Sermon – “An Everlasting Love” (Jeremiah 31:2-6)

 

About a third of the way through the letter “J” in my dictionary you will come across the word “jeremiad”. And what, you ask, is a jeremiad? Well, a jeremiad is defined as (and I quote) “a long literary work, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall”.

With a long definition like that, it is clear to anyone who knows their Bible where the word “jeremiad” originates: from the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament—fifty-two chapters of almost uninterrupted gloom and doom. And if that weren’t enough, Jeremiah wrote an equally doleful sequel: the book of Lamentations—five more chapters of melancholy and woe!

Many years ago, when I was in my late teens, I remember coming across a book entitled, Are You Joking, Jeremiah? I don’t think it was the author’s intention to turn Jeremiah into a kind of seventh-century BC stand-up comedian. A humorist Jeremiah certainly was not. What the author was really trying to do was to ask the question, “Jeremiah, can things really be that bad? Are the circumstances really as dire as you want us to believe?” And I have no doubt that Jeremiah’s answer would have been an unequivocal “Yes”. Or maybe, “Worse!”

For the past few months I’ve been working my way through Jeremiah as a part of my daily quiet time. And it hasn’t been easy reading. Jeremiah lived in the late years of the seventh and the early years of the sixth century BC. He proclaimed the message that the Lord had entrusted to him over a period of forty years, spanning the reigns of the last four of Judah’s kings: Josiah (640-609 BC), Jehoiakim (609-598 BC), Jehoiachin (598-597 BC) and Zedekiah (597-586 BC).

As he wrote, all that was left of the once-great nation of Israel were just two of the original twelve tribes, Benjamin and Judah, clustered around the capital city of Jerusalem. Now their existence too was being threatened with the expansion of the Babylonian Empire to the north and the rapid advance of its seemingly invincible armies. What were the people of Judah to do?

Much of the leadership were urging that they form an alliance with the Egyptian Empire to the south—indeed, if worse came to worst, to abandon Judah altogether and flee to Egypt. Imagine the irony, though, of going back to the very place where their ancestors had escaped from slavery five hundred years before—to the land from which God himself had intervened to rescue them with miracles on a scale never witnessed before or since!

A Message of Warning

To Jeremiah the notion of turning to Egypt was unthinkable. God’s words through him to the people and their leaders were these: “If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up” (42:10). Again and again with words like these Jeremiah urged the people of Judah to remain in their land.

Yes, the Babylonian army would attack and enslave them. Yes, those who survived would be lucky to escape with their lives. And all of this, said Jeremiah, was not just that Judah happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, what was unfolding around them was the due punishment that they had brought upon themselves—retribution for the countless ways in which they had blithely abandoned God and his laws, to adopt pagan practices and to oppress the poor.

So it was that Jeremiah went through the streets of Jerusalem, confronting prophets and priests, generals, landowners, leaders, merchants and kings—anyone he could find—with his message of warning. And he didn’t fear to mince his words!

I have seen your abominations,
your adulteries and neighings, your lewd whorings,
on the hills in the field.
Woe to you, Jerusalem!
How long will it be before you are made clean? (13:27)

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,
and his upper rooms by injustice,
who makes his neighbour serve him for nothing
and does not give him his wages… (22:13)

Behold, the storm of the Lord!
Wrath has gone forth,
a whirling tempest;
it will burst upon the head of the wicked.
The anger of the Lord will not turn back
 until he has executed and accomplished
 the intents of his heart. (23:19-20)

Needless to say, Jeremiah and his constant warnings of doom did not meet with a positive response. On one occasion his prophecies were cut up and torn to shreds by the king himself. On another he was arrested on charges of treachery and locked away in a dungeon. And on still another he was tossed into a cistern and would have died of starvation in the mud had he not been rescued. Yet none of this halted Jeremiah’s determination to issue the warnings that God had given him.

Their little kingdom was doomed. But the Lord would restore them—if only they would turn from evil and injustice, and be faithful to him once again.

The Message of God’s Love

Now it’s not as though Jeremiah was just an angry old man (or an angry young man for that matter!). Beneath all his words of woe and retribution and judgement (as with all the prophets) was the unquenchable conviction of God’s undying love for his people.

So it is that in today’s passage we come across some of the most beautiful and moving words in all of Scripture. There through Jeremiah God addresses his wayward people: “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

Now this was not some new-fangled idea that Jeremiah had come up with. He was not inventing anything. The everlasting, undying love of God is a thread that weaves its way through the whole of the Bible, from beginning to end.

