A few years ago I was at a meeting with some fellow clergy. The movie The Passion of the
Christ had just come out, and of course, it was a hot topic of conversation. Was the movie anti-
Semitic? Was it gratuitously violent? Just as I began to feel a sense of foreboding about the
direction the conversation was going, sure enough, someone pulled the switch and the train kind of
veered off the tracks.
One of the clergy, whose identity I’ve since forgotten, expressed horror that the scriptures were
barbaric enough to claim that Jesus was put to death for our sins. A few others quickly jumped on
the train and bemoaned the depravity in the idea that God the Father would “abuse” Jesus the Son
in this way. One actually called it “divine child abuse.”
Now, I’ve long since ceased to be shocked at some of the things that come from the lips of some
clergy, but I have to admit, this one kind of threw me for a loop. As with many such occasions, I
thought of my best counterarguments long after I’d parted company with this group. But I did
manage to offer that I thought they had misunderstood the doctrine of the atonement a tad, and that
this was still, as far as I knew, a rather important part of Christian theology. I shared that, in our
traditional Christian teaching, God took on flesh and offered Himself as God the Son, not out of
some primitive, bloodletting impulse, but as the supreme act of love in which He took upon Himself
the sins of the world and buried them in the grave. In no sense was this a matter of God the Father
abusing God the son.
Anyway, my explanation met with reasonable, but politely noncommittal brow wrinkling and jaw
scratching. When I had a chance to reflect on all of this later, I realized that this is just one example
of how God’s wisdom doesn’t necessarily match our own. I was trying to explain something that
defies human logic. And they, like I often do, were seeing through the eyes of human “wisdom.”
And really, the atonement, Jesus dying on the Cross for our sins, is kind of a hard one to explain to
people of a 21st Century mindset. To all of us, it really is a mystery. In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.
S. Lewis called it “the deep magic from the dawn of time.” By this he meant that there are some
basic, immutable laws of God’s universe dating back to His very blueprint of creation. One of these
is that sin leads to separation from God, and ultimately, to spiritual death. The idea basically is that
nothing impure may stand in the absolutely pure, luminous presence of God. Another basic law is
that, in a sense that we can’t fully comprehend, something on a cosmic, spiritual level needed to be
done when sin saturated the human race, bringing spiritual death on a global scale. Something that
would restore the scales of justice to balance, while defeating the power of that which separates us
from a pure and holy God. That “something” was the sending of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, to be
the great payment for our sins, and to rise up in victory at His resurrection three days later as the
proof of our salvation. Amazing love that defies human understanding.
How hard it is for us to be made in God’s image with the ability to think creatively and the thirst to
understand, and yet not have access to all of God’s infinite knowledge and wisdom. And you see,
this is the problem addressed in today’s scripture readings. In Mark’s Gospel we have Peter doing
an “oops.” Like some of us, Peter doesn’t get it when Jesus explains His self-sacrificial mission to
the disciples, and this time Jesus is not happy. He openly explains to the disciples that He, the Son
of Man, will undergo great suffering, be rejected by the Jewish authorities, be killed, and then, rise
again.
And what does Peter do? He takes Jesus aside and says, “Jesus, you can’t be talking like this. The
boys are getting spooked! You won’t die this way! We’re not going to let this happen!” At this point,
Peter doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the cosmic significance of what Jesus is saying. He
doesn’t realize that the event of which Jesus is speaking will be the pivot point of all human history—
the solution to the dilemma of sin and death.
Instead, Peter is thinking with human wisdom. He doesn’t see the big picture, and discounts
something that doesn’t line up with what his own common sense tells him. And Jesus chooses that
moment to make a point in about the most powerful way I can imagine. He turns to the disciples and
rebukes Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things
but on human things.”
Ouch! Do you ever remember giving an answer in class that you thought was brilliant, and then
having your teacher trash it? I remember a few of those. You’re stopped dead in your tracks and
the heat of embarrassment colors your cheeks. But before we take Jesus’ bluntness for
insensitivity, we have to understand the stakes here. The Son of God had just revealed to the
disciples one of the great secrets of the ages—the plan for man’s redemption. And when Peter
misinterprets this and essentially denies its necessity, Jesus sees the influence of Satan distorting
and interfering as he so often does. In fact, I’d dare say that nothing makes Satan much happier
than when we try to trump God’s understanding with our own. If our Christian aim is to love and
serve the Lord, elevating our own “wisdom” above God’s defeats that ambition. We simply don’t
have God’s perspective, and when we reject it and act on our own, we run the risk of making some
pretty major mistakes.
