Exo. 1:22-2:10, I Cor 1:18-31
INTRODUCTION
In W.W.II a B-17 was barraged by flak from Nazi anti-aircraft guns. That was not unusual, but on this particular flight the gas tanks were hit, yet the plane flew safely back to base. On the morning following the raid, the pilot went down to ask the crew chief for the shell as a souvenir of his unbelievable luck. The crew chief told him that not just one shell but eleven had been found in the gas tanks -- eleven unexploded shells where ony one was sufficient to blast the aircraft out of the sky. Chance, or Providence?
On the front porch of his little country store in Illinois, a small businessman stood with his partner. Business was all gone, and the partner asked, "How much longer can we keep this going?" The owner answered, "It looks as if our business has just about winked out." Then he continued, "You know, I wouldn’t mind so much if I could just do what I want to do. I want to study law. I wouldn’t mind so much if we could sell everything we’ve got and pay all our bills and have just enough left over to buy one book--Blackstone’s Commentary on English Law, but I guess I can’t." At that moment a strange-looking wagon came up the road. The driver drove it up close to the store porch, then looked at the owner and said, "I’m trying to move my family out west, and I’m out of money. I’ve got a good barrel here that I could sell for fifty cents." The businessman’s eyes went along the wagon and came to the wife looking at him pleadingly, her face thin and emaciated. He slipped his hand into his pocket and took out, according to him, "the last fifty cents I had" and said, "I reckon I could use a good barrel." All day long the barrel sat on the porch of that store. The partner kept chiding the owner about it. Late in the evening the businessman walked out and looked down into the barrel. He saw something in the bottom of it, papers that he hadn’t noticed before. His long arms went down into the barrel and, as he fumbled around, he hit something solid. He pulled out a book and stood dumbfounded: it was Blackstone’s Commentary on English Law. That businessman was Abraham Lincoln. Chance, or Providence?
A young minister and his wife were unemployed. Although they sent out many applications to various ministries, they had received no reply. The minister was becoming anxious and felt unsure of his future. While they were out driving one day the wife asked her husband “if you could ask God for anything right now, what would it be?” The husband thought for a moment and then said, “a place where I could be restored, where I could learn what it means to be a minister of God, and where I could discover where God is leading me.” When they arrived back home, they received a message to call the director of a hospital chaplaincy program. When the minister contacted the director he was told that there was an opening due to one staff member leaving unexpectedly. However, the director had to be out of town the next week. His business trip was to the very state that the minister and his wife were also planning to visit that same week. They set up a time and place to meet and at that meeting they were invited to go out to the hospital for an complete interview. There they were both accepted into the hospital’s chaplaincy program. In less then two weeks they had moved from Worcester Vermont, Greg’s home town, to Danville, Pa. Chance or Providence?
“Providence” What does that word “providence” mean to you? According to Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, providence is "the hidden, patient, sovereign enactment of God’s overriding purpose beyond the will and choice of human agents." These sovereign acts surface at critical points in our lives and they may not even be obvious. The providential work of God is not always plain and clear to us. We may not even realize that it is God who is acting. Only later, at some future time, when we look back over our lives, that the truth is revealed, Then we come to see the hand of God. and we say, "Ah-h-h. Now I understand what that was all about!"
A slave girl bears a son. The king has decreed that all male children born to Hebrew slaves are to be killed at birth. Two midwives disobey the king and let the male children they deliver live. One child they deliver is the son of this slave girl. She hides him for three months, and when she can hide him no longer she takes a basket, daubs it with tar, and puts the child in it. She then hides it among the reeds at the edge of the Nile River. The baby’s older sister stands by and keeps watch. On that day the daughter of the king omes
down to the river to bathe, where she finds the basket and its precious cargo. Taking pity on the little boy, she decides to keep the child. His sister steps forward and offers to find a nursemaid for the baby. The offer is accepted, and the child’s own mother is brought into the palace of the king to care for her own son - even though the princess knows nothing of this. The child grows, and is raised to manhood as the son of the king’s daughter. The princess names the boy Moses. Chance, or providence?
