Traveling Forgotten Mountains
Sermon
Hope Beneath the Surface
Cycle A First Lesson Sermons for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
Object:
Larry Crabb has written a book called Moving Through Your Problems Toward Finding God. In the foreword the author writes,
I have come to a place in my life where I need to know God better or I won't make it. Life at times has a way of throwing me into such blinding confusion and severe pain that I lose all hope. Joy is gone. Nothing encourages me ... The rhetoric we're all used to -- "just trust the Lord, pray more, get counseling, follow God's plan more carefully" -- must give way to the reality of finding God.
Dr. Crabb goes on to say that we don't feel we can trust God. "We thank him for opening up a parking place in a crowded lot, but we cannot trust him with our souls" (page 95). Perhaps you can relate to these words of Dr. Crabb.
Seven and a half centuries before Christ, or about 2,700 years ago, there was another writer who was trying to speak to a people thrown into "blinding confusion and severe pain," a whole people for whom all hope was lost, joy was gone, a people for whom nothing seemed to provide encouragement.
These people were the Israelites who had been exiled from their homeland, Palestine, by the Babylonians. Can you imagine being tossed out of your hometown and forced to live in a state hundreds of miles away? The favorite drifts for bass just a memory. Your home which was so carefully built and landscaped destroyed by an invading enemy ...
It was in the midst of this hopelessness, in the midst of exile in Babylon that Isaiah wrote this hope-filled chapter. "Thus says the Lord: In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you ..." (Isaiah 49:8).
This was quite a word of promise at a time when those in exile were saying, "The Lord has forsaken us, our Lord has forgotten us."
Is that not the feeling of many today? I talked with someone recently who said she knew few people who were really happy. Problems seem to be everywhere.
In his wonderful little book, Your God Is Too Small, J.B. Phillips writes,
To some people the mental image of God is a kind of blur of disappointments. "Here ... is One whom I trusted, but He let me down." The rest of their lives is consequently shadowed by this letdown. Thenceforth there can be no mention of God, Church, religion, or even parson, without starting the whole process of association with its melancholy conclusion: God is Disappointment.
(p. 48)
On our final evening together at a confirmation class retreat, we spent a good deal of time dealing with the feelings of disappointment over God's "poor handling" of the world. Surely there were Israelites in exile in Babylon who had given up on this God who didn't seem to care for them, who seemed to have forgotten them.
My dear friends, the feeling of being forgotten by God has been a feeling which everyone through the centuries has known, when things were at their worst. The saints called it "the dark night of the soul." Even our Lord cried out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This was not the last word, but it was a very real feeling in that moment, for sure.
The question is how do we travel those arduous, painful, exhausting mountain trails of loneliness and despair, of feeling forgotten by God, when no AAA Triptik reveals a detour, a better road?
Isaiah writes with great flair and confidence in verse 11 of chapter 49 that the Lord would turn all mountains into roads. That is, the very things that appear to be obstacles would end up being helpful roads to aid us in our journey.
I suspect the greatest lie that has been both preached and believed is that to become a Christian, to be a disciple of Jesus, is to have a piece of plastic in one's hip pocket that can be shown in hospital, doctor's office, bedroom, living room, place of work and place of stress that staves off death, pain and uncertainty. Just show the card! "Here, see! I'm a Christian. I get to go through without pain."
Nowhere in the Bible or in the teachings of Jesus is such drivel taught. Rather we learn through Jesus that the key to successful and joyful living is a close relationship with the God of the universe and our neighbors. And that only comes through a conscious decision to spend our lives seeking to know God, with Jesus as our guide.
Loneliness is a real feeling that Jesus felt and we feel. But it is a feeling, not a description of God's location or lack of existence.
If you want a crazy, fun, deep, moving, spiritually enriching novel to read, find The River Why, by David James Duncan. Your pleasure in reading it may be heightened if you like to fish, but anyone whose heart is beating will be enriched by it.
At one point toward the end of the book the main character, Gus, is in a conversation with Nick, an older man who had been making fishing rods and tying flies with him for some months in his little cabin in a remote part of Oregon. Just before Nick moves away, Gus gets up the nerve to ask Nick about the scar on one of his palms. In front of a warm fire Nick tells his story.
He served on a mine sweeper in the North Sea during WWII. He told Gus about how much he hated the chaplain who was always spouting off pious words of faith to him. Nick couldn't be less interested in such stuff. He then told of encountering a huge storm which tossed the relatively little ship like a cork on a pond. After a sleepless night of being tossed about, Nick got up for duty just as dawn was breaking. They had steered a course into the lee of the Norwegian mountains to wait out the storm. Suddenly, about a mile off the coast they hit a floating mine, blowing the front of the hull away and sinking the ship with most of its crew in minutes.
