Frustration
– and its Aftermath
Philemon
12, 16
Colossians 2:9
Philippians 3:8
Ephesians
4:10
“The
most difficult thing to do in life is to have to do nothing”, said Dr.
James Wilkes, psychiatrist and my former teacher; “The worst stress
that anyone can undergo is the stress of powerlessness.”
In reflecting upon myself and upon those for whom I am pastor
I’ve pondered Wilkes’ statement many times.
I think Wilkes is correct: the stress of powerlessness,
helplessness, is unequalled. Frustration
is a terrible burden. Like
so much of life, frustration is easy to understand but difficult to cope
with.
All of us have seen the 2-or 3-year old child who becomes
frustrated and has a tantrum. We
consider the child to be maturing when he can withstand frustration
without exploding. When we
adults (possessed now of even greater maturity) control ourselves in
moments of speechless frustration, we are still controlling
our temper. The rage is
still there, but of course we’ve learned to disguise it or deny it
until it’s safe for us to “let fly.”
For a long time now I have observed someone who strikes me as
genuinely “mature in Christ”, as he himself put it, rather than
merely “keeping the lid on.” His
powerlessness, his frustration, has been of a sort that everyone would
acknowledge as most frustrating: imprisonment.
For a long time now I have marvelled at its aftermath, under God,
and what blessing the aftermath born of frustration has brought to the
world.
The
apostle Paul was a “doer”, a “goer”, always on the move,
travelling ceaselessly on behalf of the gospel, cheerfully sustaining
shipwreck, assault, hunger, fatigue and slander.
The Lord who is the light of the world burned so brightly in Paul
himself that Paul had undertaken three lengthy journeys, establishing
new congregations or ministering to established congregations.
He had always wanted to go
Rome
, the capital of the empire; after
Rome
he wanted to move into
Spain
and declare the gospel where it had never been announced before.
He got as far as
Rome
. He didn’t get there in
the manner hoped, for when he arrived in
Rome
he was in chains. A few
months earlier Paul’s preaching had precipitated a riot.
He was charged with disturbing the peace.
Roman officials were obsessed with keeping the peace, and anyone
who provoked a riot was in huge legal difficulties.
Paul knew he was never going to get a fair trial in
Jerusalem
; he thought he might get one in
Rome
. Since he was a Roman
citizen, he had the right to be tried in
Rome
. Awaiting trial in
Rome
now, he couldn’t travel. Frustrated?
We can’t imagine how frustrated.
Not only was he in chains, he was fastened to the guard whom he
couldn’t be rid of for a minute. He
was allowed pen and paper, however, and managed to jot down four brief
letters. These four letters
are known as his “prison epistles”: Philemon, Philippians,
Colossians, Ephesians.
We must notice that the aftermath of Paul’s frustration
wasn’t violence or tantrums or lament; it wasn’t even depression.
The aftermath was four small letters that the
church
of
Jesus Christ
will never be without.
Today we are going to look at one feature only from each of the
four. We are going to do so
trusting God to bless to our edification the frustration of the man who
had surrendered his frustration to God.
I: -- PHILEMON
Paul’s letter to Philemon is written not to a congregation but
to an individual. This
little letter didn’t end the institution of slavery overnight; at the
same time there’s widespread agreement that what this letter embodied,
working quietly like yeast for years, caused the ferment that helped the
world renounce and denounce slavery.
And now to the story itself.
Onesimus was a runaway slave.
Having escaped, Onesimus fled to
Rome
where he lost himself in the crowded city.
While in Rome Onesimus met Paul.
Through Paul’s witness Onesimus came to lively faith in Jesus
Christ. Paul loved Onesimus.
He spoke of Onesimus as “my child”, meaning, “someone dear
to me whom I fathered into faith.”
So dear was Onesimus to Paul that when Paul sent him back to
Philemon he wrote, “I am sending back my very heart.” Since
it was such a wrench for Paul to send Onesimus back, why didn’t the
apostle keep Onesimus with him in
Rome
?
There were 60 million slaves throughout the
Roman Empire
at this time. If they ever
revolted, the revolt would be massive and the bloodshed colossal.
