Dr. Dale Miller, July 16, 2006

Conflicting Emotions

2 Samuel 6:6-11

We know what conflicting emotions are because we experience them daily. Watching the news about the Middle East we see the violence and the frustration, but there are no apparent easy answers, no ready-made solutions. Quite frankly, I'm not sure who is right and who is wrong. My prayer is that no one else is killed or harmed. Watching all that is going on simply confuses me. Sadly, it is nothing new. Times change, but people remain so very much the same.

Over the last three weeks we have experienced three deaths in the life of the congregation. Any time this occurs there are conflicting emotions within us. One emotion is the grieving over the loss of that person from our lives. The other emotion is that of gratitude for that person's life and for their entrance into life eternal. Two weeks ago we celebrated the entry into life eternal for Ethel Stradley, 94 years young. Because of her age her memorial service was more of a sense of relief and release than it was remorse. Yesterday we said our farewell to Doug Black, 72 years young. There was both a sense of loss for a dedicated worker of this congregation and a celebration of his life. Last Thursday we grieved over the senseless murder of 40-year-old Ken Wojtowicz and clung to the assurance of his resurrection through Jesus Christ our Lord. We experienced three deaths, three different circumstances, and many conflicting and unresolved emotions.

Allow me to visit a story, somewhat foreign to you and me, from the Book of 2 Samuel, a story that brings a conflict of emotions over something that does not make much sense to us. There is a box called the Ark of the Covenant that contains the original Ten Commandments. The power of this box is so important to the Israelites that it goes with them in battle. They felt the very presence of God was inside that box. Wooden poles carried the box so that no human hand would defile it. It is hard to imagine that God's presence could be confined in a box.

There are times when we think God's presence is confined to a certain belief, or to a certain understanding, or to a certain action. Someone once asked me about a man who had died, "Do you think he's really with God?" The person who asked the question was a devout woman, a woman who constantly worked at the church, who read her Bible with regularity, and who prayed constantly. My response was simply, "Yes, he is with God. Grace is given, not earned."

I once saw a cartoon. A man was standing in line at the Pearly Gates of Heaven. He was making a list of his accomplishments. St. Peter was busy talking to a rather small and elderly lady. All of a sudden the man overheard St. Peter say to the woman, "I'm sorry, Mother Teresa, but what you did wasn't enough to make it in." The man threw away his list. Fortunately, our relationship with God is not based on whether we are good enough for God, but on how much God loves us.

It is not that strange to assume some people of the Bible thought God was confined to their belief. Here is this Ark of the Covenant, this box. It has been shaken as the oxen moved down this road, and it has fallen off the wagon. A man stands there; his name is Uzzah. He sees the box falling. What is he going to do? What would we do? Do we get involved or not? Do we close our eyes and walk away?

Perhaps it would be better to not know about it, and then we could be innocent. If we know about it, then we may feel inclined to become involved. Sometimes I want to be exempt. Think of the people who do not see the Ark slipping, but Uzzah sees it. What are his options? "If I let it fall, there's a problem. If I stop it from falling, there's a problem because I am not supposed to touch it." He touches it and he dies. And the understanding of the time makes it very clear: God killed him.

Wait a minute, God; this guy was trying to help the Ark of the Covenant box that contains the Ten Commandments from falling into the dirt. And how do you thank him? You kill him? What's that all about? That is an unsettling concept of God.

I don't know about you, but I'm looking for a door out of this kind of understanding about God. And I think there is one. Let me offer you an idea. God did not kill this man. God is bigger than any one understanding. But that is the way truth is. What you and I do with truth is to just grasp a little bit of it. I understand a little bit of the universe. I understand a little bit of the world immediately around me. I understand a little bit of you and of myself. We never have the whole picture, do we? If we did, we would be God. Quite frankly, I don't qualify for that status.

