"Having a Heart for God:The Prayer of a Stranger"
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind"
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Text: Psalm 119:17-24
I'll never fully understand the psychology behind this, but I'm sure that many of you, like me, from time to time hear a song and for days it just stays in your head. You can be doing the laundry or driving along or just sitting doing nothing and the tune is in your head. For some reason, it just repeats over and over again and you can't shake it. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago when I heard An Englishman in New York by Sting. It kept repeating over and over in my mind, and of course I know the words so well:
If “manners maketh man,” as someone said,
then he's the hero of the day.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile;
be yourself no matter what they say.I'm an alien; I'm a legal alien.
I'm an Englishman in New York.
I'm an alien; I'm a legal alien.
I'm an Englishman in New York.
I wondered what prompted Sting to write those words. He must have been in New York. He must have been feeling like an alien in that city. His toast is done on one side, he only drinks tea, he carries an umbrella and he likes people to have manners (why go to New York if that's the case). It is a great song, but sometimes you can feel like an alien, or a stranger, even in your own country.
Just this last week I met a woman who had just been to the Churches-on-the-Hill food bank, which is located in this church. As she walked through the sanctuary, she saw me standing in the distance with my clerical shirt on, preparing for a funeral, and saw the photograph of the person we were burying. She started to tell me a little about herself and thanked me for having a food bank at the church. She explained that she had been in the country for just a little while, but even though she had found a job and was working it wasn't enough for her to meet her expenses. It seemed that she wanted me to prompt her at every stage along the way, and I did because I was fascinated by her life.
She was the vice-principal of a school in her country of origin. Her English was absolutely articulate; she was eloquent to the highest degree and expressed to me how she sometimes feels like a stranger. She said she has been welcomed to this country and treated with grace, but added, “Look at your church and how helpful it is, but still it's hard for me at times not to feel like a stranger.” I understood what she meant. If you are surrounded by people who are different from you, it can make you feel like an alien or stranger.
I thought back to a number of years ago when I lived in Ottawa and used to go to the Senators games. One day the Montreal Canadiens were coming to play and ever since I was a boy in New Brunswick I liked the Montreal Canadiens, so I thought I would sit with a number of Montreal Canadiens fans. Once I'd taken my seat, I realized that I was in the heart of Ottawa Senators territory and every time the Canadiens scored a goal and I jumped up and down cheering for the Habs, all the people sitting around me looked at me like I should be removed from the building. Talk about feeling like an alien in your own land! Montreal won the game I might add, and I walked sheepishly and quietly to the parking lot on my own.
You can be among people you know and still feel like an alien. Sometimes you can feel like an alien when your life is on the line. I was talking recently with someone who was a journalist in Burma. Although there is not much coverage of it anymore and the country is on the brink of possible elections, the situation is very tenuous. The journalist said that the people who are working for democracy in Burma really feel at times like they are aliens, strangers in their own country, such is the force of political pressure to get them to conform. The same experiences occur in countries like Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone and many others. You can be in your own country, but if you are standing for something you believe is right and just it is so easy to feel like an alien. You have to understand that to know what the psalmist in today's passage was thinking. Psalm 119, which is the longest psalm in the whole of the Psalter, talks about being a stranger on this earth. Similarly, the writer of Deuteronomy, who came before him, wrote in Deuteronomy 10:19:
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
This sense that the people of Israel at that time were aliens, that they were strangers, was a very strong and passionate experience. The psalmist explains how he feels like a stranger on the earth, and then makes an incredible statement: “My soul craves after your law and your commandments.”
In the midst of feeling like a stranger, and Psalm 119 was probably written after the Exile, he knows that the one, solid thing in his life is the law. In a brilliantly crafted acrostic, the psalmist takes the first letter for each Hebrew word for the law and commandments and begins a section with that letter. He goes through them all: Torah, Dabar, Mishpatim, Edot, Miswot, Huqqim, Piqqudim, Imrah. In all of these, he mentions the law at the beginning of each stanza and glorifies it to show that for people who feel that they are strangers on this earth, who feel that they are aliens, the law is their rock.
I want to look at what it means to feel like you are an alien - to be alienated, to feel somehow that you don't quite belong in this world - and how you can find a solid foundation, because I think many people of faith feel like that. They feel like aliens in the world. Ever since the very beginning of time, since the beginning of the faith, those who hold to their belief in God and have an absolute affinity and devotion to the Almighty sometimes feel that they are aliens. They are living in a sinful world; in a world of violence, injustice, inhumanity, temptations and uncertainties. They don't quite feel at peace; they don't quite feel that they fit in completely. We may try to do so, but at times we feel we simply can't.
Jesus understood that. He wanted people to take care of those who felt like strangers, aliens, outcasts. The Apostle Paul felt this sense of alienation very strongly. He even said, “The good that I will, I just don't do.” (Romans 7:19) Paul knew he wanted to do good, but he couldn't always do it. He put it this way in the most telling of phrases: “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)
I've been reading a great deal about Søren Kierkegaard the last few weeks and he was, as many of you know, a great Danish philosopher. He was also a man of immense faith; in fact some scholars have said that he is one of Christianity's greatest gifts. Kierkegaard was a man of humble appearance. He wasn't physically strong and people often made fun of his weakness and the ideas he held. He didn't like the way the church was going, or the way the state was going, and he felt like a stranger - so much so that when he was persecuted he said, “I will never know the security of being like other people.” He understood that sometimes when you stand for the truth, when you stand for God's ordinances and for the faith, you can feel like a stranger. Those words of Paul's, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed,” can have an immense effect on a person's life.
