Psalm 22; Psalm 13 “I Call to You”

It was 1997. A new album had come out from a musician I really liked and I was looking forward to listening to it. I had a couple albums that Jeff Johnson had done before, but at this point his music was somewhat new to me. The CD had a Latin title, Navigatio, and was what is sometimes referred to as a concept album. It used the music to tell the story of the voyage of an Irish saint named Brendan, who I really knew nothing about. This album is where I really fell in love with Jeff Johnson’s music, though most of the songs were unusual enough that I didn’t necessarily like them on the first listen. But there was one that jumped out right away to me. I had to listen to it again right after it finished and found myself singing along with it before I’d even heard it all the way through.

Here I am, fifteen years later, Jeff Johnson is still my favorite musical artist. My collection of music by him has grown exponentially. I’ve even been able to meet him twice at worship services that he’s led and have an ongoing email relationship with him. My two year old son is named after the saint that that album was about. And I find myself regularly going back to that song I heard 15 years ago when I feel that I’m in the midst of lament, needing to call out to God from a place of need, from a place of hopelessness, that he would grant me faith and hope. We even sang the song as a part of our worship service this morning, I Call to You.

Let us open in prayer

I. Lament, Hesed, Presence

We finished up our study this morning of the Michael Card book on lament entitled A Sacred Sorrow. We learned a couple things during it, perhaps most importantly that we need to move on to something a bit more joyful. But that aside, we’ve learned about the Jewish concept of hesed. Or at least we’ve learned how to say it. It is a very difficult word to translate because it is so packed with meaning. In the Bible it is usually translated as “lovingkindness”, but it’s meaning is actually quite a bit more than that. It refers to a love for enemies. It refers to the great Presence of God. God’s hesed is more than just a love for us, it is an undeserved love that is deeper than we can possibly imagine. It is also God’s response to our pain and God’s response to our suffering. When we come before God in lament, his response it to share his hesed with us.

The other main theme that we talked about through the study was the fact that lament throughout the Bible is all a question about the Presence of God. Lament happens when someone feels that God is not present, that God is absent from them and their pain. Lament happens when someone feels that they cannot connect with God at all, for whatever reason; and the reasons can be diverse. Perhaps you feel separated from God because your pain is so great; perhaps you feel separated from God because events in life haven’t gone as you have hoped or planned and you wonder how God could be in control; perhaps it is because of a sin or sins in your life that seem insurmountable, that seem to put you beyond God’s reach; perhaps you are just going through one of those wilderness times in your life where God seems foreign and distant.

In evangelical circles we are often told that this is not where we should be as Christians. When we are having those dry spells we think that there’s something wrong with us, that we aren’t the Christians we are supposed to be. So we fake it. We pretend that we’re fine. We pretend that everything is great. And we find ourselves moving farther and farther away from God. I hope by now you know that this isn’t the way to respond to those dry spells. I hope by now you see that throughout scripture God’s people found themselves in the wilderness again and again, it was a part of the journey they were on, a part of the life they lived, and God would use those times where they felt distant from God to grow their faith.

I mean, isn’t that the very definition of faith? Faith is believing what we cannot see. If we always felt close to God, there would be no need for faith at all. And when we go to the Bible we see that it is full of people calling out to God. And they find themselves in times of lament, pouring out their souls to a God whose Presence they cannot see.

II. Lamenting the Normal Things

But I don’t want to spiritualize this all too much. The fact is that most of our time of lament, most of our time of pain, most of our time of sorrow has nothing really to do with God, at least not at first glance. Rather, we find ourselves dealing with the normal problems of life: loneliness, loss, depression. Oh, it can lead to a question of God’s Presence, of how a loving God can let difficult times come upon those who he loves, but that isn’t where the real pain is coming from. The pain comes from friends who have excluded you or loved ones who have left you or circumstances that have harmed you. And sometimes, as you go through these difficult times, the question of God is the farthest thing from your mind.

But here’s the thing, though God and his Presence may be the farthest thing from your mind, you are very much on his mind. He’s there, ready to help you, ready to meet you, ready to show you that he is present even in the junk you’re dealing with. All you have to do is take that junk you’re dealing with and turn it towards him.

III. Lament leads to the Cross

In Psalm 22 we get a psalm of lament where David, probably before he was king, probably as he was running for his life pursued by armies led by King Saul, calls out to a God who seems to have abandoned him… but we also get more than that.