It takes us all the way back to that unforgettable scene in the Garden of Eden, where God takes the creature that he has created in his own image—that he has formed from the dust of the ground—and tenderly breathes into him the breath of life. We witness it as Adam and Eve are banished from the garden for their disobedience. Yet in his fatherly care for them the Lord will not see them go cold and naked, but caringly provides them with garments of animal skins.

It thunders from Mount Sinai as the mighty God proclaims to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…” (Exodus 34:6-7). Later on, as they near the Promised Land, Moses proclaims once again the Lord’s message to the people of Israel, “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession… It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you…” (Deuteronomy 7:6-8a)

As we move farther through the Bible, the chorus of God’s love rings through the psalms as well. Psalm 33, for example, reminds us that, “the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord” (5b). But most notably it is in Psalm 136, where we are invited to sing, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his love endures forever.” But not just once! In each of the twenty-five verses that follow, the psalmist calls upon us to repeat the chorus, “for his steadfast love endures forever.”

But one of the most moving pictures of God’s inexhaustible love comes to us in the book of Hosea. I suspect many of you are familiar with Hosea’s unrelenting devotion to his wife Gomer. Perhaps we could blame Hosea for making a poor choice of a wife in the first place, since Gomer already had a reputation for promiscuity long before he took her in marriage. Yet God had a plan in it all. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Gomer has not given up her adulterous lifestyle. Although forced to divorce her, Hosea continues to love Gomer in spite of her unfaithfulness, to the point where later he finds her living as a slave and purchases her freedom, giving us in the process a profound, real-life parable of God’s love for his people.

The Message Made Flesh

So it is that God could instruct Jeremiah to write, even to a people who had rejected him, “I have loved you with an everlasting love…” That love is a theme that weaves its way through the whole of Scripture (as I’ve attempted to point out) from the beginning to the end. And so it is on this fourth Sunday in Advent, with Christmas just around the corner, that we focus on God’s love.

The poet Christina Rossetti put it to rhyme in a little poem that later became a Christmas carol:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
Star and angels gave the sign.

The only problem is that, with all the charming pictures of sheep and oxen and shepherds, we run the risk of romanticizing that love—turning it into something that is cute and cuddly like the little baby gazing innocently up from the manger. (Let’s not forget the smell of the sheep and the oxen! And let’s not forget that those crusty shepherds were terrified—scared out of their wits—at the sight of the angels!)

No, the love that entered the world at Christmas was a fierce love, a costly love. And it would be forty days after that first Christmas that old Simeon would draw attention to that truth, when Mary and Joseph brought their newborn son to be presented in the Temple in Jerusalem. As he stared down on the little infant, Simeon’s words to Mary were bone-chilling: “This child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also...” (Luke 2:34-35)

Simeon could not have been aware of it. But with the advantage of hindsight we know that what he was pointing to would ultimately lead to the cross. And looking back on it years later from the other side, the apostle John could write, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) If we want to catch a vision of the love of God in all its fullness, it is not to the manger that we must look, but past the manger, to Calvary, to the one who, in the Apostle Paul’s words, loved us and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).

And so today you and I come together on this final Sunday in Advent, this Sunday of love. In a few minutes that fourth candle, the love candle, will be extinguished. But let us never lose sight of the fact that the love that you and I celebrate this Christmas season is a love that will never falter or fail. For we come together in the presence of the God who says to us, as he said to Jeremiah centuries ago, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

Sermon – “Remember Your Leaders” (Hebrews 13:7-16)

 

Wow! We’ve been reading and making our way through Hebrews for a long time. It was way back in January that we started. Now it seems almost as though that is shrouded in the mists of history. And I want to express my gratitude to Pastor Marvin, who has steadfastly and faithfully been leading us through this rich book of the Bible all that time—in spite of a car accident resulting in a serious concussion and later falling victim to covid. Now here we are part way through the last chapter, and in my Bible I’m into the final column of this profound and challenging message to the church.

It seems to me, as I read through it, that this concluding chapter is something of a catch-all. It may be that our anonymous author is running out of parchment to write on. I can imagine his hand (or the hand of his scribe) might be aching after all this writing. So now he is packing as much as he can into his concluding words. It is almost as though he were saying, “Oh, and by the way, before I put down my pen…”—with the result that he pours forth with a whole jumble of wise and timeless counsel, things that he feels need to be said.

