Sermon for February 21, 2021 Lent 1 B House of Prayer Lutheran Church
James 1:2-4; Psalm 25:1-10; Mark 1:9-15 Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Sermon Series: The Blessing of Adversity
Today’s Theme: Celebrate Your Troubles
Today I’m beginning a sermon series for the Sundays in Lent on “The Blessing of Adversity”, and the theme for each week will be inspired by a chapter from a book of the same name, “The Blessing of Adversity”. This book was written by Barry Black, who is currently chaplain of the U.S. Senate, and before that was a chaplain in the U.S. Navy. The theme for today from the first chapter is “Celebrate Your Troubles”.
The blessing of adversity (as a concept), and celebrating your troubles (as a concept) are both kind of counter-intuitive. If you’ve ever tried to “count your blessings”, I bet what you did was to make a mental list--or maybe even a written list--of the good things in your life. The things you give thanks to God for. This is a helpful practice, and if you’re ever in a spot where you are feeling down, I encourage you to give it a try. Maybe you even want to pause my sermon right here and take a couple minutes to count your blessings, and make a list of them. Go ahead and do that if you think it would be helpful.
I bet, in your list of blessings, you probably didn’t include the adversity and trouble you’ve been through in life. I’ll admit, that’s not the first thing that comes to my mind, either. Usually we’re thankful to be done with trouble; we’re thankful to have made it through adversity. Normally we feel that a time of trial is a burden, or maybe even a curse. But when we look at the witness of the Bible, we see time and again that God has many blessings to provide right in the midst of adversity.
Now, I’m not saying that we should go around hoping for bad things to happen, or that we should try to create problems for ourselves or others. After all, God calls us to love and serve one another, and not to cause harm or cruelty to befall people. But I think you’ll also find that if you know a person who has a high level of maturity, or a deep level of wisdom--if you dig a little deeper into that person’s story you’ll find a person who has been through trouble and adversity. And chances are, when they faced those times of trial they didn’t run from the problems, but instead learned to lean on the Lord. They lifted up their soul to God in prayer. They trusted God to show them the way through, and to lift them up when they were at their lowest.
For a person like this, the ultimate gift of blessing that God gave was deeper maturity and wisdom: these are gifts that last a lifetime, and they can be shared with others--they never run out.
When I thought about what it meant to “celebrate your troubles” my mind turned to a classic movie that was one of my favorites when I was growing up, it was really popular back then: “The Karate Kid”. If you don’t know the movie, the premise is that Daniel, a teenager from New Jersey, moves cross-country to southern California with his mom, and he has a hard time adjusting. But then he befriends Mr. Mayagi, a Japanese-American handyman and karate master, who agrees to teach Daniel. In one of the most famous scenes, Mr. Mayagi has Daniel spend all of his time doing his chores for days on end at Mr. Mayagi’s house--wipe the windows, mop the floor, paint the fence, wax the car. It’s not just doing the chores, but Mr. Mayagi is satisfied only when Daniel does them in a very specific way. Maybe you know the famous line from the movie: “Wax on. Wax off.” Repeat again and again. “Wax on. Wax off.”
Daniel can’t see the point of all this forced labor, and besides, he’s not learning any karate. He feels like he’s being taken advantage of and tortured, so he finally quits, saying “I’m sick and tired of being your slave.” Eventually he realizes, though, that with all of these chores, Mr. Mayagi has not only been teaching him all the basic karate moves--he’s also been learning discipline, perseverance, endurance. With all the drudgery that Daniel went through, the trials and tribulations ultimately became his friends and allies. He could celebrate what Mr. Mayagi had done, because that helped him develop maturity and wisdom.
The Bible is full of stories about how God uses times of difficulty to give us precious gifts when we stick with God in faith and trust. Jesus is one of the best examples of someone who endured the trials and tribulations of life, and he found through his patient endurance that relying on his Heavenly Father led him to be able to fulfill his life’s purpose, which was to be our Messiah and Savior.
The difficulties Jesus faced began right at the beginning of his public ministry. We hear about them in today’s gospel. Right after he was baptized, the Holy Spirit drove him into the wilderness where he spent 40 days, being tempted by Satan, and surrounded by wild beasts. It was a time of trial, to say the least. But God sent the angels to give him encouragement.
We all have times in life when we are driven “out into the wilderness”. Sometimes it’s God who sends us there; other times it’s simply the unfortunate or unfair circumstances of life. We’re all living through a time when the whole world has been sent into a “wilderness environment” of sorts for the past year, because none of us have ever lived through a pandemic before; nor did we ever realize ahead of time all of the suffering and sacrifice we’d have to endure because of it.
The good news is that we have a God, in Jesus Christ, who has endured testing and trials just as we have. Jesus doesn’t simply watch what we’re going through from afar--he jumps down into the middle of it, and walks with us whenever we’re driven out into the wilderness. Whenever we face the trials and tribulations of life, Jesus asks us to put our faith and trust in him. He asks us to offer up our sorrows, sufferings, and sacrifices to God. He asks us to open our hearts to the Holy Spirit who can give us the precious gifts of maturity and wisdom--as long as we don’t turn a blind eye to our troubles or to the troubles of others--but as we lean on the love of God to bring us through.
Of course, we’re not supposed to go around intentionally causing trouble in malicious ways just to see if we can gain a blessing from it. But we do know that in this life, troubles come. Yet with Christ, our troubles do not have to be the last word. Jesus went to the cross and rose again so that we could hand over our sins and troubles to him, because he wants to walk beside us as he travels the way of the cross. He wants to carry our burden on his shoulders. With Jesus by your side, you really can find a way to celebrate your troubles. Amen.