Healing Nations in Trauma St Marks Bassendean 29/12/24
29/12/24 Ps 22:1-8, 27-31; Num 14:11-19; 1 Cor 15:35-49; Matt 27:45-53 [] = text omitted from sermon preached
Prelude
This sermon is part of a series being prepared for my trip to Myanmar next month. I will be accompanied by several mature Christian men who have been there multiple times and as so have a deep and abiding love for the people. The Lord has already given us a focus for the trip, “healing from trauma”. One of my companions will minister into this area as a professional Christian counsellor (https://breathecounsellingperth.com.au/counsellor/nick-gwynn/), I will teach from a prophetic angle on healing in the vicarious life of Jesus. What is called “the vicarious substitutionary atonement” of Christ is a foundational pillar of faith for all Bible-believing Christians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitutionary_atonement). I believe this will prove to be a positive message applicable to all trauma sufferers, because vicarious trauma is widespread, not only in Myanmar, but across the word. Think, for example, on the impact of domestic violence on women and children here in Australia (https://www.relationshipsvictoria.org.au/news/identifying-and-managing-vicarious-trauma-221026/), consider the multi-generational trauma of Indigenous people groups, or the seemingly never-ending shock to which the Jewish people have long been exposed. I sometimes think my life experience, and the personal healing the Lord has so far given me, attract the traumatised.
Introduction
The Biblical testimony is clear that on a national scale people are in deep darkness and distress. (When was the last time you read Job?) God challenges Israel, “I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, 19 creating the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” [Eph 2:17] says the Lord, “and I will heal him.20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.” (Isa 57:18-21), and Jesus prophesied of the stresses that will accompany the end-days preceding his Return. ““And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, (Luke 21:25). Today, even young children are anxious and stressed by what they hear concerning an inescapable “climate catastrophe”. No matter how much government money is spent on alleviating mental trauma the results will be unsatisfactory (Jer 8:22; 46:11 cf. Rev 9:21). Given that Christmas is, amongst other things, by and large a futile exercise in self-medication through drink, food and gifts, we must look to supernatural help for our healing!
The Fall
The foundation of all ordinary human trauma is expounded by Paul, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). It is hard for us ,who were born stripped of the high calling of divine splendour, and who have in ourselves, outside of Christ, become “children of wrath” (Ps 51:5; Eph 2:3) to imagine the original life in Paradise very good and all-peaceful (Gen 1:31). When the first couple sinned they, as their Creator warned, “died” (Gen 1:27). This meant something more devastating and prevalent than mere physical perishing, it meant subjection to the power, penalty and pollution of sin. From birth onwards no one has full control over their body, will or emotions. The trauma inducing conditions of severe involuntary suffering witness to the disturbed fallen conscience that that not only as mortal people we must die, but that before God we deserve to die, “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).
Demonisation
What is commonly neglected, avoided or denied, both by secular people and “less than fully biblical Christians”, is that trauma, and the door to the fear of eternal punishment it opens (1 John 4:18) has led to the demonisation of the world. Originally, Adam was originally given total authority over the devil [the “prince of the power of the air” (Gen 2:15, 19-20; Eph 2:2 ) but through rebellion against God’s command became subject to the tyrannies of him “who has the power of death” and reigns over sinners through their perpetual, [“all their lives”], fear of death (Heb 2:14-15). Euthanasia is a final act of rebellion against the Lord, depriving our Creator-Father of his authority to determine the time of our end.] When Paul calls Satan, “the god (small “g”) of this world” (2 Cor 4:4) and John testifies that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” (1 John 5:19) they testify that original sin has opened (cf. Rev 9) a gateway between the world of fallen humanity and the dwelling place of demons which the book of Revelation calls “the bottomless pit” (Rev 9:1, 2, 11). The dreadful consequence is that demonic powers project onto lost humans their own utter hopelessness before God’s holy presence. You may remember how in the Gospels the demons screamed at Jesus, ““What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”” (Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:10; Luke 4:34). Marauding demonic powers plunge men, women and children into a “pit of despair” (Ps 40:2). (A term used by an Indigenous Christian leader recently!) in the parable of the sheep and the goats Christ declared the final destiny of those who denied his presence