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Sermon
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ON BEING THANKFUL Michael Leunig’s calendar for June was a kind of commentary on this verse. The 3 A.M. WAKEUP You may have noticed how adventures of the soul are shaped like a parabola. The parabolic arc sweeps down from on high, descends to its nadir, then soars upward again towards heaven. Granger Westberg became famous for his little book, Good Grief, a handbook for those who have suffered loss. He describes how after a loss or a series of losses you go down into grief. You enter the dark valley, the dark night of the soul, and by the grace of God eventually emerge. At first the sun breaks through fitfully, then at last blue skies and green pastures come again. If we have loving and understanding people to walk with us, the journey becomes easier. The community of faith can be of real assistance. Something like Good Grief describes the journey of the poet who wrote Psalm 30. Not the death of another has grieved him, but the near loss of his own life. We meet him fully recovered as he reflects on the experience. He is a religious man, and his instinct draws him to God: I will praise you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up…. He acknowledges that healing has not come in his own strength. He had felt like a bucket drawn up from a deep well by the strong one at the top. O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. How many of you gathered here, I wonder, have known healing from life-threatening illness? By the grace of God and through the skills of contemporary medical care we are here. O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from those gone down to the Pit. For this ancient Hebrew, Sheol, the underworld, the Pit, is a place of ghostly shades, devoid of joy and community. In Sheol the praise of God is no longer possible. Not until late in its history will the Hebrew Bible express hope in resurrection. As for us, perhaps we waver between strong hope of that “which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, and which has not entered the human heart, prepared by God for those who love God,” and a fear of nothingness. For our poet the prospect of death has been appalling, all the more reason for him to give thanks to God for his recovery. Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name. A wise man once said that “religion is what we do with our solitariness”, meaning our inmost being, and that is true. But religion belongs also to community. We are “constituted by our relationships”, as another wise philosopher has said. The group helps shape us. The problem with all religion is that the group may be wrong-headed. Consider small groups of jihadists, where each member’s zeal is reinforced by the zeal of the others. In Christianity the excesses of any one group are subject to the discipline of “The Book,” and the excesses of The Book (for there are many) are to be corrected by our corporate understanding of the mind of Christ. Despite our shortcomings, however, the worship of the community of faith has a healing effect. It is the very place to bring our thanks for the healing we have undoubtedly enjoyed. Our poet continues: God’s anger is but for a moment; God’s favour is for a lifetime. A famous sermon by the New England divine of long ago, Jonathan Edwards, was entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” He said, “… the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow.” And nothing keeps the sinner from descent thereunto but the pleasure of God. Perhaps Mr Edwards overstated his case a little; his sermon certainly lived in the memory of those who heard it. How, though, are we to understand the “wrath of God?” Certainly Psalm 30 does not minimize it, for terrible things happen, as the poet knows from his encounter with death. What he is saying is that the motivation of God’s “anger” is the desire to help us “forswear our sinful ways,” as the song from Godspell put it. “The primary purpose of the divine anger is to teach the wayward, and not to destroy them.” (A. A. Anderson). God’s anger is but for a moment, God’s favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Thus Leunig’s “whale of doom” is transformed into a “sardine on toast.” Indeed, the words of the psalm describe the whole shape of redemption, the shape of the Gospel. Throughout life God transmutes our mini-deaths into mini-resurrections. It is the parabolic curve that takes you down into depths and up again into the light and peace of God’s grace. The poet, now healed, has a place on which to pause for reflection. He looks back on his sin of pride: As for me I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” By your favour you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed. In prosperity he had lost sight of the source his wealth. He though he had had it made. He had been like the rich man in Jesus’ parable who decides to pull down his barns and build larger ones because his land has brought forth a plentiful harvest. “I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” God says to him, “You fool, this very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” The Psalmist had not died in the night. God, by “hiding his face,” had given him a chance to repent. He confesses: To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication. He even “bargains with God: What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my helper!” God is not put off by the element of bargaining. God hears this desperate prayer. The psalmist can now rejoice: You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever. ___________________________________________________
A sermon presented by the
Rev Dr Stuart Murray at St Aidan's
Uniting Church North Balwyn, on 8th July, 2007 IT MAY BE
REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. |
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Page updated 12/07/07