We also get a psalm that is a prophecy of what it is that Jesus is going to go through on the cross. It is actually almost impossible to read this psalm and not see Jesus in it, and not see the cross in it. It begins with the very words that Jesus spoke as he hung there, dying for our sins. Well, that makes sense, he was quoting the psalm in his head. But it does more than that. It describes him. It tells of his hands and feet being pierced. It talks of his clothes being gambled for. It talks of the mocking that Jesus experienced, a mocking that came from people that thought, perhaps, that Jesus thought too much of himself and his relationship with the Father. “He trusts in the Lord, let the Lord rescue him.” The very sentiment that Jesus heard as he hung on the cross.

This psalm is so much about Jesus on the cross that in Hebrews 2:12 it is quoted as coming from Jesus’ mouth. And it’s not a part of the psalm that has to do with suffering that is quoted. Rather, it is a part of it that talks about praising God in the assembly. The author of Hebrews, though, doesn’t see these as words from David, but rather words from Jesus himself. The fact that Psalm 22 is about Jesus stands out and is incredibly powerful and amazing, especially since it was written about 1000 years before Jesus came into this world. But I don’t want that to take away from the fact that it is also about David and his own pain and difficulty.

You see, when we see that it is about both we are able to see that God does meet us in those times of loneliness, of depression, of loss. Though we might not feel like it, he is there. He meets us there at the cross. He meets us there with his own suffering. David’s lament was about what he was going through and it pointed to the cross. Our lament can take us to the cross as well. And then we discover that the lament is no longer a lament. It is something more, something wonderful. You see, Psalm 22 changes, it changes from a lament to a celebration, a declaration of praise. A declaration of faith. And it ends in such a strong place. At the end, I will praise God, I will praise God in front of everyone and declare that he has rescued me. I will join with people from around the world, rich & poor, strong & weak, and celebrate the salvation of the Lord. I will watch as all of the people of the earth declare that God has done it. God has triumphed! My pain, my sorrow, my despair will melt away because my God is greater than these.

This is the hope that we look to. This is the good news that we find in the Bible. Life can be difficult. It can be painful. Sometimes it is in the pain where we discover the power of faith. But when we get to those painful times, we can lift them before God. We can complain to God. We can find ourselves lamenting our inability to find God, our lack of faith, our weakness. But our shortcomings are not the end of the story.

Jeff Johnson, who wrote “I Call to You” talks about the song, and about Saint Brendan who he wrote the album about. He has this to say, “While drifting along the world’s edge, the Brendan that I met wrestles with many of the same things with which I struggle. His eyes seek and long for something good, beautiful and true yet seldom does he get more than a glimpse of these. His mind dreams and hopes but his heart more often fears and despairs. He often finds himself alone – not because he does not have friends – but because he pursues the path of faith which ultimately one must follow on their own. He wonders if he has enough faith to continue down the path which he follows… He does not. Yet, always he prays and the King of Love’s good grace sustains him.” May God’s grace, that we find at the cross, sustain us as well. Amen.

Mark 1:1-11 "Great Joy"

When I lived in Chicago, I was always struck by the crazy street preachers when I went downtown. Here were guys with electric bullhorns, often standing on a bucket, shouting at people as they walked by. I wondered if their message was ever heard. I wondered if there was any point to the screaming they were doing. Every now and then someone would stop to talk with them, but it wouldn’t be a conversation, it would end up being an argument. And I’ve discovered that arguing people away from their lack of faith, arguing people out of their sin, usually doesn’t work.
But then I think of the Old Testament prophets and I think of John the Baptist. Here were guys who would put on displays. The prophets would stand on a street corner declaring God’s truth for anyone who might listen. The prophets would act out declarations of God in unique and powerful ways. They would argue with the kings and sometimes have their lives threatened because of it. They were the crazy preacher standing on his bucket on the street corner with his bullhorn. But not John the Baptist.

Let us open in prayer
I. To Repent
John told those around him to “repent and be baptized.” We like to focus on the baptism that he performed, after all, we call him John the Baptist. But John makes it pretty clear that the baptism he did was just a baptism of water. It wasn’t sacramental. It was a ritual cleansing that was connected to something that, for John, was even more important: repenting.
What does it mean to repent? When we try to figure it out, when we try to answer that question for ourselves, I discover that I find myself coming up short. Perhaps we think that repenting means that we feel sorry for our sins. Perhaps it means to us that we confess our sins. However we put it, we know it has to do with acknowledging the things we do wrong and trying to move away from those things.
The actual word in Greek that we translate as “repent” actually means to “turn around”. And it’s a pretty dramatic word. It means to be heading in one direction, turn 180 degrees and start moving the opposite direction.
Did you know that in the Old Testament, God would repent at times? This doesn’t mean that God had committed a sin and needed to repent for it. No, it meant that God had been heading in one direction and changed his mind and headed in the opposite direction. This happened when Israel was wandering in the wilderness for forty years and they sinned against God. God declared to Moses that he would smite them, wipe them out, and start fresh with Moses and his descendants. Moses talked God out of this, and we are told that God repented of his plans to destroy Israel. God’s plans weren’t evil, they weren’t sin, they came from a place of justice and righteousness. But then he changed his mind, and he headed in a different direction.
I fear that we sometimes make repenting too easy. We make it about feeling bad about our sin. We make it about confession or saying sorry. But repentance is more than that. It is truly something that we are not capable of on our own, it comes from the strength the Holy Spirit gives us. When we repent of our sins, we move beyond them, we turn in the opposite direction and head the opposite way.