It’s like the two high school girls in southern California who were looking up at the sky one night from
their porch. One of them said to the other, "What do you think is farther away—Florida or the
moon?" The other rolled her eyes and said, "Hellooo? Can you SEE Florida?" There are some
things we just need to take by faith, even though our own vision may suggest otherwise.
But now we turn to the story of Abraham. In our Old Testament reading today we have God
informing the 99 year old Abraham that he’ll be the father of many nations. God tells him that
Sarah, Abraham’s 90 year old wife, will bear him a son whose descendants will fulfill that promise.
And Abraham said, “Roger, copy that, God. We’ll get on it.” Right? Not exactly. Actually today’s
reading stops a bit short of giving Abraham’s response. The text says in the very next verse that
“Abraham fell on his face and laughed, saying to himself, ‘Oy, what a good one! A son born to a
100 year old man and a 90 year old wife! Isn’t that a whopper!’”
Fortunately for the whole world, God patiently kept at Abraham until he was willing to relinquish his
own wisdom for God’s wisdom. He had a task for Abraham that was so huge, that He couldn’t afford
distrust and disobedience. Because, through the survival and legacy of his descendents, Abraham
was the vehicle of the world’s salvation in the coming of the Messiah, Jesus. Through his obedience
Abraham set into motion a sequence of historical events giving rise to the nation of Israel and
ultimately to the appearance of the deliverer of all humanity. In Abraham I can’t think of a better
example of learning to trust God’s ways, or a better example of the wildly beneficial outcome of doing
so. One of the Proverbs says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Abraham’s
ultimate display of that trust is one of the reasons we’re here worshipping together this morning.
You see, the words of Scripture insist that leaning only on our own understanding leaves us with a
deficient view of things. But acknowledging God, submitting to His understanding, is the way to
remain on the path He intends for us. The question for us becomes, when God says something that
doesn’t line up with our own version of wisdom, who are we going to believe? Are we willing to trust
in the Lord with all of our heart?
And by asking that question I in no way intend to imply that this is an easy thing. After all, God’s
logic has a disturbing way of turning human logic on its head. With God, weak is strong. Poor is
rich. Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save
it. These are not exactly the products of human folk wisdom. They challenge our minds with truths
that require a childlike faith to accept.
So how do we submit ourselves to God’s wisdom when our own minds get in the way? Well, briefly, I’
d like to offer that there are at least two things we can do. The first is that we need to try to know
what God’s ways are. How do we recognize God’s wisdom in the first place? We have to be able to
receive the information God sends to us. While we may not hear God’s voice in exactly the way
Abraham did, or have Jesus in the flesh standing in front of us as Peter did, we do have the
resources that have kept countless generations of Christians in contact with God’s will.
The first of these is the scriptures. The Bible. This collection of writings has always been the
Christian’s source of truth for everything about the human condition, the good news of our salvation,
and the way that we’re expected by God to live. From the earliest days of the church the scriptures
have been regarded as God’s word written. In fact, in his Second Letter to Timothy, Paul writes, “All
Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in
righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
If all scripture is God-breathed, should we not inhale it into ourselves, as if it were the very air that
sustains us? Should it not be the food we eat, so that we read it, chew on it, grapple with it, and
ruminate on it slowly and prayerfully? Or as the Prayer Book says, so that we may “read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest” it. I mean think about what an amazing gift this is to us. To actually have
God giving us His words through the stories, poems, wisdom, history, and prophecy in the Bible. If
we read it faithfully, it nourishes us with God’s wisdom and His ways like the air we breathe or the
food we eat. May we never take it for granted or fail to appreciate its value.
The second way we receive the information God has for us is through prayer. Talking with God from
our hearts and listening for His guidance through the Holy Spirit. His guidance may come to us as a
mental impression, or a pang of conscience, or a recurring image, or in some cases, even as a
voice. Or a scripture verse may come to mind as you seek God’s will in any given situation. The
great news is that, as we practice prayer over time we become tuned in to the ways that the H.S.
speaks to each of us individually. And when that starts to happen, it’s a wonderful thing. It’s a
confirmation of God’s promise to guide us. He’ll do that for you if you ask Him.
