Scripture Passage – Psalm 27
Description – The third sermon of the initial 2011 Series ‘Your Hope in Christ.’
The second service featured the skit “Course Correct” as the lead in to the sermon. It appears following the sermon. Go here to see the video of the skit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y84CyiGE4Eo
When we days like this, clear, cold, snowy, and at this specific time of year, I think back to a similar Sunday that was cold, clear, and snowy when I was 8 years of age. We attended this particular Sunday at the church where my father was Scoutmaster of the Boy Scout troop that met there. They were on a Winter Jamboree and so my mother, my grandmother Kane (who had a huge spiritual influence on my life), and I went to this church.
As they sang Amazing Grace at the conclusion of the service, I suddenly realized that I needed God in my life. So I went to the altar to pray. I had grown up in church, heard all the main stories faith, and was being nurtured by wise and Godly people. But on that Sunday morning, January 29, 1966, I knew that I needed God in my life, personally. And so, with the help of my pastor, I came into God’s kingdom, “saved” as we called it down through the years.
I thought about that as I listened to our skit about the Starship Enterprise drifting on its own away from its set course. I too have drifted away from time to time on this journey of faith that started on that clear and cold Sunday morning 45 years ago this coming Saturday. And God has helped me come back again and again and I am grateful and thankful for His grace and mercy.
Last week I ended with a quote from the late Henri Nouwen and today I begin with a quote from him that came in my e-mail just after 12 noon last Sunday. It ties in with my comments about optimism and hope and serves as a bridge to this morning’s message.
“Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things-the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on-will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.”
(Slide one) I want us to keep two sentences in Nouwen’s statement in mind as we consider this morning the importance of ‘rediscovering your hope in Christ.’
Optimism is the expectation that things… will get better.
Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom.
A key member of George W Bush’s staff during his tenure in office as our President was Dr. Condolezza Rice. She was the first African American woman to be Secretary of State in American History.
Late last year her autobiography, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family was published and I learned some very interesting things about her. She grew up in Birmingham, Alabama in the early 1960’s. In fact Birmingham was her birthplace. Her father was a pastor/school teacher and her mother was a school teacher. Condi was an only child and became a high achieving student during those years.
In it she reveals a link about her and her family’s connection to one of the darkest days of our history when on Sunday, September 15, 1963, four girls died when a bomb went off in their church as Sunday School was beginning. One of those girls had been a student in her father church’s kindergarten several years earlier and she had played with some of the other girls as well.
That was a dark day for those girls’ families, their church, and their community, and for our nation. That date was a date that I am sure has never been forgotten by the survivors of that church, those families, and their friends and classmates.
We can relate to such days and dates.
December 7, 1941 – Pearl Harbor was attacked
November 22, 1963 – JFK was assassinated
August 8, 1974 – Richard Nixon resigned as President
January 28, 1986 – The Shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after take off
September 11, 2001 –
But people also have other calendar dates that are forever in their memories of hopeless moments. They are the dates of…
a child’s death
a parent’s death
a spouse’s death
a divorce
a permanent layoff from a job
a miscarriage
a decision to terminate a pregnancy or to take someone you love off of life support (controversial decisions these two are)
Those dates represent life at its worst and it’s darkest. Where was optimism that day? Where was hope that day? Where was God that day?
When our hope is decimated how do we get it back? Can we get it back? Will life ever be “normal” again?
I think Nouwen’s differentiation between optimism and hope is vital to remember as we consider how to rediscover and recover our Christian hope. And the difference is made clear in three words – God and God’s promises.
“Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom.”
Our main text for this morning, already read, is Psalm 27. But I want us to reflect in the next few moments on the following phrases out of that Psalm:
The Lord is my light and my salvation
The Lord protects me from danger—
the thing I seek most—
is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his Temple.
he will conceal me there when troubles come
I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy
Teach me how to live, O Lord.
Lead me along the path of honesty,
Wait patiently for the Lord.
Be brave and courageous.
How do we see our hope return in the midst of trouble, sickness, death, conflict, fear, and pain? The Psalmist gives us some answers. They are answers that come from his experiences that are processed through the filter of faith and hope in his Lord and the reality of who God truly is.
