American people didn't want to hear what they said and so they backed down. Both the reaction and the retraction was about the popularity of the idea, not its merits. For the record, I think Falwell and Robinson were wrong. Jesus rejected the idea that disasters, either natural or man-made, were judgments from God. He mentioned incidents where a dictator murdered people and another where a tower fell on people. Were the victims more sinful than anyone else? Jesus asked. Of course not, he said. (Luke 13:1-5)

When we speak for God, we'd better be certain that we are right. We'd better be sure that we are not just saying what we feel or what people want to hear. But if we are certain, then we must stand by it whatever the world's reaction. Jesus gave us a grave responsibility when he told the disciples that they could declare sins forgiven or not. (John 20:23)

We live in a world that feels that it is more important to be happy than right. We live in a culture that hates the idea of making sacrifices. We live in a society where a long marriage is marveled at because it is so unusual for people to take vows and promises seriously. We live in an era where whistleblowers who alert us to wrongdoing or crimes committed by an important person are attacked as snitches or traitors if the person being accused is popular. People don't seem to care if the accusations are true or if what was done was wrong.

The problem is, whether you properly identify something as true or false, right or wrong, whether you ignore it or whether you fight against it, it doesn't change the facts. If you choose to live the lie, the truth will eventually catch up with you. If you choose to do what is wrong, you will suffer the consequences.

Harry Potter becomes furious when the wizarding world doesn't believe that the evil Lord Voldemort is back and is gathering followers. The problem is that Harry doesn't trust his ally, Professor Dumbledore, and so he makes some bad choices. We also learn that Dumbledore has been holding back some of the truth from Harry. Because these two do not confide in one another and tell the unpalatable truth to one another, someone close to Harry dies. The series says explicitly that it is about the importance of doing what's right, rather than what's easy.

Sadly in this sinful world, those who stand for the truth and what is right may suffer as well as the liars and the wrongdoers. But we mustn't let that deter us. As Ezekiel and Paul learned, and as Jesus demonstrated on the cross, whether the problem is external or internal, whether it is social, physical or spiritual, the way out is often the way through, not the way around. We must rely on God's grace, his undeserved and unreserved goodness toward us. God doesn't make the problem go away; he gives us the means to deal with it. Whether we need strength or patience or kindness or self-control or rest, if we turn to him, he will provide it. It may not always be what we think we need, but it will be what we actually need.

The world needs people who constantly remind it of what it needs. It needs people who unwaveringly point to what is right and what is true. These people will not always be heeded. They will be vilified and ostracized, or maybe ignored. They may not succeed as the world counts success. But that is not their concern. They must be faithful to their duty to God and to their fellow men and women. Because they are witnesses to God's faithfulness to his lost creatures and his desire to bring them back to his love.

Are you willing to be one of them?

First preached on July 6, 2003. There has been some updating and revising.