A young carpenter lays aside his father tools to take up the call of a itinerant preacher. For three years he travels the hills and valley’s of his native home. Though thousands would begin to follow him, they would all forsake him in the end. He is scapegoated by the local religious and political powers, and arrested by the local authorities. In the end he is tortured and put to death as a common criminal. Chance or Providence? Three days later the story begins to be told he has been seen alive by his closest companions. On the next religious high holy day, they claim this man was the Messiah and his death fulfilled the plan of God, to grant mercy to sinners, and grace to those who believe. Grace.
THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD
In the Reformed tradition we teach that the last word in every human situation is “always” the grace of God -- God’s grace will have the final say. We believe and teach that God’s grace can be, and is, experienced in the ordinary affairs of our lives. The grace of God brings us not only forgiveness and renewal but also, as Reinhold Niebuhr says, “God’s providential working in history by which he ... transmutes good out of evil." In other words: God takes all the various circumstances of our lives -- even when they are far, far less than perfect; and, over time, fashions something good and useful out of them. We call that “providence.” This idea of the providence of God is really nothing more than an extension of our believe that our God is a personal God. That belief rises up out of our experience of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ. Because we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, because we have come to know him as our Savior and Lord, we know that God is at work in our world, in its mode of operation and in its history. As Paul says, "We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him." Everything. Not
some things. Not just happy things. Everything. Providence.
A LIVING HOPE
As Christians, our unique testimony to the world today is that God’s grace is the last word. In every human situation, whether it is an historical event that overwhelms us or a personal event that threatens us, God’s grace is there. But this grace is not just a human attitude that helps us stoically face whatever happens to us. God’s grace is the personal activity of God in your life and mine, that opens up for us new possibilities in every situation. And that gives us hope, hope that beyond every defeat, every disaster, every disappointment, God’s good purposes are working themselves out in our lives. As Herbert Butterfield says in one of his books, there really are only two ways of looking at life. Either you trace everything back to sheer chance, or you trace it back to God. It is a reality that was realized thousands of years ago and is still true today. A stoic attitude may allow us to face the events of our life with dignity but not with hope. God’s grace gives us a hope that empowers us to use creatively whatever comes, in seeking the fulfillment of God’s good purposes for us and for all God’s creation. As that old favorite hymn says: “Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come. ’Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”
Our hope in the providential grace of God is not a psychological trick that enables us to endure. It is the gracious presence of God who leads us. St. Augustine, at the beginning of his book “City of God”, explains that Christians are not distinguished by what happens to them. They suffer pain and death along with everyone else in this world. What distinguishes Christians is not what happens to them but rather it is the way we respond to what happens to us. Christians differ not in the details of what life brings to us, but in the fact that we are empowered by God’s Spirit to respond in faith, hope and love. This means that there are no dead-end streets in life, in which pain or suffering or evil have the last word. There are no situations from which there is no exit. There is no circumstance in which God is not at work. This does not mean that there are no difficult times. Of course, there are. And the pain, the isolation, the suffering is intense and very, very real. Let no one ever, ever try to make you believe otherwise. But, real as these are, they are not the last word. God has the last word, and it is always grace.
CONCLUSION
I began today by telling you of some very famous stories, and even a piece of my own story. We heard part of the story of Moses, and the story of Jesus. They are stories that reveal God’s providence, the awesome working of God’s grace in very human lives. They call to us, to look back through our own lives, to consider where we’ve come from, and how God’s hands have rested upon us. I invite you to do that. Look back at your own story. Look back along the footpath that has brought you to where you are today. Where are the corners you turned ever so deliberately, perhaps even painfully -- but only later did you understand just why? Or maybe that understanding hasn’t quite come yet. Where are the long, lazy curves you rounded almost imperceptibly -- and only much later did you realize how the landscape had changed, and how permanently! Do you see the patterns of the grace of God at work in your life? Can you see how, by God’s grace, we ordinary people live our lives not in quiet desperation, but in grace and power and peace, even as we face the challenges of this life?
We believe that God’s grace is sufficient for whatever comes our way -- and that it will endure even through the final test of faith -- the ultimate challenge for us all: even death. This is very near to the heart of the gospel. The grace of God is at work for good in the lives of people of faith, even if the road has been rough and the journey difficult. The final
word -- always -- is God’s grace. You can count on it. Amen.