A sermon preached by The Reverend
Scott D. Nowack on February 26, 2012
at First Presbyterian Church,
Kilgore, Texas.
“To Hell and Back”
Genesis 9:8-17
1 Peter 3:18-22
A man found a cocoon of an emperor
moth and took it home so he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon. One
day a small opening appeared. The man sat and watched the moth for several
hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it
seemed to stop making any progress. To the man it appeared as if the moth had
gotten as far as it could in breaking out of the cocoon and was stuck.
Out of kindness the man decided to
help the moth. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of
the cocoon so that the moth could get out. Soon the moth emerged, but it had a
swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the moth,
expecting that in time the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support
the body, which would simultaneously contract to its proper size.
Neither happened. In fact, that
little moth spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and
shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.
The man in his kindness and haste
didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the
moth to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing fluid from the
body into the wings so that the moth would be ready for flight once it achieved
its freedom from the cocoon.
Just as the moth could only achieve
freedom and flight as a result of struggling, we often need to struggle to
become all God intends for us to be. Sometimes we wish that God would remove
our struggles and take away all the obstacles; but just as the man crippled the
emperor moth, so we would be crippled if God did that for us.
The suffering mentioned in 1 Peter
is not the meaningless suffering and anguish that comes to victims of accidents
and natural disasters or to sufferers from birth defects and cancerous cells; it’s
not the unavoidable tragedies against which there is no immunity.
The suffering here is caused how others
react to you doing what is good and right and pleasing to God. It is the suffering one could easily avoid by
choosing not to swim against the current, to go against the flow of the culture.
Our lesson in First Peter provides
the basis for Christians not to conform to this world; to go against the flow. First, Christ’s suffering becomes THE example
for all Christians. If we are true
disciples of the crucified Jesus then we should not expect anything less than
opposition from a hostile culture. We
are called to live with gentleness and reverence, so we should not go looking
for trouble or provoke persecution but neither should it come as a surprise.
This may sound strange to us who
live in a nation that is relatively tolerant of religion and where only
fanatics voice and promote passionate opposition. The text pushes you and me to see ourselves
as “resident aliens”, living in the culture but not of the culture; to be in
the world but not of the world.
Second, the text speaks of Christ’s
unique action, suffering “for sins once for all, the righteous for the
unrighteous,” dying, preaching to the spirits in prison, being raised from the
dead, ascending into heaven and in control of angels and heavenly powers. I think what enables us as nonconformist
Christians not to fear what the Gentiles fear, and not to be intimidated in the
face of opposition, is the redemptive journey of Jesus through suffering to exaltation,
a journey that brings all people to God.
Being grounded and planted in the Gospel not only makes us vulnerable to
suffering; it also sustains us to push through in reverent fear of the one who
made us. We conform to the one who sits
in the seat of ultimate authority.
Part of the redemptive journey of
Christ includes preaching to the spirits in prison. Exactly what this means is not totally
clear. It appears to affirm that
Christ’s redemptive work on the cross applies to all who died before his
coming; nobody is cut off from the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ, not
even the horrible, wicked generation of Noah’s lifetime. They are not separated from the grace of God
in Jesus Christ.
To hell and back: Can you remember a
time in your life when you experienced suffering and hardship that can only be
described, “I’ve been to hell and back again?”
Ask the recovering alcoholic or drug addict who have suffered a great
deal because of their illness and they’ll tell you: “I’ve been to hell and back
again.” Ask the parent who watched their
little girl suffer through leukemia for many years be declared cancer free and
they’ll tell you: “I’ve been to hell and back again.” Ask the woman who was raped and she’ll tell
you about her ordeal: “I’ve been to hell and back again.” We’ve all been through times of great
suffering that feel like we’ve been to hell and back.
“In Denver, Colorado, two brothers
embraced before going into surgery for a liver transplant. Ryan Arnold was donating a part of his liver
so that his older brother Chad Arnold, who had an incurable liver disease,
could live. This type of surgery is rare
and not without risk. After what seemed
to be a successful surgery, complications arose. Within four days, the donor Ryan Arnold died
while his brother Chad lived…In a world in which faith is often ridiculed and
marginalized, Ryan Arnold, husband and father of three children, simply lived
out his faith. His words, spoken minutes
before his surgery to his brother telling him that he was “worth it”, causes us
to catch a glimpse of how God views us.
His faith told him that love has the power to forever change the life of
another.”[1]
God doesn’t take away our problems,
sufferings, and difficulties, but he promises to be with us, to walk beside us,
in the midst of them and to use our sufferings to restore us, making us into
better, stronger people. God gives us a
hope that we have been saved by grace in Jesus Christ. God gives us a hope that there is no place
that far that Christ can’t reach us. God
gives us a hope that we’ve been given God’s grace through the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. God gives
us a hope that somehow, someway the quality of life among us “resident aliens”
will transform the world. Amen.
[1] Shuler,
Rev. Bill. A Brother’s Ultimate Sacrifice
– A Story of Faith Amidst Suffering. FoxNews.com; August 21,2010.
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