Don't Stop Believing
A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, Year A
The Lord be with you.
Let us pray.
Holy and Loving Father, the provider of all strength and hope, this past month has seen names added to our long list of those killed by the powers that think they supercede yours. We hold Da’Quain Johnson of Grand Rapids, Dr. Linda Davis of Savannah, Nurul Amin Shah Alam of Burma, and Lorth Sim of Cambodia1 in our hearts and pray that your light will shine upon them in perpetuity. We pray as well for those killed in Iran, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and across the region of the Middle East, may You hold them in light perpetual. In the Name of your Son our Savior and the Prince of Peace. Amen.
My beloved siblings in Christ,
Turn with me if you will to page two of the bulletin, where I want to begin by looking again at the Psalm. Now as we look again at this I want to ask a few questions, and don’t worry, it’s an open book test, so feel free to shout out the answer.
From where will our help come?
Who made Heaven and Earth?
Who watches over us?
Who is our shade at our right hand?
Who will watch over our comings and our goings?
The Lord. The Lord. The Lord. The Lord. The Lord.
There’s something calming about having 16 lines in 8 verses that just make this idea wash over us. The Lord is where our help comes from, not from anywhere else. The Lord who made the Heaven and the Earth, not some earthly power. The Lord watches over us, and He won’t fall asleep on the job. The Lord is the one who shadows us so closely as to be constantly at our side. The Lord watches over our going out and our coming in from this time forth for evermore. And he’s done this since the beginning.
Only a few short generations after the flood had reset the map of Creation, God has seen how humans have failed again and again, first with Noah, then at the Tower of Babel, and he looked out across His Creation and saw Abram, not quite yet Abraham. He tells Abram “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house,” Abram is to leave everything he has ever known and where he grew up for “the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” And off Abram went with his cousin Lot.
We can imagine as Abram begins this journey that he looks up at the hills, and before taking that first step, saying to himself “The Lord will watch over us as we go both night and day.” We can imagine these thoughts reverberating in the minds of many travelers as they prepared to take a step into an unknown next. Did Jesus think about this Psalm as he went out into the desert to fast?2 Did Paul think about these words as he prepared to travel to Rome?3 Did Martin Luther King ponder over what this meant as he approached Memphis?4 Did Jonathan Daniels think about Psalm 121 before leaving seminary to go south?5 Do we think about it while we are traveling the unknown roads of our own unknown futures?
Did Nicodemus think about Psalm 121, and that the Lord would keep him in all things, before he stepped out of the darkness to talk in secret to Jesus? Nicodemus who held all the cards in his hands because he was a member of the Sanhedrin and had power and influence, and yet, here he is coming in the secrecy of the night to tell Jesus “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” This man who is powerful in the way of the world, is powerless before this man who comes from God. This man who is the Son of God, who tells poor, powerless Nicodemus that he must be born again, he must be born again in his belief, born again in water and Spirit. Jesus sets Nicodemus on a journey, where he’s going to have to decide between the power of the world, and the power of God. We share this journey with Nicodemus, a journey of struggle between God and the World.
It’s a journey many of us struggle with. It’s a journey of surrendering ourselves and to give up control over our own lives, turning it all over to God that we may be a blessing. God knows that I struggle with it. Surrendering, on our knees to God, “Father, I believe that it is you who is all powerful. That it is you who watches over me. Who walks every path with me. You have made the heavens and the earth, and I am but dust blowing in a wind that I know not from whence it comes. It is You who have made the very hills and the very paths that I must walk.” This surrender in the face of all we see in the world, is even more of a struggle, but it is one which we must accept because the alternative is to embrace the World, turning away from the path God has set for us. So we see Christianity wrapped in flags of Empire, working hand in hand to pass laws of oppression; laws which strip trans people of their driver’s licenses in Kansas if the gender marker doesn’t match their birth certificate.6 Laws which allow conversion therapy to be used to this day in states like Indiana and Florida, banning these practices from being banned.7 Laws which have forced Indigenous people into Church sanctioned residential schools, where more than a thousand children died and thousands more were forever scarred.8 This is the power that the World promises to us, and many accept it willingly because the struggle is too hard, and so we enter a space where we, who do not wish to embrace the power of the World, feel caught in a middle space between God and the World. We feel like we have to hide our faith, hiding it away in the night, only coming to Jesus out of the shadows.
But why should we be so afraid? Are we afraid because we thought ourselves to be like God on Earth? Masters of our own domain and all that we could see. We forgot that it is the Lord who made heaven and earth, that it is the Lord who controls the wind that we feel caress our skin, that it is the Lord who walks with us as a shade at our right hand. We have forgotten all of these things. We have forgotten because we have allowed ourselves to walk in the shadow of power for far too long. We have forgotten what the cost is and what the cost was.
During Lent we accompany Jesus to the desert as he fasts and prepares himself for what must be done, and in so doing we fast and we prepare for the things that are to come. We follow along with Jesus as he journeys back to Jerusalem and rides triumphant through the gate, filled with joy, once again forgetting - just for a moment - what is coming next. We forget that the cost of the journey, the cost of participating in the restoration of all of Creation, in the reclamation of our lives, was Jesus Christ on the Cross. The cost of our sin, the cost of our failure to believe, the cost of our failure to do what is right, the cost of our failure to love one another and to love God, is for us to be dead in our sins. But we also forget that the cost has already been paid. That at the end of this journey, Jesus will hang from the Cross, giving us a way out of the darkness and into the light.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
My friends, we live in the after; the time that has come after the Cross. We live in the time when the world might be saved through him. But it will not be saved if we hide away in the dark with Nicodemus, only coming to Jesus when it is safe and convenient, when the risk of losing it all is low. We must come into the light out of the shadows of the night, shining our light brightly into the world. We must remember Abram’s journey and how God told him that he would be a blessing for the whole world, beginning the journey to the restoration of Creation. We must remember the psalmist who looked at the hills and said “From where will my help come to finish this journey? It will come from Him who Created all things, who watches over me and keeps me.”
My friends, we must come into the light. We must cast off the doubts that beset us in our lives, those doubts which would compel us to hide away our faith. We must not concede the notion of what it means to be Christian to those who wrap themselves in Empire. We must not fail to follow alongside Christ. We must not stop working. We must not stop loving. We must not stop believing. We must not stop.
Turn with me again to the Psalm, and let us say it together;
I lift up my eyes to the hills; *
from where is my help to come?
My help comes from the Lord, *
the maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved *
and he who watches over you will not fall asleep.
Behold, he who keeps watch over Israel *
shall neither slumber nor sleep;
The Lord himself watches over you; *
the Lord is your shade at your right hand,
So that the sun shall not strike you by day, *
nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; *
it is he who shall keep you safe.
The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, *
from this time forth for evermore.
Thanks be to God.
Names of those who have died since we did a vigil on February 6, including Da’Quain Johnson who was murdered by GRPD.
Paul was crucified in Rome and martyred. He writes throughout his writings about his journey to Rome while imprisoned.