Remember

The first thing he calls upon us to do in these verses is to remember. “Remember your leaders,” he says, “those who spoke to you the word of God.” So I want to let you take the next couple of moments to pause and think back to the people who have had an impact on you, men and women whom the Holy Spirit brought into your life as an influence for the good. Who were the individuals who helped you to come into a living relationship with Christ? Who were those who drew you back onto the path when you were going astray? Who were the individuals who stood by you and held out a light for you in the darkness? Who were those who prayed for you? Who were those who had the thoughtfulness to encourage you or the boldness to caution or to scold you?

What a wonderful thing it is that the Lord does not call us to walk the path of discipleship alone! As the author has already reminded us in the previous chapters, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. And, as he has made clear in that long catalogue of God’s faithful servants in chapter 11, that cloud is not limited to the present.

In addition to that list, we owe a huge debt to our Christian forebears who have come since that time: for their steadfast commitment to the truths of the gospel, even in some cases, to the point of death; for their willingness to journey hundreds, even thousands, of miles to share their faith; for their deep insights into the mysteries of God.

Last Sunday at the end of the service we did something slightly out of the ordinary here at First Congregational… We sang a song that was penned nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. That hymn was written by a young woman named Frances Ridley Havergal. And one of its verses began like this:

Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold…

I had to laugh to myself a little as we sang it because, in the hymn book that we used in the church where I served before I retired, that verse had been omitted by its editors! Yet behind it there lies a marvellous story and one that I find quite moving. It comes in a quote from a letter that its author sent to a friend. Here is what she wrote:

‘Take my silver and my gold’ now means shipping off all my ornaments—including a jewel cabinet which is really fit for a countess—to the Church Missionary Society where they will be accepted and disposed of for me. I retain only a brooch for daily wear… I don’t think I need tell you I never packed a box with such pleasure.[1]

How much we have to learn from an example like that! And Frances Ridley Havergal is just one of thousands, no millions, who have paved the way for my faith and yours today.

We live in a generation that tends more and more to focus on the immediate. Our lives are governed by catchy headlines and sound bites, on tweets and social media posts. And I don’t for one minute debate that we need to keep up with the present. Yet we can’t allow our obsession with the now to happen at the expense of plumbing the deep riches of the past, to learn and to benefit from the lives of women and men of faith who have gone before us.

So allow me to commend the study of Christian history and biography, to encourage you to familiarize yourselves with the lives of great men and women of faith from the past. You will find yourself challenged and enriched by the depth of their faith, by their profound insights and by the steadfastness of their commitment to Christ.

Way back nearly nine hundred years ago a very wise man named John of Salisbury wrote these words:

We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.

The Unchanging Christ

We would not be who we are or where we are without the witness of those faithful saints who have gone before us. More importantly, our author tells us, we would not be either of those things without Jesus: Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Circumstances may change; Jesus does not. The world of 2022 is a markedly different place from what it was only a few years ago—and the pace of that change continues to accelerate. Many of the things we take for granted now were unheard of twenty years ago: iPhones and iPads, Facebook and Twitter, Netflix and Amazon Prime, smoking bans in restaurants, text messaging, led lighting, drones, and electric cars, to name just a few. And I doubt that anyone would have seriously considered the notion of this worship service being broadcast online even three years ago!

All of that has been accompanied by some huge societal shifts as well: the increased frequency of gun violence, the rising acceptance of alternative sexual lifestyles, our awareness of global climate change, and the fact that it’s not just robbers who wear masks into stores any longer! I am even more amazed when I pause to think that my grandfather was born into a world where there were no cars, no telephones, no sound recordings and no electric lights!

Into the midst of this ever-accelerating pace of change, we stand with the author of Hebrews and proclaim, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And before I utter another word, I want to affirm that that does not mean that we are reactionaries or that we spend all our time longing for the good old days. (And realistically, if we look at them objectively, we’ll find that they weren’t nearly as good as we might wish to think they were.)

What I do want to state unequivocally is that Jesus Christ is not limited by time or the passing fashions of any age. He is still able to speak as powerfully to the twenty-first century dweller as he was in the first. Yet over the centuries there have been people who have tried to paint a different picture of Jesus from the one given to us in the gospels.