I was deeply touched by a conversation I had with a young man on the campus of Acadia University just 10 days ago. He attended a lecture I gave and wanted to speak to me afterward. He was considering going into the ministry and thinking that, maybe in a year's time, he would enroll in the divinity program. But he's searching. He said that he's been a Christian for a year. It was very obvious that, just like the woman who needed the food bank, he wanted to tell me his story. So I said, “Well, how did you get to the point where you want to do this?”
He explained that, about a year ago, he was sitting in a pub in Halifax with his Blackberry out, texting a friend. He had other friends around him and they were drinking, but they decided they'd better get some drugs if they wanted to have a really good time. So he texted his dealer and asked him to come to the pub with a supply for the evening. After he'd finished texting his dealer, he suddenly got another message, this one from his girlfriend. She only wrote one phrase: ”˜I want you to look on FaceBook because I've sent you a message.'
The FaceBook message said: ”˜Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.'
After he read that, he cancelled his request for the drugs. He went to his girlfriend's apartment in Halifax and asked, ”˜What does all this mean?'
She said, ”˜I can't live in two worlds. I can't live in your world and my world of faith, so you're going to have to decide which world you're going to live in.'
He said it was as if God was speaking to him through her. He said,
I knew I would lose probably the most precious thing in my life: Her. And yet I felt this incredible pull toward the life that I was leading. I knew that I had to make a choice, and I made it. Having made it, I've never looked back. I have never known such joy; I have never known such peace. I followed her advice and the words of the Apostle Paul: I must not ”˜be conformed to this world.'
Sometimes being an alien can actually give you a sense that you are saved from something. It's not just those who are down and out, or who are in desperate situations who feel this way. Sometimes it is the most religious people who feel rejected and need to be embraced by the love of God.
I read the story of G. Campbell Morgan, who was one of the greatest preachers of the last 200 years. When he was about to become a minister he had to give a sermon that was approved by his peers. There were 150 candidates for the ministry but only 45 of them were accepted. He was one of the 105 whose sermons were rejected by the Methodist board, so he sent a telegraph to his father to tell him what had happened. The message contained just one word: “Rejected.”
Twenty-four hours later, his father sent back a message saying: “Rejected on earth, but accepted in heaven. Love, Father.” That inspired Morgan to keep preaching and he became one of the greatest preachers of all time. You see, sometimes rejection - even for the things you believe, even for who you are and what you stand for - can be a springboard for you to something else, something solid.
The psalmist said, “I feel like a stranger, like an alien on this earth.” Then he said, “But I am consumed by a desire for your law.” You see, for Jews the law is a thing of love, not a thing of tyranny. It is a thing of support, strength and guidance and the psalmist knew it. So it is for us. The response to sometimes feeling like an alien is to be obedient and in being obedient, we know and feel the hand of God in our lives. No one felt that more than Jesus. He understood that people - the stranger, the alien, the outcast - needed him and his love to help them with the law. He knew and understood that sometimes it is overwhelming and you just don't know how to be obedient, but he is there for you. In being obedient, you are brought to something better.
I read a story about a boy on a tricycle who kept going around, and around and around the block, time, and time and time again, peddling hard. A police officer saw him doing this and said to him, “Where are you going?”
The boy said, “I'm running away from home.”
The policeman asked, “Well, how do you think you can run away from home by going around the block? Why do you keep doing that?”
The boy answered, “Because my mother told me never to cross the road alone.”
The law is like the mother. Even when we want to stray, even when we're unsure and want to run away from home, even when we're tempted to do the wrong things, still these words are in our mind: “Don't cross the street alone.” They are there for our protection and guidance.
In Entebbe, Uganda in July 1976, there was one of the worst hostage-takings ever known. One hundred and three Jews were rounded up and taken hostage. The story goes that the Israelis entered in an incredible military move. As they came in the room where everyone was standing, they cried out in Hebrew: “Get down on your knees and put your face toward the ground.” All those who were Jews dropped to their knees; the hostage-takers remained standing, because they didn't understand Hebrew, and they were shot. There were two people who understood, but wouldn't listen to the instructions. They took things into their own hands and remained standing - they, too, were shot. One commentator made a fascinating remark about this:
When the word of the Lord comes, it is to save us. For those who were there in a desperate state - aliens, strangers - it was the word of the Lord that brought them to their knees and it saved their lives.
Such is the power of the law. Not only does it save us, protect us and keep us from harm, it also sends us in the right direction. The psalmist knew this; he craved the law, he craved the love of God in that law, because more than anything he wanted God to go with him.
C.S. Lewis puts it the most beautifully in Mere Christianity when he tells a story about walking a dog. As many of you know, I have a puppy who is now five months old named Sir Humphrey. Sir Humphrey likes to run in 1001 directions, as all puppies do. I'm now trying to train him to walk on a leash, but he has one mind and I have another. He wants one direction, which is anywhere where I'm not going, and so it's a tug-of-war. But C.S. Lewis likens our relationship with God to the relationship between a dog and its walker.
If you tie a dog to a static pole, it will keep pulling and pulling until it eventually throttles itself. But if the dog walks with a master or mistress who takes it by a lead, then at least they are moving in one direction. Although the dog might want to go somewhere else, with a pull, with a guide, with some pressure it comes into line and is directed on a straight path to a safe place, for the master wants to go with the dog in a safe way.
So it is with God, Lewis says. God uses a pull, or constraint on our lives - uses the law on our lives - in order that we might walk with him. But notice this: We never do it alone, for it is always the Master who guides us safely home. This is what the psalmist knew and understood: We might at times feel like strangers, but it is the tug of God that leads us home, and that path is the path of life for the stranger. Amen.