TD Jakes - Uncertainty Is Its Own Affliction
We were young then, and I would have thought that we were living together. You came to preach for me, and I came to preach for you. Your anniversary and my anniversary—we were living together, not in the sense of sharing the same house, but living in the same era, in the same generation. Our relationships have been lifelong. I can see dozens and dozens of people in here that I remember from way back when. We all thought we were living together. You have to live a while to figure out that it is not so much that we are living together; more aptly put, we are dying together. Halfway through your life, there are messages and emails and texts that come from your body, your bones, your joints, your tissues, your cells, and your core. It says you’re not going up; you’re going down. We are dying, and it changes how you treat one another.
Imagine if we were all on the Titanic, and if we were all going down together. We wouldn’t be so petty. We wouldn’t fight over foolish things. We wouldn’t be so territorial. We wouldn’t be so political. We wouldn’t be so analytical. We wouldn’t be so self-aggrandizing if we all recognized that we are a generation fading into the shadows. It causes a different level of appreciation. Every moment we interact with each other ought to be a little bit more special. Every time we connect, we will not allow the voice of the enemy to inject poison into our interactions because we would appreciate that we may not ever have this opportunity. So, if I love you, I better say something right now, and if I care about you, I better say something right now.
If you’re valuable, if you’ve helped me in some way, I must say something. I don’t have to compete with you; I’m glad you have what you have. Do what you can do for as long as you can do it because there may come a time when you will not be able to do it. Jesus lets us know a doctrine of theology about dying that, even though the pure emblem of the Christian faith suggests there will be suffering, we tend to obliterate the ideology that there’s any suffering in faith. Occasionally, we come up with the idea that if we have enough faith, we will go through nothing and we will get everything we want. We treat God as if He’s Santa Claus, here to fulfill your wish list for Christmas.
We have this theology that omits suffering. But a big clue that suffering is in the strategy and structure and essence of God Himself is exemplified by the very emblem of our faith—the cross. The cross is a significant clue. Jesus boldly and openly declared to His disciples, «If any man must be my disciple, let him pick up his cross and follow me.» Can you imagine making an altar call at the time Jesus lived? The cross was not an emblem of worship but a place of suffering and degradation; it was like an execution chamber. It had no spiritual significance. Can you imagine making an altar call and telling people, «If anybody will join this church, let him be prepared for a gas chamber»?
At that time, we had not yet sung hymns like «The Old Rugged Cross.» The cross had no endearment about it; it was common to see men die and sometimes decompose in shame on crosses. Crosses had nothing to do with religion; they had everything to do with Rome’s torture chamber for people who rose against the powers that be. Still, Jesus warns us that it is bigger than Rome, and it is bigger than Caesar; God has left space in everyone’s life for a cross. Jesus delivers His final homily from a cross; perhaps His most powerful session on His exodus as He prepares to depart is delivered to us with splinters gorging into the blood-soaked gaping holes of His back, where He had been beaten with a cat o' nine tails. He is denied even the luxury of liniment or Band-Aids. He presses His open wounds into the rugged cross and there delivers His homily.
Jesus teaches us that preaching is painful, that serving is painful, that it is not the glamorous thing to which many people who aspire to it think it is. In reality, your gospel must be proven in your life and in your suffering and in your agony. You start out preaching it, but before you get old, you must live through everything you’ve preached about. You find out it’s more than a hoop and a holler when your back is pressed against the wall, and there is no comfort, and your mouth is parched, and you have to beg for hyssop. You begin to recognize that preaching means this: it means suffering in secret places. It means dealing with agony that we don’t even talk about. I was wrong when I said we were living together; we are, in fact, dying together.
When I look at this text, Paul is in it, but he is in a grave situation. He’s in a terrible situation, and there are so many characters that contribute to the context from which I will extrapolate some ideas. I’m trying to figure out—let me back up and say, aside from what I do in the pulpit, I own a television production company that makes films and deals with scripts, and people bring you stories that must be converted into scripts. If the story is good enough—and this one is amazing—you have to turn it into a script. The first thing you have to determine when you’re turning a story into a script is which one of the characters is going to do the talking.
I was watching «Soul Food» the other day, and I told my wife, «Isn’t it funny that they chose the little boy to be the narrator to tell the story of the whole 'Soul Food' movie that was out years ago?» You know, it feels like, when you’re home so long, you’re watching the whole story. I love Lucy; I’m catching up on everything I’ve forgotten even existed. As we were watching «Soul Food,» the question has to be: Who tells the story? My first thought when I look at the text is Luke—Luke the physician, who has journeyed with Paul and given us the Gospel of Saint Luke and the book of Acts as one piece, divided only later.
Is it Luke who is the narrator, because he is a contributor who writes his story with such detail that even contemporary meteorologists have to confirm the authenticity of this journey, making it tough at the specified time? They’re traveling in winter, at a time when most people would not be willing to travel. I thought maybe it ought to be Luke because he is one of the contributors to the four Gospels who is not an apostle but a contributor nonetheless. He writes within a level of intelligence and intellect that far exceeds those of the other Gospels.
He is so educated that he articulates this to the point that modern-day meteorologists can read this story and tell the climate of the times around the ship. It matters what’s going on around you when you sail. I have sailed when the coast was clear and the breeze was high; I have sailed through good times and marvelous moments. But to sail through the time we are navigating now is perhaps the most tempestuous period in the history of our lives.
To operate ministry right now in the middle of COVID, with over 200,000 people dead and five million people affected in our country, during a time of governmental chaos, and a time of racial divides like we thought we would never see again, it is a time of such power that there is stress that devolves not only from the circumstances but just from the uncertainty. Uncertainty is its own affliction. You don’t know what to plan for, you don’t know what you can have, you don’t know when to set something on the date, and you don’t know how long before things will get better. Anytime our souls are uncertain, there is a special agony that comes from the invisible influence of uncertainty.