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| Thy Will Be Done 24 August 2003 TEXT: Reflection on a line from the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:10 © 2003 Gregory Turner |
Let us pray:
Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest:
To give and not count the cost;
To fight and not heed the wounds;
To toil and not seek for rest;
To labor and not ask for any reward
Save that of knowing we do Thy will. Amen.
Thus did St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, interpret Jesus’ prayer: “Thy will be done.” Give, fight, toil and labor without cost, rest or reward. This is surely a rigorous view from one who saw himself a “soldier for Christ.” Like most of us, Ignatius took comfort in believing he was doing God’s will. A century later Charles I of England prayed: “Lord, let thy glory be my end, thy word of my rule, and then thy will be done.” Loyola saw himself fighting for the Lord without heeding the wounds, led a Spartan existence along the way, founded one of the most effective mission orders in history, and lived to the age of 65; an old age in the year 1556. Poor King Charlie had no stomach to fight with anyone but still imagined himself monarch by divine right. He found out otherwise when beheaded by Cromwell and the Puritan Parliament at the age of 48. Was that the glory waiting at Charles’ end? Was that the will of God? Maybe so…or maybe not.
Across the ages people have found that discerning the will of God is a necessity for making their way more surely through a world of trials and temptations. But is it God’s will they have found? Is it the “will of God” when something stupendous or horrendous happens? That phrase is so loosely used, and the consequences of its use are so important for both to an understanding of our faith and for our peace of mind, that we ought not let it pass without thinking about it.
Confusion reigns here. A man’s wife dies too young, and he says: “I must accept it, for it is the will of God.” But the man himself is a physician. For months he fought for her life with every mental skill he possessed and every technological tool available. All that time was he struggling against the will of God? Had she recovered, would he have thwarted the will of God? Or would the recovery be God’s will too? When he works to assist the recovery of other patients, does he say then too: “This is the will of God”?
A small child near Bombay dies horribly in the middle of the night, a victim of cholera. “It is God’s will,” her father says. Yet what would he have said if, in the middle of five nights before, a maniac had crept into the house while his daughter slept and placed a wad of cloth soaked in cholera germs over the child’s face? Would he have been so accepting? Yet in a way is that not what he accused God of doing?
Friends, when we are faced with acute or relentless pain, when anxiety afflicts a close friend, when war or disease devastate a people, when high hopes are dashed, years of investment wiped out, family or friends taken from us in senseless or cruel ways; call it folly, call it sin or stupidity, call it the neglect of the laws of nature or the risks of the economy, call it something our minds cannot fathom or our spirits cannot embrace, but do not necessarily call it the will of God.
I have a great and lasting appreciation for the faith, courage and intellect of my Puritan and Pilgrim forebears. They stand at the heart of what I understand America and American principles to be. Still, I grimace and shake my head when I recall that William Bradford, founder of Plymouth, my spiritual ancestral home, said after that harsh first winter: “But it pleased God to visit us then with death daily, and with so general a disease that the living were scarce able to bury the dead.” With all due respect to the great Bradford, Hogwash! My God pleased to do no such thing. What sort of God is it, what evil demon, who would inflict that disaster and be pleased about it? Who could worship such a God and be mentally healthy at the same time? No, this god is to be hated and opposed. Half the Pilgrims died because they were unprepared for winter. The Indians helped save the rest.
So maybe we should skip this part of the Lord’s Prayer when we come to it each week? Well, no. For while it is often silly and sometimes disastrous to claim that God has willed something for which we have no rational answer, how we react to the painful and the defeating, as well and the joyous and uplifting – not to mention the ordinary and dull – is the key concern. How our minds or hearts effected by the experience tells us a great deal about our view of God and how her will works. Naturally, when we are pushed and pulled by the emotion of the moment, we can be forgiven (and are forgiven) if we call our tribulations the will of God. But when time has healed the pain a bit, and the emotion has retreated somewhat, then we need to look at this question: What do we mean when we say “Thy will be done.”
No where have I found a better and more simple understanding
of how “the will of God” works than in a little book of the same
title by Leslie Weatherhead. Dr. Weatherhead was the great preacher of the London
Blitz and decades thereafter at City Temple. His words of courage while bombs
fell, his insights as a therapist, and his famous book The Christian Agnostic
have helped thousands. But he was never so helpful to me as when he laid out
three forms of the will of God and warned us to keep them straight, for we confuse
ourselves and separate ourselves from God when we mix them up.
First, we need to ask “What is the Intentional Will of God?” What
does God want; what does God intend for us? Scripture is clear that God’s
intention, God’s cause, is the well being of humankind. In Jesus’
teaching this cause is spelled out in the vision of a kingdom of love and justice,
a realm of mercy and peace…or what we call, in this more democratic age,
the Commonwealth of God, the Community of Shalom. What God wills, what God intends,
is the best of all good things for all his creation.
If Jesus lived to reveal the cause of God, the Intentional Will of God, then
was it the intent of God that Jesus be crucified? No, the intention was that
Jesus be followed! so that God’s cause might be understood and advanced.
When some goodness, some part of the commonwealth is promoted, there we find
the intentional will of God. That is what God would want, would will, and would
achieve had not part of God’s good intention for us been that we be as
mature and responsible as we can be. That is, had God not covenanted with us
to exercise the gift of free will to be responsible for chunks of God’s
creation.
