1 Corinthians 1:18-21 “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”

One reason for sticking with the preaching of the cross is that those who find it foolish are perishing. It is not as though they have an alternate plan that works just as well. Christ crucified leads to life. Everything else leads to death. It’s that simple.

So why do people find the cross foolishness and prefer their own way? Have you ever tried a fad diet or weight loss product? Certainly you are aware of them. In the 1920’s Lucky Strikes cigarettes advertised themselves as a way to stay slim. In 1946 Marion White wrote a book touting ice cream as the key to losing weight. I can’t tell you how much I wish she were right. In the 1950’s Domino Sugar company ran a campaign claiming that consuming their sugar was better way to stay trim and slim than eating fresh fruit. Why do people go for this stuff? Because they don’t hurt. It’s more fun, even if it doesn’t work. Even if it leads to death.

In one way, people might suspect that the preaching of the cross is the easy way to life. Jesus dies for you. But it seems too easy, and it means admitting such horrible things about ourselves. Letting Jesus take our sins to the cross means admitting that we have sin, and that we are too weak and incompetent to take care of the problem ourselves. It means accepting that people are bad, not good, including me. People would do almost anything to avoid trading their dignity and their positive self-image for the cross of Jesus Christ and all that it says about us. So they write it off as foolishness, even if it kills them.

Then they try to dress up their own foolishness as smart. Much of our world has the idea that the only things we can know for certain are the things we can observe. One of the Indiana Jones movies has the hero teaching in a college classroom. In his lecture he tells his students. “Archeology is the search for fact. If it’s truth you are looking for, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall.” You see, facts are real. Truth is an abstract concept, something people debate, something you can’t be sure about.

But maybe you see a problem. What are you going to do about God? How are you going to know about him? He doesn’t sit still for people in a laboratory, and you can’t dig up his bones. You won’t see sins under a microscope, and the scientific method can’t explain what happens when they are forgiven. The Hubble Telescope can’t see all the way to heaven, and no space probe will ever find it in the universe. This is why “the world through its wisdom did not know him (God).” And a world that is locked in to human observation and science as the only way of knowing is bound to find the idea of God foolish, much less the preaching of Christ crucified.

There are ways of knowing things that don’t have anything to do with what goes on in the classes or labs at some university. There are things we know that don’t come from text books or experiments. Life isn’t something anyone has ever seen, not life itself. We see living things, we know we are alive, but the thing that makes us live, that force or power that separates us from the rocks or the elements on the periodic table–that defies observation.

Love is one of the most interesting things in all the world, and people study it a lot. Some scientists can tell you about hormones and chemicals and nerve connections in certain parts of the brain. But do you believe for even a moment that love is just a mechanical reaction, an illusion produced by chemical and electrical processes going on inside of you? You know that there is something more going on inside your personhood.

And God hanging on a cross isn’t the conclusion of someone’s PhD dissertation or years of government funded studies. The world finds it foolish in every way. But we preach it anyway. We know it’s true. It is God’s saving wisdom.

Job 1:20-21“At this Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.’”

What sets God’s people apart is not that we have become unfeeling. That would be a bad thing. Tearing your robe and shaving your head were ancient ways of expressing grief. Like crying, which Job likely also did, they were ways of releasing the sad emotions. It bothered Job to see all that he had worked so hard for, his little agricultural empire, disappear in a day, and rightly so. That is no criticism of him. It pained and grieved him that his ten children were dead. Because he loved them, this was right.

Before I conduct a funeral today, I often remind the grieving family that their tears are not a bad thing. They honor the dead. They are a reflection of the love they shared. They say good things about the relationship that has been lost, if only temporarily. They tell the truth. Losing people we love is supposed to feel bad. The same goes for the lesser losses we suffer in life: a failed business, a lost job, stolen property, homes destroyed by storms or fire. God doesn’t expect us to be happy about such things. He didn’t make us rocks and stones. We have hearts, and we are made of flesh.

