Everything happens.
And in everything, God is near.
This sermon series has not been easy but it really has been worth it. I am writing today before my sermon is done (sorry, team) because I had some things I needed to work out.
We are talking the mack-daddy of the “Do No Ham,” series and that is “everything happens for a reason.” This saying has made it to bumperstickers, t-shirts, and of course, facebook posts with AI generated pictures of Jesus with sheep (to be clear, I have googled none of this, but I feel like my guess is accurate).
But I am also reading this incredible book, “The Lord is My Courage,” by KJ Ramsey (also, you can buy it at Inklings). This book has very little to do with this idea that all things happen because Jesus is trying to teach us a lesson.
However, y’all, this book is so incredible. Act surprised when I make it a whole sermon series.
This quote made me really dig deep:
“Confession is naming the truth of what we have lived and who we are becoming, and I needed to confess how God has already pursued and strengthened me as I showed up in the pages of my first book.”
-p. 233, The Lord is my Courage, by KJ Ramsey
And then the gift of my wayward mind brought me to this reality: the vast majority of my job as your pastor is to help you to confess to the courage that you carry.
This passage of Ramsey’s book spring from her act of confession on the ways she was unkind in writing her first book. She was selfish, mean, all of those things. I spend so much time hearing about all the ways that we have all failed and it is the honor of my life to hear your confessions.
There is usually an undertone of fear in these confessions because if we believe everything happens for a reason, well then, we must be getting a lesson for all of these faults. If everything happens for a reason then every failure becomes an opportunity for corrective action.
But most of the time when I hear these confessions, people are omitting the ways in which they have had immense courage or kindness. They overlook the ways that they have shown up for themselves or the people who rely on them. in short, they forget to confess the ways the fruits of the spirit or the courage of the Holy Spirit has manifested in their response to their sin.
And y’all, I think it’s because we have started to believe that everything happens for a reason.
We reject the idea that God might be at work in us because we assume God is busy making other things happen.
Even the goodness God is doing through us becomes something we cannot be proud of because it’s just there because God has willed it. We end up, ironically, seeing the handiwork of God in us because we end up looking out for the handiwork of God from outside of us.
Psalm 121 says this:
I raise my eyes toward the mountains.
Where will my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the maker of heaven and earth.
—Psalm 121: 1-2 CEB
So we miss that help because we are so wrapped up in:
Why God is doing terrible stuff to us (everything happens for a reason)
How God is at work in us (we focus on our failures and not the work God is doing in us)
And as the letter in Romans says, all of creation is groaning, waiting for us to be transformed. So may we see the ways God is at work in us. May we see the coming glory that is going to be revealed to us (Romans 8:18-25).
May we confess the courage we carry so that we can begin to see and believe the powerful and transformative work God is doing in all of us.
Amen.
