A Sermon Inspired by Psalm 40:1-11
Part 1 of #DaysofHope Sermon Series
(a worship series adapted with permission from
HOPE: Living with Confident Expectation Creative Brief
HOPE: Living with Confident Expectation Creative Brief
by The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection)
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| Image: Hoping Against Hope © Jan Richardson |
“I put all my hope in the Lord. He leaned down to me. He
listened to my cry for help.”
I knew bargaining with God wouldn’t work…not because what I
was offering wasn’t enough. Not because I didn’t think God was able. But because
I knew that requiring bargains for his favor, requiring a sacrifice for his
grace, that’s just not who God is.
Still, as I sat, tears streaming down my face, tucked away in
the corner of a hospital floor waiting for the call that my mom had made it
through emergency surgery, I tried to strike a bargain with God of all the ways
I would be more faithful, pray more, love more, if He would just let my mom be
okay. Maybe it was because I was sitting next to a snack vending machine as I
prayed…and I thought if I could just punch the right numbers with my prayer and
deposit the right amount of currency with my promises, then God’s mercy would
come tumbling like a package of chips or candy bar from above and life could
return to normal. Maybe it was because, even though I had been offered a more
abundant understanding of God’s grace my entire lifetime raised in the United
Methodist Church, somewhere deep inside me this twisted theology that God sends
bad stuff our way to teach us or to punish us had made an unholy home with its
false teaching. Or maybe…it’s because, in the dark and miry pit I found myself
in that day, I was desperately searching for a ray of hope wherever I could
find it.
When, in your life, have you been desperately searching for
hope?
For all of us, at some point in our lives, we will find ourselves at the
end of a road, when all the others paths have been exhausted, with no options
left. When the doctor says there is nothing more we can do for you. When we
lose our jobs and don’t have enough saved up to pay next month’s bills. When a
child, a parent, a loved one has cancer. When our spouse or friend hurts us in
a way we are not sure we can recover from. When we realize that no matter what
happens, life is never going to be the same.
That’s exactly what the Psalmist means when he writes about
his experience in sinking down in the muddy, filthy pit of death in Psalm 40. Walter
Brueggemann, a renowned Biblical scholar, calls these instances in life, when
we feel like we are at the end of our rope, seasons of disorientation, and he
points out how they are reflected not only in Scripture, in the Psalms, but in
the very lived experience of Israel as well.[1]
Time after time, Israel found itself under attack from enemies, confused, and
the people, often through the voice of the Psalmist or the Prophet, would cry
out to God for deliverance.
Yet, Brueggemann observes, before Israel experienced a season
of disorientation, there had to be a season of orientation. In a season of
orientation, everything makes sense in our lives. Things are going well, we
feel settled, our personal lives feel ordered, and the world feels mostly at
peace. Seasons of orientation are when you can happily drink out of a coffee mug
like this that says, “Life is good” without any sense of irony.
For me, the year leading up to the discovery of an aggressive,
cancerous tumor compressing my mother’s spinal cord and her emergency, life-saving
surgery was a season of orientation. Adam and I got married. He graduated with
his master’s degree and got his first professional job as a social worker
within a month. We adopted our dog Haddie. We didn’t worry too much about
money. We enjoyed spending lazy Sunday afternoons with our friends, talking
about our plans for the future. And two months before I would be crying in that
hospital waiting room, I was joyfully celebrating as I walked across the front
of Benton Chapel and received my Master of Divinity degree after three hard
years of work at Vanderbilt.
Life was good…until it wasn’t.
But that’s how seasons work, right? No season of life lasts
forever. There are times in our lives when everything is going right. Life isn’t
perfect, because, let’s face it, life never is! But, we are healthy, and our loved
ones are healthy, too. We have a roof over our heads and food on the table. Maybe,
we even have enough extra income to enjoy a vacation every once in a while. In
seasons of orientation, we can join in with the Psalmist and sing out, “Lord,
our Lord, how majestic is your name throughout the earth!” (Psalm 8:1). Many of
us, we were living in a season of orientation until March 2020. I imagine, for
most of us, even if we had the occasional complaint or something that we were
worried about…life, for the most part, was good.
Until it wasn’t. First came the news reports from China, and
then Italy. And, while we felt sorry for the people in those countries, we
thought, “We’re safe here.” And then came the first reports from New York and
Seattle, and maybe we were a little more concerned…but life went on as normal.