But Job didn’t wallow in his sadness, staring at his losses and nothing else. He redirected his attention to God. He looked at the greater relationship in his life, and in worship he let God help him with his perspective and renew his hope.

First, worship gave Job a better view of himself and his condition. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.” We come into the world without this huge collection of stuff, and we will leave our whole pile behind when we go. It wasn’t ours in the first place, and it isn’t ours to keep. Sooner or later, we have to let it all go. And yet God manages to feed us, and keep us warm, and keep us alive.

More important, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” The Lord gave. From Creation to Judgment Day, from the opening verses of Genesis to the closing prayer of Revelation, this is the God we see. He is the Lord who gives. The central concept of all Christianity is not morality or obedience or goodness. It is the gift-giving love of the God who made us, and then saved us. We call it “grace.” “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life,” Jesus told Nicodemus one dark Judean night. “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” Paul wrote the Christians in Rome. These are some of God’s gifts. And while they may not entirely remove the loss we feel at sad times, they certainly help us to get some perspective. Even what “the Lord has taken away” does not remove his gifts, just some items he lent us for our short journey on the way home to him.

As the grateful recipients of God’s gifts, we learn to cope with our losses by turning to worship and praising God for them. It’s what we do at a truly Christian funeral, not one of these sad memorials that do nothing but tell stories about the deceased and make us dwell on what we lost. I’m talking about a service where we sing “Amazing Grace” and mean it, where the preacher directs our eyes to the cross, and the empty tomb, and the peace of heaven and the promise of bodies raised again from the dead.

It is what we do week in and week out, when, after another week of “Life is pain,” we gather with our family of faith to be encouraged, and to hear that our sins are forgiven, and to meet our Savior for a little taste of his grace in his supper, and to be sent home with God’s blessing ringing in our ears.

God has given these coping tools to each of his sons and daughters by faith. Put them to use like Job, and you will find reason to praise God even in the midst of pain or loss.

Job 1:13-15, 18-19 “One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only who has escaped to tell you!’ … While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, ‘Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’”

Job’s story reminds me of a line my Russian history professor kept repeating through the course. “Just when you think it has gotten as bad as it can get, it gets a little worse.” One man can’t finish telling his bad news before the next one comes and interrupts him with more. At first, it might be hard to imagine how anyone could suffer a more painful day of loss than Job. His suffering seems extraordinary.

But what happened to him was less rare in the scope of his loss and depth of his pain than we might wish. To quote from Wesley, the hero of one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Maybe we won’t suffer loss as bad as Job’s. Maybe we will suffer worse. My point is, that’s not what makes the suffering of God’s people extraordinary. Many, many people suffer more than we do.

No, while our suffering, real as it might be, is mostly ordinary in terms of its scope and depth, it is extraordinary in terms of its purpose. As people of God, our suffering has meaning and purpose that cannot be applied to everyone. Here we have to pick up some of the context of Job’s story I did not read before. Do you remember why the Lord let this happen to him? Satan came to God and questioned Job’s godliness and faithfulness, denied it really. He accused Job of being a fair-weather fan. The only reason he was so good is that God had blessed his life so richly. “Strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face,” the devil claims. So the devil has a purpose in our suffering. He wants to see us fall. He wants to ruin us spiritually.

That being the case, should it surprise us when so many of the ungodly people in our world do so well? The world’s wealthiest are not Bible-believing Christians, by and large. The celebrities and the business moguls are rarely people of faith. They live and talk like the spiritually dead people they are.

This all makes perfect sense. The devil has no reason to make their lives uncomfortable, other than to satisfy his twisted pleasure in human suffering. He doesn’t need to ruin these people spiritually. They are already ruined. He is happy to encourage them on their present path toward hell. So let’s not envy them, or worse yet, aspire to be like them.

God’s purpose, however, makes our suffering extraordinary. He allows it for our good. In Job’s case, the Lord was actually defending Job’s sullied reputation. He let him suffer to let his faith and witness shine. At first, we see, that faith shined brightly.

