Sermon – “Out of the Depths” (Psalm 130)

This past week, the news media had about all they could handle with the G-7 summit in Quebec, the Ontario election, the Washington Capitals’ win of the Stanley Cup and the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. But all those stories were quickly overshadowed by two others—the deaths of two of the world’s most highly successful people: Kate Spade, whose handbag designs became a multi-million dollar business, and Anthony Bourdain, the travelling gourmet, whose books and TV shows have enjoyed almost universal popularity for the past two decades.

Tragically both deaths were by suicide and they served to underline a growing concern among health professionals. It is the rising rate of suicide in our society today. According to a recent article in USA Today that rate has risen by nearly thirty percent in the past two decades. Among middle-aged men the increase is even more alarming at forty-three percent. As I look at these statistics, I am forced to ask myself, what is it that makes life for some people so bleak that there is nothing left to live for? What has entrapped them to such an extreme that they are not able to see any other way out than to end it all?

The psalm that we read a few moments ago begins with the lament, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord…” The words express the desperation of a person who is drowning. They are not unlike those we hear from the lips of the prophet Jonah as he languished in the belly of the great fish: “In my distress I called to the Lord… From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help…” (Jonah 2:2). Life has carried him far beyond the point where he can any longer contemplate helping himself. All he can do is shout for dear life and hope that someone will hear him and come to his rescue. Tragically there are some people for whom that is not an option. They feel they are caught in a swirling vortex that will drag them down only deeper and deeper.

There are seven accounts of suicide in the Bible, six of them in the Old Testament. Probably the best known, though, is that of Judas Iscariot. In remorse over the horror of what he had done in betraying Jesus to the authorities, he went out and hanged himself. And while the apostle Paul likely did not have Judas in mind, I believe his words to the Corinthians have something to say here. He writes about a godly sorrow that leads to repentance and contrasts it with a worldly sorrow that leads to death (2 Corinthians 7:10).

Well, where does all that bring us this morning? If my own experience is anything to go by, then there are times when most of us find ourselves “in the depths”. Sometimes the depths in which we find ourselves are the result of circumstances beyond our control—a severe illness, a long period of severe strain, an impossible situation at work or at school, a tragedy of one kind or another, a bereavement… And sometimes those depths are of our own making. I believe this morning’s psalm has something to say to each of us when we find ourselves in the depths, no matter what it was that landed us there.

I cry

The psalmist’s opening words (as you have probably already observed) are an expression of desperation. Listen to how Eugene Peterson renders them in The Message:

Help, God—the bottom has fallen out of my life!
     Master, hear my cry for help!
Listen hard! Open your ears!
     Listen to my cries for mercy.

It may not seem apparent at first, but hidden beneath the psalmist’s anguish there lies a conviction, and that is, that while his situation may be desperate, he still has one upon whom he can call for help. He is not alone.

I recently listened to a radio interview with Kate Bowler. She is a professor at Duke University Divinity School in North Carolina. Married to her high school sweetheart and with a two year-old child, she was given the news that she had stage-four incurable cancer of the bowel. I cannot begin to imagine what a devastating blow that must have been for her. Yet here is what she said:

I gave up most of the spiritual clichés, I think—that every good thing was going to come back to me or that I could be, you know, the architect of my own life. But one of the only certainties I actually truly latched onto was the sense that in the worst moments that there can be an unbidden God and that I don’t have to earn it. And I don’t even have to like worry that I won’t have it—but that maybe the hope is that when we come to the end of ourselves, that we’re not alone.[1]

“The hope is that when we come to the end of ourselves, we’re not alone.” The hope that Kate Bowler cherishes in her soul is the same hope that enabled the psalmist to cry out from the depths. It is the hope in a God who is with us, no matter how dire the circumstances, no matter how high the flood.

