“Something most distasteful—and unwelcome”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Tuesday, May 2, 2023
Wisdom 3:1-9 (Forward, p. 4) RSV p. 104
Here are some words that most of us would rather not hear, much less take to heart, for they are quite disturbing to our modern sensibilities and our frame of mind. Our author is describing a righteous person who, in the eyes of the world, has died somewhat prematurely. Yes, in the eyes of most people it seemed to rank of affliction, destruction and punishment, and even our author seems to agree in part with this sentiment in verses 5-6: “Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them”. But then, he goes on to state that God loves them and has a special place of peace and immortality for them.
But it is this idea of God’s discipline, God’s testing, that sticks in our craw. We moderns prefer to think of God as wholly kind and gentle, never visiting or allowing suffering or unpleasantness to descend upon His beloved children. But, much to our chagrin—if we dare to read through the whole canon of Scripture—this is not the Scriptural picture. Just consider, for instance, the following:
“So know in your heart that just as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you” (Deuteronomy 8:5)
“I know, O LORD, that your judgments are righteous, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me” (Psalm 119:75);
“My son, do not reject the discipline of the LORD, and do not loathe His rebuke; for the Lord disciplines the one He loves, as does a father the son in whom he delights” (Proverbs 3:11-12);
And even the New Testament, which surely to some people’s thinking, should reflect a kindlier, less ‘judgmental’ tone, says the same sort of thing:
“And have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by him. For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives’. Endure suffering as discipline. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:6-7);
And, Revelation 3:19, “Those I love, I rebuke and discipline. Therefore be earnest and repent.”
But lest we get the mistaken notion that this is out of some sort of alleged ‘nastiness’ or vindictiveness on the part of God, this is actually meant for our good, for our purification, for our ultimate wholeness and salvation. After all, we aren’t quite ‘up to snuff’ yet, not at all. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans xx) and still need ‘a fair bit of work’. So, consider the following:
“Why should any mortal man complain, in view of his sins?” (Lamentations 3:39);
“In the same way that gold and silver are refined by fire, the Lord purifies your heart by the tests and trials of life” (Proverbs 17:3);
The prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 3:19) says, “I will bring that group through the fire and make them pure. I will refine them like silver and purify them like gold. They will call on my name, and I will answer them”;
And Malachi 3:4, which is prophetic of Christ, says, “He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness”.
And so the idea here is that we haven’t quite ‘made it’ yet. We still have some work to do, or more accurately, God still has some work to do in us. And so He uses the stress of life, the difficulties, the hardships, and yes, even the sufferings and manifold discomforts of life to refine away the sin and the gloss and the manifold impurities and make us more the people that we were meant to be. In a sense, all of this is meant to be freeing as these sins and impurities are weights that weigh us down and hinder us from truly being free and truly being ourselves. And so, unpleasant as they may well be, and untasteful and unwelcome as it is, we are not to cringe in horror at the discipline of God but to welcome it and learn from it. Amen.
Forward notes: “But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them” (verse 1).
“I did not meet Dorothy until near the end of her life. Dorothy was an elegant lady who had lived into her nineties, and even though she was not able to get out of her chair, when I was scheduled to visit, she always made sure to have her best robe on and her hair styled neatly.
“As her health continued to decline, my visits began to occur in the hospital. When I arrived, she apologized for her appearance, but after some gentle reassurance, that same familiar grace and dignity that I had come to know during our home visits returned.
“We often read this passage about God holding the souls of the righteous during our burial liturgy, but Dorothy helped me see it differently. Even as her body failed, the divine image that she carried within her never dimmed. The torment of cancer was no match for the strength of her soul because her soul was in God’s hands long before her life here on earth ended.”
MOVING FORWARD: “Who in your life exudes the divine image of God? Thank them for their witness.”
[This from the apocryphal book known as The Wisdom of Solomon, as opposed to Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach]