Living with Uncertainty
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, la’ma sabach-tha’ni?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ”
April 12, 1981
In the first part of this message, I plan to talk about the uncertainty in life. Or the reality of uncertainty. Or, if you please, the uncertainty of reality. In short, we never know for sure what is going to happen to us, and that fact makes us, to say the least, edgy and a bit shaky about ourselves. Live long enough, and sure enough, a rug will get pulled out from under you: with an unexpected illness, the death of someone special, a marriage suddenly under internal or external attack, a bomb-out in school or job, a crisis of faith or self-confidence, or a dozen other events that swoop down on you when you least expect it.
For ole Mr. Uncertainty himself – Charlie Brown – it is more often a football instead of rug that gets snatched out from under him. I remember one of those football episodes with Lucy going something like this. Lucy is holding the football for Charlie to kick; she has her best smarty-pants little girl smile on. Charlie talks about it to himself. Something like: 'If I knew she would hold it there long enough for me to kick it, I would really give it all I've got. And if I knew she was going to pull it away like she always does, I just wouldn't try.’ The trouble is that he doesn't know, so he tries to run for it. And just in the nick of time, Lucy snatches the ball away, Charlie's feet go up higher than his head, and lying there in the grass and among the stars, Charlie hears Lucy: 'Charlie Brown we all have to live with a certain amount of uncertainty in life.’
Although Lucy creates more uncertainty than she should for Charlie Brown, she has a point that we often miss. Life is an uncertain proposition.And we make matters a lot worse than they need to be when we fret, and fuss, and sulk, and feel sorry for ourselves because reality offers no guarantees.
The recent shooting of the President is a giant example of this for me. We felt much outrage that such a terrible event was allowed to happen to the President. It is bad enough for shots to come out of the blue in one way or another for us but someone like the President of the United States should be immune from uncertainty. We don't like to be reminded that no one is home free on earth. Thus, we analyze the performance of the President's guards, locking for the slip ups and mistakes. Yet even with the President like Humpty Dumpty, there are times when all the king's horses and all the king's secret service men cannot prevent a fall. Such happenings shatter our illusions that if we play our cards right then just around the corner will be all that certainty, security, and safety we long for. That kind of surefire certainty doesn't exist even for presidents.
Henri Nouwen in his little book Reaching Out speaks of "messianic expectations" in relationships. You remember all the problems Jesus had with people and their messianic expectations. God's special messiah would come and solve all their problems, kick the Romans in the seat of the pants, and put them on top of the worldly heap again. But instead of a king, they got a servant. Instead of one who would take away all of their problems, they got a Jesus sharing God's love to empower them to work on their and the world's problems, not escape from them.
Nouwen speaks about "messianic expectations" in relationships. We do so much damage to ourselves when we expect others to be our personal messiahs and take all the uncertainty and unhappiness from us. Parents demand children to achieve in ways that compensate for the parent's needs. We husbands and wives expect the other to magically "fix" us when we are unhappy. We do it with possessions. If I could just have the house of my dreams, or get the house of my dreams paid for...if I could just have the furniture I want...if I could just have that particular job or position...if I could just get into that school...if I could just get my children raised successfully...if I could just find that book to read that world explain everything to me, if I could just get right with God, THEN, THEN, things wouldn't hurt anymore, I wouldn't be afraid anymore, and I could feel some security and certainty, and then I could really start living!
Yet, then someone fires a shot at the President or a shot out of the blue hits you in your own personal experiences and all the messianic expectations about life and ourselves bite the dust. There are no bulletproof cocoons on this side of death. There is no person or position or possession that will take all of life's sting out of it for you. We miss the real joy loved ones and possessions can give us because we load them with such unrealistic messianic expectations. We miss the excitement of life even in its uncertainty because we become bitter and withdraw because we have taken the uncertainty of life personally.
So, there is some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that life is uncertain. It cannot be escaped, only faced. The good news is that life really is uncertain. It is not because you did something wrong, it isn't that way only for you, it is that way for all of us. Life has not singled you out for a hit.
The Nature of Certainty. But is that all there is? Life is uncertain and tough. Thanks, Bill. I never would have figured that out without you. No, I really don't think that is all there is. It is not that certainty does not exist. It is just a matter of looking for it in the right places and ways.
Let's look at Jesus's last week of life. It is interesting to me that the Christian year remembers the last week of Jesus' life beginning with this day sometimes called Palm Sunday and sometimes called Passion Sunday. Palm Sunday, the victorious and triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, pam branches waving, Hosanna, hosanna! Certainty. Passion Sunday, the beginning of the end for Jesus, betrayal and denial, spit upon, lonely Gethsemane prayer of ‘O God, is there any other way?’, and the body on the cross crying 'My God, why...why have you forsaken me?' Uncertainty. We have to remind ourselves that we look at Jesus with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight. We know how it all came out. We know the good guys did win, at least in a way. What we know with the clarity of hindsight, Jesus only had glimpses with his faith that God was in charge despite appearances to the contrary.
