October 1, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng of the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco at the Ordination of Lauren Lisa Ng.
We all know who we are talking about when we say: “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!” When Lauren was a little child, she was a fan of Superman. She had Superman cup. One of her favorite Christmas tree ornaments is Superman in a telephone booth that changes back and forth from Superman to Clark Kent then back to Superman again. When Lauren was in junior high and the TV series, Lois and Clark with Dean Cain playing Superman was on the air, it was a must see TV on Sunday nights after youth group. I think she still has a Superman magnet on her refrigerator door!
Most of us like the idea of superheroes. There’s Batman who fights the Riddler or the Penguin in Gotham City. We have Wonder Woman with her lasso and invisible plane going after criminals. There’s Spiderman who glides through the city with his spider web tangling up thieves. Many of the blockbuster movies are about superheroes because they portray a power that can ultimately and eventually defeat evil. We want superheroes to be real, don’t we?
We live in a world where bad things happen, where people are being killed all the time. Violent death is a daily occurrence in the streets, schools, workplaces and homes in our communities and in this country. Innocent people do die from violence and evil done to them. Such evils are perpetrated not only by individuals, but also by political and social forces, by nations, by governments, by armies and navies. Violence, persecution, hardship, hunger, and homelessness are everyday news items in our world. Paul quoted from Psalm 44:22, “…we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No wonder we need Superman! We need one of those big spot lights to beam a Batman sign up in the sky for a superhero to help us!
Suffering World
Paul writes in Romans 8 that we are living in between the age of evil and the age of the Spirit. We have received the gift of the Spirit and have first tasted that glory which has entered history in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But God’s reign of splendor is yet to come in its fullness. It is like D-Day, which is not the end of World War II but the beginning of the end. It’s like the Montgomery bus boycott, which was not the end of legalized segregation in the United States but the beginning of the end. It is like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa which was not the end of everyday apartheid but the beginning of the end.
Even though we have this power from the Spirit, Paul reminds us that we live under the ongoing conditions of the age of evil, which is defeated but not yet destroyed. The power of sin and evil is that faithful people still suffer, but the promise of the Spirit is that suffering will give way to our full fellowship in God’s own family.
We see the sufferings of the present time every time we turn on our computers and read today’s headlines. We don’t need to look too hard to hear the groaning and the cries of people who are hoping that soon they will be adopted and welcomed into God’s house. When the world is suffering, when it is in bondage, when it is groaning like in labor pains, we desperately hope for a superhero to restore the whole creation. But it is exactly during these horrible times that Paul encourages us to have hope because nothing that we see today that horrifies us is worth comparing with the glory of God that is about to be revealed to us.
Our Weakness
One of the reasons why we identify with superheroes is that they all have some kind of vulnerability. Superman may have x-ray vision but he can’t see through lead and when bad guys hide kryptonite in a lead box, Superman would get weaker and loses his superpowers. Batman always struggles with the tragedy of seeing his parents gunned down. Spiderman can’t decide whether he wants to lead a normal teenage life and have a real girlfriend or follow his dying father’s instruction that “Those who have great powers have great responsibilities.”
Paul says that Christians also have weaknesses. We are weak when it comes to knowing how to pray as we ought. I shared this morning about how we don’t really know how prayer works. And sometimes, as pastors, we yearn to become more effective witnesses and compassionate consolers but find ourselves sighing more than praying.
According to Paul, our weakness, this inward groaning, the waiting, the hoping without seeing; all of this is what it means to live under the cross in this world. This is what it means to be “weak.” Our praying is less than it could be because the gap between who we are and who we are destined to be has been too long.
Our weakness is that we can never completely appreciate and understand what is happening in and around us. What is a good thing? What is a bad thing? Paul insists that we may not understand all things, but we can trust that no things are unusable for God’s final purposes. God’s sovereignty is expressed in God’s ability to take anything and bend it to serve his divine purpose. Paul says, “We know that all things work together for good, for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (8:28).
