"BUT GOD..."

To read endnotes, click on the the note number, then click on the to return to your place in the text.

Graduation time. No more teachers, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks. And no more having to come up with excuses for absences.

A school system in Pennsylvania collected some of the excuses parents wrote for their elementary school students - parents hurrying out of the house, parents having trouble spelling, parents not familiar with the right choice of words. Here is a smattering:

• Please excuse Fred for being absent yesterday. He was sick and I had him shot.
• Mary was sick yesterday. Please execute her.
• Please excuse Fred for being. It's his father's fault.
• Please excuse Fred for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea yesterday and his boots leak.⁽¹⁾

No doubt you graduates have heard all sorts of good wishes. You have mine too. Lots of congratulations. And I join with them. No doubt folks have wished you "Good Luck," but there I will draw the line. You see, I do not believe in luck. And I say that not because I subscribe to platitudes like "The harder I work, the luckier I get." Nor is it that you are so bright and blessed that you will never need any help to make it. It is just that the help you need outside yourself has nothing to do with luck.⁽²⁾

Now, I admit, that flies in the face of popular culture. Sometime ago, Christian therapist Wayne Oates wrote a book entitled Luck, A Secular Faith,⁽³⁾ in which he claimed that modern people no longer believe in a purposeful, intervening, directing God. What we believe in is luck. Luck has become our way of explaining ourselves and what comes our way.

Do you remember Harold Kushner's phenomenally popular, When Bad Things Happen to Good People?⁽⁴⁾ Rabbi Kushner says that in life, God does not WILL bad things to happen to people. When bad happens, it is the result of lousy luck. The world is a great spinning roulette wheel. When your number is up, it is up, for good or ill. Nothing is meant by either one. It is mostly a matter of chance.

Most folks (at least people of faith) are not willing to go quite that far, but they will go along for a bit of the ride. No doubt that accounts for the phenomenal upsurge of the gambling industry around the world. Just a few weeks ago, we all heard about the lottery prize that reached the astonishing figure of $350-million for one winner. And the lotteries continue to grow. Despite the ridiculous odds against anyone winning (something on the order of getting struck by lightning...5,000 times), millions play them, all hoping for the chance to get something for nothing. Teachers support lotteries as a way to finance schools, though only a tiny portion of the money goes for any good. Politicians support lotteries as a way to raise needed funds, though most of the funds do not meet those needs. Until the voters in North Carolina establish one here (and it is probably only a matter of time), Moms and Dads and Aunts and Uncles load up the van and drive to Virginia each week to play numbers based on their wedding anniversary, their children's birthdays, or the ages of their dogs when they died. All very "scientific," don't you think?

Speaking of science, Paschal noted that while science shows that there is "probability," there is nothing in nature that could be called chance. Chance - luck - is only what appears when we observe circumstances at close range. But with observation over time, we discern probability. Flip a coin a hundred times, it will not be by luck that half the time it will come up heads and half it will come up tails. No doubt this is part of what was behind Einstein's statement, "I don't believe that God plays dice with the universe."

God and luck. Did you know that the word "luck" never appears anywhere in the scriptures? Odd, in a way, since it was a popular concept in the ancient world. Pagans were always ascribing things to the Fates, those women who sat at their spinning wheel in the heavens and, when their thread broke, so did the lives of some poor mortals here on earth. Our lives, said Homer, are mere playthings of the gods. It is all a matter of luck, fate, chance. And what can anybody do? Sounds like Rabbi Kushner.

Not long ago, the National Safety Council urged news organizations to stop speaking of "accidents" on our highways. Rather, they thought it more accurate to speak of "crashes." If you are doing ninety down I-85, and have a wreck, is this really an "accident?"

Perhaps that is one of the reasons why luck has become so popular - if "It was just bad luck," we are absolved of responsibility for our lives. If it is all up to good or bad luck, the Fates, well, why bother? Roll the dice and take your chances.

Our lesson from Acts sounds like it fits right in with that mindset. At first blush, this story of the apostles "casting lots" - rolling the dice - to choose a successor to Judas sounds very much like a reliance on luck. But, in fact, it was just the opposite - they were counting on God making the divine will known through the way the lot would fall. This was no gamble at all, instead it was supreme faith that the choice of a new apostle would be God's rather than their own.

Of course, this is not the only story in scripture that leads us to understand God's intimate involvement with our lives. From the story of creation in Genesis to the consummation in Revelation the message is clear. In fact, story after story says that, not only is God involved, God makes mid-course adjustments to bring things to a proper outcome.

