Contemplation Corner: “God Has The Last Word”

“God has the Last Word”
Pastor Donnie Brooks

  What a title one might say. Is this a preachy devotional about “judgment day”? Or an introduction to a hell, fire and brimstone sermon? Or something to get one’s fears “mongered”. . . so that one is to give more money to one’s church this Sunday?

  Nope. This title was actually a title of a sermon by an early 20th century Lutheran preacher and preaching professor, Paul Scherer in his book of sermons, “The Place Where Thou Standest.”  That sermon was not any of the above. Its scripture text was Psalms 37:1-9 (check it out!) and it also drew upon unusual sources! Its focus was that we shouldn’t get too bound up in the present moment. We shouldn’t be too quick to join the bandwagon of past, present, or imagined future moments. We also shouldn’t restrict from whom we might learn our lessons.

   Scherer believed that God has had, does have, and will have the “last word.” God speaks the first word, the present word and every word that will follow. The illustration Scherer uses is from an unfamiliar culture, philosophy, and religion to our likely Christian, and even more likely, American, ears. If we believe that God has a grip on things, we might just learn from other cultures and peoples than ourselves (here and abroad, yesterday, today and tomorrow)!

   Scherer quotes an ancient sage: a Chinese philosopher in the Daoist tradition.  The lesson is a parable called the “Old Man at the Fort”. “An old man was living with his son at an abandoned fort on top of a hill. One day he lost his horse, and the neighbors came to express their sympathy. But the old man asked, ‘how do you know this is bad luck?’ A few days afterwards his horse returned with a number of wild horses! So, his neighbors came, again, to congratulate him. But the old man replied, ‘how do you know this is good luck?” With so many horses around his son took to riding, and it wasn’t long before there was a broken leg in the family! Once more his neighbors came around to express their sympathy. But the old man was not to be moved, he answered, ‘how do you know this is bad luck?’” The parable then closes with, ‘The new year there was a war, and because the old man’s son was injured still, he didn’t have to go to the front.” 

   As you can see, with some irony and humor here, we don’t always know the moment how things will turn out; if they are good or bad in themselves, we don’t know how God will work things out towards a good. So let us be patient, have trust and have hope that God will have the last word. Let us also realize that we might just learn something from others, even those we might least expect.

Pastor Donnie
Marcellus United Methodist Church

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I. Paul Scherer, The Place Where Thou Standest, (Harper Brothers, 1942)
II. Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, (William Morrow, 1998)
III. Scherer, and Yutang.