Do not fear, [that same God says elsewhere through Isaiah]
     for I have redeemed you;
     I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
     I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
     they will not sweep over you…
Do not be afraid, for I am with you. (Isaiah 43:2,5)

More than that, the psalmist can rely on the God who is with him because that same God is a God of mercy. Underlying all the history of Israel and underlying the psalmist’s faith is the conviction that the God to whom he prays is the same one who revealed himself to Moses amid the cloud and thunder of Sinai as “the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” (Exodus 34:6-7).

In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer there is a beautiful prayer that runs like this: “We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies.” Like the psalmist we can come to God in the confidence that no matter what the circumstances he is with us and that he is a God of mercy.

I wait

And so the psalmist prays. And he waits. According to my Hebrew dictionary, the verb he uses here means “to wait or to look for with eager expectation”. And if that were not enough, the psalmist tells us that that is exactly what he means: “I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits…” Then he goes on to give us the most beautiful picture:

My soul waits for the Lord
     more than watchmen for the morning,
     more than watchmen for the morning.

Can’t you just picture it? The sentinel has been on the ramparts all night long. Rumours have been rising that an enemy is on the approach. What was that noise in the bushes? He strains his eyes to look out through the darkness of the surrounding countryside. His fingers grow numb in the frostiness of the chill night air. Then over the horizon there appears the first glimmer of dawn’s light signaling a new day. And the fears brought on by the shadows and the strange sounds of the night begin to melt away.

In the same way there will be times, seasons of our life when we find ourselves waiting—and sometimes with deep anxiety. But that does not mean that we are doing nothing. The Bible does not equate waiting with idleness. Those of you who know your Bibles well will recall that the apostle Paul had some rather harsh words for those who used waiting for the Lord as an excuse for laziness. His advice instead: “Never tire of doing good.” (2 Thessalonians 3:13)

Besides this, I do believe that in those times of waiting (and indeed in times of suffering) the Lord can come to us in ways that we may never have anticipated and give us strengths that we never knew were there. I have seen it again and again in the lives of my parishioners. At times when I have sought to bring them comfort, I find that they already have a strength that is far beyond anything I can offer. I never cease to find encouragement in the words of Isaiah:

Do you not know?
     Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
     the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
     and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
     and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
     and young men stumble and fall;
but those who wait for the Lord
     will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
     they will run and not grow weary,
     they will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31)

I hope

So it is that the psalmist says, “Put your hope in the Lord.” Notice that he does not say what to hope for. Rather, it is whom to hope in. And between the two there is a world of difference.

Somehow it seems to me that what this psalm is saying is that when we find ourselves caught in the depths, we do not control the outcome. Ultimately we are confronted with our own powerlessness. No doubt we have a preferred way in which we would like things to end up. But we cannot dictate that to God. We can only place ourselves in his hands in the faith that he is a God of mercy who loves us more than we could ever imagine. Allow me to give the final word to Kate Bowler:

Cancer has kicked down the walls of my life… But cancer has also ushered in new ways of being alive… Everything feels as if it is painted in bright colors. In my vulnerability, I am seeing my world without the Instagrammed filter of breezy certainties and perfectible moments. I can’t help noticing the brittleness of the walls that keep most people fed, sheltered and whole. I find myself returning to the same thoughts again and again: Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.[2]

I would love to trade the life I have for one in which I imagined I could always spend it with my husband and my son. But it did feel like cancer was like this secret key that opened up this whole new reality. And part of the reality was the realization that your own pain connects you to the pain of other people. I don’t know. Maybe I was just a narcissist before. But like all of a sudden, I realized how incredibly fragile life is for almost everyone. And then I noticed things like—and that felt like a spiritual—I don’t know—like gift.

It’s like you notice the tired mom in the grocery store who’s just like struggling to get the thing off the top shelf while her kid screams, and you notice how very tired that person looks at the bus stop. And then, of course, all the people in the cancer clinic around me. That felt like I was cracked open, and I could see everything really clearly for the first time. And the other bit was not feeling nearly as angry as I thought I would. And, I mean, granted—like I have been pretty angry at times. But it was mostly that I felt God’s presence. And it was less like, here are some important spiritual truths I know intellectually about God. There are four of them. I have a PowerPoint presentation. It was instead more like the way you’d feel a friend or like someone holding you. I just didn’t feel quite as scared. I just felt loved.[3]

Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
     for with the Lord is unfailing love
     and with him is full redemption.

