The sermon was written because our community has had three suicides in the last two weeks, two of whom were high schoolers connected to some of the youth in the congregation. The hymn after the sermon, "There
Is a Longing in Our Hearts," was a new hymn to me and fit very well with the sermon and mood of the service. Finishing with "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," also worked well.
Either of these texts is worthy of its own sermon, or maybe even sermon series. I have loved Psalm 139 for years, but only preached it at funeral. Preaching it felt right today.
“Who will find me?” SAPC, Denton; 1/28/18; Psalm 139; Romans 8: 31-39
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
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.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end —I am still with you.
As some of you may know, our youth, their parents, and those who work in local schools have been dealing with two suicides in this new year.
These deaths cut to core of who we are as they expose our vulnerability;
they reveal the challenges and fears that youth face as they move through a time in life that seems so full of possibilities, yet often lead to despair;
and they remind each of us of the difficult times we too may face.
Today, I do not speak as a medical expert or counselor, although I would quickly commend the importance of proper medication to deal with mental health issues and the critical role a counselor can play in the life of someone who is struggling. If you need a referral, please see Lisa or me, and we can help you find medical help or a counselor.
I speak to you this morning as someone who asks the question, “where is God?” in the midst of our vulnerability and distress.
I ask this question not as one who has pat answers, but as one who has held a grieving mother as I told her news, news she already knew in her heart of hearts when she saw me waiting on her doorstep that night, news that her adult son had committed suicide.
I ask this question as a parent, who knows the vulnerability of watching my daughters experience the trials and pains of growing up; the helplessness of not being able to control their every thought or action.
I ask this question as one who continually discovers that when answers do not satisfy, our only hope is in the God whose story shows that again and again God has been there to comfort and guide through difficult times.
Move 1: My first reflection - being connected to God does not make us immune to difficult times.
a. Consider the biblical characters.
1. Job - whose story of anger and anguish is played out before us in the biblical text; whose pain leads him to challenge God, and then to affirm that he cannot know God’s ways, but that God has been with him.
2. Or King David - whose life of great triumph also reveals sin against God and pain and anguish in his personal life;
3. Even Jesus, who on the cross repeats the words of the 22nd Psalm - “My God, my god, why have you forsaken me?”
4. Consider the powerful words Paul shares with the Romans about how nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus - Paul would not have to write those words if he were not dealing with people who felt separation.
5. The Psalmist - we heard powerful words from the Psalmist who speaks of God knowing us in the womb and finding us wherever we go, even we try to hide from God or feel forsaken by God. Those words bear the mark of someone who has experienced separation from God and has wondered who even cares about him. The Psalmist’s affirmation of God grows out of the psalmists own soul-searching and questioning.
b. I suspect most of us can point to a difficult time in our own life.
1. Battling with a difficult, perhaps even debilitating illness.
2. Going through an unexpected job loss.
3. dealing with grief.
4. Struggling to find friends who build you up, instead of tear you down.
5. Difficult time in a relationship.
6. Or just an overwhelming time in life.
c. And, as we have been reminded in recent weeks, youth can have an incredibly difficult time as they deal with the pressures and challenges they face.
I have a friend who tells the story of a difficult time in his life the summer after high school. the youth among us, Summer before college; friend headed to college; pretty good family life; rough summer with relationships with friends; wrong end of a break-up; still, a young man with opportunities and the world before him; worked until fairly late in the evening some night; would drive home, and near his home was a hill; would accelerate up the hill while driving down the middle of the road; fortunately, he never met a car coming the other way late at night.
d. What all these situations have in common is the temptation to believe that we are alone, separated from God.
1. Unable to see beyond the helplessness and hopelessness we feel.
2. If hell is, as some would describe it, separation from God, then these situations can feel like hell, even for those who have an ongoing relationship with God.
3. We wonder - “who will find me in the darkness of my life?”
Move 2: Hear the good news - if you do not hear anything else this morning, hear this: God desires to be with you. God desires to be with you so much, God is going to find you wherever you are.
a. This truth finds itself at the heart of our Reformed understanding of God.
1. The great theologian Karl Barth tell us this truth about who God is.
2. God does not have to be in relationship with us, but God wants to be with us;
3. God chooses to be for us;
4. God desires to be our partner, our almighty and compassionate Savior….(Barth, The Humanity of God, 50-51)
5. Barth reminds us that “God is the father who searches for his lost son, the king who does the same for his insolvent debtor, the Samaritan who takes pity on the one who fell among robbers… (Barth, 51)
He could also have mentioned the shepherd who looks for the one lost sheep or the friend who will go into Lazarus’ tomb to bring him back to life.
The biblical stories again and again point to the God who will go anywhere to find us and save us.
b. Barth goes on to say, ”God takes to heart the weakness and the perversity, the helplessness and the misery” but instead of despising humanity, God chooses to join with humanity and offer Christ to stand up for us (Barth, 51)
c. who will find me when I find myself in the hell of feeling forsaken and forgotten?
1. God will.
2. Each time we affirm our faith through the words of the Apostles’ Creed, we say the words “descended into hell” to describe what Jesus has done.
3. I have found through the years that the most commonly asked question about the Apostles’ creed is “why do we say Christ descended into hell?”
4. In fact, some church’s take out the “descended into hell” part of the Apostles Creed.
5. Years ago, when I went to KY to interview with the PNC and preach at a neutral pulpit, one of the committee members was going over the service where I would lead worship. He asked me, “do you descend into hell or not?”
6. I had to admit I had not idea what he was talking about, to which he informed me that some churches in that presbytery took the “descended into hell” out of the Apostles’ Creed.
6. I do not want to take it out because I have learned to appreciate, in fact sometimes cling to that phrase.
Tt means that when the Psalmists exclaims, “if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there” it is true to who God is and is lived out by Christ who even descends into hell to join with us.
7. It also means that when we find ourselves alone, forsaken, seemingly forgotten by the world, when find ourselves in a place where suicide might seem like the only answer, when we wonder is there anyone who will find us in this place - our hope is in the God who promises to be with us, the God who sends Jesus Christ to find us wherever we are, even the depths of hell.
Where can we go where God will not come for us? Nowhere.
Move 3: As we describe this desire of God to find us, we also discover our task as the body of Christ.
a. To find those struggling and be the presence of Christ for them.
1. AS the body of Christ, we are called to be the presence of Christ in the life of someone who feels lost.
2. I say that not to provide a tool to beat yourself up if someone around you succumbs to their sense of forsakenness.
3. Ultimately, we cannot make decisions for others or control the decisions they make.
4. I mentioned telling a grieving mother about the suicide of her adult son. Full disclosure - he had been in my office a few days earlier talking with me about his struggles, and somehow I missed or he did not give off the signal that he was suicidal.
5. I had reminded him of how God was with him, but he did not hear it, or did not believe it, or somehow it did not change his course of action a few days later.
b. but we must continue to offer through words and actions the presence of God in people’s lives, particularly when we see people struggling.
1. I suspect we can seldom win a debate with someone who is hurting if we argue with them that God is present or God loves us.
2. But our own stories of how we have discovered God’s love and presence in our times of vulnerability may offer a word of hope.
3. Our being there with someone who is struggling may be the presence of God in their life at their particular moment of desperate need.
4. When I read Barth’s words about God sending Christ to stand up for us, I was reminded of this congregation’s tradition of standing up for those being baptized.
5. Hold that image before you as you look and listen for those who are hurting — how can you stand with that person and be the body of Christ for them.
Conclusion: Paul writes to the Romans and to us a powerful statement about the God who will let nothing separate us from God.
Claim those words for yourself.
Live those words out for someone else.
Amen.
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