II. “You bring me great joy”
When Jesus is baptized, we see an amazing thing happen. The Spirit descends on him like a dove and a voice comes out of heaven saying, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” It is interesting that in both Mark and Luke the voice is talking to Jesus, but in Matthew the voice is talking about Jesus. “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” In Matthew we hear what the crowds around Jesus heard, a voice proclaiming for them the wonder of Jesus. But here in Mark and in Luke we instead hear God’s words to Jesus, words of love. It even becomes more real when we read it from another translation, the New Living Translation: And a voice from heaven said, “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy.” I love what this translation does here because it takes something that comes across as a bit formal and out of the head and brings it down to the heart. “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy.” You’ve got to imagine that as Jesus faced difficult times, as he was persecuted and reviled by the religious leaders throughout his ministry, as he headed for the cross, these words gave him strength, they gave him hope.
On Wednesday night we were looking at this passage together in our Bible study and someone asked a powerful and insightful question. They asked whether this was what God thought or said when one of us were baptized, they asked if this was God’s reaction to our coming to him.
At first I wanted to say, “no” because Jesus was special. Jesus is the Son of God and stands out as unique and different because of this. Jesus has a special relationship with the Father that is beyond anything we can possibly hope for. But then, as I looked at Jesus’ teachings, as I looked at everything we see in the Bible about God’s great love for his children, I realized that the answer to this question was “yes”.
In the gospel of John (17), at the end of the Last Supper before Jesus heads off to Gethsemane to have his private time of prayer, Jesus prays with his disciples and for his disciples. And as he prays he talks about his special relationship with God. “All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.” But then he shows that he wants to share that special relationship he has with the Father with the disciples and all who come after them: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me… Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”
Jesus wants us to share the relationship he has with the Father. Though he is special, though he is unique, he opens his arms and invites us in. And therefore, when we repent, when we turn away from ourselves and towards God, when we step out of the sins that overcome us and enter into right relationship with him; we too can hear God’s voice speak to us and say, “You too are my dearly loved child, and you bring me great joy.”

Matthew 2:1-12 “We Follow a Star”

Last year Lisa picked up an advent book in the after Christmas sale. It told the story of a little bear that was following a star on a journey to Bethlehem. Each day there would be another adventure the bear had, another person or creature the bear met, another lesson the bear learned. The people and creatures the bear met were often following the star at their own pace and the little bear would sometimes journey with them for a way before their paths separated. And throughout the journey the bear got closer and closer to Bethlehem so that on Christmas Eve he finally got to his destination, not the star itself, but the thing it was pointing towards, Baby Jesus, lying in a manger.

It was fun reading the book with the kids this year, though sometimes we missed a night or two, we would make up for it another night by reading a couple stories instead of just one. But it was exciting to join the little bear and his friends on this journey as they sought Jesus together, and it is even more exciting to realize that we all are just like that little bear, seeking Jesus ourselves. Perhaps we don’t know that it is Jesus we seek, but he is the one the star points to, the fulfillment of all of our questions and the solution to all of our problems.

Let us open in prayer

I. Magi Journeying

When we look at the story of the Magi, we see the story of each of us as well. They were strange easterners who traveled long distances, sometimes we think of them as kings, other times we see them as exotic foreigners. So often we see them as someone different, someone other, someone set apart. When we look at the Christmas story we like to associate ourselves with the shepherds or even Mary and Joseph. The Magi are there to make the story a bit more exotic. And yet, in some ways, I think we’re more like them than anyone else in the story.

You see, the Magi were looking for something. They were on a journey to find something more than themselves. They were traveling foreign lands looking for a king.

Well, what does that have to do with me, Pastor? You may not have traveled long distances, you may not be in a foreign land, but we all have that longing to search for something more in us. We are all following stars and hoping they will lead us to something great. We just aren’t always sure what it is they are going to lead us to.

