Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

March 16, 2008

Life in Scorn of Consequences

Isaiah 50:4-9

If you have not seen the movie, The Bucket List, you have probably seen the previews. It stars Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. Morgan Freeman plays a mechanic who is also a philosopher. Jack Nicholson plays himself. That’s the best way I can describe it. It just seemed like him. He is a hard case, corporate man. In the course of the movie, both men have cancer diagnoses with short prognosis. They have made a list of things to do, The Bucket List, things to do before they kick the bucket. They are flying in Jack Nicholson’s private jet, and they have a brief discussion about faith.

Jack Nicholson’s character just can’t get his mind around it. He just can’t quite come to it. Morgan Freeman’s character can’t quite explain it. He just says that he has it, and they leave it at that.

We attend church every Sunday because we are people of faith. We sing hymns of faith. If we had to, we could all probably name a hymn or two that is about faith. If we attend church because of faith, and if others know that we are people of faith, how many of us can explain what faith is? If we were really pressed, how many of us could explain? It is a difficult task. I did not envy Morgan Freeman’s character. We all know it, feel it, and can identify with it, but to just be able to explain it to someone who doesn’t get it, how would we describe faith?

I have been reading a book recently which accounts several arguments against atheism. It notes that in several recent popular books by atheists, The God Delusion and others, most contemporary atheists believe that faith is simply a person who will not pay attention to the evidence of science, philosophy, history, and whatever else you want to name. There is all kind of evidence, so they say, that would speak against the existence of God, but people who believe, in spite of this evidence, have faith. They just cannot be convinced of good sense. The atheists would say, particularly the ones who have written best sellers, that faith is belief in spite of evidence to the contrary. That’s not very good, is it?

If we are looking for a better definition, one that suits our purposes, we can look to the Old Testament and there is a character there that is never named. We know most of the popular ones from the Old Testament, Abraham, David, Moses, and Solomon. We can all name them. But there is one character that is never named. In the Book of Isaiah, he is only described. God speaks of him through the prophet as “my servant.” The Servant, if you read the passages that relate to him, never has it very easy.

There is a children’s book entitled, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The Servant has one of those all the time. Students of the Bible have come to call this character, the Suffering Servant, because of how bad things are. There is one famous passage that you probably think is about Jesus, but in its original context, it is about the Suffering Servant. From Isaiah 53, “Surely, he took our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.” We are all familiar with that. It is about the Servant.

The Servant is also in Isaiah 50. The flow of it is that the Servant has received a message. God has instructed him and he has taught the message, but yet he has not been received well. It talks about plucking out his beard and offering his cheeks to those who would slap him. Yet he continues on. What he describes for us is a light that follows God no matter what the consequences may be. This particular passage is used for Palm Sunday because we can identify that with Jesus. Those of us who are Christians believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of these passages from Isaiah which speak of the Suffering Servant. There are many places in the life of Jesus that quotes from here are attributed to Jesus or are said about Jesus.

At his baptism, remember what the voice of God said when the spirit descended as a dove? It said, “My beloved son with whom I am well pleased.” That was first said about the Suffering Servant.

Jesus went into Nazareth, as was his custom, and spoke in the synagogue. He opened the scroll to the place that said, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has sent me to heal the sick, to give sight to the blind, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He is quoting the Servant.

We think about that passage during Holy Week because we believe that Jesus goes to the cross and something is done for us there that we could not do for ourselves. The passages about the Suffering Servant are attributed to Jesus because during Holy Week, Jesus comes into Jerusalem and the palms are waved, but before the week is out, they have crucified him. Jesus is the one who, in spite of consequences, lives the life, does the things commanded of him by God no matter what happens. It is a life in scorn of consequences.

This is a message that we need to hear as American Christians. One of the distortions of the faith that particularly happens around us and in the culture in which we live is this belief that faith is an inside guarantee that your life is always going to go well. Your prayers will always get answered and you will never have any problems as long as you have faith. If something goes wrong, people will say, “You just didn’t have enough faith.” If your prayers are not answered, people will say, “You just did not have enough faith.” It is like a guarantee, and that’s not the way it is. If you have faith, you can pray and get Cadillacs and all this other stuff if you just have faith. That is not what we read in the scripture.