Therefore Roman officialdom sought to ensure that no slave
escaped. Anyone who
counselled a slave to escape was executed.
Anyone who harboured a runaway slave was executed.
When a runaway slave was caught, a white-hot branding iron seared
the letter “F” in his forehead; “F” for Fugitivus,
“runaway.” The branding
itself was torture, and it was followed by greater torture: crucifixion.
Paul loved Onesimus and wanted him alive.
Little wonder he sent Onesimus back.
But back as what? From
the perspective of Roman officialdom, as a slave.
But from the perspective of the gospel, as a free man.
When Paul sent Onesimus back he asked Philemon to receive him as
a “beloved brother in the Lord.”
Fine. To make his
point crystal clear, Paul added, “Receive him as a beloved brother
in the flesh.” To
receive anyone as a brother in the Lord ought to be enough to overcome
within the church all the social differences and distinctions that
riddle a society. Ought
to be enough; but, sadly, a congregation can think itself sincere in
claiming to receive everyone as brother/sister in the Lord while all the
while (perhaps unknowingly) maintaining the social standoffs that curse
a society. For this reason
Paul added, “Receive Onesimus as a
brother in the flesh.” In
other words, Onesimus the slave and Philemon the master were henceforth
to be looked upon, and to look upon themselves, as blood-brothers
without distinction. Right here Paul undercut the practice of slavery.
To be sure, it would take decades before slavery was abolished in
the empire; still, it was undercut here.
Then Paul added something more.
“You and I are partners, Philemon; receive Onesimus as you
would receive me.” Philemon
was to receive Onesimus as he would receive Paul, his partner in the
gospel – yet more than this. Paul
was a Roman citizen. Yes, he
was in prison awaiting trial; still, a Roman citizen could never be made
a slave. Then while the
Roman government would continue to look upon Onesimus as a slave,
Philemon was never to treat Onesimus as a slave.
The slave who was not only a brother in the Lord was also
virtually a brother in the flesh and also virtually a Roman citizen.
Philemon would never look upon Onesimus as a slave again.
In one of those glorious paradoxes that abound in the gospel, the
man who was in chains himself – Paul – did more to unchain slaves
than anyone else in the ancient world.
II: -- PHILIPPIANS
The
congregation in
Philippi
was especially dear to Paul. The
congregation was beset with no major problems.
Oh yes, two women, Euodia and Syntyche, were having a “tiff”,
and Paul told them they should sort it out.
The tiff was a trifle. Unlike
the congregations in
Corinth
and
Galatia
, the congregation in
Philippi
was problem-free. Moreover,
the Philippian congregation was the only one that Paul had allowed to
help him financially.
Paul’s intimacy with the people there and his affection for
them can be read on every page of the letter.
“I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus”, he
writes; “and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and
more….” His intimacy
with the people was rooted in his intimacy with his Lord.
Never indifferent to the truth of the gospel, never indifferent
therefore to the truths of the
gospel (doctrine), Paul yet knew that the truths of the gospel serve one
luminous reality: an intimacy with the living person of Jesus Christ, an
intimacy so profound as finally to be inexpressible.
At the end of the day everything we are about in Schomberg
Presbyterian Church serves one glorious end: helping each other to an
ever more intimate acquaintance with Jesus Christ.
Everything that we struggle for in our congregational life;
everything that we struggle against everywhere else: the “bottom
line” of it all is what the apostle himself glories in when he sums it
all up in six simple words of one syllable each: “For me to live is
Christ.”
A few lines later in the Philippian letter Paul adds, “I count
everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord. To know, in
Hebrew, is to be so intimately acquainted with something as to be
altered by that thing. To
know pain is to have had such personal
experience of pain as to be changed by the experience.
To know hunger is to have been so hungry oneself as to never to
be the same again. To know a
person, in Hebrew, is to be so intimately acquainted with that person as
to be forever altered by the encounter, the relationship.
What Paul knows of Jesus Christ is simply the difference
his ongoing engagement with the master makes to Paul himself.
Everything else in his life pales compared to this.
And then the apostle continues with something we must never
overlook: all he wants from life is to know
Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection.
Does this mean that Paul regards his relationship with his Lord
as protracted, privatized ecstasy? that all he wants in life is the most
intense ecstasy in his innermost self while a suffering world’s
suffering goes unnoticed or at least uncared about?