Perhaps our hope is in the fact that we can take what we know and realize it is not the whole truth. Maybe our hopelessness is when we think we know everything. God did not kill this man. The man died, probably from fright when he realized what he had done and knew he was not supposed to do it.

Imagine how many people across the centuries may have died feeling God hated them and God caused them to die. Can we imagine how harmful that is? It is bad enough that I have a problem and that I am dying, but then I also start to believe that God is causing my death. I don't think so. It is sad when somehow we twist the goodness of God, feeling that we are not worthy to be well.

Jesus taught differently. The gospel is not something that is a trick. The gospel is not, "Believe in Jesus so you can get to heaven." The gospel is, "God is with you." That is the gospel; that is the Good News. God has always been with you. God's grace is what Jesus teaches. Sometimes we can make grace so small.

When we define Jesus by our limited understanding, then we put ourselves in charge and we can then ask ourselves the question, "Do we really think that man who dies believes enough to be with God?" We can put God in a box. Perhaps we should let the box fall so God can be free from graceless limitations.

Uzzah stands there and the box known as the Ark of God is falling. "We wish it weren't falling; we wish we didn't know it. We wish we weren't here." We reach out, try to help, and we are scared to death. There are times when we get involved and we are frustrated because we cannot do much. And sometimes we feel helpless because we do not do anything. We have conflicting emotions, but we feel that we are involved in a no-win situation.

Do we have surgery or not? Do we change jobs or stay where we are? Should we get married? Should we get a divorce? What are we going to do? How are we going to handle it? We face daily choices. Often we find ourselves frustrated and inwardly torn apart.

In the middle of our anxiety we attempt to engage the best part of ourselves, but it doesn't always happen that way. Perhaps we need to just reach out as the emotional conflict box is falling, even if our reaching out threatens our comfortability and safety. Perhaps we should give up trying to be proper and simply become responsive.

There can be a marvelous, spontaneous possibility that happens in the middle of conflicting emotions. In the midst of bouncing back and forth, being in charge on one hand and vulnerable on the other, we can discover ourselves in an arena where great living takes place. In the midst of our struggles we make our choices and they are not always perfect, but they can be filled with hope and love.

Alfred Russell Wallace was an English botanist who lived about 150 years ago. One day in his laboratory, Wallace was observing an Emperor butterfly seeking to get free from its cocoon. The scientist was struck by the little butterfly's painful struggle and the length of time it was pushing and pulling, working to get free. He wondered, "What would happen if I assisted in the process?" And so he took his scalpel and he cut down the length of the cocoon. He watched to see what would happen, and these are his exact words: The butterfly emerged from the cocoon, spread its wings, dropped perceptibly - and died.

The butterfly needed to struggle. It needed the pain, all that intense work. Otherwise, the juices would not be distributed into every square millimeter of its large, beautiful wings. Without all the pain, there would be no beauty, no color, no character, and no life.

Struggle and pain are necessary to create a beautiful, living creature. We, too, need that effort and work, those opportunities where we participate in working with the conflicting emotions that challenge us to grow in our faith.

We need to be willing to reach out and take the risk of making the choice to serve God. We don't need to suffer from the paralysis of analysis. People can wear down the possibility of any idea by trying to second-guess everything that could go wrong before they attempt to do anything at all.

We have heard of the phrase, "Ready, aim, fire." It would be better to live by the phrase, "Ready, fire, aim." If we live our lives in the readiness to serve God, we respond to God's love now. Later on, we'll figure out the better way to aim that love. God will help us aim our hope and love in the right direction.

The Ark of the Covenant was about to fall. The man touches it and the man dies. They apparently put the Ark back on the wagon. But God was not about to fall. God always is. The love and grace of God always is. Because that is true, we always will be. And we are all right, too. We will be well, not because of our great faith, however important that is, not because of our great accomplishments, however important they may be, but because of the grace of God, which undergirds us and keeps us. We experience conflicting emotions, but our hearts can be healed.