In the scripture about the Suffering Servant and the life of Jesus Christ, we are reminded that we are to be faithful and to live as God would have us live, even when we can’t see God, even when we can’t see the victory, even when we don’t see the logic of what we are doing.

Let me describe faith for you in a couple of areas.

Forgiveness. Forgiveness is a good thing. We all want forgiveness. Let something happen to you and you forgive somebody and see if that just turns out well. If you don’t believe me, go back and look at the story in the news in 2006 when the gunman burst into that little school house in Pennsylvania Dutch country and killed those little girls. The community suffered so terribly, and then when they forgave the man, they had to endure the scorn of all the people who did not understand forgiveness writing in the newspapers, etc., saying, “They should have never forgiven him.” You would think, “God wants me to forgive. If I forgive, then that will guarantee that everything will be all peace and light.” Not always. Sometimes people don’t understand and they reject you for forgiving. Faith is forgiving in spite of the consequences.

Giving to the poor. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Jesus talks about it, and there are other places in the scripture that mention it. If you give to the poor, that should set you up as a person of esteem, right? You just never know how people are going to act when you start caring for the poor. There was a quote in the Rome, Georgia newspaper that Rome is too generous. If you try to do what you think is the right thing, somebody will criticize you for it. Faith is doing what you believe God has set you to do in spite of what someone else may think about it. It is life in scorn of consequences.

Peace. Peace is a good thing. Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. He came to bring peace, but if you start talking about peace in today’s world, somebody is going to tell you how unpatriotic you are. “If you don’t like living here, go live someplace else.” All you were really doing was talking about peace. Faith is life in the scorn of consequences.

When you can’t see the advantage, when you can’t see the victory, you continue to live faithfully no matter what. That’s what the servant does. He has received this word. He said the word sustains him and he teaches, and because of that, he has to offer his cheek so that his beard can be plucked out. “I don’t hide my face from mocking and spitting but confidence is in God.”

Sometimes it can even be something like prayer. “Well, something in my life has gone wrong so I am praying about it,” and somebody at work starts laughing at you and says, “Well, that must mean that you have given up all hope.” It’s like quoting Shakespeare. What does the character in The Tempest say? “All lost, to prayers, to prayers! All lost!” That is what most people think. “Well, you have given up when you start praying.”

And you think “I was just trying to be faithful.”

You try to stand up for righteousness and people laugh at you like you are a prude. But a person who is faithful, a person who has faith continues to stand for righteousness, even when there is no apparent victory, even when there is no apparent advantage. True faith in God is the belief that this is still the path we need to walk even when we can’t see the outcome, even when we can’t see God in it. Isn’t that true faith? Pray when an answer doesn’t come. Stand up for righteousness when everybody else around you is telling you to cut corners. Forgive when people tell you that you are foolish to forgive. True faith is to continue to walk the way that Jesus Christ leads us to walk, no matter what the consequences may be.

Stephen Carter has written a couple of very good books about faith in public and one of his books has the one-word title, Integrity. Carter said in Integrity that anybody can stand for right, anybody can be honest, when it doesn’t cost you anything. Anybody can tell the truth if there are no consequences to it, but he says you only, truly, have integrity when it is going to cost you something. If someone is going to reject you or you are going to have to pay a price or a penalty for being honest, only when you are then consistent can you really say you have integrity. It’s never integrity if it hasn’t been tested.

I think we can see the parallel with faith. Faith in a God when nothing is wrong is just nice belief, but it’s really belief and it’s really faith when we can’t see what’s out there. When we can’t really see that this is going to guarantee us success or grant us the victory but we know it is God’s way and we do it anyway.

Clarence Jordan said it so well. “Faith is not belief in spite of evidence; it’s life in scorn of consequences.” Thank goodness Jesus had faith.

Copyright 2008. P. Joel Snider. All rights reserved.

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