Second Sunday in Lent, 2009
Text: I Kings
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed
Episcopal Church
“Hear the Voice and Prayer”
“Hear the voice and prayer of thy servants that they make before thee
this day. That thine eyes may be open toward this place night and day, ever
toward this place of which thou hast said ‘My Name shall be there.’ And when
thou hearst have mercy on
them.”
One day, in the not too distant future I hope, we’ll have a choir that can sing this hauntingly beautiful early English anthem by Thomas Tallis. It makes a wonderful Introit for the service of Choral Evensong. If any of you are interested in forming a choir, don’t be shy about volunteering. Of course I mean those of you who have more than just a willingness to sing. Don’t worry; some of you will one day finally receive your singing voices – in the Resurrection! Until then, we’ll let those who already have that gift sing in the choir.
Tallis wrote “Hear the Voice and Prayer” in the year 1550 – a long time ago. And as you’ve probably already noted, Tallis based his text on King Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the first temple, which we heard this morning from I Kings 8. It was a prayer that went basically like this: When your people are suffering various plagues – famine, pestilence, locusts, war, all the promised covenant curses that would come upon them if they disobeyed and turned away in unfaithfulness – when they turn back to you and make their prayer of repentance towards this place, towards this temple which is called by your name, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and come to their aid.
So what was happening in or around the year 1550 that may
have made Tallis look back to this prayer as a particularly appropriate text
for his anthem to be sung in the churches?
Plague! A new wave of Bubonic
Plague – the Black Death – was sweeping through
It was a horrible time! And it is in times like these that people begin to look around and say in their hearts, “This must be a judgment from God. This must be God punishing us for some sin we’ve committed.”
Isn’t that the way we think sometimes, especially when we’re
hit by some great catastrophe in our lives or in the life of our nation? A strange, incurable disease, which no one
has ever heard about before, starts spreading like wild-fire through the homosexual
community, and we wonder - and some proclaim - that this is God’s judgment on
gays. A woman loses her child in a freak accident and she blames herself,
because she thinks God must be punishing her for some sin in her past. An airplane slams into a building and we
secretly wonder whether this is in some way a divine judgment on
Well why do we think this way? Is there some Biblical justification for looking at the world in this way?
The Scriptures do reveal a principle that would suggest to us that the fortunes of men are more than just chance happenings or random luck. We call it the “Retribution Principle,” or we might even call it God’s principle of “fair-play.” It’s basically this: that the righteous will prosper, and the wicked will suffer, in this life and in the next. That’s the Retribution Principle in a nutshell. We’re reminded of it especially during this season of Lent when in the Commination service we read from the blessings and cursings section of the Book of Deuteronomy – heavy emphasis on the cursings!
In Deuteronomy 28,
Moses gathers all the people of
“But,” Moses goes on to say, “it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land,” and so on.
So there it is: blessings for obedience, and cursings for disobedience. Prosperity for the righteous, and suffering for the wicked. That’s the Retribution Principle.
And this principle carries through the rest of the Old Testament. It is the very foundation of the books of Psalms and Proverbs.
But this principle isn’t just Old Testament. It’s all through the New Testament as well. Jesus said to his disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no on who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time… and in the age to come, eternal life.” (Mark 10:29-30)
The Retribution Principle is at the very heart of God’s revelation in the
Scriptures, so we must believe and trust that it is true. The righteous will
prosper, and the wicked will suffer. But, brethren, we end up in problems
because we always tend to assume that the corollary is also true: that if you
are suffering, it must be because God is punishing you. And if you are
prospering, well it must be because God is rewarding you.
That’s the corollary to the retribution principle, and it is not always true. The book of Job was written to prove that it’s not always true. Job was the most righteous man on the earth, and yet God allowed him to suffer to test and prove his righteousness. The book of Ecclesiastes was written to show that prosperity is not always God’s blessing. Why? Because the Retribution Principle is a description of the way God generally works; it is not a mechanical rule by which He is bound.
Remember what the disciples asked Jesus about the man who was blind from birth: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” And what did Jesus answer? No one sinned. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but [he was born blind] that the works of God might be revealed in him.” God had a different purpose for this man’s suffering.
On another occasion, some people came and reminded Jesus of
the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And remember
how Jesus responded? “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners
that all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you no. But,” he says, “Unless you repent you
will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell
and killed. Do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men in
See, here Jesus says that suffering is not always the direct consequence of some sin we’ve committed, but… it can be. He denies the corollary, but affirms the principle.
Let’s not forget that people were getting sick and dying in
St. James writes that if anyone is sick let him call for the presbyters that they may pray over him and anoint him with oil, and the prayer of faith will save the sick. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. This is why in the Prayer Book office of the Visitation of the Sick opportunity is always given to the sick person to confess his sins and to receive absolution in case his sickness is, in fact, the chastening of God for his sins. At least he’s given the opportunity to set his conscience at ease with regards to his suffering.
This brings us back, to Solomon’s prayer in the temple, and how we might apply this passage to our lives. Solomon says, “When your people are suffering and they turn back to you, and prayer toward your holy temple, then hear, and forgive, and act.”
When we suffer, how should we view our suffering? And, if I may put it this way, what should we do with our suffering? I believe we should always take it as an opportunity, given to us by God, to return to Him with all our heart, and to confess our sins, and therefore to receive it as an opportunity afforded to us, like perhaps no other time in our lives, to truly set our consciences at ease. For if our suffering is due to our sin, we should then trust that God will hear us, and he will forgive and act and come to our aid. But then if our suffering does not cease, we can have the confidence that God is not punishing us. God is not pouring out his curse upon us, but he is chastening us as a father chastens and disciplines his son, to train us is the way of faith and righteousness. And therefore, brethren - I know this is hard to hear –suffering can in this way be received as a gift. I know it can. I’ve seen it in action. I’ve seen how men and women have been transformed into people who are confident of God’s love and mercy towards them, eminently confident of his forgiveness of their sins, by what they have suffered.
I think that’s the bottom line message of Solomon’s prayer in the temple. If you’re suffering, view it as an opportunity to turn once again to the Lord and to set you conscience free. Humbly confess your sins unto the Lord and He will hear in heaven his dwelling place, and he will forgive, and act, and come to your aid. +