All of us have heard the testimonies of men and women who have suffered the loss of loved ones, or fought cancer or some other dread disease. They declare that great good has come from what they initially saw as a totally negative event. They echo Joseph’s words to his brothers, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good (Gen. 50:20). God is able to take everything that happens in this world and bend it to serve his divine purpose.
Lauren’s Call
We can testify that the things that are happening in Lauren Ng’s life are working together for good. She loves the Lord and God has called her according to his purpose. Lauren excelled in creative writing and English in college. Her professors were hoping that she might pursue a career in writing and perhaps college teaching. As her father, I found myself encouraging her to do graduate work in this field too.
But as Lauren wrote in her ordination paper, she became “troubled by my indifference toward completing” the creative writing graduate program applications sitting on her desk. She said, “Poetry had been my life and passion throughout college and so I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t excited at the prospect of continuing my studies.”
At this time, Lauren was working at International Ministries in Valley Forge and on her way home driving on the Schuylkill Expressway in heavy traffic toward Philadelphia in the summer of 2001, she experienced a Damascus event. God took Lauren’s indifference about pursuing a creative writing degree and bend that troubling situation for his divine purpose.
Lauren continues, “I called my father on my cell phone to talk. When he answered, I began to sob. I explained my problem to him and finished by crying out desperately, ‘Dad, I want to help people!’ It sounded so elementary, and I even laughed out loud at the simplicity of it. As we talked, I realized I didn’t want to spend another two years at school perfecting my craft of writing. I didn’t need more training in syntax, meter, and metaphor. I needed training in compassion, creativity, and servanthood. I know I wanted to use my gifts to serve God’s people.”
Lauren, you sound a lot like the superheroes we mentioned today. We are so proud of you that you want to help people with the gifts God has blessed you with to serve his people. By doing so, all the things in your life will be working together according to God’s purpose because of your love for God. But we also want to remind you that like every single person here regardless of how young or old, how many degrees we have or not have, how many who are here with clergy robes or any earthly credentials and achievements that we can proclaim, we still have our weaknesses.
You too may have the weakness of knowing how to pray as we ought—when a loved one dies, when there’s no remedy left to heal, when you have no more comforting words to give—no more syntax, meter or metaphor. You too may discover that you have the weakness of not having the foresight to see the complete plan of God’s will and in anguish, cry out to God for direction. At that point, you and all of us turn to God and the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. God who already knows what is on our minds and in our hearts sends the Holy Spirit to intercede and assist us in our weaknesses so that God’s will may be done.
God’s Superhero
Against all the things that can separate us from God’s love: sin, flesh, the decay of creation, human weakness, hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or the sword, spirits, demon, time, the past, things to come or astrological forces, anything else in all creation, God won’t let it be. When we see this long list of things that call God’s goodness and power into question, we are loss for words and certainly for answers.
God, however, has not been reduced to silence. From the very same world of violence and vulnerability, God “did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us.” The “slaughter of the innocents” is not only recent headlines—this was Jesus’ world too. In Jesus who died, God spoke loudly to the world’s violence, to all that is against us. The Spirit of Christ, who was raised, now intercedes for us. Just as Christ speaks for us, he speaks for all the victims and sufferers too.
Whatever is against us, God is not. God is for us. For all who may be tempted to see “these things” as signs of God’s rejection, we have the blessed assurance that God refuses to reject us. This is good news indeed! Suffering is not the place where God is absent, but where God may be heard to be most powerfully in love with us. We might still secretly wish that some Superman might instantly appear and with his mighty breath blow all the sins and evil of the world away. But the real superhero is God’s giving of his Son, Jesus Christ. We don’t need to beam up a sign to call up a superhero to fight against evil anymore!
We can choose to give into the power of evil and suffering, and become consumed with bitterness and fear and cynicism. Or, we can choose to love God—we can trust in the overall, long-range, rock solid promise of a loving and sovereign God. If we make the second choice, let us not kid ourselves. Things will not work differently. The bombs and terror, the suffering and the pain will not stop. But if we choose to love God, what can and will be different is the way we see things.
