Pastor Glenn McDonald: Hope in the Midst of Failure

To listen to today's reflection as a podcast, click here.

Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn.  

The gruff cynic Henry Ford once growled, “History is bunk.”

Now that Henry Ford himself is history, we can dare to take a more enlightened view of things.

History matters. Those who have died still speak. They are not excluded from our conversations just because they’re gone. The study of history grows our humility, especially when we delve into chapters that have much to teach us about what it means to trust God in our broken world.

In the end, studying the past reveals God’s faithfulness – then and now.

This is not to say that the study of history is without controversy. Last week President Trump signed an executive order that the Smithsonian Institution and other museums receiving federal funds must present only positive stories about America. Museums must become “symbols of inspiration and American greatness.”

Make no mistake: America is an extraordinary country. But the American story, like all stories of families, nations, religions, and ideologies, is marked by setbacks, failures, and tragic mistakes. Refusing to tell those parts of the story does not make them go away.

Having reached the midpoint of our Lenten series, let’s pause and acknowledge that you don’t have to look very hard to find the shadowy parts of the Christian story.

As historian Mark Noll puts it, “God sustains the church despite the church’s own frequent efforts to betray its Savior and its own high calling… Despite a dazzling array of God-honoring triumphs, and despite a wide and deep record of godliness among believers of high estate and low, the sad fact is that the church’s history is often a sordid, disgusting tale.”

He continues, “The golden ages of the past usually turn out to be tarnished if they are examined closely enough. Crowding around the heroes of the faith are a lot of villains, and some of them look an awful lot like the heroes.”

Catholic popes have long been a favorite target of religious skeptics. Entire websites are devoted to the foibles and frailties of the 266 men who have been identified as Christ’s unique representative on earth.

Pope Stephen VI, for example, exhumed the corpse of his predecessor Pope Formosus in 896, for the curious purpose of putting him on trial. No one was surprised that Formosus, dressed in his formal papal vestments, never spoke a word in his own defense. He was found guilty of crimes against Christendom.

The Renaissance-era Pope Alexander VI, who ascended to Peter’s chair in 1492, is the poster boy for moral degeneracy in the Vatican. A member of the murderous Borgia family, his scandals included nepotism, bribery, fathering illegitimate children, and incest – not to mention allegedly ordering “hits” on political rivals.  

The brightest lights of the Protestant Reformation cannot escape such scrutiny.

Michael Servetus, the brilliant Spanish physician and theologian, dared to disagree with Christian orthodoxy concerning the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1553, he fled to John Calvin’s Geneva, hoping to find sanctuary. Instead, Calvin condemned him as a heretic and orchestrated his burning at the stake.

In his cantankerous later years, Martin Luther wrote an exceedingly regrettable tract called Against the Jews and Their Lies.

He declared, “What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? Since they live among us and we know about their lying and blasphemy and cursing, we cannot tolerate them... First, their synagogues should be set on fire... Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and set on fire...Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer books and Talmuds... Fourthly, their rabbis should be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more… To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden – the Jews.”

Adolph Hitler made much of those words in justifying his anti-Semitism to the German Lutheran Church of the 20th century. At least one of Luther’s biographers has wished aloud that Luther had died before he ever got around to writing that tract.

For hundreds of years, the Church participated in Europe’s maniacal pursuit of people (mostly women) who were suspected of witchcraft. The Spanish Inquisition of the 15th and 16th centuries sometimes excessively pursued, in brutal fashion, its primary task of “inquiring” about the faith of suspected heretics and Jews.

Jesus said, during his final hours, “By this will everyone know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).

But public perception is more in line with Bart Simpson’s encounter with his next-door neighbors, the Flanders kids. “Hey, where have you guys been?” Bart asks. “We’ve been to church camp,” they answer, “to learn how to be more judgmental.” 

Sadly, history is dominated by stories of Christians who can’t (or won’t) get along with other Christians.

Although Paul described the Jesus-following reality as one in which “there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” (Galatians 3:26-28), church leaders have often made decisions that reinforced those distinctions instead of obliterating them.

Although Jesus declared, “My kingdom is not of this world,” people ministering in his name have frequently jumped at the chance to control money, power, and military arsenals – only to make decisions that seriously compromised the gospel.

The watching world has a right to ask, “If God is really God, how are we to understand the church’s checkered past?”   

Jesus provides insight in the parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43).

A Palestinian farmer plants seeds in his field. He aims to grow a crop of wheat. But when the tiny plants appear above the soil, it's obvious something else is also growing there. He discovers a profusion of wheat and weeds growing side by side. But nobody can tell them apart.  

The servants ask if they should try to go and separate the good from the bad. No, says the farmer, we’ll do the sorting at harvest time.

A day is coming, Jesus says, when God will do the harvesting. God will right every wrong. The distinction between history’s “wheat” and “weeds” will finally become clear to everyone.

Until then, we recognize that God’s faithfulness is not erased by our failures. The Spirit is continually remaking and reforming the church, and no other faith has generated anything that comes close to the blessings bestowed on this world when God’s people choose to trust him.

Like a tide that raises every boat in the harbor, the spread of Christianity has raised a global awareness (and expectation) of freedom, dignity, and the inherent worth of individuals.

According to Jesus, whose life is worth preserving? Everyone’s life is of infinite value. And who can make a difference in the world? Anybody, with God’s help, can change the course of history.

Novelist and social critic Dorothy Sayers once identified what she called God’s three greatest miracles.

The first is the Incarnation – the fact that God became a human being. The second is the resurrection – God’s triumph over death. The third is the church – the ludicrous notion that God decided to entrust his reputation and the success of his global mission to faulty, faithless people like us.

Our track record may be spotty.

But God is seriously committed to setting things right.  

And Jesus has promised the best gift of all: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

*************************************************

Would you like to explore previous reflections and learn more about this ministry?  Check out glennsreflections.com.