“For our struggle,” St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, “is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” It’s easy for us, especially today in our polarized society, to get caught up with whose side is right or who we’re fighting with. And there’s no shortage of ways that we are duped into thinking that somehow something or someone out there is against us, when in reality what’s really causing the problem is something much more hidden away behind the scenes—the man behind the curtains, if you will.
For us Christians, it’s easy to miss the mark of what we’re about and get caught in “stupid controversies and foolish debates” as Paul, yet elsewhere, explains to his disciple Titus, instead of remembering what holds us fast—the love of God made real for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. As astounding as it in fact is, the death and resurrection and the promise of eternal life with God because of Jesus’ victory over sin, death, and hell sadly often become secondary, tertiary, or even quaternary to other concerns in our lives, even here in our life together as the church—where you’d think we’d never forget it! And that’s precisely where sin gets a foothold and seeks to undo us—when we lose sight of what holds us together, God’s love freely given for us and for all creation, through no merit of our own but wholly on account of Jesus. Our struggle is not against each other, but against everything that would drive us away from God’s simple, simple promise—love given away is more powerful than love kept for yourself. Hold fast to that truth today as we go forward.
Let us pray. May only God’s Word be spoken and may only God’s Word be heard; in the name of Jesus. Amen.
“Because it’s there”—that’s what George Mallory, British mountain climber, answered when asked, before his third attempt, why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. Everest, at 29,008 feet above sea level, is the highest land mountain on earth. To climb it requires major preparation, not just in special gyms at home, but in the Tibetan Himalayas themselves, a rocky region of perpetual ice and snow. In the 1920s, when Mallory was climbing, equipment was not as advanced as it is today, almost 100 years later. It is amazing that Mallory and his partner Andrew Levine could’ve even made the attempts in the ‘20s. “Everest is the highest mountain in the world,” Mallory said in an interview with the New York Times in 1923, “and no person has reached its summit. Its existence is a challenge. The answer is instinctive, a part, I suppose, of humans’ desire to conquer the universe.” The debate continues as to whether they made it to the top as they were seen through a telescope in 1924 very close to the summit and then never seen again. He and Levine died on that third attempt to climb Everest. It wasn’t until May 29, 1953 when Tenzing Norgay, from Nepal, and Edmund Hillary, of New Zealand, that someone successfully conquered the summit of Everest. And even then—we don’t know who technically was the first. To their deaths, neither man would say who made it first.
Such feats are lauded the world over. Climbing Everest. Swimming the English Channel. There are TV shows that celebrate incredible feats that push us to the extreme, where people set out to conquer some sort of adversity. One of my favorites, that in its name almost points to the absurd lengths some people will go to take on these taxing challenges, is “Naked and Afraid.” It’s a Discovery Channel show, where two complete strangers, a man and a woman, are taken out to a remote location with all sorts of wild animals and dangerous plants, without food and water. And they’re completely naked. Each episode follows them as they attempt to survive on their own, without anything but one item each of their choosing and the knowledge that their only prize is their pride and sense of accomplishment—no money involved.
Their only prize is their pride and sense of accomplishment…That’s what it is for many who set about to tackle these challenges the world over. I’ve often looked at these athletes in football, in tennis, in basketball, in baseball, and I hear what they make a year, and the prizes they get for doing this or that spectacular feat in their sport. They already have millions in the bank. What’s another $18 million, the prize Viktor Hovland won at the PGA Tour this year, when he’s already worth $15 million and has an annual salary through the PGA of $7.9 million? No—the real prize likely isn’t the money for him; it’s pride and sense of accomplishment. And we support it on when we buy merchandise, go to events, watch it at home, even talk about it with a sense of wonderment and awe. Look at what he did! He won the PGA Tour 23 under par! How impressive!
To many, such things are worth striving for. There’s a kind of worldly blessing—the accolades of people for your accomplishments. And the world does reward it, as we see in the case of Hovland and his $18 million haul. Who isn’t aware of Taylor Swift and her new boyfriend, some football player who’s now going to be worth even more because he’s dating a famous singer? Climbing that social mountain to a better status is something that is preached to us everywhere. It’s a challenge, and one worth attempting to conquer. Why? Well, there’s the pride and sense of accomplishment that comes from it, sure, but there’s also simply “because it’s there.” There is something inherently human about wanting to conquer the universe and make it ours, to tame it, to rule over it. There’s something inherently human about controlling our destiny, feeling secure in what we do or knowing we’ll be secure if we take the right steps to make it happen. It’s a sign of our own strength.