Not for a minute. He
insists that to know Jesus Christ is both
to know the power of Christ’s resurrection and
to share Christ’s sufferings, even to be conformed to Christ in his
death. There’s a sense, of
course, in which we can’t share another’s suffering.
If your leg is broken it’s your
leg that’s broken, not mine. Nevertheless,
when your leg breaks, your suffering has a claim on me, a claim that I
must honour if in fact I do
know Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection.
Everyone knows that the parent whose child suffers
extraordinarily – cerebral palsy or spina bifida or cystic fibrosis;
everyone knows that such a needy child changes the parent’s life
profoundly. Not to the same
extent, most likely, but in the same way none the less, a world whose
suffering rages relentlessly is a world that claims us indisputably and
therefore ought to change us irrevocably.
Intimacy with Jesus Christ certainly includes the ecstatic, just
as married life includes the ecstatic.
Yet as surely as Luther was right when he said, “It’s when
the spouse is sick that one learns the meaning of marriage”, so it’s
when the world suffers that we learn the meaning of intimacy with our
Lord.
And to be conformed to our Lord in his death?
His death presupposed self-forgetfulness.
Enough said.
III: --
COLOSSIANS Jesus
Christ is sufficient; our Lord needs no supplementation.
He doesn’t need an additive or a booster or a corrective.
He is sufficient. Listen
to Paul’s ringing reminder to the Christians in Colosse: “In him
[i.e., Jesus Christ] the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. (Col.
1:19) And a minute later,
“In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." (Col. 2:9)
And again in the same letter, “He is the image of the invisible
God.” (Col. 1:15) “Image”:
eikon.
In Greek, however, eikon means not only image (as in perfect mirror-reflection) but
also manifestation. Jesus
Christ is the manifestation of God.
As manifestation of God
he not only need not be supplemented, he cannot
be supplemented. What,
after, all could God lack, and what could ever be added to him?
And yet the Christians in Colosse had to be reminded of this
truth; had to be reminded inasmuch as they were hounded night and day by
religious devotees, “inventors”, who insisted that Jesus Christ
needed religious additions, supplementation, of one kind or another.
Then what did they think was needed?
Wherein did they regard our Lord as deficient?
These people belonged to a group called “gnostics.”
The gnostics believed the human body to be inherently evil.
Since the body is inherently evil, God would never have
incarnated himself in Jesus of Nazareth.
Since a holy God would never, could
never, identify himself with human flesh, the incarnation had never
occurred.
The consequences of this notion were far-reaching.
If the incarnation hasn’t occurred, then
Calvary
’s cross wasn’t an act of God, and God hasn’t
dealt with our sin definitively and invited us home unconditionally.
The gnostics believed, therefore, that people had to expiate or
work off their own sin.
In the second place, if the human body is inherently evil, then
such evil has to be lashed out of the body.
Whereupon the gnostics developed the most extreme ascetic
practices as they tried to beat their bodies into something that would
eventually be acceptable to God. Other
gnostics argued that just because the human body is inherently
evil, the body is incorrigible. Therefore
there’s no point in beating it; might as well indulge it.
These gnostics indulged themselves shamelessly, immersing
themselves in whatever luridness they fancied.
In the third place, all gnostics insisted that genealogies and
horoscopes provided spiritual sustenance, making up in the spiritual
life what Jesus Christ couldn’t supply.
It all sounds like the contemporary church, doesn’t it.
The incarnation is denied (for whatever reason).
The cross of Jesus is no more than another instance of martyrdom.
The body has to be drilled into champion athletic form (even
though the only person who looks like a 20-year old in a swimsuit is a
20-year old), or else the body is to be indulged with nary a
conscience-twinge. Genealogies
and horoscopes are invested with religious significance in view of the
deficiencies of the Christian faith.
From his prison “digs” in
Rome
Paul underlined his letter to the Christians in Colosse: “You don’t
need anything that gnosticism offers: Jesus Christ is sufficient. Since
the fullness of God, the whole
God, dwells in him, since he
is God’s perfect manifestation, ‘what more can he say than to you he
hath said’? Since the
fullness of God dwells in him bodily,
the human body can’t be
inherently evil. Then the
body is neither to be beaten nor to be indulged, but is rather the
vehicle of our service to God and neighbour.