Nick ended up in the water, more or less in shock and soon numb from the cold water. To make the long and gripping story short, a big trawler eventually appeared and after taking on a number of the survivors, Nick saw a man with a short stubby fishing pole cast his line out past him. He could see the line but he couldn't feel it, nor could he grasp it, for there was no feeling in his hands.
As the line was being reeled in, the bobber moved by him and he tried to enfold his body around it, but could not hold on. Then he saw it, a five-inch, heavy gauge hook. The ship was pulling away and it was his last chance. As best as he could he held the point of the hook against his palm, waiting for the line to come taut ... it did, and mercifully he soon blacked out as he was literally reeled into the boat.
Gus found out where the scar on Nick's hand came from, a scar that was the remaining evidence of how he was hauled to safety. And for Nick, that experience changed his life. Listen to his final words to Gus:
It isn't that it would have been so bad for me to drown ... what scares me, what makes me happy, is what I'd have died believin' then, compared to what I'll die believin' now ... I don't know how to put it. I'm still not religious, never will be. But since this hook pierced me the world hasn't been the same. I just didn't know anything, nothing at all, till God let me watch that line run away from me, my hands all powerless an' cold. You're young, Gus. I don't know if you've been to that place beyond help or hope. But I was there, on the sea that day. And I was sent the help unlooked for, an' it came in the shape of a hook. An' nothin' will ever be the way it was before that day, not for me it won't ...
It seems that, for reasons none of us can understand, the mountains of despair and loneliness, of being forgotten, often become the road to our connection with God. But often we have to make some tough decisions in the midst of our despair, trusting that God will honor the risks and the pain. Only you know what those risks are for you. For Nick it was facing pain in his hand, and it left a scar.
For Jesus it was facing death on a cross, and that, too, left wounds in his palms and feet and side. Yet out of such trust in God's faithfulness came our salvation.
Remember Isaiah's words in chapter 49, the fifteenth and sixteenth verses? He said, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands ..."
One of the ways students in school remind themselves of the assignment for the coming week is to write it on their hands! Impossible to forget. Perhaps this is the image to take with you: a loving God taking pen in hand and writing on the almighty palm your every need.
With that confidence we all can travel our mountains of despair, of feeling forgotten, putting our hand in the hand of the one who will never leave us or forsake us, for we are inscribed on the palm of God.
I have come to a place in my life where I need to know God better or I won't make it. Life at times has a way of throwing me into such blinding confusion and severe pain that I lose all hope. Joy is gone. Nothing encourages me ... The rhetoric we're all used to -- "just trust the Lord, pray more, get counseling, follow God's plan more carefully" -- must give way to the reality of finding God.
Dr. Crabb goes on to say that we don't feel we can trust God. "We thank him for opening up a parking place in a crowded lot, but we cannot trust him with our souls" (page 95). Perhaps you can relate to these words of Dr. Crabb.
Seven and a half centuries before Christ, or about 2,700 years ago, there was another writer who was trying to speak to a people thrown into "blinding confusion and severe pain," a whole people for whom all hope was lost, joy was gone, a people for whom nothing seemed to provide encouragement.
These people were the Israelites who had been exiled from their homeland, Palestine, by the Babylonians. Can you imagine being tossed out of your hometown and forced to live in a state hundreds of miles away? The favorite drifts for bass just a memory. Your home which was so carefully built and landscaped destroyed by an invading enemy ...
It was in the midst of this hopelessness, in the midst of exile in Babylon that Isaiah wrote this hope-filled chapter. "Thus says the Lord: In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you ..." (Isaiah 49:8).
This was quite a word of promise at a time when those in exile were saying, "The Lord has forsaken us, our Lord has forgotten us."
Is that not the feeling of many today? I talked with someone recently who said she knew few people who were really happy. Problems seem to be everywhere.
In his wonderful little book, Your God Is Too Small, J.B. Phillips writes,
To some people the mental image of God is a kind of blur of disappointments. "Here ... is One whom I trusted, but He let me down." The rest of their lives is consequently shadowed by this letdown. Thenceforth there can be no mention of God, Church, religion, or even parson, without starting the whole process of association with its melancholy conclusion: God is Disappointment.
(p. 48)
On our final evening together at a confirmation class retreat, we spent a good deal of time dealing with the feelings of disappointment over God's "poor handling" of the world. Surely there were Israelites in exile in Babylon who had given up on this God who didn't seem to care for them, who seemed to have forgotten them.