More than this, the Lord uses our suffering to train and discipline his people. By discipline we mean more than the kind of “correction” a parent applies to a child though pain of one sort or another, a divine spanking. Sometimes that is involved as well. But this is discipline more like the kind a coach uses to train his players. Or think about the child learning to ride a bike. The training wheels were necessary at first. Eventually, they become a crutch and get in the way of improvement. They may mask the level of mastery our cyclist in training has achieved. So off they come.

The many blessings with which the Lord had surrounded Job in his life were like training wheels for his faith. It was time to take them away, and see how far Job’s faith had come, and let it grow and strengthen without the soft life that propped it up before. This is what makes our suffering extraordinary as God’s people. God is working great things for us, even when the suffering tests our limits. It is why, even at its most difficult, the life we lead is an extraordinary life.

2 Kings 2:11-12 “As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, ‘My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel.’ And Elisha saw him no more.”

People don’t like to talk about death. They don’t even like to use the word. We avoid saying things like, “My father is dead.” We find ways to say it more softly.

When I make hospital calls, I come to remind the person in the bed that God loves them, in spite of the disability of the moment. We talk about God’s promises and power. We pray for healing.

But the day comes when that conversation has to change. It is increasingly clear, or likely, that the patient isn’t going to go home well. We have entered the last stretch of this earthly journey. The finish line is close. We can’t pretend. The time has come to prepare our dying friend to face death well. The time has come to prepare their family and friends, too.

As you may know, there are two people we know of whom God took directly to heaven alive. One of them we have here. Elijah never died. God took him body and soul in the whirlwind. Elisha and the fifty prophets watching from across the Jordan river saw the miracle.

We might think, “But when the people we love die, there is no miracle to see.” It is true there isn’t anything miraculous to see with our eyes. Labored breathing, a slowing heartbeat, the death rattle, and then utter motionlessness–these are far too ordinary, depressingly unmiraculous things to see at the end.

But if we see with eyes of faith, if we believe what Jesus tells us, the angels come. The soul, the real personality of our limp and lifeless friend, steps out of that body, free and unaffected by the years of physical decay, and the unwholesome appetites of a heart infected with sin. A door opens between earth and heaven. The angels carry that soul into the presence of believing friends and family, some who made the trip many years before. Jesus himself is there, with his Father, keeping that soul safe until the day he returns to restore the body and unite it with the soul again.

That is a miracle. And it happens every time a believer goes home. And we can see it in our hearts, if we can’t see it with our eyes, because Jesus gives us eyes of faith. See it, believe it, and you will face death like God’s servants Elijah and Elisha, and uncountable others the angels have carried home.

Deuteronomy 4:1 “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you.”

Some people are worth listening to. Your doctor is generally someone worth listening to. Take ALL the medicine in the bottle until its gone, even though you feel better, and you won’t end up with a relapse twice as bad as the original illness. Take it easy for a few weeks after surgery, even though you feel no more pain, and you won’t land yourself back in the hospital with complications.

Your parents–your parents are people worth listening to. How many of us had parents who told us not to jump on the bed? But how many of us banged our heads on the headboard, the floor, or a sibling because we were jumping on the bed?

The Lord God is one person always worth listening to. Others occasionally steer us wrong, even the doctor, even our parents. But when we listen to the Lord, we always come out smelling like a rose.

One reason to take God’s word seriously is that he takes it so seriously himself. It’s not so obvious in our English translation, but the word “decrees” literally refers to something carved or etched into something solid. That makes us think of the ten commandments which were carved into stone. What was God telling us about how he felt about his commandments when he chiseled them into two sheets of rock? They could have been written on scrolls like the rest of the five books of Moses. But even after Moses broke the first set of stone tablets in the golden calf incident, the Lord insisted the commandments be carved into stone again. In stone they would not fade, they could not be erased, and they could not be changed. We still use the phrase “set in stone” to refer to something which cannot be changed. God is serious about his word!

