Redeemed and restored – Finding God in Suffering, Sun 22nd Feb Ringwood Church
This week, we began our lent journey towards easter. This year lent, Ramadan and lunar new year all start on same day. How may we celebrate in solidarity with others in this season?
Have you found a resource that you are using during the season of Lent? If not, consider reading Siufung’s book, Finding God in Suffering, which is both Siufung’s story and his love for the book of Romans.
Siu Fung is a New Testament scholar and teacher and a dear friend; he has written a Romans commentary, title ‘Suffering in Romans’. His second book, Finding God in Suffering is a more personal reflection on his life and faith and his engagements with Paul’s epistle. Siufung will be with us next week, to share more of his story and will lead us in reading Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.
During this season of Lent, I am committing to actively listen. I am keen to hear how you are going with faith, church and what’s been happening in your life and the life of our community here at Ringwood.
During Lent, I invite you to join me and Amelie, in the listening circle, here at church on Wednesday evenings, to unburden, to release, to do a spiritualtoscopy, drawing out anything that’s been churning in your soul. We will ensure it is a safe place, confidential and affirming place. If you would like to know more, there is a flyer on the welcoming desk.
There is also an opportunity to share a word, a picture, a ‘Haiku’ (three lines), any promptings of God’s Spirit, that you want to express and share with our community, write them on sticky notes and place them to the glass of the fellowship room. If you prefer a more personal conversation, I am always up for a coffee.
During this lent, I want to listen, and to discern how we are doing as a community of faith and being open to what’s God’s invitation for us at this season. There are some challenges indeed, someone once wrote that the church is thrust into a continuous risky adventure with always hazardous improvisations. We are indeed ‘improvising’.
The church my teacher Jason Goroncy reminds me, ‘is a pilgrim community awake to the truth that it its strength lies in the knowledge that it is, in principle, weak and fragile and homeless. It is a community continuously suspended over the abyss of nonbeing, and upheld solely by the voice of one who remains a Stranger to us, one before whom we stand utterly exposed, and who continually calls us into new being.’ I will share some more of his reflections in weeks to come.
The theme of finding God in suffering seems heavy, but if we find the spiritual practices, the resources and accompaniment when life is difficult, when we go through change and transition, we may find that God is indeed present to us and for us in and leading us through the dark night of the soul and into the rising of the Son at Easter.
During Lent, we will be following Jesus in his suffering, even death… before catching up with him, risen and alive, at the grave, in Galilee and on the Emmaus road.
Paul’s letter to the Roman is, of great significant, like Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible. It is a profound theological reflection on faith, and for Paul’s it is faith in Jesus, in whom God redeemed and restored humanity from rebellion and death and into life in the union of love with God and neighbour.
I want to confess that I am not a fan of Paul, because he tends to go around in circles, in a philosophical manner. I appreciate however, that to make sense of our faith, to discern truth and meaning in knowing God and God’s saving act in Jesus is not an easy thing to do. Paul is doing the best that he could to teach the new emerging church, in the context of the first century under Roman empire, of the foundation of faith as reveal in the Hebrew Bible and the fulfilment of that faith in Christ Jesus.
Have you written a letter like this, to a friend who is a new believer, helping them make sense of their new faith and giving them the foundation they need to go on in learning about their discipleship with Jesus. I have attempted to write a few of this form of letter to the community of young people that I am ministering to in Vietnam. I first have to write it, then translate it to Vietnamese and to the cultural language of which they are reading my letter. I find myself going in circles…
What I love about Paul’s letter to the Romans is learning that Phoebe, who Paul introduced and commends in Chapter 16, as our sister, trusted deacon, a patron, and a servant/ minister of the church in Cenchreae), was the one who delivered, read, and possibly reflect on the theological content of the letter to the church in Rome. There’s a possibility that she may have work collaboratively with Paul in crafting the letter, with the scribe name Tertius. In Paul earlier letters, he blames Eve, but in this passage of Romans 5, that we just read earlier, he refers to Adam for the sins and rebellion of humanity. I like to think Phoebe had something to do with this.
The Church in Rome existed before Paul knew of it and he wanted to come and visited them on his way to Spain. For now, he writes a letter, possibly with Phoebe, and in the letter commends her (with credentials as a minister and a person of high status), and ask the church to welcome her with warmth hospitality as a fellow believer and a missionary like and with Paul. In this letter we learned that Phoebe was a businesswoman, theologian, church minister and a missionary and was the first in Paul’s list greetings of individuals, 27 names, 8 of these were women. These women inspire many other female leaders in the early church.
Origen, a church father wrote that ‘This text teaches with the authority of the Apostle that even women are instituted deacons in the Church. This is the function which was exercised in the church of Cenchreae by Phoebe, who was the object of high praise and recommendation by Paul’. He also advocates for woman to be considered ministers of the church – like Phoebe is among the women ‘who through good services have merited… apostolic praise.’
If you as a woman have been hurt, undermine and rob of opportunities to lead and minister, I want to say I am sorry that you have suffered so. Too many times, throughout ‘herstory’, women have been silenced, translators and church traditions have changed or diminished meanings of words associated with women over the centuries undermining women’s leadership in the life of the church.