Even before the ink of the last books of the New Testament was dry on the parchment, there were already some who were denying that Jesus could have been a true human being, but that he only appeared to be so. When I was a university student, there were theologians who argued that Jesus never rose from the dead and an archaeologist who claimed that Jesus was really the leader of a psychedelic mushroom cult!

No doubt there will always be those who will try to shed doubt on who Jesus is. But like those in the past, they will prove to be nothing more than a temporary fad. For as we have read this morning, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” And as the author of Hebrews has already stated, “He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him” (Hebrews 7:25).

Let’s hold on to those words of assurance from the apostle Paul, that “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). And let’s trust in Jesus’ final words in the gospel to his followers, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

The sacrifice of praise

At this point we may be tempted to stand with those disciples and stare upwards in wonder at the risen, ascended, glorified Christ. Or to want nothing more than to gather with that great crowd of ten thousands times ten thousands and cry with them “Worthy is the Lamb!”.

There’s an old hymn that runs,

Father of Jesus, love’s reward,
What rapture it will be
Prostrate before thy throne to lie
And gaze and gaze on thee!

And you might think that that is what the author of Hebrews is calling upon us to do when he writes, “Through him let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God…” Yet we need to read on. And when we do that, what do we find that he says? “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have…” That is the sacrifice that is pleasing to God. And it is an ongoing theme of Hebrews:

•  “Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works” (10:24) 

•  “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers” (13:2)

•  “Remember those who are in prison” (13:3)

Yes, being here on Sunday morning is important. Yes, being caught up in worship and in praise is vital to our souls. But it loses its purpose if it is divorced from what happens “out there”—if it doesn’t motivate and transform the kind of people we are and the things we do once we step across the threshold at the back of the sanctuary.

I remember visiting a church several years ago and participating in a wonderfully lively time of worship. We had great music. There was solid, challenging biblical preaching. The congregation, drawn from all walks of life and representing every age group, was enthusiastic in its participation. I was in no doubt that the Holy Spirit was truly present. But what I remember most about that church was that, as we left we were met by the large letters of a sign over the door that read, “You are now entering the mission field.” That’s what worship is about. It’s not just to have some kind of spiritual high. It is to empower and equip us for the other six days of the week.

I suspect you may have noticed the new glass doors as you enter the church. (If you haven’t, you’re excused—they’ve only been there for two or three weeks!) What I like about them is that they help to connect “in here” with “out there”. They remind us that the world is right there at our doorstep.

How crucial it is that we maintain that connection! We often call what we are doing right now a “service”. But the real service begins as we step outside the door. How important that we see our worship Sunday by Sunday not as an isolated event, but as being equipped to live for Jesus in the world, to carry the compassion and the grace—the sheer goodness—of Jesus into our homes and neighbourhoods, our workplaces and our classrooms. “For such sacrifices,” the author of Hebrews tells us, “are pleasing to God.”

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[1]     Albert Edward Bailey, The Gospel in Hymns, 405

Sermon – “Open Your Mouth Wide” (Psalm 81)

One of the joys that my wife and I share is not only that we live within a few minutes’ drive from three of our grandchildren, but that our house backs onto miles of forest. The result is that our back yard is almost constantly being visited by wildlife—even including a bear! But our most frequent visitors are the birds. This summer we’ve counted seventeen different varieties of them, but I’ve got to say that our favourites are the hummingbirds. We love to watch them zip madly back and forth across the yard, stopping every once in a while to suck up some nectar into their needle-like beaks.

The hummingbird is the smallest of all bird species. A mature hummingbird weighs less than a nickel and their nests are no bigger in size than a walnut. Their tiny hearts thump away at an amazing rate of over twelve hundred beats a minute. They lay their eggs (which are about the size of a jellybean) twice in the summer. And, sad to say, in a few weeks’ time we won’t be seeing them anymore, because they will be starting their four-thousand-kilometer journey back over the eastern United States and across the Gulf of Mexico to their winter quarters in Central America.

I often find myself asking, how do they do it? How do those tiny fledglings, only weeks old, know when they should be heading south? How do they know their destination? And how do they know how to get there? It seems that somehow it’s all been implanted in their tiny brains from birth.

What a contrast to us human beings! When we’re born there’s almost nothing we can do for ourselves, except occasionally fill our diapers! We have to be taught practically everything. And, unlike the hummingbirds, it seems that nowadays I can’t find my way anywhere without a GPS!

