His Faithfulness Endures from Age to Age
Psalm 100:5
Keynote Remarks on the Occasion of the
Gala Celebration of the 10th Anniversary
of the Beijing International Academy
Westin Hotel Chaoyang, Beijing
6 February 2010
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
Part of my spiritual discipline as an Anglican priest is to say Morning and Evening Prayer each day. Almost every morning, as part of the daily prayer office, I chant Psalm 100, the Jubilate:
Be joyful in the LORD all you lands!
Serve the LORD with gladness, and come before his presence with a song!
Know this—the LORD himself is God.
He himself has made us, and we are his.
We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him, and call upon his name.
(and here is the text I’ve been asked to comment on this evening)
For the LORD is good, his mercy is everlasting,
And his faithfulness endures from age to age.
The Psalm in Hebrew is not making a logical argument. It simply overflows with joy and says “Rejoice! God is good and reliable.” On happy occasions like tonight, where we celebrate good things like this school’s first ten years, our heart is at one with the Psalmist’s. When you see God’s blessings up close and your heart is full of thankfulness, there is little room for judgment, for criticism, or for stinginess. A thankful heart has little room for doubt.
But in life, we run into situations where we are forced to wonder where this good and reliable God is. Unfortunately, each of us, sooner or later, is bound to run headlong into the problem confronting Job—where our trust in God seems betrayed by what appears to be irrational and unjust evil and suffering. We are tempted to turn our backs on what we know from our previous experience of God’s goodness and trustworthiness. “How can God be trusted when he let that baby die so horribly?” "What about all those poor people who died in that earthquake?" “How can God be good if he lets such a thing happen?” Some people find in this a reason to just say that there isn’t a God after all. Sometimes it seems easier for us believers to blame the victims of horror for what they suffer than to have these doubts and fears about God.
Jesus was asked questions like this several times in his life. “Why was this man born blind—did his parents sin or was it him?” “Neither,” he replies, “it wasn’t punishment, but so I would have the chance to heal him” (John 9:2-3). “Did you hear that the Romans massacred a bunch of guys in the Temple? Their own blood was mixed with that of the animals they were sacrificing! What did they do that was so bad that God punished them this way?” “Nothing,” he replies. “What about those people who died in the Tower of Siloam when it collapsed a few years back? They were no worse than anyone else. The lesson we should take here,” says Jesus, “is not that they were particularly bad, but that we all need to be better” (Luke 13:1-5).
Jesus knew well that sometimes bad things happen to good people and that in this world the evil often prosper. His death of the cross is the ultimate example of the righteous suffering unjustly. But he trusted in God and the goodness of God nonetheless. That’s why in Gethsemane, he asks if it is possible to have the cup pass from him. But immediately he adds, “Your will, not mine, be done.”
How can we keep our trust in a Good and Reliable God when things go terribly wrong? A key is cultivating a thankful heart. It is only when we know God personally, and recognize his personality through our own personal experience with him, that we can continue to trust and love him when we are faced with horror and deep injustice.
The women with a flow of blood is healed by touching Jesus' hem
Knowing that the face of God is the face of Jesus helps. His healing the sick and the insane, his raising Lazarus from the dead, tells us that the ultimate purpose of God does not include disease, suffering, and death. God raising Jesus from the dead is the ultimate proof of God’s reliability and goodness, and a sure token that his ultimate purposes of love and good will be achieved.
The disciples faced a moment of fearing God’s trust and care when their boat was almost sunk in a storm. “Master, don’t you care that we are perishing?” they cry when they find Jesus sleeping in the storm. Jesus calms the storm and then asks, “Why are you terrified? Where’s your trust in God? Where’s your faith?”
When I heard this story as a young boy, I thought that Jesus here was condemning the disciples. "O ye of little faith. If only you had faith, Peter, you could not only walk on water but also calm the sea itself." "If you have faith the size of a tiny mustard seed, you could not only move mountains, but calm the oceans too." All this conspired to make me want to say, "I'm unworthy, unworthy."
But that is not what these stories say. Remember that this is the Jesus who spent his days with drunkards and prostitutes, and when criticized for this replied, "Sick people need a doctor, not healthy ones." His point here is this-- if our situation forces us to yearn for help, then we should realize that it is God that we need. For, in the words of the Jubilate, God is good and God is trustworthy. Relying on God leaves little room for doubt. Maintaining a thankful heart leaves little room for fear. Regardless of how things turn out, we know that God "is doing for us more that we can ask or imagine." I think this is why in this story Jesus calms the storm before he asks about faith.
God is good and faithful. God is wholly reliable. There is no situation—no matter how awful—where God cannot help in some way. I myself have seen prayers answered in wonderful and miraculous ways, sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually: a deadly illness cured, the progress of another one halted, mental illness in a loved one managed.
This is why I know that God is Good, that God is Reliable. As so many others this evening have expressed, God's grace is seen in the creation and growth of this school, the only educational institution in Beijing that specifically states it is based on Christian faith and ethics in its educational philosophy.
But I know too that sometimes the righteous and the innocent suffer while the wicked prosper. In the face of this mystery, I have to deepen my trust, not betray it.
That’s one of the reasons I pray every day and recite the Jubilate. It’s one of the reasons why when I pray I try to give at least as many thanksgivings as I do petitions. Cultivating a thankful heart is the surest way of banishing doubt and fear. So let's party this evening and be thankful.
Jesus cares, and can help us. We need to cultivate a thankful heart. We need to trust him.
In the name of God, Amen.
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