Not when the soldier is killed but when the war is over and
peace restored; then it is time to say, “Thy will be done.” Not
when the baby dies, but when a person takes a child to her heart and dedicates
that child to grow in love; then is the time to say “Thy will be done.”
Not when millions starve, but when our world marshals its will and resources
to grow and feed; then is the time to say “Thy will be done.” For
these good things are part of the Intentional Will of God, her kingdom or commonwealth,
which Jesus demonstrated and to which he points us. In our haste to be comforting
to others, we are apt to torment them by claiming something horrendous is the
will of God when, if we are talking of what God wants, it is exactly the opposite.
Second, when men and women act against the Intended Will of God for his free
people, either in disobedience or in ignorance, circumstances are created that
make evil a part of the will of God. This is important to grasp and here is
how it works. Again, God does not intend for Jesus to go to the cross. But when
people abuse their God-given freedom to create a self-serving religious hierarchy
and mix it with others’ freedom to create an imperialistic empire, and
to that dangerous alliance is added a frustrated populace burning for any claim
of liberation – when these conditions combine, though God intended life,
death becomes her “will” in this situation. Dr. Weatherhead calls
this the Circumstantial Will of God.
In such circumstances Jesus has the option of hiding away or
selling out. But as the faithful son of God he had to ask himself: “What
advances the cause of God, what does God want if not that even here his common-wealth
be more fully shown? So, though cowardice or simple human fear might have gained
the upper hand, thus sparing Jesus the agony, the Circumstantial Will of God
leads to arrest by the religious hierarchy, to trial by the Roman Empire, to
the cross by the cries of the crowd, and to death by crucifixion through the
combination of all three. Jesus was fully aware of the circumstances to which
his faithfulness had brought him. Before the Temple Guards arrive that night
in the garden, he prays: “Not my will, but thine be done.”
It was the Karen Quinlan case nearly thirty years ago that began our very active
concern about the artificial prolongation of life, a debate that rages until
this very moment. The Quinlans asked that their daughter be taken off the life-support
system in order to die, or live, naturally. God knows they did not intend that
she die, or that the auto accident happen which destroyed her brain. Surely
God wanted no such thing. But under the circumstances they could in good conscience
make the hard choice to turn off the machine, for the Circumstantial Will of
God seemed to say that that choice is better than continuing futile treatment.
I put it “seems to say” because we must approach these decisions
in “fear and trembling.” Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician
and even greater devout Christian, was right to observe: “I am astonished
at the boldness with which people presume to speak of God.” Yes, we presume
when we talk of God’s will. But being human, we must speak.
Third and last, we can use those words, “The Will of God,” in an
ultimate, a final or decisive sense. We have considered God’s Intentional
Will, followed by her Circumstantial Will. Now we come to the place where we
must believe God’s final goal is realized even though he does not intend
the events that promote it and though evil itself tries to intervene to stop
it. Yes, God’s will be done though evil itself be used to reach it!
Now that is a frightful thing to say, a mind-boggling sentence. Only faith can
take the next step into the mystery of the divine way. Again, look at the cross.
Though God did not intend it, and though evil circumstances made it necessary
-- and for a while seemed even to block God’s love -- when we look into
the depth of the cross, we see that nothing can defeat God. The Ultimate Will
of the Divine prevails, and the cross is transformed from the statement of failure
and oppression into the symbol of life-giving power. God achieves his goal not
in spite of the cross, but through it, turning evil back on itself and consuming
it with love. Did Christ die, then, for our sins? No Christ died because of
our sins. To say that Christ died for our sins is to argue that all along God
had a plan for Jesus to die to compensate for the rest of us, that God planned
for and wanted his son to die. I refuse to believe that such a God as that deserves
to be worshipped. When Jesus gave up his last breath on the cross, my God was
the first to weep.
We stand before the cross, therefore, only in wonder and confession. Somehow God has turned defeat into victory. As a pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew that assassination of a head of state was evil. Yet as a faithful German he had to participate in the plot to kill Hitler. He did so without joy, without self-righteousness, but in confession for the evil he had to do. Furthermore, the plot failed. Bonhoeffer was arrested, imprisoned and hung. Not doing the Intentional Will of God and failing to accomplish the Circumstantial Will of God, through his witness perhaps the Ultimate Will of God prevailed. For Dietrich was among a small number of faithful Christians who helped redeem the soul of a nation.
These are the hard questions for gentle summertime. They see more appropriate to Lent, our most serious of seasons. But think of these things we must. When we do, let us not confuse ourselves and inflict pain upon others -- let us not deny the fundamental love of God -- by jumping automatically to believe all things are God’s will. Too often that leap lands in the lap of a monster-god and makes us its frightened captives. Instead, when faced with excruciating turns in the life’s road, let us ask three questions. What does God, who love us, intend here? What use can God have for these painful or evil circumstances we are facing? And given God’s loving intent, and in spite of this lousy situation, how is God’s ultimate will for me being worked out. In so asking we can ride through heart-wrenching anxiety and emerge on the other side to say with St. Thomas a Kempis, and let us pray:
Grant to us, O Lord, to know that which is worth knowing,
To love that which is worth loving,
To praise that which pleaseth thee,
To esteem that which is most precious to thee,
And to dislike and oppose whatsoever is evil in thy eyes.
Grant to us a true judgment to distinguish things that differ,
And above all to search out and do that which lies within thy will for us;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.