ABSENT AND WITH US

The sky was gray all day long on Friday, that's when I wrote most of my sermon. I finished it yesterday morning. The sun was out. I sat in the backyard and I prayed "Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love."

In order to be at our best, in order to survive life's worst... sometimes we need a guide, someone to invite us in to show us how to do what we need to do... with that in mind I offer some of the words of Psalm 31 this morning... and invite you to pray along...

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors,
an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many-terror all around!-
as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, "You are my God." My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors. Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.

Before he was crucified... Before Jesus echoed the psalmist's words from the cross "Into your hands I commit my spirit"... before they stripped him and beat him and crushed a thorny crown into his temples... and laughed and spit and mocked... before the disciples ran off... before one of his own betrayed him... before the crowds cried crucify him... they cried hose ana in the highest Blessed be the one who comes in a name of the Lord... before he entered that great city of Jerusalem among their praises and the waving palms... before he felt the dread of turning and traveling and entering that place, that hour... before his baptism in the Jordan River, before his ministry began, before the signs and wonders and miracles, before the parables, before all of his astounding teachings, before all of that -- Jesus learned the Psalms... He was brought up as a devout Jewish man was brought up. He learned about the law that was handed down to Moses for God's people, he knew their history, the places they had been, the things that had happened -- the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David, he knew the words of the prophets, all of the lessons of the Kings... he knew about the 430 years that Israel waited without an answer from God to be freed from the Egyptian captivity... he knew about their many times and places of exile and dislocation... and he knew the songs and prayer's of his people. Jesus prayer life was shaped by the psalmist...Jesus knew their words... and most importantly he knew all of God's words that had been spoken, and he knew about all of the silences too...

The psalmist prays from a moment, a place of distress -- be gracious to me of Lord, I am in distress... is a problem named, a problem solved? -- -- Sometimes we are in distress... enemies of circumstance surround us, they whisper terror all around us, they conspire -- persons in our lives, problems in our family's, dark, life-threatening prognoses sometimes they conspire together against us, they do it in these ways and in countless other ways -- they plot to take our life and we are overwhelmed by fear... asking, where is God? He must know what is happening, he must care... and if he does surely he must act, he must want to... but so often he does not. We cry out from places of distress and despair and when we do we join the psalmist's... and we join Jesus too, we join the one whose choice was to join us there -- who knew to the most painful extent the experience of being abandoned by God.

We hear the psalmist pray from a place of deep sorrow, feeling the sting of betrayal from those who he loved, grieving the loss of relationship. Despised by his neighbors, shunned by his own, a broken vessel whose life is spent with unconsoled sighing... he mourns the loss of what was, the loss of what might have been, the psalmist mourns from a place of isolation and despair. Sometimes we do too... sometimes we take our wheelchairs down the streets of Saugatuck and people stare and well-meaning moms and dads pull their children back, away from us... sometimes those who see me in the street flee from me.... and sometimes they say hey aren't you Jill Smits husband? Sometimes we are blue... truly blue -- truly poor in spirit -- disenchanted, discouraged, overwhelmed -- and in those moments don't we sometimes have the wish that the whole world were blue right with us...

As a young man I remember holy week experiences... we celebrated Maundy Thursday Last Supper and for several years, when that evening came I can remember feeling like I wanted the weather to be miserable, I wanted it to rain, I even wanted it to storm, I had the desire for God to set the stage for grieving, for lamentation, for sadness so that as I tried to draw close to Jesus I had some help... to enter in to this much-needed connection with Christ... I wanted the world to become as troubled and abandoned, as God forsaken as I was... as Jesus was too...my God my God why have you forsaken me?

Sometimes we need a teacher, a guide... we need someone with us in those God forsaken places.

If you are uncomfortable with me saying that Jesus was forsaken by God on the cross?... you're in good company... we could talk about it in many different ways, as people have for centuries. We could talk about it as we do about the weather... the sun was out today, the sun was not out, I hope the sun comes out, the sun went away... have you ever spent the day under cloud cover -- a day from beginning to end where the sky was gray... on such days what you truly experience is the absence of the sun... where it really is dark, cold... hard to see... things are half lit, half dead ... that is what you experience... Now, some people, whether talking theology or meteorology, some people would like to get technical with us and would like to say "the sun hasn't gone anywhere, you just aren't seeing it... for different reasons they don't want to hear about your melancholy... your gloomy attitude... the sun is out, the sun is there -- you just can't feel it... to which any one of us, to my way of thinking, has every right to ask -- if I can't see it or know it or feel it's presence, does it really matter -- technically -- if it's their... you can imagine it's presence but you experience its absence -- and that experience is real and valid.

And people do this with God... especially Christian people. And I don't think they have to -- especially given the facts of our Good Friday history... the things that happened and became part of our salvation story...

The story in which God does his saving work arises among a people whose primary experience of God is his absence. And although that experience doesn't fit into what we would call a normal or understandable place in God's salvation plan, the more we look at the life of God's people and the deeper we search into the experience of Jesus, the more we discover that it is part of the plan and it is normal.

The teachers of prayer, the psalmist's and Jesus' guidance offer us this: Belief in God does not exempt us from feelings of abandonment by God. Praising God does not inoculate us from doubts about God...
Meditating on God's words won't always rescue us from the darkest and driest places of our lives... (Peterson)

As we experience God's silences in the stories of our lives, We need to name and to measure the significance of God's silences in the story of salvation. The silence of God while Christ hung on the cross. When we do, our experiences are made valid, we see that they are not exceptional or preventable or a judgment on our feelings or the way we are living our lives.

Sometimes we need a teacher, a guide, a real person... we need someone to help us cry and to be with us in those God forsaken places. Jesus is that person and in that connection lies the goodness of Good Friday... it's where our desire to be like Jesus... is eclipsed on the cross by his desire to be like us -- even to be forsaken -- truly and only... for our sake.