And, then the reports that the virus was in Tennessee, maybe not where we live
yet, but in our state. And, the people we knew who were undergoing medical
treatments or who are living in remission from cancer got a little more
careful, but we still went to work and the grocery store and to the Saw Meal to
eat supper.
And then churches suspended in-person worship services. Schools
sent students home and cancelled prom. Restaurants closed dining rooms. Grocery
stores and gas stations put up plexiglass shields. And, if we were lucky enough
to be able to still work, the way we did our jobs day to day probably significantly
changed.
In seasons of disorientation, we can commiserate with the one
who cries out in Psalm 13, “How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever? How
long will you hide your face from me? How long will I be left to my own wits,
agony filling my heart? Daily?” We know what Israel felt like when they were
under attack, from enemies or famine or disease, when they didn’t understand,
when they lamented to God in frustration and anger. At our most honest moments,
we might wonder like they did, “Where are you, God? Are you really there?”
In the fall, our congregations spent time studying the
Psalms, digging into these songs of faith at the center of the Bible, these
words of Scripture that express the highest of highs and lowest of lows in
human emotions and experiences. If you remember, when we looked at the Psalms,
we studied Psalms of lament, these psalms that begin with confusion and chaos
and cries of mourning. But…that’s not where these psalms end, remember?
Consider Psalm 13. It may begin with the question, “How long will
you forget me, Lord?” but by the end the writer has turned back towards God
saying, “BUT…I trust in your steadfast love. My heart rejoices in your
salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has been good to me.”
But. That is a word of hope. But.
When we find ourselves in seasons of disorientation, like the
one we are all collectively experiencing right now, like the one I was in while
my mom was in surgery, like the ones we have experienced when a loved one dies
or our lives feel like they are falling apart, we all need hope. Hope is what
keeps us going. Hope is what gets us up in the morning. Hope is what keeps us from
giving up.
When Israel found itself in seasons of disorientation, it’s
hope came from trusting in God. When their world fell apart, the Israelites
would turn back to God, get serious about listening to God through the witness
of Scripture and the witness of prayer. And Israel would find hope in God
because they knew God has saved them before, and he would do it again.
Hope for them became a choice. Hope was the choice to believe,
that despite the appearance of their present circumstances, the future would be
better than the present because God would be faithful. Even after listing all
the ways they felt abandoned or lost, hope was the choice to say, “But God….”
Walter Brueggemann reminds us that after the disorientation
that interrupted their season of orientation, there always came a third season
for the Israelites—a season of reorientation. God would redeem the Israelites, would
bring good things our of their pain. In the words of Psalm 40, God would lift
them out of the pit and set their feet on solid rock. New life happened.
Deliverance came. And the Israelites would be changed.
Friends, I believe this sort of hope is being born in us
right now. Not a hope that things will return to normal, that the life we had
in January or February would come back in May or in June. Our world is being
changed by this season of disorientation. Just like the Israelites as they emerged
from disorientation to reorientation, we are being changed. There is no returning
to normal.
But, if we choose hope, our lives can be changed for the
better. What we learn from Scripture is that God redeems time periods like
this, these seasons of disorientation. God brings us through them and sets our
feet on solid ground. And we can trust this is true because of the hope we
celebrate together in the miracle of Easter. Even in this season of
disorientation, we have been proclaiming together the stories of our faith. That
God put on skin and in Jesus came to live among us. That as Jesus performed
miracles and preached, healed and prayed, he showed us the love of God and
taught us how to experience relationship with him through faith. That he willing
laid down his life, suffering and dying on the cross, and experienced his own season
of disorientation as he cried out the words of Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why
have you forsaken me?”
BUT…thank you, God, for that word of hope…But, on the third
day, the stone rolled away and Jesus walked out of the tomb alive.
The Easter story is our story in every season. When life is
going great, when life is falling apart, when we are trying to put the pieces
of our life back together again, there is always hope because Jesus lives!
God was faithful like he promised. God redeemed even Christ’s
suffering and death and used it for the good of our salvation.
Because of Easter, you and I can live our lives oriented
towards hope in every season. Because of Jesus, we put ALL of our hope in the
Lord. Because of Jesus, we can sing a new song of praise. Because of Jesus, we
can choose to believe and live in the truth that the future will be better than
the present.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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