- Psalm 139:1-12 - read this text online here »
- Matthew 11:28-30 - read this text online here »
In Psalm 139, the psalmist highlighted three images where life could feel like a battlefield for him. But even more than that – these images reflect where life could leave us feeling helpless and hopeless and broken too. They feel like places where God is not present – where even God would not want to be. Godforsaken places we call them! But here’s the paradox: The psalmist expected God to be there with him and for him in those very places of brokenness, helplessness and hopelessness!
One image the psalmist used was the edge of the sea. In verses 9 and 10, the psalmist joyfully says this of God: “If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” For the psalmist, the farthest limits of the sea or the edge of the sea was as far away as he could get -- the edge of the Earth in poetic language. What happens when we reach the edge in our lives? At times, we may feel we could very well fall off the face of the Earth. And we may feel we have also fallen beyond the reach of God.
What does being at the edge feel like? Is there not the sense of losing control, of feeling the foundations of our life shake so hard the bottom could fall out of our world at any moment? It seems as if there is no one to hold onto us or steady the ground under our feet. Even God feels nowhere to be found to stop our free fall over the edge.
But according to the psalmist, who has been there himself, God is there and so hope is there! It is as if the psalmist reaches into our soul and says: If you should find yourself at the edge like me and even beginning to free fall, look up and you will discover God is with you after all. And God will hold you as he held me. God will hold you fast and will not let you go.
Another image the psalmist used was darkness. Verses 11 and 12: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you [God]; the night is as bright as the day for darkness is as light to you.”
To be in the dark alone is to be vulnerable and defenceless. It’s like being lost in a forest in the dead of night and wondering what might be lurking in the shadows. It’s like not knowing which direction to go in or whether or not our next step may cause us to trip and break our neck. We can’t see anything to help us find our way and it feels as though no one can see us either. So there is no help or no hope to be had.
But according to the psalmist, who has been there himself, God is there and so hope is there! It is as if the psalmist reaches into our soul and says: God will be with you when you are groping about in the dark. You see, God can see you in the midst of your darkness. You are not out God’s sight and you are not alone.
A third image the psalmist used was Sheol. Psalm 139, verse 8: “If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” To the psalmist, Sheol was the world of the dead. Death -- where a person was finally cut off from God.
But according to the psalmist, who knew he would die like everyone else, God is even there so hope is even there! It is as if the psalmist reaches into our soul and says: God will be there with you even when you are in the most hopeless place of all – when you die. Hope is there even when we die because God is there!
Jesus has been in these places of brokenness, helplessness and hopelessness too. He stood at the edge of life looking into the abyss of being totally forsaken when he took the sin of the world on himself: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Matthew 27:46]. He experienced the darkness of being utterly vulnerable. Matthew recorded that, while Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Grief and anguish came over him, and he said to [the disciples – Peter, James and John who were with him], ‘The sorrow in my heart is so great that it almost crushes me. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ He went a little farther on, threw himself face downwards on the ground, and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, take this cup of suffering from me! Yet not what I want, but what you want.’”
Jesus went through the process of an unjust and illegal trial. Hear some more of what Jesus went through according to Matthew: “They made a crown out of thorny branches and placed it on his head, and put a stick in his right hand; then they knelt before him and mocked him.… They spat on him, and took the stick and hit him over the head” [Matthew 27:29–30]. Jesus was lashed so badly he was too weak to carry his own cross. And finally he was nailed through his hands and feet to rough wooden planks. As we will hear in our Communion service, Jesus’ body was broken – broken for us. He faced death for us.
What does being broken or helpless or hopeless mean in our lives today? Are we experiencing this in our finances? In our relationships? In our employment or unemployment? In our bodies – physically and emotionally? In the changes of life we experience all around us? Yet, like the psalmist, do we see hope in such places? Do we expect God to be there for us too?
Jesus understood how broken and hopeless people could be in life – how they struggled and carried too much in their lives. So he invited them to an astonishing place of hope and grace. Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads and I will give you rest.” How startling is that! That is what we heard in the reading this morning from the Gospel of Matthew. It more than intrigues me that Jesus did not invite those who were having a hard time of it and felt overwhelmed to come to God to receive the hope and strength and refreshing rest they needed. No, he clearly invited these harassed and beleaguered strugglers to come to him as if he was the authorized connection to God! Constantly throughout the New Testament, and certainly in Matthew’s Gospel, the truth about coming to God always pointed to Jesus. I like the way New Testament theologian and commentator Dale Bruner expressed it:
“In Jesus, God gets a face. Jesus invites us to himself, and we feel quite naturally that we are invited to God.”
[Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. Revised and Expanded Edition, p. 537. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.That’s why, in the Communion service, you will read and hear these words of hope:
“Loving and tender God, in Jesus of Nazareth we recognize the fullness of your grace: light, life and love, revealed in words that confront and comfort us, in teachings that challenge and change us, in compassion that heals and frees us.”In her memoir Take This Bread [Ballantine Books, 2008, xi], author Sara Miles shares how the first time she ever took Communion changed her life forever. She writes:
One early, cloudy morning, when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of [people] -- except that up until that moment I'd led a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.
Eating [the bread as Jesus’ body], as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not [merely a] symbolic wafer but actual food -- indeed, the bread of life....
I took communion, I passed the bread to others, and then I kept going, compelled to find new ways to share what I had experienced.It is important to realize that God does not always take the forsakenness out of the so-called godforsaken places. If God did not do that for Jesus on the cross, it is not likely it will happen to us. But when God comes to us in those places – and God does come to us even in those many situations that feel hopeless -- we can still have hope!
Brennan Manning wrote with insight and with hope: “To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.”
That’s what you and I are doing here this morning. In our deep desire to experience a life of hope, we freely confess our brokenness – our helplessness and our hopelessness -- before our loving and compassionate God. And as we each pour out precisely our circumstances and situation to God from the depths of our hearts, we will also find ourselves knee deep in the place of grace – God’s grace. This is a remarkable place to be: to experience -- perhaps for the first time or many times over -- hope in our lives for those places where we feel broken.
In this 2010 Christmas season, even if you are experiencing brokenness, may you also experience hope. Like the psalmist, may you also be joyfully amazed that there is no place you can be that is beyond the reach of God’s compassionate grace and God’s loving care.
May this be so for you and for me.
Rev. Chris Miller
November 28, 2010
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
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