But as with anything that’s subtle and finely tuned, there’s a danger. The danger is that we can go
back to substituting our own words for God’s. We can make the age-old mistake of projecting our
own thoughts and words onto God. It’s here that it’s important to follow the teaching of our
catechism, which says that “we recognize truths to be taught by the Holy Spirit when they are in
accord with the Scriptures.” So when we believe that we’re receiving guidance in prayer, the
measuring stick of its truth is its harmony with Holy Scripture. Do you see how these fit together?
The scriptures urge us to pray, and the answers to our prayers are themselves measured against
the yardstick of Scripture.
Finally, once we’re familiar with God’s ways for us, our job is to humbly trust and obey. This may be
simple, but it’s not easy. Our ways are very likely to collide at some point with God’s ways. Do you
sense the Lord asking you to do something you don’t fully understand? Has He perhaps not
answered a prayer in the way you think it should be answered? When you eat from the word of
God, is there something that you find hard to swallow because it doesn’t make sense to you? It
happens to all of us. Through the prophet Isaiah God tells us, “my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
When there’s a collision between God’s ways and ours, one is right and the other’s not. I’ll bet you
can guess which is which. G. K. Chesterton once said, “We do not really want a religion that is right
where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong.” And when this is
the case, As hard as it is, our job then is to trust and obey.
This subjection of ourselves to God’s ways is at the heart of Lenten discipline. It’s not easy. As
Rich Mullins once sang, “Surrender don’t come natural to me.” We may want to insist upon
personally understanding all of God’s ways and their reasons. But letting go of the obsession to
understand absolutely everything can be incredibly freeing. It gives us the freedom of not having to
have all the answers. It brings us the peace of truly trusting the Lord to be our Shepherd. And
having faced and already conquered the temptations we face, Jesus stands ready to help us
surrender to our all-knowing, all-loving Father in heaven, and trust His good ways for us. As we
renew our attention to following Him this Lent, May He give us the desire and the ability to yield
ourselves fully to His perfect and loving will. Amen.
Christ had just come out, and of course, it was a hot topic of conversation. Was the movie anti-
Semitic? Was it gratuitously violent? Just as I began to feel a sense of foreboding about the
direction the conversation was going, sure enough, someone pulled the switch and the train kind of
veered off the tracks.
One of the clergy, whose identity I’ve since forgotten, expressed horror that the scriptures were
barbaric enough to claim that Jesus was put to death for our sins. A few others quickly jumped on
the train and bemoaned the depravity in the idea that God the Father would “abuse” Jesus the Son
in this way. One actually called it “divine child abuse.”
Now, I’ve long since ceased to be shocked at some of the things that come from the lips of some
clergy, but I have to admit, this one kind of threw me for a loop. As with many such occasions, I
thought of my best counterarguments long after I’d parted company with this group. But I did
manage to offer that I thought they had misunderstood the doctrine of the atonement a tad, and that
this was still, as far as I knew, a rather important part of Christian theology. I shared that, in our
traditional Christian teaching, God took on flesh and offered Himself as God the Son, not out of
some primitive, bloodletting impulse, but as the supreme act of love in which He took upon Himself
the sins of the world and buried them in the grave. In no sense was this a matter of God the Father
abusing God the son.
Anyway, my explanation met with reasonable, but politely noncommittal brow wrinkling and jaw
scratching. When I had a chance to reflect on all of this later, I realized that this is just one example
of how God’s wisdom doesn’t necessarily match our own. I was trying to explain something that
defies human logic. And they, like I often do, were seeing through the eyes of human “wisdom.”
And really, the atonement, Jesus dying on the Cross for our sins, is kind of a hard one to explain to
people of a 21st Century mindset. To all of us, it really is a mystery. In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.
S. Lewis called it “the deep magic from the dawn of time.” By this he meant that there are some
basic, immutable laws of God’s universe dating back to His very blueprint of creation. One of these
is that sin leads to separation from God, and ultimately, to spiritual death. The idea basically is that
nothing impure may stand in the absolutely pure, luminous presence of God. Another basic law is
that, in a sense that we can’t fully comprehend, something on a cosmic, spiritual level needed to be
done when sin saturated the human race, bringing spiritual death on a global scale. Something that
would restore the scales of justice to balance, while defeating the power of that which separates us
from a pure and holy God. That “something” was the sending of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, to be
the great payment for our sins, and to rise up in victory at His resurrection three days later as the
proof of our salvation. Amazing love that defies human understanding.