And his experience is only an intensification of the way it must have been for all of those great people of the Bible. Do you think Abraham and Sarah had it all figured out when the old man, almost 100, got the compelling notion that God wanted him to leave comfortable Haran and go to some Podunk called Canaan? Those two old barren birds laughed in God's face when he told them they would have a child and descendents. Read Exodus 3 again if you think Moses was all certainty when a strange bush that wouldn't burn told him to tell Pharoah a thing or two. Or what about Ruth, ole "entreat me not to leave thee" Ruth? Husband dead, leaving her homeland to go to a foreign land with her mother-in-law Naomi. No questions? All certainty? Of course not. Their certainty was not a matter of what they knew about their future; their certainty was a matter of who they entrusted their lives and future to.
But back to Jesus on the cross. Yes, there was uncertainty in him in what we after Easter see as only certainty. His certainty was not a matter of knowing exactly how it would turn out. His certainty was of another kind. A kind which we need. Notice when he cried, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" he does not cry "O my God, there is no God.” Even his doubt is expressed in faith and his pain is addressed to God. What's more, Jesus the student of his Bible, our Old Testament, was crying the first verse of Psalm 22, a lament asking for God's continued help in desperate times. Jesus' certainty was not based on having all the answers about uncertain reality, it was not based on the absence of questions within him they were there, nor was his certainty based on everything in life going his way. His certainty was a certainty of God's love for him even in uncertain circumstances which called God and himself into question.
Think about what the certainty of being loved means in your own life. I am at my best when
I feel loved by my wife, my children, and special friends. Their love doesn't take away my problems; their love gives me strength to deal with my life issues. On the days my relations with people who mean the most to me are rocky are the days when I have trouble getting it together in whatever I try to do. The same is true for a parent's love of children. As much as we would like to protect them, absorb all their pain and bumps for them, we can't. We can only give them our love and support so they can have strength and resources for facing the inevitable emotional and physical bruises that come their way.
Human love is only a partial example of the love of God proclaimed in the New Testament. In I John: "...perfect love casts out fear." Paul who knew what it was like to be beaten, shipwrecked, hungry, chased out of town declared to the Romans: "For I am sure neither death, nor life, ...nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Neither Jesus or Paul lived without uncertainty. But what they did do was to live with the strength of the certainty of God's love FOR them and WITH them in the middle of the uncertainties of life. And that certainty of God's love in the midst of scary, unknown reality can make all the difference.
Living with Certainty in the Midst of Uncertainty. What, then, does it mean to live with the certainty of God's love in uncertain life circumstances? It means two things, I believe. First, we are delivered from burdening others and life with our "messianic expectations" of them. We stop expecting spouses, children, and friends to solve all our problems. We stop blaming them for all of our unhappiness. When we liberate them from the unfair expectation of being our "savior", then they and we are freed to enjoy one another's human love. A love which doesn't take our problems away but gives us strength and encouragement to face what we must face and do what we must do. We, then, can bless them for the real help they can be to us and can stop cursing them for the unrealistic help they cannot be. We can come to forgive each other even after disappointments and betrayals.
In another time and another place, I worked with a couple having some serious marriage problems. Their difficulties were aggravated by their idea that because they read the Bible together and prayed together, they should not have any problems with each other or their children. It was so difficult for them to understand that God's love for them was not a magic wand that would make their problems instantly go away but a source of strength to work on their conflict. God's certainty to us is not a painless existence equipped with a crystal ball. His love for us and with us is for facing the tough situations of life. Living with the certainty of that love frees us from unrealistic and cruel messianic expectations of ourselves, each other, and even God.
Second, the certainty of God's love for and with us – as it was with Abraham, Ruth, Moses, and Jesus – can change us from pouting "crybabies" over life's raw deals (and life does have its raw deals) into servants of God's certain love in an uncertain world. And isn't that exactly what Jesus, Moses, Paul, Ruth and the rest were: servants of God's certain love in an uncertain world? People who trusted God enough with their own necks so they could be free to worry about other people's necks, people who did not have to pull footballs out from under others to put themselves up?
You know, it is not that we don't care that someone starves every 13 seconds in this world. It is not that it doesn't bother us that our country spends almost one billion dollars a day on war and instruments of death. It is not that we wouldn't like to give more to our church. It is just that we are so worried about ourselves, afraid of what the Russians might do, so worried that we won't have enough salted away for a rainy day, that it is hard for us to worry about all of the thems of the world. Our selfishness is not because of our overestimation of our importance, it is the result of our fear and insecurity.
Thus, the death defying love of God is our only hope. If it is true that nothing in life or death or all creation can separate you and me from the love of God and I believe it then we can dig our heels into that love and get to the feeding and healing that God wants for this world. We can begin to see hints and glimmers of God at work in us and in the world that are invisible to the naked eye without faith. When you and I become servants of God certain love in an uncertain world, then even bumbling and stumbling you and I become examples, witnesses, and proof of that love for others. We can become reasons for others to have certainty in the midst of their personal experiences of life's uncertainty. We can become channels of God's love, givers instead of grabbers.
What's your choice? Will you be a crybaby of uncertainty in life, dragging others down with you? Or will you with the help of Jesus Christ become one of God's servants of certain love in an uncertain world, holding people up with you? God help us to dry one another's tears so we can be Christ's servants together. Amen.