(Slide two) First of all hope returns through the protection of God. The Psalmist says right up front: The Lord is my light and my salvation/The Lord protects me from danger—
We live in a world of danger. Our sinfulness has made it that way. It began with Cain and Abel.
We do not have a rock solid guarantee of total safety. Disease, wounds of various kinds, and even death come to believers and unbelievers. The rains as Jesus said “falls on the just and the unjust.”
So at a certain level, we always are exposed and vulnerable to danger. Jesus made that clear to the twelve during His earthly ministry.
But sometimes, we lose our hope because we leave the protection of God through disobedience. Now nobody likes to hear this but it is true.
If King Saul of Ancient Israel would have obeyed God instead of disobediently acting on impulse before the prophet Samuel arrived to perform his tasks, he might have died as an old King, revered and honored by the people and the Lord. But he did not obey and he paid the price.
David was not perfect either. He, too, grievously disobeyed and paid the price for that disobedience. However, through his repentance he returned to God’s protection.
(Slide three)And the image of light of which the Psalmist speaks gives credence to this truth. Every once in a while, we realize the value of a flashlight. It gives us the ability to navigate through the darkness. The light of which the Psalmist speaks is expressed through Himself, His word, His Spirit, and His church.
And so just as a small beam of light gives us hope that we can navigate through the house when the power is off, through the woods and back to our car, and across the camp ground to the bathroom, the light of God shines on the path that God has for us to take and our hope can be rebuilt.
We also get confused along with way as we get overwhelmed with our schedules, as we listen to competing voices on various issues in our life and try to discern who is right and who is wrong, and as we get tired through the daily routines. Again God comes to us as a light and a lamp to show us the way through and as we choose to follow Him hope begins to return.
Think about this for a moment. “What good is a flashlight in the dark if we fail to use to find our way to safety?”
(Slide four) A second way that hope can be re-established is through corporate worship. The Psalmist writes “the thing I seek most— is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,/delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his Temple./he will conceal me there when troubles come
Throughout the Psalms there is the remembrance of being in the house of God during times of trial and difficulty even death. We read the last phrase of Psalm 23:6 to be reminded of this “and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” Even in Psalm 51, David’s Psalm of repentance when he speaks of the Lord’s acceptance of “worthy sacrifices.”
What I call our series text, 1 Peter 3:15 that says “And if you are asked about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it,” is written to early Christian believers not believer. And it is also written in the context of suffering for one’s belief that can become moments when our hope leaves us.
Our hope can be re-established more quickly as we come together for worship. There is something powerfully helpful and renewing when we come together in worship, pray together, sing together, worship together and know that we are not alone. Worship is not just about music and preaching, important as they are, it is about coming together and praising God together as a reminder that we are not alone in this journey and as a place to have our hope renewed.
But what happens here in worship is part of the third way that hope begins to re-emerge in our hearts.
(Slide five) Hope returns through intentional spiritual growth.
The Psalmist says I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy/Teach me how to live, O Lord./Lead me along the path of honesty.
The psalmist mentions being led along the “path of honesty” on the tail end of a statement about sacrifices with shouts of joy and a desire to be taught how to live by the Lord. There is a connection between the three.
In Matthew 5 Jesus says, “If you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.” Intentional spiritual growth includes the path of honesty with God, others, and ourselves.
Kary Oberbrunner, a pastor in Ohio has said “Next time you’re “mad at the church” ask yourself: What is “his/her” name? The Church is the people of God, not an institution.” Unresolved conflict sucks the life out of hope. Hope grows stronger and more authentically when there is an inner, and outer, honesty that seeks to get right, and stay right, with God, others and self.
This honesty also means that we are deeply honest with and to the Lord and other believers, about where we are at with regard to our lives, our faith, and our hopes. Intentional spiritual growth requires us to honestly face our lack of hope but to also intentionally pursue our relationship with God.
As we do so, we find, like the ancient Hebrews, like the early Christian communities, that hope begins to return because we are honestly seeking the God who is our source of hope.