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[1]     NPR interview, 12 Feb 2018 https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/585066841/a-stage-4-cancer-patient-shares-the-pain-and-clarity-of-living-scan-to-scan

[2]     “Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me”, The New York Times, 13 Feb 2016 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/death-the-prosperity-gospel-and-me.html?smid=tw-share

[3]     NPR interview, 12 Feb 2018

Sermon – “The God who knows us” (Psalm 139)

It was my original intention this morning for us to look together at the Old Testament passage we read a few moments ago: the story of Samuel’s first encounter with God. The narrator opens the account with an observation that has to be one of the saddest statements in all of the Bible: “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions” (1 Samuel 3:1). Generations had elapsed since the time of Moses and the great events of the exodus. The voice that had thundered from the peak of Mount Sinai was scarcely a faint echo from the past. The worship of the tabernacle had degenerated into a hollow ritual. And the great moral principles that had made them unique among the nations had largely slipped from the people’s collective consciousness.

From this sad overview of the spiritual state of the nation of Israel the camera focuses in on a young lad fast asleep in the large tent structure that served as the centre of Israel’s worship. And in the stark silence of the night we hear a voice: “Samuel!” The young lad stirs, sits up, rubs his eyes and answers, “Here I am.” He gets up and runs to his master, the aged priest Eli. “You called me?” he asks. But the old man replies, “It wasn’t me; go back to bed.”

A second time it happens. “Samuel…” A second time he gets up and goes to the old man. And a second time he is sent back to his bed. He has barely fallen asleep when it happens again: “Samuel!” But this time the old priest has begun to figure out what’s going on. It’s all rather like what we read in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Narnia has been trapped in winter almost since anyone can remember, as suddenly the snow starts to melt, buds appear on the trees, and spring flowers begin to sprout and blossom. “Aslan is on the move!” So old Eli instructs the lad, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” Back to his bed the young Samuel goes—and sure enough the Lord comes to him again, “Samuel! Samuel…”

You know me

And this brings me to Psalm 139, which begins with the words, “Lord, you have searched me, and you know me…” I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us that God knows us. After all, he is the creator of the universe! Several weeks ago Karen and I watched the film Citizenfour. It centres on the story of Edward Snowden and how government agencies in our western nations are increasingly able to snoop on seemingly every detail of our lives. 1984 is long in the past, but it appears that George Orwell’s catchphrase, “Big Brother is watching you,” has become a reality—and for many of us, who value our privacy and our freedom, it can be a frightening one.

So what does the psalm mean when it says, “Lord, you have searched me, and you know me”? Well of course it includes the idea that God knows all about us. He knows what’s in our emails and our bank accounts. He knew our DNA long before Francis Collins and others were able to map the human genome. Furthermore, the psalm tells us he knows what’s going on inside our hearts and minds—and that can be a scary thought! But all of that is not the point. For the Hebrew verb “to know” is not just about knowing facts. It is about knowing someone personally, having a relationship with them.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” the Lord says tenderly to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5). When Jesus speaks to his followers about his being the good shepherd, he tells them, “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:14-15). So what we are talking about here is a personal knowing, an intimate knowing. To my mind we see it most poignantly in that scene outside the empty tomb on the first Easter morning. Mary Magdalene has come with her pounds of spices to anoint the body of Jesus. But the stone has been rolled away and the body has gone. Through her tears and the morning mist she sees a figure whom she mistakes as the gardener. “Tell me, sir,” she says to him, “where you have put him.” Then she hears the word that changes her life forever: “Mary…” (John 20:11-16)

“Mary…” “Adam…” “Emily…” “Alvin…” “Kewoba…” “Lolita…” “Gil…” “Brian…” “Samuel…” The Lord does not look on us only as a collectivity. He knows each of us by name. He knows our highs and our lows, our joys and our sorrows, our strengths and our weaknesses, our dreams and our secret fears—not to use them against us, but to come alongside us and to strengthen us along the journey of becoming the women and the men that he has created every one of us uniquely to be. And with that I have already arrived at my second point.