in the weak, poor, sick and imprisoned, “‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matt 25:41). He makes it clear that hell was never part of God’s original plan for humans. [Strictly speaking, no one “belongs” in hell. Cf. Matt 5:22] No amount of ordinary human therapy, however helpful or well-intentioned, can heal the lost soul from the unnatural ravages of trauma. We need supernatural release from the power, penalty and pollution of sin. As Paul teaches, “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Rom 14:17). No amount of fleshly- induced merriment such as we see at Christmas, can heal deep despair (https://www.aihw.gov.au/mental-health/topic-areas/social-isolation-and-loneliness; https://www.hcf.com.au/health-agenda/body-mind/mental-health/lonely-christmas-how-to-deal-with-being-alone-during-the-festive-season ), for we were created with the need to share in the exhilarating other-worldly pleasure Jesus experienced at his baptism, when he “was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”” (Luke 3:21-22 cf. 1 Pet 1:8-9). The baptism of Jesus prophetically points to his coming passion and crucifixion. Unlike others, in being sinless, he had nothing to confess (Matt 3:14; 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15; 1 Pet 2:22). His baptism is his taking the way of lowliness (Phil 2:3ff) and identifying with we traumatised sinners (Heb 2:14).
Ichabod
Insight into what it meant [within the personal experience] for Jesus “who knew no sin to be made sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21cf. 1 Pet 2:24) comes from certain Old Testament texts. The prophet Habakkuk complains to God, “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” (Hab 1:13 cf. Ps 5:5). The only adequate defence of the God’s patient justice, against his seeming moral passivity, in combatting evil [in the cosmos (https://jasongoroncy.com/2008/05/02/theodicy-the-justification-of-god-%E2%80%93-8/)] is the cross, where Jesus [as a real and true human being steps into the way of the Adamic race, all of us, and] takes responsibility for what we have refused to own as ours. This is the struggle we see happening in Gethsemane when we read of Jesus appealing to his Father, ““Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”” (Mark 14:36). Jesus knows that the weight of the sin of the world is beginning to crush his life, “he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.” (Mark 14:33; Isa 53:3). The “cup” is the fierce ultimately [because eschatological] inescapable holy anger of God underlying the eternal traumas of the world (Isa 51:17, 22; Jer 29:12; Ezek 23:33; Hab 2:16; Isa 2:10; Rev 6:15-16). The anguish of the cross is not something as small as the physical afflictions of crucifixion,[ a cruelty thousands endured], it is a fiery baptism (Luke 12:0 cf. 3:16) into the state of death, body/physical, soul/emotional and spirit/spiritual, which came on the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden on.
Insight into this [vicarious and substitutionary] cross-experience of Jesus is found in the traumatic cry of dereliction. “And when the sixth hourhad come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, [“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means,] “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:33-34). Every aspect of this lament [Jesus is quoting Ps 22:1] is profoundly significant. First, the darkness, so thick that it could be felt (Ex 10:21), is the darkness before creation’s light (Gen 1:2a), and immersion into the outer darkness, where, apart from the light of God (John 1:3-5; Rev 22:4-5), people “weep and gnash their teeth” under everlasting divine condemnation (Matt 8:12; 13:42, 50; 24:51; 25:30). In other words, Jesus has been plunged into the bottomless pit of despair (Ps 40:2) where he is totally encompassed [on every side] by the powers of sin and death (Pss 18:4; 22:12, 16; 40:12; 116:3). Let us be clear on what this means, whilst sin, sickness and death are no strangers to fallen humans, but their presence, power and pollution is totally alien to the holy life of the Son of God (Luke 1:35). Jesus knows that for God the Father, the most strange/alien/repulsive of his deeds/acts/works is to forever punish those made in his image (Isa 28:21). From eternity the plan of God (Rev 13:8; 1 Pet 1:19-20) has been to reach a stage when he can triumphantly declare, “I have no wrath” (Isa 27:4). The cross is the traumatic indispensable epicentre of this great plan. Whilst dreadful and incomprehensible to sinful humans, in order to restore glory to the race of Adam, [the Father, Son and Spirit must will that] Jesus must be stripped of all the glory of God. He must become the place of “no glory”/Ichabod (1 Sam 4:21-22) totally stripped of all “the glory of the Father” (Rom 6:4). [Whilst Jesus is quoting Psalm 22:1, it is impossible to say if his words constitute a prayer, even if they are a plea to an “unknowable God”. Whilst Jesus could never conceive of himself as sinning, the revelation of what this could mean for him was stretched to the maximum. This is the deepest meaning of the trauma of the cross! The possibility of a sinning saint!]
