"Faith Through the Eyes of Psalm 130:
Faith as Redemptive Hope"
Place your confidence in God
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Text: Romans 10:1-13
One of the great misunderstandings of our time is the belief that the only people who are broken and alienated - who feel separated from God and the world and are not at peace with themselves - are those who are visibly broken. Only those who walk the streets, are homeless or mentally ill with no place to call their own. Only those who are so poor that they beg; only those so completely lost because of drugs or alcohol that they lie on street corners. While the visibly broken need our love, help and justice, most people who are really broken and really need healing are broken in ways that are not as readily seen. They are broken in soul, heart and mind.
Sometimes the most broken people are those who outwardly seem the most affluent and together. They appear to need healing the least, but the contrary is true. I must admit I have been watching the saga of Britney Spears' life unfold of the over the last few weeks. I do have better things to do than read the tabloids, but this woman has become the subject of jokes on late night shows, is on the covers of all the magazines in the grocery stores and has become an object of derision. It appears to me that what we have here is a very broken young woman; a very deeply troubled person.
Even looking at Canadian celebrities, we see examples of brokenness. Kiefer Sutherland, who is probably the highest paid of all our television personalities and clearly one of the most talented, recently made the news after being charged with impaired driving. Despite his apparent successes, he must be deeply troubled in his soul and wrestling with problems in his life.
Those who appear on the outside to have it all together are not always at peace on the inside. Sometimes they are the most troubled of all. It is not only people who are broken; sometimes nations and populations are broken. Our eyes have turned recently to what has been transpiring in Myanmar (Burma), and we are horrified by what we have seen. Nations that have such problems with tyranny are often not on the world's radar screen. Armies aren't sent to their rescue because there is a lack national interest. Tyranny often stays hidden until it emerges eventually like it has in Burma. It is a nation divided, sick and broken.
I was talking to a friend of mine who teaches at the University of Toronto about various countries in Africa and that continent's brokenness. When I lived in South Africa, helping my father in serve a church, a man came to the door looking for work. People came from all over, particularly during the apartheid era in the 1970s, looking for work wherever they could find it. They sometimes migrated thousands of kilometres into the big cities. One man came and pleaded with us to give him a job. No one would give him work, not because of the colour of his skin - people were hired and worked regardless of the colour of their skin. The problem was where he came from.
He was known as a Vhavenda. The Venda is the northern part of South Africa, south of the Limpopo River, just on the border with Zimbabwe. It is magnificently beautiful. But the problem is, as other nations migrated through the lakes down into the southern part, very often they oppressed the Venda people and overran them militarily. This worker who had come to find a job couldn't even find help from the people of the same skin colour because he was a Venda. He pleaded with us to give him a job. I couldn't help but imagine the brokenness of having to carry the stigma of being from a people who were proud, glorious and wonderful, but oppressed.
I had the same feeling when I walked through Yad Vvashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and saw all the names lining the walkways. Sometimes brokenness is out in the open. Sometimes the brokenness of the world is hidden until a moment when it suddenly emerges for all to see.
The writer of Psalm 130 was a broken person. He began this psalm with, “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord hear my voice and let be attentive to my prayers.” He felt that brokenness; that sense that God was distant; that sense of alienation from others, personal sinfulness and a lack of worthiness. But by the end of the psalm, he is in a different mood altogether. He says, “O, Israel place your hope in the Lord.” Before, he told the nation, “If God marks our iniquities we will be destroyed.” But now he says, “No, place your faith and trust in God.”
What happened between the beginning of this psalm when he cried out of the depths and this great declaration of faith at the end? It seems to me that our help in dealing with the world's brokenness lies in the answer to that question. The first thing the psalmist did was gain a great sense of confidence. When you start to heal after an injury, the first time you use that limb again you tend to be just a little bit concerned as to whether or not it will work. I sometimes go to a physiotherapist for help with my legs and hips. One day my physiotherapist was pushing my knees up to my chest with great force. The pain was excruciating, and I was crying out, “Mommy, mommy, mommy.” It was really awful and I asked, “What happens to athletes when they have to come back from an injury?”
She said, “Well, in my experience as a sports physiotherapist, some come back and are just like they were; others come back and are never quite the same.”
I said, “What's the main difference?”
She said, “Faith.”
“You mean in God?” I asked.
She said, “No.”
I said, “You mean in themselves?”
She said, “No.”