How hard it is for us to be made in God’s image with the ability to think creatively and the thirst to
understand, and yet not have access to all of God’s infinite knowledge and wisdom. And you see,
this is the problem addressed in today’s scripture readings. In Mark’s Gospel we have Peter doing
an “oops.” Like some of us, Peter doesn’t get it when Jesus explains His self-sacrificial mission to
the disciples, and this time Jesus is not happy. He openly explains to the disciples that He, the Son
of Man, will undergo great suffering, be rejected by the Jewish authorities, be killed, and then, rise
again.
And what does Peter do? He takes Jesus aside and says, “Jesus, you can’t be talking like this. The
boys are getting spooked! You won’t die this way! We’re not going to let this happen!” At this point,
Peter doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the cosmic significance of what Jesus is saying. He
doesn’t realize that the event of which Jesus is speaking will be the pivot point of all human history—
the solution to the dilemma of sin and death.
Instead, Peter is thinking with human wisdom. He doesn’t see the big picture, and discounts
something that doesn’t line up with what his own common sense tells him. And Jesus chooses that
moment to make a point in about the most powerful way I can imagine. He turns to the disciples and
rebukes Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things
but on human things.”
Ouch! Do you ever remember giving an answer in class that you thought was brilliant, and then
having your teacher trash it? I remember a few of those. You’re stopped dead in your tracks and
the heat of embarrassment colors your cheeks. But before we take Jesus’ bluntness for
insensitivity, we have to understand the stakes here. The Son of God had just revealed to the
disciples one of the great secrets of the ages—the plan for man’s redemption. And when Peter
misinterprets this and essentially denies its necessity, Jesus sees the influence of Satan distorting
and interfering as he so often does. In fact, I’d dare say that nothing makes Satan much happier
than when we try to trump God’s understanding with our own. If our Christian aim is to love and
serve the Lord, elevating our own “wisdom” above God’s defeats that ambition. We simply don’t
have God’s perspective, and when we reject it and act on our own, we run the risk of making some
pretty major mistakes.
It’s like the two high school girls in southern California who were looking up at the sky one night from
their porch. One of them said to the other, "What do you think is farther away—Florida or the
moon?" The other rolled her eyes and said, "Hellooo? Can you SEE Florida?" There are some
things we just need to take by faith, even though our own vision may suggest otherwise.
But now we turn to the story of Abraham. In our Old Testament reading today we have God
informing the 99 year old Abraham that he’ll be the father of many nations. God tells him that
Sarah, Abraham’s 90 year old wife, will bear him a son whose descendants will fulfill that promise.
And Abraham said, “Roger, copy that, God. We’ll get on it.” Right? Not exactly. Actually today’s
reading stops a bit short of giving Abraham’s response. The text says in the very next verse that
“Abraham fell on his face and laughed, saying to himself, ‘Oy, what a good one! A son born to a
100 year old man and a 90 year old wife! Isn’t that a whopper!’”
Fortunately for the whole world, God patiently kept at Abraham until he was willing to relinquish his
own wisdom for God’s wisdom. He had a task for Abraham that was so huge, that He couldn’t afford
distrust and disobedience. Because, through the survival and legacy of his descendents, Abraham
was the vehicle of the world’s salvation in the coming of the Messiah, Jesus. Through his obedience
Abraham set into motion a sequence of historical events giving rise to the nation of Israel and
ultimately to the appearance of the deliverer of all humanity. In Abraham I can’t think of a better
example of learning to trust God’s ways, or a better example of the wildly beneficial outcome of doing
so. One of the Proverbs says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Abraham’s
ultimate display of that trust is one of the reasons we’re here worshipping together this morning.
You see, the words of Scripture insist that leaning only on our own understanding leaves us with a
deficient view of things. But acknowledging God, submitting to His understanding, is the way to
remain on the path He intends for us. The question for us becomes, when God says something that
doesn’t line up with our own version of wisdom, who are we going to believe? Are we willing to trust
in the Lord with all of our heart?