The brief passage we heard earlier from the book of Genesis is the climax of one of those stories. It was called to my attention years ago by that great old Methodist preacher, Clovis Chappell. He said that someday he was going to preach a sermon entitled "But God..." It would be based on the text in Genesis, chapter 50, as Joseph says to his brothers in venerable King James English, "But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good." Dr. Chappell said he wanted to count all the places in scripture where the phrase "but God" appeared and use them to teach divine providence, even in the face of monstrous malevolence. As far as I know, Dr. Chappell never did that research or preached that sermon, but, the idea was a good one, so I followed up. In Dr. Chappell's King James Bible, the phrase "but God" appears 43 times. Over and over it comes as God responds to some failure or folly and instead works a blessed outcome.

In the Hebrew Bible, the story of Joseph is as good as any. By the time we encounter "but God," Joseph is nearing the end of a most fascinating life. As you recall from your Sunday School lessons, young Joey was his father's favorite son, a bitter enough pill for his brothers to swallow, but the boy did everything he could to rub their faces in it, and the result was that his fed-up siblings took matters into their own hands and sold him into slavery (and you thought YOU had a dysfunctional family).

The Midianites who bought the boy were on their way to Egypt where they would soon sell Joseph once more, this time to a man named Potiphar, the head of Pharoah's security force. Joseph did well, under the circumstances, eventually being placed in charge of Potiphar's entire household, an incredible honor for a slave. But Potiphar's wife had her own ideas about honor - she tried to seduce the young man, and when he refused her advances, she yelled RAPE!!!

Now Joseph is in jail, once again the victim. But here again he prospers, gaining the respect of fellow prisoners and guards. Eventually two of the Pharaoh's servants find themselves behind the same bars where they all become friends, a scenario that (after a few dream interpretations) would eventually lead to Joseph's release.

To make a long story short, the Pharaoh had an eye for talent and made our Hebrew hero the Prime Minister of Egypt - from the jail house to the penthouse. Not bad for a bratty kid who had been sold into slavery by his brothers!

Now a famine settles on the Near East. Jacob tells his sons to go to Egypt to buy some grain. They do and in the process meet Joseph -- only they do not know it is Joseph. It happens twice. Finally, Joseph reveals his true identity. The brothers are shocked and rightly scared - PAYBACK time! But Joseph does not do that. In fact, he stuns them with these words:

Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, BUT GOD.⁽⁵⁾

Now it is just Joseph and his brothers. Again they fear retribution - with Jacob gone, brother Joe will be free to take his revenge. So they tell Joseph, "Oh, by the way, before Dad died he told us to tell you to treat us kindly." Uh huh.

Listen again to Joseph's gracious response. These are the words of a man who understands the providence of God: "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, BUT GOD intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."⁽⁶⁾

All the while his brothers thought they were doing in Joseph. But theirs' was not the only doing. God was working behind the scenes weaving even their evil into good purposes.

Can you think of other stories from scripture that demonstrate the same thing? Of course, you can. The most famous of all is the one we celebrate in Christian churches over and over and over again. We gather on the first day of the week for worship because we recall another first day of the week, another "BUT GOD" event. Listen to the way Peter describes it in his sermon in Jerusalem on Pentecost:

You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know--this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. BUT GOD raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.⁽⁷⁾

To be sure, the story of Jesus, the cross and the tomb, say very loudly, despite our belief in God's providence, that everything that happens is not good. Not at all. Horrible things happen - babies die, mothers get cancer, parents abuse children; we have Chechnya, Bosnia, Rwanda, Auschwitz. Everyday's news has a story. But our faith has the REST of the story: in the words of the apostle Paul: "We know that all things [...even the terrible things...] work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose."⁽⁸⁾

There is no such thing as luck. What there is, is "providence," that care and guidance of God over God's creatures. We can see that providence in our lives, but usually only in the rearview mirror - it is difficult to speak of God's guidance in terms of what happens to us at this moment or what will happen to us tomorrow, but, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, we are more able to discern the loving hand of the Lord in that which has happened to us in the past.

Augustine described it this way: when you first consider your life, it looks like nothing but a bunch of chicken tracks in the mud of a barnyard, going this way and that. But through the eyes of faith, we begin to discern pattern, meaning, direction. Providence.

To my graduating friends, I extend my good wishes for a fruitful and happy life. But I will not wish you "Good luck." Rather, I will remind you of God's providence in your life...and yours and yours and yours and yours...and say simply adieu in French or adios in Spanish, which as you scholars well know is "God be with you." As you move into the future, you are not left to your own devices, you go with God. Vaya con Dios.

Amen.

1. As referenced by Michael Nichols, "Finding Your Own Lake Wobegon" in Hometown Humor, USA, ed. Loyal Jones and Billy Edd Wheeler (Little Rock, Ark: August House, 1991), 216-17.

2. A tip of the homiletical hat to Will Willimon, Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, for his sermon "Good Luck?" preached in April, 1999 for some of the support material found herein.

3. Louisville, Ky. : Westminster John Knox Press, 1995

4. Boston, Mass. : G. K. Hall, 1981

5. Genesis 45:5-8a

6. Gen 50:20-21 NIV

7. Acts 2:22-24

8. Romans 8:28

click and send us mail