Good News Amidst Bad News – Br. Curtis Almquist

SSJE Sermons

Br. Curtis Almquist

Isaiah 7:1-9

Our reading from the Prophecy of Isaiah is an 8^th century BC version of what we are seeing every day in our own newspapers and online: a world, including our own homeland, teeming with conflict. For Isaiah, the players were King Pekah and King Remaliah of Israel; King Rezim of Aram-Syria; and Kings Tabeel, then Uziah, then Ahaz, and then Jotham the successive Kings of Judah.[i] For the life of me, I cannot keep it all straight – neither the political players whom we are reading about from the 8^th century BC, nor our own present-day news stream: the historic territorial disputes, the ever-changing political alignments, often created by common enemies; the fracturing of treaties and goodwill; the political threats and promises; and the suffering of the innocent. Whether in the 8^th century BC or in the 21^stcentury of the Common Era, there are so many parallels in strife that span across time.

There is a word of hope buried in this Prophecy of Isaiah, hope for the 8^th century BC which also pertains to us in our own day. Isaiah speaks an assurance in the voice of God: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…” “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…”

These words of assurance do not mean that everything will be just fine. Clearly not. We do not escape suffering in this life. None of us does. I don’t need to tell you that. If anything, suffering takes on a certain poignancy for those of us who are followers of Jesus. You may remember Jesus’ saying that if we want to be his followers, we must “take up ourcross and follow him.”[ii] This signals the cost of our discipleship to Jesus. We are promised the experience of the cross: not taking up Jesus’ cross but our own cross. I imagine that every one of you knows about that: what it is to have been handed a cross in life – at least once and perhaps multiple times – to carry in life.

In almost the same breath that Jesus speaks about our taking up our cross, he also speaks about living in peace… but with a qualification. Jesus does not say we will know peace because all the political turbulence and terror will calm down. Quite to the contrary. Jesus says: “I do not give you peace as the world gives.” The gift of peace Jesus is talking about is from the inside out. Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give [peace] to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[iii] Jesus lived in a time of cataclysmic political strife with the massive occupation of the oppressive Roman Empire, and with the political factions within Judaism being so very fractious and frightening. It is in this context that Jesus speaks of his gift of peace, peace from the inside out.

Jesus’ promise of peace does not preclude our suffering in life. Jesus clearly knew suffering himself. Nor does Jesus’ promise of peace circumvent our mortality, nor the diminishment we will likely experience as we decline with age before we die. Neither does Jesus’ promise of peace mollify our grief from those whom we have lost in life, nor our grief from what we have lost in life. Jesus says, “You will weep and mourn; you will have pain but, he adds, your pain will turn into joy.”[iv] And Saint Paul picks up on this.

The single-most prolific author of the Christian scriptures – the New Testament – is Saint Paul. Virtually everything that he wrote about following Christ was inspired by his suffering and written during his imprisonments. He writes about his floggings, lashes, having been beaten with rods, and being stoned. He writes about being shipwrecked and adrift at sea, about the danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger from deceivers….” He writes of “toil and hardship, many a sleepless night, being hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.” He faces capital punishment, and he continues to write. [v]

In the end, what is he left with? Again in prison and on the cusp of being executed, the experience which he writes about, repeatedly, is joy. And in case we miss his point, he writes, “again I say, rejoice!”[vi] Joy is such a great paradox. For Saint Paul, suffering sets the stage for knowing joy: a deep sense of well-being and gratitude in life. One might say that Saint Paul is a little over-the-edge about joy, rather hyperbolic in an unimaginable sort of way… unless you have discovered how joy will so often emerge from and companion grief and loss.

Back to what we heard in our first reading from the Prophecy of Isaiah: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…” This is about living life peacefully, but not about living life passively. It is not about taking the suffering we experience and witness in life with a saccharine smile on our face. But it is to say that when we find ourself powerless to overcome what we know to be wrong, or when we find ourselves suffering without promise of relief, or when we find ourself reminded of the imminence of our mortality, we are not left alone. We are promised Jesus’ provision of inner peace, his companionship, and his joy. As Jesus says, “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”[vii]

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[i] In the Hebrew scriptures we read of about 250 different kings in Middle Eastern antiquity. Many of these kingdoms were miniscule in size; however the title “king” usually designated unrestrained power and the divine favor of whomever or whatever the kingdom worshiped.

[ii] Matthew 16:24-27; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23, 14:27.

[iii] John 14:27.

[iv] John 16:20.

[v] 2 Corinthians 11:21-29.

[vi] See Philippians 4, particularly verse 4.

[vii] John 15:1-11.