And by asking that question I in no way intend to imply that this is an easy thing. After all, God’s
logic has a disturbing way of turning human logic on its head. With God, weak is strong. Poor is
rich. Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save
it. These are not exactly the products of human folk wisdom. They challenge our minds with truths
that require a childlike faith to accept.
So how do we submit ourselves to God’s wisdom when our own minds get in the way? Well, briefly, I’
d like to offer that there are at least two things we can do. The first is that we need to try to know
what God’s ways are. How do we recognize God’s wisdom in the first place? We have to be able to
receive the information God sends to us. While we may not hear God’s voice in exactly the way
Abraham did, or have Jesus in the flesh standing in front of us as Peter did, we do have the
resources that have kept countless generations of Christians in contact with God’s will.
The first of these is the scriptures. The Bible. This collection of writings has always been the
Christian’s source of truth for everything about the human condition, the good news of our salvation,
and the way that we’re expected by God to live. From the earliest days of the church the scriptures
have been regarded as God’s word written. In fact, in his Second Letter to Timothy, Paul writes, “All
Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in
righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
If all scripture is God-breathed, should we not inhale it into ourselves, as if it were the very air that
sustains us? Should it not be the food we eat, so that we read it, chew on it, grapple with it, and
ruminate on it slowly and prayerfully? Or as the Prayer Book says, so that we may “read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest” it. I mean think about what an amazing gift this is to us. To actually have
God giving us His words through the stories, poems, wisdom, history, and prophecy in the Bible. If
we read it faithfully, it nourishes us with God’s wisdom and His ways like the air we breathe or the
food we eat. May we never take it for granted or fail to appreciate its value.
The second way we receive the information God has for us is through prayer. Talking with God from
our hearts and listening for His guidance through the Holy Spirit. His guidance may come to us as a
mental impression, or a pang of conscience, or a recurring image, or in some cases, even as a
voice. Or a scripture verse may come to mind as you seek God’s will in any given situation. The
great news is that, as we practice prayer over time we become tuned in to the ways that the H.S.
speaks to each of us individually. And when that starts to happen, it’s a wonderful thing. It’s a
confirmation of God’s promise to guide us. He’ll do that for you if you ask Him.
But as with anything that’s subtle and finely tuned, there’s a danger. The danger is that we can go
back to substituting our own words for God’s. We can make the age-old mistake of projecting our
own thoughts and words onto God. It’s here that it’s important to follow the teaching of our
catechism, which says that “we recognize truths to be taught by the Holy Spirit when they are in
accord with the Scriptures.” So when we believe that we’re receiving guidance in prayer, the
measuring stick of its truth is its harmony with Holy Scripture. Do you see how these fit together?
The scriptures urge us to pray, and the answers to our prayers are themselves measured against
the yardstick of Scripture.
Finally, once we’re familiar with God’s ways for us, our job is to humbly trust and obey. This may be
simple, but it’s not easy. Our ways are very likely to collide at some point with God’s ways. Do you
sense the Lord asking you to do something you don’t fully understand? Has He perhaps not
answered a prayer in the way you think it should be answered? When you eat from the word of
God, is there something that you find hard to swallow because it doesn’t make sense to you? It
happens to all of us. Through the prophet Isaiah God tells us, “my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
When there’s a collision between God’s ways and ours, one is right and the other’s not. I’ll bet you
can guess which is which. G. K. Chesterton once said, “We do not really want a religion that is right
where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong.” And when this is
the case, As hard as it is, our job then is to trust and obey.
This subjection of ourselves to God’s ways is at the heart of Lenten discipline. It’s not easy. As
Rich Mullins once sang, “Surrender don’t come natural to me.” We may want to insist upon
personally understanding all of God’s ways and their reasons. But letting go of the obsession to
understand absolutely everything can be incredibly freeing. It gives us the freedom of not having to
have all the answers. It brings us the peace of truly trusting the Lord to be our Shepherd. And
having faced and already conquered the temptations we face, Jesus stands ready to help us
surrender to our all-knowing, all-loving Father in heaven, and trust His good ways for us. As we
renew our attention to following Him this Lent, May He give us the desire and the ability to yield
ourselves fully to His perfect and loving will. Amen.
Whose Wisdom
Second Sunday of Lent
Second Sunday of Lent
March 8, 2009
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton
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