My dear friends, the feeling of being forgotten by God has been a feeling which everyone through the centuries has known, when things were at their worst. The saints called it "the dark night of the soul." Even our Lord cried out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This was not the last word, but it was a very real feeling in that moment, for sure.
The question is how do we travel those arduous, painful, exhausting mountain trails of loneliness and despair, of feeling forgotten by God, when no AAA Triptik reveals a detour, a better road?
Isaiah writes with great flair and confidence in verse 11 of chapter 49 that the Lord would turn all mountains into roads. That is, the very things that appear to be obstacles would end up being helpful roads to aid us in our journey.
I suspect the greatest lie that has been both preached and believed is that to become a Christian, to be a disciple of Jesus, is to have a piece of plastic in one's hip pocket that can be shown in hospital, doctor's office, bedroom, living room, place of work and place of stress that staves off death, pain and uncertainty. Just show the card! "Here, see! I'm a Christian. I get to go through without pain."
Nowhere in the Bible or in the teachings of Jesus is such drivel taught. Rather we learn through Jesus that the key to successful and joyful living is a close relationship with the God of the universe and our neighbors. And that only comes through a conscious decision to spend our lives seeking to know God, with Jesus as our guide.
Loneliness is a real feeling that Jesus felt and we feel. But it is a feeling, not a description of God's location or lack of existence.
If you want a crazy, fun, deep, moving, spiritually enriching novel to read, find The River Why, by David James Duncan. Your pleasure in reading it may be heightened if you like to fish, but anyone whose heart is beating will be enriched by it.
At one point toward the end of the book the main character, Gus, is in a conversation with Nick, an older man who had been making fishing rods and tying flies with him for some months in his little cabin in a remote part of Oregon. Just before Nick moves away, Gus gets up the nerve to ask Nick about the scar on one of his palms. In front of a warm fire Nick tells his story.
He served on a mine sweeper in the North Sea during WWII. He told Gus about how much he hated the chaplain who was always spouting off pious words of faith to him. Nick couldn't be less interested in such stuff. He then told of encountering a huge storm which tossed the relatively little ship like a cork on a pond. After a sleepless night of being tossed about, Nick got up for duty just as dawn was breaking. They had steered a course into the lee of the Norwegian mountains to wait out the storm. Suddenly, about a mile off the coast they hit a floating mine, blowing the front of the hull away and sinking the ship with most of its crew in minutes.
Nick ended up in the water, more or less in shock and soon numb from the cold water. To make the long and gripping story short, a big trawler eventually appeared and after taking on a number of the survivors, Nick saw a man with a short stubby fishing pole cast his line out past him. He could see the line but he couldn't feel it, nor could he grasp it, for there was no feeling in his hands.
As the line was being reeled in, the bobber moved by him and he tried to enfold his body around it, but could not hold on. Then he saw it, a five-inch, heavy gauge hook. The ship was pulling away and it was his last chance. As best as he could he held the point of the hook against his palm, waiting for the line to come taut ... it did, and mercifully he soon blacked out as he was literally reeled into the boat.
Gus found out where the scar on Nick's hand came from, a scar that was the remaining evidence of how he was hauled to safety. And for Nick, that experience changed his life. Listen to his final words to Gus:
It isn't that it would have been so bad for me to drown ... what scares me, what makes me happy, is what I'd have died believin' then, compared to what I'll die believin' now ... I don't know how to put it. I'm still not religious, never will be. But since this hook pierced me the world hasn't been the same. I just didn't know anything, nothing at all, till God let me watch that line run away from me, my hands all powerless an' cold. You're young, Gus. I don't know if you've been to that place beyond help or hope. But I was there, on the sea that day. And I was sent the help unlooked for, an' it came in the shape of a hook. An' nothin' will ever be the way it was before that day, not for me it won't ...
It seems that, for reasons none of us can understand, the mountains of despair and loneliness, of being forgotten, often become the road to our connection with God. But often we have to make some tough decisions in the midst of our despair, trusting that God will honor the risks and the pain. Only you know what those risks are for you. For Nick it was facing pain in his hand, and it left a scar.
For Jesus it was facing death on a cross, and that, too, left wounds in his palms and feet and side. Yet out of such trust in God's faithfulness came our salvation.
Remember Isaiah's words in chapter 49, the fifteenth and sixteenth verses? He said, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands ..."
One of the ways students in school remind themselves of the assignment for the coming week is to write it on their hands! Impossible to forget. Perhaps this is the image to take with you: a loving God taking pen in hand and writing on the almighty palm your every need.
With that confidence we all can travel our mountains of despair, of feeling forgotten, putting our hand in the hand of the one who will never leave us or forsake us, for we are inscribed on the palm of God.