It shouldn’t surprise us then that, like almost everything else in life, the worship of God is something that has to be learned. And in many ways the psalm from which we have read this morning gives us some useful instruction on how to worship. So let’s take a look at it for the next few minutes and discover what it has to teach us.

Sing (1-5a)

The first lesson comes in the opening words: “Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob.” Unlike professional football or tennis, worship is a participatory sport. True worship demands our involvement, both spiritually, mentally and even physically. And so it’s vitally important that we listen carefully to the Scripture readings, that we join in the prayers (not least with a hearty “Amen!”), that we sing the hymns…

Now at this point you might be saying to yourself, “You don’t really want to hear me sing. I can’t hold a tune in a bucket.” Well, neither can I, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. So sing anyway. It’s good for you—not only spiritually (and this may surprise you) but also psychologically and physically.

A report published in Australia in 2008 revealed that on average, choral singers rated their satisfaction with life higher than the general public—even when the actual problems they experienced were more substantial than those faced by those around them. Another study from ten years before that found that after nursing home residents took part in a singing program for a month, there were significant decreases in the levels of both anxiety and depression.[1]

Two and a half centuries ago John Wesley was concerned about the state of singing that he heard in the churches where he preached. Here are a few of the pieces of advice that he offered at the time:

Sing all.

See that you join with the whole congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.

Sing lustily and with a good courage.

Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep, but lift up your voice with strength. Do not be afraid of your voice now, nor ashamed of its being heard …

Above all sing spiritually.

Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is … offered to God continually. So shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

So it is that our psalm this morning calls upon us to sing aloud, to shout for joy, to raise a song… And we find the same when we read the New Testament, where we are encouraged to “be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:18-20).

Remember (5b-10a)

So we are encouraged to sing. And the second thing our psalm calls us to do is to remember. The problem with the people of Israel was that they frequently suffered from collective memory loss. We might call it a kind of spiritual amnesia. They were inclined to forget the God who had made his covenant with Abraham, who had rescued them from slavery in Egypt, who had brought them into the Promised Land.

Now ask my wife and she’ll tell you that I’m not always all that good at remembering things, including names. We have new next-door neighbours who just moved in last week. They’re a young couple from the United States and they are excited to be in Nova Scotia. The other evening we spent a few moments introducing ourselves—and fifteen minutes later, do you think I could remember their names? A few days later I saw them in their driveway and I apologized that I had forgotten their names. I had hardly gotten the words out of my mouth when they apologized that they couldn’t recall my name either!

So it is that the psalmist writes about hearing “a voice I had not known”. Yet it was a voice that everyone in Israel should have recognized. It was the voice that had called creation into being. It was the voice that had spoken softly to Adam and Eve in the Garden. It was the voice that had thundered from the top of Mount Sinai. It was the voice who addressed his people time and time again through the prophets. Yet it had become unfamiliar, forgotten, not even a distant echo from the past.

And so the psalmist calls them to remember: to bring to mind the remarkable series of events that had formed their ancestors into a nation; to remember how God had had heard their groaning as they laboured as slaves in Egypt; to remember how he had enabled them to escape from the clutches of Pharaoh and his armies; to remember how he had provided for them in their forty-year trek across the wilderness and brought them into the Promised Land. And although they might have forgotten him, he would remain true to his promise, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)

This morning, in a few moments’ time, we will gather around the Lord’s Table and you and I too will be called to remember, as we hear once again our Lord’s familiar words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” We will take the bread into our hands to remember the body that was broken for us. And as we bring the cup to our lips, we remember the blood that was shed for us.

The challenge, though, is to take that memory into the week with us. It’s so easy, once we’ve walked out of the church and slammed the car door, to allow the world to take over once again. There are all those little details like the lunch that needs to be prepared, the lawn that needs to be mown, the text that just came up on our cellphone, and the list goes on and on…

So let me suggest a couple of things that can help us to remember: As you rise in the morning, thank God for the gift of another day and to ask for his guidance through it; before each meal (if you don’t do it already) express your gratitude for his gracious provision—simple acts in themselves but small ways in which we can keep our focus in the right place.

Open wide (10b-16)

Before we leave this psalm today, I would be remiss if I didn’t point you to what I think is one of the most wonderful promises that God gives us in the Bible—and it is so easy to overlook. It is nestled in the latter half of verse 10. There God says to us, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.”

