Comedy or Tragedy

I'm a little behind--six days after the sermon.  Nonetheless the question remains, Are we living in a comedy or a tragedy?  At times it feels like a tragedy; nothing seems to work right: children rebel, the economy contracts, hatred abounds, conflicts grow.  Is there any hope?  Is what we see all there is?  Do you remember the movie "Stranger than Fiction"?  Will Ferrell starred a character whose life was being written by a novelist.  Will Ferrell's character, Harold Crick, is stuck in a meaningless job where nothing seems to go his way and in a life that is lonely at best.  He confesses in one scene his belief that he's actually living out a tragedy.  We can probably identify.  We've been there; life often feels like it's one big tragedy.

But we know better.  Christians are not living in a tragedy but a comedy.  Everything will come together in the end to the praise of God.  Our God is the creator of comedies.  Sarah testifies to this with her statement in chapter 21:  God has made laughter for me.  What an amazing ending to a long and tiring journey.  Finally, it all came together.  The hurt, the pain, the stress, the sorrow, the doubt was all answered by God's amazing ability to come through and bring new life out of the deadness.  Read Romans 4:18-25.  There we see the connection between Abraham's life and the resurrection of the dead.  So it shall be for us.  We're not on the losing side of history.  God will come through.  The promise-maker is a promise-keeper.  Keep going.  Don't give up.  Don't grow weary.  We will all laugh with joy again.  Peace.   

Judgment

Yesterday, we talked a bit about God's judgment.  It's  a theme that many people find difficult to comprehend.  Many wonder how can a God of love judge his creation.  Others scoff, stating, "God has no right to judge."  Both seem to assume that love and judgment are diametrically opposed to each other.  

I could not disagree more.  Love and judgment go together.  In order for God to save, he must also judge.  He can't pretend as if the world is whole when anyone with half a brain can readily seen that it isn't.  Furthermore, God can't merely cover up the evil that has defaced his good creation and has made a mockery of his noble intentions.  If God ignores evil, then he's neither loving nor good.  If God does not stand against oppression, hatred, racism, injustice, and sexual perversity, then he does not love.  But because he does love, he also judges.  

I believe this will probably work in at least two ways.  First, there will be a judgment at the end of time when evil will be eliminated.  Everything that can't be redeemed will be destroyed.  Revelation 20, along with many other chapters, describe this well.  But there is a also a judgment for those who can be ultimately redeemed but who also need a little cleaning up.  Paul talks about workers who labored for God but with shoddy workmanship; their desires and intentions weren't always noble.  Paul says, they will be saved but as through a fire (1 Cor. 3.15).

Again, both of these examples speak of God's love.  Because of God's love for creation, evil must be dealt with.  Doctors will often have to use invasive measures to heal a patient.  They do this out of compassion.  So it is with God.  

All of this should help us understand better the work of the cross.  In Romans we learn the "wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth" (Romans 1.18).  But there is hope:  "they [Jew and Gentile] are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith" (Romans 3.25).   In the cross, love and judgment come together.  God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself (2 Cor. 5).  God absorbed the evil of the world in order to defeat it.  The judge submitted to his own judgment to release us from the bondage of sin and death--God embraced his own wrath in Christ through the cross. For it is in the cross that God judged sin and wickedness, and he also set the sinner free.    

Our response?  It's simple:  Receive his grace and walk in the light as he is in the light (1 John 1); become a participant in God's new creation made available to you through Christ (2 Cor. 5).   

Peace.