Frustration vs Formation

Out of frustration, have you ever prayed to God requesting more patience and then found yourself thrown even further into an arduous and challenging predicament that you must struggle through? 

Many of the experiences of our lives can have meaning and purpose if we desire for them to be so. For our experience is just that: Ours. It shapes and influences each of us in unique ways quite like nothing else. 

It is something we might refer to as formation. 

Our frustrations act out our base desires and expectations regarding how we believe things ought to be.This is as true for us as for the apostles when they asked Jesus to give them more faith. They must have been frustrated with where they were. And as we see, this request bred a Jesus who expressed loudly his own frustration with the apostles as well. 

How was Jesus' answer an answer regarding their formation?

Luke 17:5-10
17:5 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"


17:6 The Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.


17:7 "Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here at once and take your place at the table'?


17:8 Would you not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'?


17:9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?


17:10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'"



Walter Morton for Journey Across the Line

Today we're all in the same boat...

The lectionary passages today remind of a story about faith and how it should be acted out.
During the months of early Spring a flash food comes to a small Texas farming community. Livestock, houses, and barns are loosened from their foundations and washed away by the over-bounding currents of furious water. Farm folk are caught upon their roofs as waters suddenly rise and flow. One farmer trapped atop his shed flowing down the current prays to God saying, "I believe in miracles and I know you will save me."

Before the next hour is finished the farmer experiences three incidents. The first, a man on the shore offers to throw him a rope, second, a rescue boat passes by the floating shed and offers help, third, a helicopter flies over and lowers a rescue harness. But each time the farmer refuses. "God will rescue me, I have faith" he states.

But the deluge overcomes him and suddenly he finds himself before his maker. Bewildered, he asks God why he let him perish. God angrily replies that he sent him the rope, the boat and the copter! Didn't the farmer recognize the miracles of this present world?  Dr. Luther Martin King once said about the African-American struggle that "once we all came in separate boats to America, but now here, we are all in the same boat. That very same lifeboat.


Our lesson today is the importance of providing the everyday miracles of that lifeboat today to those who need them.

What could Jesus mean when he said? 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

Luke 16:19-31
16:19 "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.

16:20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,

16:21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.

16:22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.

16:23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

16:24 He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.'

16:25 But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.

16:26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.'

16:27 He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house--

16:28 for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'

16:29 Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'

16:30 He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'

16:31 He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

Walter Morton for Journey Across the Line

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?

Fire in the Eye

Similar to our verses today is a sermon by the colonial Puritan preacher. Jonathan Edwards, from our country's early days.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 1741                                                                                        

For better or worse, the sermon for which Edwards is probably most famous—or infamous—is the one preached to the congregation of Enfield, Massachusetts (later Connecticut) in July 1741. Anthologized in high school and college textbooks, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God represents in many persons’ minds the bleak, cruel, and hell-bent outlook of Edwards and his Puritan predecessors. But of course such a representation is only a caricature, for Sinners, if it represents anything, stands for only a small part of Edwards’s view of the relationship between humankind and God. As a specially crafted awakening sermon, Sinners was aimed at a particularly hard-hearted congregation. But, at the same time, the awakening sermon and all it expressed—the awful weight of sin, the wrath of an infinitely holy God, and the unexpectedness of the moment when God will execute justice—were integral to Edwards’s theology.(Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University) http://edwards.yale.edu/research/major-works/sinners-in-the-hands-of-an-angry-god    

Does God change his mind? 

In the Lectionary session we have today from the book of Exodus 32: 7-14 we see God's angered reaction to the stiff-necked people he has brought out from Egypt. We also see Moses' response to God and how he regards the people of Israel as his responsibility. 

Who are we responsible for? 

Are we ready to speak for them when the need arises?

Exodus 32:7-14
32:7 The LORD said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely;


32:8 they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'"


32:9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.


32:10 Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation."


32:11 But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?


32:12 Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.


32:13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, 'I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"


32:14 And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.           

Walter Morton for Journey Across the Line