The words take me back to those birds in our back yard. The picture that it brings to my mind is of a nest of baby hatchlings, their tiny beaks opened as wide as they can stretch them, waiting, trusting in the mother bird to feed them. Like those little birds, whatever the cause of our spiritual hunger, we have a God we can trust and who is able to fill it.

Indeed, Jesus assures us that God knows our needs before we ask (Matthew 6:8). He once asked his disciples,

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)

And so the psalm stands as an encouragement to us—a gracious invitation—to trust God, as the little birds trust that the mother will return to the nest. Now there may be some of you who think that this kind of thinking is naïve, that it won’t stand up amid the ups and downs of life in the real world. But let me tell you, it does.

For the last six months I’ve been following the journal of a woman in Ukraine. Again and again I find myself dumbfounded by her faith in God’s provision. Here is something she wrote just the other day:

I am reminded once again of the verses in Philippians 4:11-13. ‘I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.’ … We don’t need to postpone life till after the war. We live it to the maximum now!

Our psalm this morning is an invitation to do just what she says, to live life to the maximum—joyfully to trust in God, who did not withhold even his own Son and graciously gives us all things (Romans 8:32).

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[1]     https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/emotions/singing-happy1.htm

Sermon – “Let Your Face Shine” (Psalm 80)

 

 

One of the great strengths of our Anglican worship is the continuous repetition of the psalms. If you turn to the Daily Office Lectionary in the Book of Alternative Services, you will see that there is a provision there to recite at least one psalm every morning and every evening of the year.

That is a practice that has always lain at the heart of Anglican worship, right back to the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. Of course that book was only carrying on a tradition dating back to the earliest Christian liturgies. And they in turn were borrowing from Jewish practice that had gone on for a thousand years before that. So when we recite the psalms, we are not only joining with our fellow believers around the world. We are engaging in the continuous worship of three thousand years!

For quite some time now, one of the habits I have engaged in my own personal devotions is to read from the psalms every day—and I almost invariably find myself enriched by the practice.

The marvellous quality about the psalms is that they give voice to the whole range of human experience. There is joyful praise. Think, for example, of Psalm 95—what we call the Venite, with which we open Morning Prayer: “Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation…” Or the Jubilate Deo, Psalm 100: “Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands; serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with a song.”

At the other end of the spectrum there are psalms like Psalm 55, so magnificently set to music by the composer Mendelssohn: “Hear my prayer, O God; do not hide yourself from my petition… Fear and trembling have come over me and horror overwhelms me. And I said, ‘Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest…’” Or the chilling psalm that Jesus quoted from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Like those two psalms that I have just quoted, the psalm that we have read together this morning, Psalm 80, is one of what are known as “psalms of lament”. Each of these psalms in one way or another expresses sorrow, pain and discouragement—we might even say disappointment with God. In all, there are over fifty of them, more than any other category of psalms in the Bible.

So for the next few minutes I want us to take a look at the psalm we have just read this morning—and I hope that you may find it speaking to you in a new way.

He looks around

The psalm was likely composed some time after the year 722 BC. That was the year when the powerful armies of the Assyrian Empire finally crushed the northern Israelite kingdom centred in Samaria. The Assyrians had gradually been gaining control of Israelite territory for a dozen years. And it was after a three-year siege that the northern capital of Samaria itself eventually fell. As was the practice in those days, the city was leveled to the ground and its citizens deported to serve as slaves.

As I read this psalm, I imagine the psalmist having made the journey back to Samaria. He wanders through familiar streets and alleyways where houses and shops and the king’s palace once had proudly stood, now reduced to piles of rubble. Perhaps it is a herd of sheep grazing on the tufts of vegetation growing up through the tumbled stones that prompts him to cry out, “Hear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock…” Or maybe it is the familiar words penned centuries before by Israel’s greatest king: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”

In the silence of the deserted city he cries out, “Stir up your strength and come to help us!” And then for the first time we hear the sorrowful refrain that is repeated three times in the course of the psalm: “Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.” Behind those words we can detect the faint echo of the blessing that Moses’ brother Aaron had given to his sons and the priests that would follow them:

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you,
     and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
     and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26)

Whatever the case, the psalmist is not afraid to vocalize his disappointment with God:

How long will you be angered,
despite the prayers of your people?
You have fed them with the bread of tears…
and our enemies laugh us to scorn.

A hundred and thirty-five years later, following the destruction of Jerusalem, it would be another psalmist who wailed,

By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion…
How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?

