Promises, Promises

Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, and we begin our 40 day journey of Lent, our 40 day journey with Jesus to the cross. The season of Lent is a spiritual journey through the wilderness, modeled on the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness following His baptism. It is preparation for the times we all spend in the spiritual wilderness, for those dark nights of the soul, for those desert places in our lives when we see little before us to feed our spiritual hunger and thirst, and God seems far away. It’s a time for reflection, introspection, repentance, and renewal of our faith and our relationship with God.

Our Psalm reading for today is a traveling song of sorts, a song about being on the journey of faith, such as the 40 day journey that lies ahead of us. The Psalms, of course, were the songbook for the Jews and early Christians. The Psalms are in many ways the most human-feeling parts of the Bible. In much of the Old Testament, we get history; we get laws and commandments; we get prophets pleading with us to change our ways. In the Gospels, we get biographies of Jesus, in Acts, we hear of the beginnings of the early church, and in Paul’s letters and the other epistles we get theology. But reading the Psalms is like overhearing someone praying or singing to God, like overhearing someone’s most secret thoughts, someone’s cry from the heart. While we clean up our speech when we’re in public, our private thoughts and prayers can run from adoration of God, to anger over life’s circumstances, fear of danger, rage at those we see as our enemies, and back to gratitude to God. However polite and appropriate we are in public, our private thoughts aren’t always so pretty. And the Psalms are like that. The same Psalm 139 that begins with words about God knowing our sitting down and rising up, and of our being fearfully and wonderfully made, near the end breaks into a plea for God to kill the wicked. Psalm 137, in which the Psalmist speaks of never forgetting Jerusalem, ends with these words to Babylon: “Happy are those who will take your children and dash them against a rock.” (Congregations with a “safe church” policy may want to avoid having this guy help in the nursery.) The Psalms aren’t all sweetness and light – not hardly! They reflect the whole range of human emotion, and Psalm 25 is no exception.

In Psalm 25, the Psalmist pours out his heart to God – his trust in God, his plea for God to protect him from his enemies, his pleas for forgiveness, his humble willingness to follow where God leads, his gratitude for God’s faithfulness. While our life circumstances are very different from that of the Psalmist, we all know the feeling of being overwhelmed by life’s troubles – bereavement, illness, loss of employment, family problems. Some who read these Psalms know the pain of being uprooted and dislocated, of being a stranger in a strange land, “alone and afraid in a world they never made.” In all these circumstances, we, like the Psalmist, can cry to God – “To you I lift up my heart; do not let me be ashamed; do not let life’s troubles overwhelm me.” With the Psalmist, we can ask for God to teach us God’s paths. We can plea for God not to remember the sins of our youth – in the words of the hymn we just sang, “remember not past years.” And throughout Psalm 25 comes the refrain of God’s steadfast love – “be mindful of your mercy, O God, and of your steadfast love, for they have been of old.” “According to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord.” “All the paths of God are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep God’s covenant and God’s decrees.” Steadfast love – steadfast love – steadfast love – this refrain of “God’s steadfast love” is what can keep the Psalmist – and us – going through the worst that life can offer.

Our reading from Genesis speaks of God’s protection for the family of Noah. The flood waters – which have wiped out human and animal life except for those in the ark with Noah – are receding. God says, “The waters will never again become a flood to destroy all flesh” – and the rainbow is a sign of this promise from God. And we can claim this promise – though the flood of trouble around us threatens to carry us away, God will not allow it to destroy us. The rainbow is a reminder of God’s promise of steadfast love.

Our reading from I Peter sees the reference to the flood waters as a reference to baptism. As the flood destroyed the wicked, while Noah was saved, in our baptism our sinful nature is drowned, and we are saved and claimed for Christ. The reading also speaks to Jesus “preaching to the spirits in prison”, that is, proclaiming salvation to the spirits in hell. This is where the phrase from the Apostles’ Creed, “he descended into hell” comes from. This tells us that God is with us on our journey, and that Jesus will literally go through hell in order to save us. That’s how much we are loved by God. In our baptism, God says to us, as he said to Jesus, “You are my beloved son – my beloved daughter – with you I am well pleased.”

Which brings us to our Gospel reading from Mark. We actually read part of this passage a few weeks ago, on the Sunday after Epiphany, back in mid-January, when we remembered the baptism of Jesus. But now we go further. In Mark’s usual condensed fashion, Mark takes us directly from Jesus’ receiving a blessing from God himself to Jesus’ going into the wilderness, to be tempted by Satan. And that’s often how it is with us. We can experience some moment in which we feel God’s presence so close to us, and we want to hang onto it. And yet life carries us from these moments of intimacy with God, out into those dark nights of the soul where it almost feels like God has forsaken us. The moments of intimacy with God are like an oasis, where we can draw the nourishment that will carry us through the lean times, through our time in the spiritual wilderness, so that we have the strength to come out on the other side stronger for the experience, grateful for God’s steadfast love, even through those times when God seemed far away.

“Lead, kindly light, amid the circling gloom – lead thou us on.” God leads, and we follow, through our urban wilderness of Philadelphia, where one can be surrounded by people and yet very much alone, alone in the crowd; and through the wilderness in our souls where we cry to Jesus, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” Like Peter when he tried to walk on the water toward Jesus, we may at times feel the ground giving way beneath us, and reach out a hand, saying, “Lord, I’m sinking.” Yet we can have confidence in the promises – the many promises - of God’s steadfast love, God’s steadfast love that carried the Psalmist, carried Jesus, and will carry us through the wilderness. Amen.