“Well, in who then?” I asked.
She said, “In me.”
I said, “In you? No disrespect . . .” (as she's piling the pressure on my hip.)
“Yes,” she said, “because I tell them that they are now okay, that they can now exercise and run. But if they don't believe me, they will never recover thoroughly.”
So it is with our relationship with God. After sin, after we've fallen short, after things have not worked out, after illness, after that sense of brokenness in our hearts, minds and souls, we sometimes lack confidence - not in ourselves, but in God. The psalmist wanted Israel to renew its confidence. “O, Israel, hope in the Lord your God.”
There is a wonderful legend about a person who walks through the desert, dying of thirst. He sees what he thinks is a mirage, but it's real. There is a shed, so he goes up to it and stands in its shadow to gain respite from the sun. Some 15 metres away, he sees a water pump. He goes over to it, thinking, “Oh, there's water! This is tremendous!” He cranks the pump, but nothing happens. It's dry. In desperation he crawls back to the shed and lies in its shade trying to find relief from the heat. He turns to his left and finds a jug with a stopper in it and a little tag. He brushes the sand from the tag and reads it: “In this jug there is enough water to prime the pump. Pour it into the pump and it will work. Remember to refill the jug when you are done.”
Suddenly the man has a crisis, doesn't he? What does he do? Does he drink the water in the jug and quench his immediate thirst, or pour the water into the pump and prime it? If he pours it into the pump and it doesn't work he will surely die. If he drinks it he will live, but not for very long. What is he to do? He waits for half an hour, prays, thinks and decides to trust what is written. He pours the water into the pump and it begins to prime. He pumps and he pumps and he pumps, and all it does is squeal - nothing happens. Dryness, warm air, and nothing else come out. Absolutely nothing. He pumps and pumps and is desperate, thinking he made the wrong decision. Rust falls off. Then all of a sudden, when he's getting near the end, he sees one little drop of water. He smiles and begins to pump with fury until more water comes, and more, and more until the jug is overflowing. He fills the jug and drinks, fills another jug and drinks again, then refills it for the next person. He places the jug back by the shed, and with a stone he etches on it: “This is true. If you're willing to give it away, you will get it back.”
Faith is having the confidence to trust in God that he will give it back. That is what God promises. “O, Israel, hope in the Lord,” is what the psalmist says. Regain your confidence - not in yourself, for you are dry and bound, but in God and his word.
There is one last element to this psalm that describes what we need in order to renew not only our confidence, but also our confession. By confession I don't mean saying sorry, as in the confession of sins. I mean publicly declaring your faith. At the end of this magnificent psalm, we have a declaration of faith, a statement. The psalmist wants the whole world to know there is an abundance of salvation in God. There is hope in this God. This God is there for you - what a statement of faith.
In the passage from the Book of Romans, there is this incredible moment when the Apostle Paul says the same thing. He looks at the history of Israel and says Israel - the fulfilment of all that was hoped for - is now realized in Jesus Christ. If you will confess with your tongue that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, if you believe that God keeps his covenant, then whether you are a Jew, Greek or Gentile makes no difference. Salvation is yours in all its abundance. It is not just a matter of believing, it's also a matter of having the courage and faith to say you believe. This is one of the great challenges of the church today: To not only experience healing from brokenness, the joy that comes from forgiveness, and to celebrate the love and hope of a gracious God, but also to tell others about it.
We gave that man from Venda a job, and for two years he was one of the greatest gifts God gave that church and us. You see, the Venda are a proud people and they have some beautiful towns like Makhado near the former Louis Trichardt. It's a wonderful place and a beautiful spot. Even now with the new regime and all the changes in a post-apartheid world, the Venda are still discriminated against in many ways. But it is one of the most beautiful, unspoiled parts of God's earth, and people are discovering it and going up just south of the Limpopo to visit it.
They not only have a great land; they also have a great faith. The Venda people are deeply, deeply committed to Christ. They have great and glorious traditions; they have wonderful myths and legends. Get them to tell you the story of Lake Fundudzi and you will have your mind blown away. But it is their faith and their loving sharing that is so incredibly infectious. Even though they have gone through oppression and been downtrodden, their faith in God and Christ is still strong.
The psalmist's words resonate yet again in this broken world:
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice and let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my prayers. If you should mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness in thee, that thou might be revered. My soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope like those who wait for the morning. My hope is in the Lord, who has abundant salvation.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.