And since Jesus Christ is the
event of God’s speaking to us and acting for us, there’s no need for
genealogies and horoscopes, and no religious significance to them in any
case. Jesus
Christ is sufficient.”
IV: -- EPHESIANS
Ephesians is one of the richest documents in the newer testament.
One 20th century minister, Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
preached through the book of Ephesians Sunday-by-Sunday for eight and
one-half years. I have five
minutes. What shall I say?
I want to draw your attention to something that Paul says both
near the beginning and near the conclusion of his letter.
“Jesus Christ fills all
things.” (Eph.
1:23
&
4:10
) In other words, there is
no nook or cranny in the universe where our Lord isn’t.
Even though I had read these two verses over scores of times I
was startled as never before when I read them once more in a whorehouse
in downtown
Toronto
. In 1986 The United Church
Observer commissioned me to write an article on the housing situation of
the chronically mentally ill. Maureen
drove me to the Parkdale area of
Toronto
– where the chronically mentally ill live in large numbers, expelled,
as they have been, from scaled-down provincial hospitals in west
Toronto
. Since it was raining I
went to a doughnut shop and sat down with a 25-year old woman who
trundled everything she owned in a household shopping cart.
Before the day was out I’d visited several more doughnut shops
and asked my newfound “friends” there where I might get a hotel
room. I went to one of the
places mentioned and booked the room.
It cost $117 per week or $35 per hour.
I rented it for a week. As
I lay in bed that night trying to shut out the sound of the footsteps up
and down the stairs and the constant flushing of the communal toilet at
the end of the corridor I re-read Ephesians.
Then it leapt out at me: Jesus Christ fills all
things. All
things? The Parkdale
boarding houses that “shelve” the wretched and rejected of the city?
The hotel where I was staying?
The rooms adjacent to mine whose occupants weren’t reading the
bible? If Jesus Christ does
fill all things, what does it mean that he does?
What’s its force? What
are its implications? I’ve
pondered all of this thousands of times in countless different contexts.
To say the least, because he fills all things we never have to take
our Lord anywhere. We
don’t take him anywhere; he’s always on the scene ahead of us.
We can only identify him and his work and identify ourselves with
it all. The implications of
this for my life are so vast that I’ll not live long enough to pursue
them all.
Margaret Avison, a zealous Christian and member of Knox
Presbyterian Church,
Toronto
, has twice been awarded the Governor General’s Award for poetry in
Canada
; two years ago she received the most prestigious prize in the
English-speaking world for poetry. Margaret
tells me she doesn’t want to write “Christian” poetry, religious
poetry. (Religious poetry,
she says, is usually inferior and “corny” as often.)
She wants to write poetry so well, so superbly, that her
unbelieving poet-friends will have to notice it and query her about it,
and therein listen to her. It’s
the implication for her and her gift of the fact that Jesus Christ fills all things.
Margaret told me that this was one kind of evangelism she
could do. She can do it,
however, only because Jesus Christ fills the world of poetry, even
though most poets don’t know it and disdain him in any case.
What about you and me? Since
our Lord fills all things, what are the implications for us?
What must we be about? What
misunderstandings must we henceforth drop?
And what urgency fires us as never before?
Frustration.
The man who had always been busier than a water-spider one day
found himself chained to a guard who was never out of sight.
It wasn’t the apostle’s first taste of powerlessness, but it
would prove to be next to his last.
All he could do was scratch out a few lines to three
congregations and an individual. It
was all he could do. Still,
he was determined to do all he could.
Perhaps you want to say that Paul wasn’t completely powerless,
utterly helpless. You are
correct. He wasn’t.
He could still write. Myself,
I have long noted that when people claim they are helpless they rarely
are: there’s something they
can do, if only a little. Then
what about the situation of honest-to-goodness utter helplessness,
complete powerlessness? We
must surely be speaking here of our powerlessness in the face of death.
We should all know by now that it’s precisely in the midst of
death that God has always done his most effective work.
Victor
Shepherd
January 2006