New Glory
The Biblical pattern is totally transparent, as the resurrected Lord explains that the message of the prophets , “Was it not necessary [Greek dei; δεῖ] that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). Here we are dealing with the divine “must”/necessity, not of ordinary inevitability but of sovereign loving divine indispensability. Only as Jesus goes to the very bottom of trauma and despair can he be raised and exalted in our place into the unfathomable joys of heaven. As re-entry to the Garden of Eden was forever blocked by a warring angel (Gen 3:24), and as these fearsome holy creatures were woven into the fabric of the curtains of the Temple, so when Jesus died with a triumphant cry “It is finished!” (John 19:30), “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised” (Matt 27:51-53). The way into the most holy place, God’s presence and its perfect intimacy (Heb 10:19-22) has forever been opened.
Conclusion
What transforms trauma from something that is merely shocking into something which shares in the glory and honour of Jesus has to be something as simple and profound as what brought the disaster of Fallenness into the world. The corrupt choice of Adam brought death to all (Rom 5:12ff.) [and since then nearly all trauma comes upon our race involuntarily]. In Jesus, the Church has divinely given authority to make a voluntary free choice, one full of the Holy Spirit, that a Christian ‘must’ “suffer” with Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of a lost and broken world. The precise form of suffering, and the trauma it induces, is a decision made in eternity by the Holy and Righteous Father in Christ (Matt 20:23; Luke 23:46; John 17:5, 11, 25), such choices are not in our hands but in his alone. But we can, and indeed must, agree by faith with his decisions.
Last year was an especially traumatic one for our household. I was diagnosed with a heart condition which is generally fatal (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24507-widowmaker-heart-attack). At that time I received the surprising news that my left anterior descending (LAD) artery, the largest of the heart’s arteries, was 100 percent blocked, the good news was that I was alive because I have grown new, collateral arteries. More bad news was to come, they later discovered both a valve problem and a blockage on the other side of the heart. Whilst this is being treated with medication (https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/jardiancer-reduced-risk-cardiovascular-death-adults-type-2) which is quite effective, it has not removed all my symptoms. (Which are quite common, like today.) Therefore, awake in bed early in the morning some ago feeling particularly weak I fell to prayer. The well-known story of Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor 12:1-10) came to mind. We do not know what this affliction was, but we do know it was a “messenger from Satan” (2 Cor 12:7), something sent from the bottomless pit to induce the fear of death in Paul’s life. Then when the apostle repeatedly asked the Lord to remove “the thorn” he was told directly from heaven, ““My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”” (v. 9). This was something I already knew about, but it was what came next that was particularly a divine, and as such, a prophetic word. The Spirit explained that if the plan of God for the new creation of the universe/all things/cosmos (Acts 3:16-21; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15) was ever to be accomplished through Jesus’ humanity he needed to be made perfectly weak through the cross. Especially through seemingly being abandoned by his God as Father. This revelation gave me a wider perspective on my own need to be weak and set my heart at rest before the Lord.
Brothers and siters in Christ, by faith we can believe that that the choices we make “in Jesus” to be weak in a little church in an obscure Perth suburb, most famous for being the residence of a notorious paedophile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolf_Harris), can alter the destiny of our world. I believe our upcoming trip to Myanmar will witness such a glorious transformation, and I believe that through prayer we can transform the destiny of Australia too!