God Be With You

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

May 18, 2008

Text: Second Corinthians 13: 11-14

The words “luck” and “fortune” are part of our daily life. “Good luck,” we say to a friend on parting. “I was fortunate,” we say about something which has made our lives and work better.

We have many words and phrases for luck: the way the cookie crumbles, or the ball bounces. Luck of the draw. Lady Luck, we may say, be with me today.

What are we doing when we say these things? Likely we mean nothing more than good wishes. Something like: “Who knows what might happen? But I hope that whatever happens to you is good and not bad.”

Lurking behind such expressions, however, may be the residue of devotion to the ancient Roman goddess Fortuna (or Tyche, her Greek predecessor.) Not that we explicitly name such a goddess. But it is amazing how much the ancient attitudes regarding fate and chance are embedded in our culture.

Fortuna was the goddess of luck personified in many different ways. Fortuna was one of the many deities to which people prayed or offered sacrifices, asking for cruel fate to be kind to them. She came to represent the capriciousness of life----the idea that those in control of what happened to people were really playing with people as a cat with a mouse.

In one painting for a work of Boccaccio, a woman in a pricey gown and imposing, tall hat is standing next to a wheel, which she turns round and round. Men and women are shown on the ground waiting their turn, while others are being thrown off the wheel, willy nilly. Others are in various states of pain or delight, having already been ridden the wheel around and landed somewhere.

She is at other times depicted with a cornucopia, or a rudder or a ball “which way the ball bounces”. Sometimes Fortuna has been imagined with a child who randomly chooses from among oak sticks, each with a possible future written on it—a drawing of straws to find ones fortune.

Luck can be the hand we’ve been dealt, in terms of our birth or genes. It can be circumstantial, involving accidents or just happening to be in the right place at the right time. Or, as is more common, luck can be dumb luck----luck with factors that we cannot know about.

You can look up on Wikipedia all of this information as I did. So why am I bringing it up?

Lately I am more impressed than ever that Lady Luck is a rival deity to the God of Jesus of Nazareth. Or, as so often happens, Lady Luck has taken her place alongside the God of Jesus, and we worship first one and then the other.

Note, for example, the pervasive influence of gambling. It is, to be sure a form of entertainment and of harmless fun for many----and I am not here this morning to preach on the evils of gambling. (By the way, the owners of the slots and the casinos are not gamblers: they are prudent investors who are counting on others to believe in luck!)

But the popularity of gambling seems to me to be fueled by the view that fulfillment of our dreams depends on dumb luck---  or that we are all by ourselves in the world to grab what we can---to make our own luck. There was a phrase in Latin which has carried over into our own day: “Fortis fortuna adiuvat:” “fortune favors the bold (or the strong).” (Alexander the Great used this phrase to describe his bold way of leading his troops into battle. It is used today as a motto of the RAF Airbase in Scotland, and as the motto of an English football team.)

I remember a friend telling me that she had prayed to God to win the lottery. I asked her if she realized that, for her to win, millions would have to lose-----and that many of them may have been praying to God to win, too! One can just picture God spinning the wheel of fortune! She had not thought of it that way.

Are we alone in life, with no god at all, or with a god who is capricious-----throwing out blessings or curses with no apparent purpose?

Paul the apostle, in winding up his farewell words to the Corinthian Christians, gives them his parting words:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

“Be with” is an odd form of the verb. It is more than a wish, more than good luck, more than “may you be happy.” It is a  way of reaching out in friendship to give this gift of God’s presence to them. It is a prayer with his eyes open, imagining them in his mind’s eye held the arms of God.

The God of Paul and Jesus is not Fortuna and not dumb luck. Paul knew that life could deal out some tough circumstances.

In fact, you can listen to Paul tell about all of his “bad luck:”

In defending himself against those who had decided that he did not have the right stuff, that he had not earned the right to have authority, Paul engages in playful bragging:

More imprisonments, more beatings (39 lashes of the whip, beaten with rods, stoned; shipwrecked and adrift at sea; in danger in danger from rivers, robbers, danger in the wilderness, many sleepless nights, often without food, in cold and exposure.

But for bad luck, he would have had no luck at all!

So in his parting remarks, he was not saying to them, “I hope everything goes well for you.” Paul knows that followers of Christ are not protected from the perils of this mortal life---in fact, they might well get into more perils because they are being faithful to their calling!

Paul himself, in his letter to the Philippians, says that he has “learned in whatever state he is to be content.” He knows how to be abased and how to abound. He has had plenty and he has had little, and his sense of well-being doesn’t depend on either one. Contentment is not passivity but closer to deep happiness or blessedness. (4:10-13)

The God to whom he prays and commends to his friends is not a mythological figure. It is not one god among the many, hoping that someone is listening and will be kind. It is the One God, the one who has been revealed in the history of his people and preeminently in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The God who has infused him and others with energy for abundant life.

Ellen Charry, professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, writes that when she was baptized a friend wrote:

“Try to remember deliberately once a day that you were and are baptized, that your life is underwritten by God and that in a sense this grandest position in life has already been achieved. You can never go higher than simple baptism. In a sense, this is a release from striving. What was sought for long and hard has not been found, it has found you.”

She goes on further to say that as Christians, we belong no longer to ourselves nor to the times in which we live, “but to God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit….I am defined by the wisdom and power of God revealed in the death of Christ. I am sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. I die and rise with Christ to new life. I am clothed with Christ to fight the powers of sin and death.” (Ellen Charry, Christian Century, November 15, 1995)

The grace of Jesus Christ signifies Jesus’ “uncalculating generosity.” (PNCL, Year A, After Pentecost) As Paul says in Romans, “though he was rich, for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” (And he is not talking about dollars.)

The love of God signifies the gift of Jesus Christ of his only begotten son. “In the work of Christ and in the person of Christ, God’s love reaches its most intensely brilliant radiance as a shaft of light.” (PNCL)

I love my children and grandchildren so deeply that words cannot express such love. God loves us like a father or mother or grandfather or grandmother---only multiply such love by a billion. This is infinite love. “The God who creates the heavens and the earth and the stars and the endless reaches of the universe is also the God who loves you and me endlessly as a father [or mother] loves their child.” (Edward F. Markquart, Sermons for Seattle)

The fellowship of God (sharing, participation, with-ness) means that God is an active partner in our lives and in our life together as Church. This shared life within the koinonia, the church, is signified by Paul when he tells them, in spite of their quarreling, to greet each other with a holy kiss!

Today we recognize graduating high school senior. The Lord knows, we wish you well. But we do not say to you [them] merely “Good Luck.” We use Paul’s words because we are one [with you] in the Spirit, in the love of God given in Jesus Christ. You and I belong to Christ: you and I have been baptized in the Triune God we signify by the words Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

What will life hold for you? It is unrevealed until its coming, something God alone can see. And in the midst of whatever comes, you are being watched after by Jesus, the lover of your souls. This church is here for you

Lady luck has many devotees in our world. But you have been given a deeper understanding and a higher calling than to depend on luck for your deep happiness, your deep fulfillment. 

You and I have been given a priceless gift and calling.

“In and through Christ, God’s love is present and active as a gracious redeeming, reconciling and renewing gift.” (Victor Furnish, Second Corinthians)

Receive this blessing and, whatever the future holds, you will be held in the hands of the God with the human face of Jesus.