The Magi were magicians, they were court advisors, they were seers. They were the prophets and advisors of their day, they were the cabinet members, the scholars. In the Old Testament we see a few of God’s people who went on to be Magi in their own right, The most obvious of these examples are Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon. They stood out from the other Magi around them because they didn’t rely on tricks or the stars or smooth talking to sus out the truth, rather they went to God.

But the Magi in our story weren’t necessarily God fearers. Rather, they were studiers of the sky and they saw a great omen in the sky. A star appeared in the east that told them that a great king had been born. And like the man who finds a treasure in a field and sells everything so that he can buy that field and have that treasure, they head out on a great journey to meet this king and welcome him to the world.

Basically, they saw something great in the sky and they felt that they needed to be a part of it. So they headed out on a great journey that took them to Jerusalem. Now it’s interesting to note that the star itself didn’t get them to Jesus, to Bethlehem. They showed up in Jerusalem and went to the palace to see where the king might be. In Jerusalem they were introduced to scripture which told them that the king would be born in Bethlehem. Then they traveled there, and only then saw the star again which confirmed for them the truth. For the Magi, the star wasn’t enough. It got them started on the journey, but it didn’t get them to the destination. I’m convinced that this is an important distinction to make because we are all on journeys, we are all following stars, and we cannot expect that the stars will always lead us to the right answer right away. Sometimes we need to go as far as we can with the stars, but then turn to scripture, then turn to prayer, then turn to God and go the rest of the way.

II. Our Journey

What are the things that we follow? What are the journeys that we begin as we search for something more? What are the stars that we find ourselves chasing after? If we’re really honest with ourselves, we will admit that we do follow stars, and not all of them are healthy. We look for things to give us fulfillment. We look for something to give us meaning. And we put our energy into certain things because we think they’re going to take us someplace special. I’ve talked before about my sister’s wanderlust. She’s constantly on the move, looking for another adventure to go on, another place to travel to. There’s something that she gets from traveling, there’s meaning she finds in going places. But we all have different things that give us that same kind of meaning, that same kind of purpose. Or perhaps it is something that we’re chasing that we hope will give us that meaning, that purpose. I have a pastor friend who’s writing a book. He is somewhat unhappy with what’s going on at his church and the situation he’s in in ministry, but he’s excited about this book he’s writing and is throwing all his energy into it. For my dad, it was always heading down to the garage to work on his classic car. For my mom, it has been collecting Elmos. I believe the whole dating scene is a bit of a star, trying to find the perfect person to complete you and make you happy. For others it is keeping up appearances, making sure that they look good to the people around them. I know others who have addictions, things that are very unhealthy and that rule over them. I know for me, since the kids have been born, I find myself again and again trying to find good and fun things for them, trying to be an awesome dad.

We are all following stars, trying to find purpose, trying to find meaning. Some of the stars lead us in the right direction, others pull us into dangerous places. But when our stars come in contact with God, they will bring us to a place where we can find true fulfillment, true purpose, true peace. You see, the fact that we are following stars in normal. It is not bad in and of itself. Some of the stars we may chase may be bad for us or those around us, and when we get to the point where we obsess about anything too much, it can become dangerous. But following stars isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. These Magi were following the star of astrology that led them to seek after a great king. And they ended up in front of the one true king, Jesus.

You see, I believe that if we are truly seeking after truth, if we are truly seeking after knowledge, if we are truly seeking after what is right, God will find a way to make sure we find it. The star didn’t lead the Magi to Jesus, though that’s the way we like to hear the story. The star got them so far, got them in the general area, and then they turned to the Word of God and found their way the rest of the way there. This is a hopeful message for us, it is a hopeful message for those we know who are lost, who don’t know Jesus. Now I need to be clear, I’m not suggesting that all roads lead to heaven. Far from it. But I am saying that God rewards true seeking after the truth. God put the Magi on the right path and brought them in contact with the true word so they could find Jesus. When we meet someone journeying on the path for truth, when we find someone following a star hoping to find God at the other end, perhaps we can help put them on the right path as well. This doesn’t happen necessarily by arguing with them or trying to explain to them every way they are wrong. Rather, we can encourage their curiosity about truth. We can celebrate their open minds to the wonders of the universe. And we can share with them where the star has led us. We were led to a town on the other side of the world, a little town called Bethlehem where we found a young boy named Jesus. He would grow up to be a great teacher, an amazing healer, a man of wisdom and truth, a man who would sacrifice himself for the world so that all who believe in him might know eternal life and the heavenly peace that passes all human understanding.

The stars we follow may be distractions, they may be false hopes, they may be things that are leading us in circles. But eventually they will intersect with God in some way. The question is how we’re going to respond when they do. The true king is born, and he wants to be born in us as well. Let’s be sure that we don’t miss him and that we find ourselves seeking him ourselves. Amen.