I want to listen, and make spaces where you can voice your pain, frustrations and hurt, so that we may together work for a more safe, inclusive community, embracing each other’s humanity and the diversity of gifts that we bring to worship God, men, women, other, Jews and Greeks, poor and rich…
Let’s turn now to one of the central themes of Romans. Humanity redeemed and relationship restored through Jesus. The whole of the Old Testament is Israel witness or testimony of their constant failing and the enduring faithfulness of God. Most of the books of the Old Testament were threaded together during the Babylon exile, with the intention to reveal why they ended up in exile, why their land invaded, their temple destroyed and where was God.
The key element of their witness is that from the very beginning of creation, humanity chose to disobey God, and even when God sends leaders, judges, prophets to call people back to faithful covenantal relationship with God, they chose to be like the other nations, to wage war, to kill, to establish themselves as a mighty kingdom, to put themselves on the map, to make Israel great… what was worse, they did all these in God’s name. Using God to justify their actions.
God chose, bless and enter into covenant with their ancestor, to establish them as God’s royal priesthood, a holy nation set apart to minister to the world, by embodying God’s economy of love, mercy and justice… to be God’s image bearer, but they wanted to make a name for themselves, and consistently disobey the voice of God through prophets and priests and so God let them to their own demise… to fight wars, even among themselves, and to suffered division, defeat, exile and death. Paul’s too offer a critique not just of Israel, but humanity as a whole.
12 Sin infected the world through Adam; and it proved to be fatal. It spread rapidly and no one was immune. In no time at all everybody was facing death because sin had shown up in the actions of every person on the planet. Indeed, the epidemic of sin had well and truly taken hold before God gave us the Law through Moses, but until then, there was no way to accurately diagnose it or keep a record of it. Records or no records, death was still the order of the day before the time of Moses, and had been ever since Adam. While most people had not developed symptoms as serious as Adam’s — flat out disobedience of a clear instruction from God — even the mildest cases of sin proved to be fatal. Despite his role in all this, when we look back at Adam we can see in him some clear indicators of the nature of the one who would later come to clear up the mess. https://laughingbird.net/
While Paul refers to Adam, he is not so much referring to the individual person, but a representative of humanity. Sin entered the world because of human disobedience, and sin and death reign as a result. That’s Israel’s testimony, and it is also our own testimony, that is until we encounter the grace and mercy of God, drawing us to Jesus who took on flesh and for us, he lived an obedient life, life in covenant union with God, he submitted himself to be God’s redemptive action, and for us, he suffered our fate, defeat, humiliation and death, so that in his resurrection, we rise with him into new life of loving union with God, and be again the image bearer, a holy nation, royal priesthood, that we were made to be.
We were members of disobedient humanity but in Christ we become members of a new covenant community of grace and love. The narrative of human failing, and its impact on creation and history, it’d devastating, because no matter what we do, we tend to only make a mess of things… we are bent on dysfunction and destruction and death.
But it’s not the end of the story, there is a new chapter, of reversal, of hope, healing, and restoration. There is one who is able to do what no one has even done before, he live an obedient life, he is God’s perfect image bearer, he is holy, priest of God, he is able to fulfil our covenant obligation, but also suffer the consequences of our dysfunction and disobedient – the holy one of God, who did not deserve death but willingly died so that all who suffers death may rise to new life. We participate in this new narrative of God in Jesus, which is still unfolding.
Siu Fung reminds us that the first hearers of Paul’s epistle, In Rome, ‘face everyday hardship, injustice, exclusion, sickness, and possibly persecution simply for being a Christian’. Paul’s letter was not only just laying the foundation of faith, but a letter to encourage suffering people, that their position is in Christ, they can raise their heads high, with confidence, in the midst of suffering, because they are, in Christ, God’s beloved, God’s image bearer, and in suffering, and they are agent of a new world coming closer each time.
Chapter 5 of Romans, Paul wrote: (1-11)
We put our trust in Jesus Christ our Lord and we can rest assured that he has cleared up everything with God for us. Christ got us in on the extravagant generosity of God, and that generosity has given us a safe place to plant our feet. We don’t just stand there, though.
We hold our heads up high and announce, with pride, that we confidently expect to be sharing the glory that is coming to God. Actually, it’s not just what’s coming in the future that makes us feel so good. Even now, when life seems to be giving us a raw deal, we can stand proud. We know that going through suffering can make us tough enough to survive the worst of times. This ability to tough things through will in turn generate new depths of integrity and maturity within us. And that brings us full-circle because it is this integrity and maturity that gives us our confidence about the future. Our confidence is not in vain either. We are sure about that because of what we have already experienced: a flood of love surging into our hearts from the Holy Spirit who God has given to us. https://laughingbird.net/
The writer of the Hymn it is well with my soul, Haratio, Gates Spafford, while a prominent figure went through great suffering and grief, first by the loss of his son due to a fever, then his property destroyed in a fire, and then the loss of his four daughters as the ship that carried them across the Atlantic sunk, only his wife survived. Traveling to meet his wife, Horatio wrote the hymn, as his ship passes the area where his daughter died tragically.
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!—
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
Haratio G. Spafford 1873