Yet today in the gospel, Jesus turns such thinking upside down with his words—from a mountain, I might add. Jesus goes up the mountain and begins to preach to the crowds who followed him. Not with popular wisdom, but with upside-down, almost aphoristic couplets. Blessings…beatitudes, as they’re called. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who hunger. Blessed are the persecuted…Laughable, almost. Popular wisdom channels Tevye the Dairyman, “It’s no shame to be poor…but it’s no great honor either.” Yet today, Jesus says the opposite. Blessed are those struggle…What’s that about?
St. John’s apocalypse today is rife with dramatic imagery about St. Michael’s battle in heaven against good and evil. Some people don’t like this lesson for its violence. Some don’t like it because it raises lots of questions about “the end of the world.” Some people get very excited about this lesson though because they see it as God smiting those who haven’t lived a good life. And still others get excited about it because it seems to say that God will swoop in and take all problems away for those who obey him or believe him or somehow please him.
There might be some element of validity in all those ways of looking at this passage, but none of them are especially helpful to our daily lives as disciples of Jesus. For one, at the time he wrote Revelation, John and other Christians like him did experience great persecution and violence, so historically the image is apt. And there is the promise of God’s deliverance for the faithful—but it’s not about how well we obey or even that God will simply come in and make everything rosy. The passage today does, however, offer us insight, and comfort, for the day-to-day struggles that we have as ordinary people, in the midst of our day-to-day ordinary lives.
We don’t all set out to climb mountains, to surmount seemingly impossible challenges. Sometimes, oftentimes, the day-to-day suffices in providing us with more than enough to challenge us. Checking accounts. Health. Family. Work. School. Sometimes, instead of setting out to climb mountains, we find ourselves in a pit and don’t know if we can climb out of that. And this is where hopelessness and despair can easily overtake—and the Accuser, who prowls about, that ancient Serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, the one who leads the whole earth astray—that Accuser steps in and feeds you lie after lie. You’re poor. You’re fat. You’re old. You’re dumb. You’re underappreciated. You’re taken for granted and taken advantage of. People disrespect you. In fact, you’re ignored by most. People like dogs more than you. You’ll never manage…You’re not worth it. You’re weak. We find ourselves in that pit, and climbing out of it seems impossible.
Yet all of that is lies, meant to make us turn in on ourselves and forget the blessings we have outside ourselves. Blessed are those who struggle, for they shall know strength. Blessed are you who struggle, for you shall know strength. The love and support of the community faith in times of adversity, in times of challenge struggle, in times of struggle is the strength of God manifested in our day-to-day ordinary lives. Amid our struggles, we experience strength when others like us reach out and pull us out of the pit, or perhaps looked at another way, when one with us in the pit lifts us up out of the pit, and then we reach back down and lift them out. The strength of God’s love, the promise that we are not alone in our struggle, but that God is with us, made real for us in the acts and words of others who know his love—that is strength, not weakness.
When you’re going through a rocky patch, and someone invites you out to eat, to listen and share time with you, then you’re rich, then you’re appreciated, then you’re valued and loved, respected and noticed. When you see someone struggling and offer a kind word, offer to help however they need it, maybe even just give them a hug…you recognize their dignity and their worthiness of love. Those are moments that popular wisdom might spurn and say are sappy, weak copouts to help us cope with adversity, but in truth, they’re the embodiment of God’s very own strength, of God’s very own love in our day-to-day ordinary lives. More and more common, everyday moments where small kindnesses shine forth win the battle against single outliers of pride.
The tide of the war waging between goodness against evil is not turned by one great, single act of charity, one single loving battle against selfishness, but by a way of life that looks at things differently than popular wisdom would have us see it, in struggle after struggle, battle after battle that embodies and is filled with joy, forbearance, gentleness, kindness, goodness, peace, faithfulness, restraint, and ultimately, love. Goodness is stronger than evil, and love is stronger than hate, greed, and selfishness. True strength trusts that love is perfected in weakness, and that through love, all things are possible—through Christ, who first loved us, love himself made human, through Christ all things are possible. And so now he sends us, the ones whom he loves, in the midst of our day-to-day ordinary lives, struggles and all, to love one another and to be loved by one another, to the greater glory of God.
Blessed are you who struggle, for you shall know strength.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 