The film ‘Monty
Python Live AT the Hollywood Bowl” starts with a sketch in which one of the
python crew send up big time wrestling by getting into the ring and wrestling
himself. He circles round the ring looking for a opening to get a good hold on
himself. He links hands in one of those tests of strength with himself. He gets
himself in a headlock, breaks out of it, and slams his own head against the
turnbuckle… Finally he gets himself in a complicated leg lock and is forced to
tap out and is declared to be the winner and also losses to himself. (watch it
for yourself)
As I watched this
sketch I couldn’t help but think of the deeper spiritual and philosophical
implications of people wrestling with themselves. Paul in Romans talks about
the war that goes on within, when he talks about his new nature and his old
nature wrestling with each other. He does things that he doses not want to do
because the two natures are at war with each other. You get the feeling as you
read through Psalm 22 that in the midst of his troubles that David is also
wrestling within himself. Between despondency and despair as he looks at the
trouble he is in and hope and faith as he remembers God’s faithfulness in the
past and acknowledges God’s ability to save him in the situation he finds
himself in. Maybe even beyond that he is wrestling with God as well. We often think
of seeking God as the quite pastime, a quite meditation by a beautiful stream
or quite lake. Maybe we equate it with people who talk… slowly… and…
thoughtfully… and… are… very intense, but in scripture we often see people
seeking God in the midst of difficulties and suffering and it has the quality
of wrestling of grappling of struggling to come to terms with what they know of
God and what they are experiencing in life.
As we lead into
Easter we are reflecting on Psalm 22, a poem and prayer that David wrote a
thousand years before Christ. A poem that encapsulates the real depth of
suffering that we can experience in life and even in the light of that a real
gutsy trust in God to be with him and save him. It’s more than just a poem
because as with scripture it has the breath print of God’s spirit on it as well
and prophetically points to the suffering that the Messiah would go through.
David’s son like David was not exempt from pain and sorrow in fact as the book
of Isaiah calls the suffering servant he was a man of sorrows. Jesus himself
would use his dying breath to gasp out the first line of this prayer on the
cross. Again not a cry of despair in his final hour but like this poem an
identifying with the suffering of humanity and a trust in a God who at the
moment may seem distant but who through his saving acts would see people from
all nations and peoples come to know God though Jesus Christ.
At the heart of our
faith the thing that makes it unique is that God is a personal God. When we say
that we mean God is knowable, we were created for and saved into a relationship
with God. A relationship which is robust and like any love relationship is able
to withstand the wrestling and
struggling of the soul. We have a God who doesn’t want obedient robots who will
go “yes God” and do his bidding no matter what but God enjoys a relationship
with us in the midst of our ups, when we feel like a teenager in love and all
giddy like we are drunk on the Holy Spirit’s presence, and in the midst of the hard times
in life when we feel abandoned or our souls fire the real deep questions or
real deep hurts at the heavens. When we cry “oh come on God where are you”. I
want to look at that from the experience of three biblical characters.
The first is
Abraham. Abraham is held up to us in the book of Hebrews as a hero of the
faith. By faith he leaves all he knows in his home town and becomes a wanderer,
trusting in God that he will have decedents even though he has no children and
he’s getting on in life, a promised land, even though he doesn’t end up owning
anything except the land where he is buried and that he will be blessed and be
a blessing to the nations. He follows God. When God tells him that he is going
to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham plea-bargains with God for the lives of
the people in the city. He wrestles with God and in that wrestling learns more
about the goodness and grace of God as the numbers of good people in the cities
that would cause God to spear them falls lower and lower.
It is a surprise
then that when Abraham faces the greatest challenge in his life that he is
silent before God. He hears God ask him if he will take Issac and sacrifice
him. This passage is one of the most disturbing parts of scripture. Abraham
makes Isaac walk three days to the mountain carrying the wood and after they
have built an altar puts Isaac on it and raises his hand to kill him. It is
only the intervention of an angel that stops him and God provides a ram to take
Isaac’s place.
Jews and
Christians have viewed this scripture as the greatest test that Isaac has to
face and when it comes to Obedience he does well. However maybe that wasn’t the
test that Abraham was being asked to pass. God knew that Abraham had faith,
great faith, leave it all behind faith. Rather it was a test of relationship,
after all Abraham knew of God and God’s goodness was Abraham going to see God
as simply like all the other god’s round about who called for a child sacrifice.
Abraham could have wrestled with God like he did at Sodom and Gomorrah, But he
didn’t. It says in the Genesis narrative that for three days as he walked to
the mountain that he had his head down and he was silent. Maybe the test was not would he do it but did
he know God enough to know that God wasn’t like that. That God was different
from all those other gods of the people round him.
It’s interesting
to note that it was an angel not God himself who intervened with Isaac. That
after this part of the story we do not have another instance where God speaks
with Abraham. Abraham goes home alone and we don’t have a time when Isaac and
Abraham actually talk face to face again. It says that Sarah died after this
and you can imagine her heart breaking when Abraham comes home and tells her
what he has almost done. He blew the
relationship test.
The second person
is David himself. David is known as a man after God’s heart. It doesn’t stop
him from stuffing up and making errors in his life and he doesn’t seem to be
the greatest person when it comes to family relationships either. However as we
read Psalm 22 through you get the feeling that he knows God well enough to be
prepared to wrestle with him. He expresses both hope in God but also a feeling
of overwhelming abandonment in the face of trouble. You get the feeling that he
is trying to bargain with God. God come and save me from these bulls that roar like
lions these Dogs and wild animals and I will tell of your praises in the
gathering of your people. Come on God spare my life and people in many lands
and nations will hear and come to praise you. I know you God you are good and
righteous and able to help me in this trouble. Don’t be too far off God now
would be a good time.
Despite the agony
of the situation and the questions and doubts it flicks up there is a hope and
an affirmation that God is able to save him: A faith that he will continue to declare
God’s goodness. If this is a test of relationship, David does not let go of the
God who will not let him go. He has a faith that will not resign itself to
disbelieving God’s goodness. God is able to and willing to rescue him. God is
for his people. God is still good and great even though it seems like he is
going to be torn to bits by these wild animals. In the end we know that God did
lead David through many of his troubles. He didn’t lead a charmed or totally
sorrow free life but that God was with him.
The third person we want to look at is Jesus. In Luke 22:39-46 Jesus praying wrestling with God in the garden of Gethsemane. The fact that Jesus had the words of Psalm 22 on his lips may have shown that he knew something of the suffering that was before him. We see him in the garden come before God and it tells us that he was distressed that his sweat was like blood on the ground. His prayer is “father if its possible take this cup from me.” Or “If there is any other way we haven’t thought of father.” As a human being Jesus would have wrestled with the suffering and sorrow he was about to endure, Jesus didn’t simply accept it like a masochist, pain was not his thing. He had to wrestle with God to make sure he had heard right. That he was indeed doing the right thing. The relationship he had with God was such that he could still call God that most intimate of names ‘abba’ (father), as he enters into a debate, a wrestling with God. He knew God well enough to know that the questions and the doubts and the dread of suffering were not going to destroy the relationship. But in the end after being strengthened by an angel he was able to say “not my will but yours be done”. He had come to trust God. Maybe the words of Psalm 22 were again part of that strengthening as they were brought to mind. That because of God’s saving action and that people would hear of it in every nation and people that he could trust God for what was to come. AS Hebrews 12 tells us for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross.
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