Kate Bowler is a Canadian author and blogger. As a young mother in her mid-thirties and having just completed her PhD thesis, she was met with the devastating news that she had been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. Almost immediately well-meaning friends and acquaintances began to attempt to comfort her with thoughts like, “This is a test and it will make you stronger,” and, “At least you have your son. At least you’ve had an amazing marriage.” But what she really needed was time to grieve, time to be angry, time to be depressed, as she faced the terrible reality of her situation.[1]

I believe that this is exactly what we find happening in the early verses of this psalm. The poet makes no attempt to gloss things over or to look to a brighter future. He is bluntly realistic with God. And I believe this can act as a model for us today when we stand in the face of disappointment or tragedy. We need make no attempt to hide it or disguise it. Instead we can be open about it. We can be honest. Because we have a God who invites us to cast all our anxieties on him, because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7).

He looks back

So the psalmist looks around. He is bluntly realistic about the situation he is facing. But then in the second part of the psalm (in verses 8 to 11) he looks back. He remembers God’s faithfulness to his people Israel—all the way back to their escape from centuries of slavery in Egypt, to the settling of the Promised Land:

You have brought a vine out of Egypt;
you cast out the nations and planted it…
You stretched out its tendrils to the Sea
and its branches to the River.

He thinks back to Israel’s establishment as a prosperous kingdom under David and Solomon—the envy even of the Queen of the faraway kingdom of Sheba!

At the same time there was a problem, and the problem was this: the people had invested their hope in the wrong place. They had been blinded by the false pleasures of wealth and prosperity and of military might. And it was not as though they had not been warned by prophets like Amos:

Alas for those who are at ease in Zion,
    and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria,
the notables of the first of the nations,
    to whom the house of Israel resorts! …

Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,
    and lounge on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock,
    and calves from the stall;
who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp,
    and like David improvise on instruments of music;
who drink wine from bowls,
    and anoint themselves with the finest oils,
    but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,
    and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away. (Amos 6:1,4-7)

When things seem to have turned against us, we can sometimes be inclined to look back to the “good old days”, when everything was so much better! Of course we know that that is a mirage, that the prosperity that so many of us became accustomed to came at a tremendous cost—a cost to people who were often ignored or trodden under foot and the destruction of much of our natural environment, which it is unlikely that we will ever be able to rectify.

At the same time, the Bible calls us to look back—not to the good old days, not to some imagined golden era, but to one specific day: to the day when darkness covered the whole land, to the day when the sun’s light failed, the earth shook, and the thick curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

In a few moments’ time we will take the bread in our hands, we will bring the cup to our lips, in obedience to the one who said to his disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me.” As we go through those familiar actions once again, we remember. We remember the ultimate example of self-giving love. We remember the one who took all the ugliness and cruelty of our sin upon himself. We remember the one who suffered defeat, so that we might share in his victory over evil and death. “Do this,” he commands us, “in remembrance of me.”

He looks ahead

It is only once he has looked back and recalled God’s faithfulness in the past, that the psalmist is able to look forward—and to look forward in hope. And so, as the psalm draws to a close, he prays,

But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand,
 the one whom you made so strong for yourself.
And so we will never turn away from you;
give us life, that we may call on your name.

As he sets his sights on the future, he recognizes that, while Samaria and his life of the past may lie in ruins, he is not alone. There is a strong hand that is grasping his.

Centuries before, as the people of Israel stood on the edge of the Promised Land and were preparing to enter it, their leader Moses encouraged them with these words: “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed” (Deuteronomy 31:8). And our Lord Jesus says the same to us as he promised his followers as the time of his ascension, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who vehemently opposed Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany. Just before his works were banned from publication, he wrote a little book about the Psalms. Here is what he had to say about the psalms of lament:

[These] psalms have to do with that complete fellowship with God which is justification and love. But not only is Jesus Christ the goal of our prayer; he himself also accompanies us in our prayer. He who suffered every want and has brought it before God, has prayed for our sake in God’s name… For our sake he cried on the cross: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Now we know that there is no longer any suffering on earth in which Christ will not be with us, suffering with us and praying with us—Christ the only helper.[2]

The psalms are intended not just to be read, but to be prayed. And as you learn to pray those psalms, may you know the presence of Jesus, our Great Shepherd, praying alongside you, and the light of his countenance shining upon you.

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[1]     Bowler, Kate. Everything Happens for a Reason (2018)

[2]     Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible, 49