If there was any doubt about that among his people, look at the conditions he placed upon following his commands. First, he says follow them so that you might live. By “live” he is not talking about having an enjoyable lifestyle, a desirable standard of living. By “live” he means the difference between life and death. He was giving his people a choice: “Follow my commands, and I will permit you to stay alive. Break them, and I will wipe you out.” God means serious business!

Then the Lord conditioned their earthly happiness upon keeping his commands. He told Israel to follow them “so that you may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.” The last time Israel had a chance to take possession of the promised land had been forty years earlier. When they disobeyed him, they ended up wandering in the desert for forty years. Again, when God says, “Listen,” he wants to be taken seriously.

The Lord is no less serious about his commandments today. They are not “voluntary initiatives,” as one humanist has called his set of ten replacements. Choosing to break what God has commanded still invites his anger. Those who insist on living in some sin only add to their own misery and that of those around them. The Lord designed each commandment to take care of us in some way. Breaking them may result in short term pleasure, but it leads to long term pain.

Though we take God’s word seriously, none of us keep his commandments perfectly. All must confess their failure. For Jesus’ sake the Lord does not condemn us. As Paul preached to the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch: “Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:39). God’s word also teaches that he is loving and forgiving. That makes us desire to take his word all the more seriously and keep his commands. People to whom God has revealed himself as their Savior and Redeemer find in him the power to do so.

Listen, and Live!

2 Kings 2:1-3 “When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Stay here: the Lord has sent me to Bethel.’ But Elisha said, ‘As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel. The company of the prophets at Bethel cam out to Elijah and asked, ‘Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?’ ‘Yes, I know,’ Elisha replied, ‘but do not speak of it.’”

There are a lot of things going on here. Everyone knows something big is about to happen. No one seems to know exactly what to do about it. Should Elisha leave, or should Elijah and Elisha stay together? Should we be talking about what’s going to happen, or shouldn’t we?

It’s hard to tell what everyone is thinking. Does Elisha want to stick close to Elijah for himself, because he can’t bear to leave him, because he wants every last moment with his friend he can get? Or does he stay with Elijah to support him, because what is coming seems a little scary, and he doesn’t want Elijah to face it alone? Does Elijah ask Elisha to stay behind because he wants to spare Elisha the trauma of thinking about this all day long, and having to see Elijah’s final moment? Is he trying to help him get started on resolution and closure? Or is he personally burdened by the grief he senses in Elisha, and he doesn’t want to drag this around with him his last day? “Just leave me alone.”

How to act as death approaches confuses us. Family members get on each other’s nerves. Selfishness often rises to the surface. The emotional pain makes some people bossy. Others withdraw into themselves. We are tempted to believe the worst about others. It’s sad that at a time when both the dying and those around them may need each other the most, we easily end up pushing each other away. Just when “Love your neighbor as yourself” is most needed, it suddenly becomes all about me.

If we are going to face death like God’s servants, this is what we can take from this part of the story: This is the time to support each other. Maybe that seems too simple. But this involves a facet of the gospel we don’t talk about so much. It is important at a time like this. Regardless of the current condition of our earthly families, God has made us part of a family of faith. Jesus died to cleanse us of our sins and to make us his brothers and sisters by faith. That makes us brothers and sisters to each other as well. One of the prayers in the funeral liturgy reminds us of the blessing when someone dies. “In our earthly sorrows, help us find strength in the fellowship of the church…You give us family, friends, and neighbors to help us when there is loneliness now and in the days to come.” We are not alone. That’s good news.

I don’t know the reasons Elisha stuck so close to Elijah, or the reasons that Elijah kept asking him to stay behind. But God had given these two men to each other as brothers. It was good for them to spend these last hours together until the chariot and whirlwind came. Maybe Elisha didn’t want to talk about what was going to happen to Elijah later that day. But God kept sending him prophets to prepare him. He wasn’t going through this grief alone.

You and I are unsteady, imperfect disciples. But we are forgiven, and we are a family of faith. We are God’s gifts to each other. Be who you are. When you or facing your own death or that of someone you love, face it like God’s servants, and support each other.