You hold me fast

That personal, intimate knowing of our hearts on God’s part inevitably leads to something more. So it is that we read in verses 9 and 10,

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
     if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
     your right hand will hold me fast.

When we read these words we need to remember that ancient near-eastern cultures gave particular significance to the right hand as opposed to the left. The right hand is the strong hand. The right hand is the useful hand. The right hand is the hand of blessing. It is for this reason that through Isaiah God promises the people of Israel, “Do not fear, for I am with you… I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). By the same token, when Jesus spoke about being struck on the right cheek, what he was referring to was a slap from the left hand, and that was a grievous affront. It was quite literally to add insult to injury. And so when we are failing or falling, it is with his right hand, the hand of strength, the hand of blessing, that God graciously reaches out to us and lifts us up and puts us in the place where we should be.

The apostle Paul expressed it memorably those magnificent verses in the eighth chapter of Romans when he wrote,

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 37-39)

The late Scottish theologian T.F. Torrance hit the nail on the head in an illustration that I have found myself going back to again and again. He wrote,

Many years ago I recall thinking of the marvellous way in which our faith is implicated in the faith of Jesus Christ and grasped by his faithfulness, when I was teaching my little daughter to walk. I can still feel her tiny fingers gripping my hand as tightly as she could. She did not rely upon her feeble grasp of my hand but upon my strong grasp of her hand which enfolded her grasp of mine within it. That is surely how God’s faithfulness actualized in Jesus Christ has hold of our weak and faltering faith and holds it securely in his hand.[1]

Torrance’s fellow countryman, the hymn writer George Matheson, put it lyrically in the successive verses of his hymn of 130 years ago: “O love that wilt not let me go… O light that followest all my way… O joy that seekest me through pain…”

As we read in the psalm, there is nowhere we can go, whether to the heights of ecstasy or to the depths of despair, or to the farthest place imaginable, that our gracious God is not able to reach out his hand to us and take us firmly into his grasp—and as we look at that hand we see on it the mark of a nail and the stain of his blood.

You lead me

All of these observations take us in the end, and as they should, to a prayer:

Search me, God, and know my heart;
     test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
     and lead me in the way everlasting.

If there is nothing else that we can learn from the verses of this psalm it is that we have a God whom we can trust to lead us through life, and trust to the uttermost.

Yet we would be horribly mistaken if we thought for one minute that following him turns our lives into a cakewalk. That is the false message being promulgated by the purveyors of the so-called “health, wealth and prosperity gospel”. The true gospel—and our faith—centres in the one who proclaimed, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me,” (Luke 9:23) and who warned those same followers, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). A couple of generations later one of those followers would reiterate the same warning: “Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you” (1 John 3:13).

The Letter to the Hebrews dedicates an entire chapter to the stories of those who chose to follow God’s leading. It tells of some

who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated… They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:35-40)

Torture, floggings, stoning and imprisonment! All of this seems like a rather discouraging note on which to end a sermon. And it would be, were it not for two things: the companion and the destination. We have a God who promises, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Do you remember the story of Daniel’s three companions whom King Nebuchadnezzar commanded to be thrown into a blazing furnace for their refusal to bow to a graven image? When the king looked into the furnace, he saw not three men but four. They trusted in God’s promise,

Do not fear, for I am with you;
     do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
     I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

And were not Jesus’ final words to his followers before he departed this world, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20)?

When we come to the end of that journey (where the Lord has been with us at each step along the way) it will be to arrive at a destination to which nothing that we have ever experienced in this world can compare. It will be to set foot in the new Jerusalem, the very dwelling place of God, where God himself will be with us and we will know his unmediated presence, where he will wipe every tear from our eyes; where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away and everything will have been made new (Revelation 21:3-4). And our only possible response will be,

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory!” (Revelation 19:6-7)

Amen.

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[1]     The Mediation of Christ, page 83