(Slide six) Finally we need to remember that we can re-discover and re-establish our hope through patient and courageous waiting for God.
The Psalmist says, “Wait patiently for the Lord./Be brave and courageous.”
Glyndi Avera has said, “Hope is the anchor of the soul, it stimulates faith into action & waits patiently & lovingly for the answer.” But when we are feeling hopeless, patience is often the last thing on our minds. We want God to act and we want God to act now.
But sometimes our hope is slowly restored and re-discovered. We have to admit to this fact that for whatever reason sometimes our hope takes some time to recover. It is hard to wait for our hope in Christ to return. There have been moments in my life and moments in yours that it has taken time for our hope to return.
Hope is, at times, fragile. And when it is shattered it is not easily put back together.
And yet one of the things that I have been learning in some new ways is that when my hope is in God and not in others nor in circumstances, but in the Lord, my hope begins to revive and grow strong sooner than later.
So, to paraphrase Glyndi’s statement, where we drop anchor with our hope is critical. It must be anchored in God and His purposes.
So what does all of this mean for us today?
Let me ask some questions:
Where is your hope stretched thin these days?
Where are you finding your hope as non-existent?
Has disobeying God been an issue for you? Do you need to do some confession?
Are you growing in your faith in Christ? How has God been working in your life this past week?
Are you sharing both your burdens and hopes with spiritually trustworthy people?
Are all known conflicts resolved with others?
What is the Holy Spirit saying to you this morning?
I am concluding with a time to pray either at your seat or at the altar if you so choose. Bring your hopelessness to the Lord this morning. He is our light and our salvation! He is our joy and our strength!
Amen
Note: Cary Oberbrunner and Glyndi Avera quotes are from twitter.com
Star Trek: Course Correction
[CD TRACK 1]
Kirk: Captain’s Log, Stardate 4632.8. We are on a routine mission to deliver supplies to the Federation colony at Omega Fatty 3. But something appears to be amiss.
Kirk: The stars don’t look… (Turns to Scotty) Mr. Scott, are we on course to Omega Fatty 3?
Scotty (embarrassed): Uhhh, No sir. We’re not.
Kirk: Can you explain to me WHY we are not headed toward Omega Fatty 3?
Scotty (continues to look down nervously): We’re a bit … off course, Captain.
Kirk: How far off course, Mr. Scott?
Scotty: About 300 light years, Captain.
Kirk (explodes): Three hundred light years? Where is this ship taking us?
Spock: If we continue on our current course, we will arrive in the Delta Epsilon system in about three days.
Kirk: How did this happen, Scotty?
Scotty: Well, it started innocently enough. We just had a little … drift.
Kirk: Drift?
Scotty: Aye. Somethin’ in the navigational computer was getting us off-course … just a wee little bit. And we’d notice and steer her back on course. But then she seemed to want to drift even father. So we had to make some compromises.
Kirk: Compromises, Mr. Scott? Has the Enterprise’s main computer become self-aware again?
Scotty: No, sir. It’s difficult to explain; we just couldn’t quite get her back the way she should be going. Not a big course deviation; just a little drift. So we tried to make some compromises with the navigational readings. But the more we compromised, the more off course we got.
Kirk: This is unacceptable, Mr. Scott. This ship has a mission, a purpose she needs to fulfill. She can’t do it if she won’t follow the intended course that’s laid out for her.
Scotty: Aye, Captain. We’re doin’ the best we can, but she’s bein’ stubborn. The more she’s got off-course the harder it’s been to get her back on it. Mr. Spock is helpin’ me run diagnostics on the navigational systems to see if we can find the problem.
Spock: I appear to have found the issue – an errant line of code in a software upgrade we received during our last stop at Starbase. I am applying a software patch now that should get the ship back on course.
Kirk: Will we be able to get back on our intended course in time to complete our mission?
Spock: It appears so, Captain. Things will not work out as well as if we had stayed on the path that was laid out for us. But, once back on course, we should have another opportunity – a second chance – to complete our mission.
Kirk: Then let’s get back on the path that was designed for us, gentlemen. Mr. Sulu, maximum warp!
[CD TRACK 2]