What sets Christianity apart from all other religions—what is stunning and unique about our story—is our understanding of suffering. Among all the theological systems that define the world’s various religions, only Christianity presents a God who suffers. Hindus and Buddhists try to escape suffering. For Muslims and Jews, a God who chooses the humiliation and limitations of suffering and death is unthinkable. The only way we as Christians can accept Paul’s words of victory and hope about suffering, is to see—to understand—that our God suffers in every way that we do. And the lens through which our seeing becomes vivid is the person, the flesh and blood of a man named Jesus Christ.
In Christ, our faith proclaims that God is intimately intertwined and embedded in our human experience, a God who becomes one with humanity so that humanity can become one with God. If you want to know a superhero, know Jesus Christ.
At a concentration camp in World War II, a philosopher named Berdwaev witnessed the murdering of thousands in the gas chambers. In his words, “At one point a distraught mother refused to part with her little baby. The officer tussled with her, trying to split them apart because he needed only one more Jew to throw in the gas chamber to fulfill his quota for the day. And then it happened. Another woman, a simple woman named Maria, realized what was happening. In a flash she pushed the mother and the baby out of the way, and she became the one thrown by the officer into the chamber!” “At that moment,” said Berdwaev, “I saw the power of Christ at work in the world for the first time, and I knew that never again could I be the same person again!”
Even in the horrible and unthinkable human suffering and tragedy as the Holocaust, God was not absent. Beyond our human weakness to understand the mystery of God’s purpose, we can only choose to love God, to trust in the overall, long range, rock solid promises of a loving and sovereign God. Even in death, we can see God is using everything for his divine purpose.
More than Conquerors
Lauren, you chose Romans 8:37-39 as your faith defining verse when you were baptized at eleven years old. You said that this passage struck you in a profound way. In your own words, you said, “These words made it possible for me to see God as a source of love, security, and hope—feelings I used to only associate with my parents. God was beginning to reveal God’s self to me as the ultimate parent.”
Many have asked me what it is like to have your daughter work with you. And I am able to happily reply that it is wonderful. Your mother and I will always be your earthly parents providing you with love, security and hope. But you have now become an adopted daughter of the Lord. God is the spiritual source of your life: for an abiding love, for confidence during those crushing times, and for God’s enduring hope when all other hope has failed.
We may still fantasize about how great it would be to have Superman or a Wonder Woman to fight against the evil and suffering in the world. But Paul said that with Christ, we are more than conquerors. God in Jesus Christ has already conquered death. We don’t have to go around wishing that we can be superheroic conquerors. God has already defeated the evil forces and we just need to have the hope and patience to see the glory that is about to be revealed to us.
Jesus doesn’t need a “secret identity” like Superman does. We know him as our Lord and Savior. He revealed himself on the Cross for the whole world to see and on that resurrection Easter morning; he revealed God’s mighty glory by defeating death forever.
In Christ, we are more than conquerors. We don’t need to engage in a life of conquest when we are called to loving compassion. We don’t need to be conquerors because those who are more than conquerors are those who refuse to conquer. We don’t need to be conquerors when those who refuse to seek victory are victorious. We don’t need to be conquerors because those who do not glory in their own accomplishments can boast in the glory of the Lord.
Lauren, you don’t need to fantasize that there are superheroes or that you should be a superheroic conqueror anymore. We are more than conquerors because we don’t need to be conquerors anymore—Jesus Christ, God’s Superhero has conquered death already!
It’s time for you to have a God’s superhero Jesus Christ magnet on your refrigerator door!
Lauren, will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword hurt you? Will all the killing that we see all day long separate you from the love of Christ? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For we are convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate you and us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord God, we lift up Pastor Lauren as your special servant in Christ Jesus. Bless her with the confidence to follow Jesus as her superhero who has already conquered death and promised us everlasting life. Be with all of us here and remind us that against all trials and tribulations, nothing will ever separate us from your love in Jesus Christ. Amen.