FEAR NOT, GOD IS NEAR!
A sermon by the Rev. Dr. James G. Kirk
Harundale Presbyterian Church
Text: “You know that the
First
Second
All of the scriptures that we’ve read this morning, including the 25th psalm that we didn’t read have two things in common. One, all of the writers are speaking out of some sort of personal suffering. Jeremiah has consistently been rejected by the people who refuse to repent of their ways. The 25th Psalm is a prayer for deliverance from personal enemies. Paul speaks earlier in our passage this morning about his distress and persecution. Jesus speaks of the time becoming short, just as we experience darkness enclosing about us earlier and earlier each day.
Yet, in spite of their circumstances each writer reaches out in a spirit of hope. Even as Jeremiah “paces the courtyard in which he is confined, he envisages his society transformed, recapturing its original morning time. He speaks of the return of a joy in nationhood, a thriving economy and, under girding all, a deep commitment to doing justice and being right with God.” Far from crushing his spirit, Jeremiah’s situation enlarges his vision of the essentially merciful and generous nature of God.
“In Psalm 25, where someone is wrestling with (personal enemies), we see the psalmist reaching out to the one he can trust as not treacherous, to whom he can relate, secure in the knowledge that in God he has a source of steadfast love.
“There must have been times when Paul wondered if it was all worth it. Unpleasant receptions often culminated in rejection, with communities at each other’s throats about this or that issue. Paul faced it all. Yet the knowledge that there were great people to rejoice in, a community where there was at least the promise of good things to come, makes all the difference at this juncture. Such knowledge—that there is within reach even a small circle of those who respond and care, who show enthusiasm and purpose—makes all the difference when otherwise disappointment and a sense of defeat could make us their prisoner.
“For
Jesus…there have been recent moments of vicious and aggressive questioning,
contemptuous dismissals of the authority he seems to assume. Being human, Jesus finds his thoughts and
feelings clouded. Images of threat and
fear and confusion come into his mind, images speaking to him of the troubling
world around him but also of his inner turmoil.
As we walk with him, these images expand, becoming thoughts of cosmic
threat—sun, moon, stars, ocean, the earth itself, all heaving in turmoil. His own sense of fear and foreboding becomes
a universal fearfulness and foreboding.
He feels the confrontation is near.” (Herbert O’Driscoll, “Pent-up
Power,” The Christian Century,
There are times in all of our lives when the powers that be weigh heavily upon us. What have I done that this should happen to me? Just like our four authors this morning, people don’t respect what we say to them. We feel ourselves threatened by outside forces. People seem bent for whatever reason on persecuting us, or just the situation in the world foretells impending doom. There is a passage in the Wisdom of Solomon that aptly describes such feelings:
“Short and
sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy when a life comes to its end, and
no one has been known to return from Hades.
For we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we
had never been, for the breath in our nostrils is smoke and reason is a spark
kindled by the beating of our hearts; when it is extinguished, the body will
turn to ashes, and the spirit will dissolve like empty air. Our name will be forgotten in time, and no
one will remember our works; our life will pass away like the traces of a
cloud, and be scattered like mist that is chased by the rays of the sun and
overcome by its heat. For our allotted
time is the passing of a shadow, and there is no return from our death, because
it is sealed up and no one turns back.” (
Yet, you know as well as I that we can never stop there; we have to look further. In spite of the situation in which our four authors find themselves there is the assurance and the expectancy that God is near. That same assurance can lead to us to live expectantly, filling each day with activity that is meaningful because that is what God would have us do, and such living will ultimately contribute to the fulfillment of God’s purposes for human life.
God doesn’t want us to live as though there were no hope. Hope for Jeremiah sounds like a new day, a day full of promise, and being right with God. I’m constantly amazed to see the faith of those who’re undergoing life threatening situations. It’s as though they’re suddenly transformed from the routine in life to the epiphanies of life. They see God showing God’s self in so many new and exciting ways. What we so often take for granted becomes for them revelations on just how near God is to them.
Hope for the psalmist is trusting that God will not let his enemies triumph over him. He rehearses time and again how God can be trusted, God is faithful and God’s love will never end. When, during those dark days in our lives, we pray to God we should with the psalmist rehearse time and again in our lives how God’s trust, God’s faithfulness and God’s love have been there to sustain us.
Hope for Paul gives thanks for the community of friends and fellow believers who’re always there for him. During our times of walking through the valley of the shadow, we need that same community of friends and fellow believers to be there for us. The love notes in The Spire each month remind us just how important those cards, phone calls and visits have meant. Sometimes they are a life line linking us to that support we so badly need during those times when the fragile boat of our lives is being whipped about by the waves of pain, discomfort, disease and doubt.
By the time we get to Jesus we hear from him the mention of a summertime in our lives, the pointing to nothing less than an everlasting kingdom, a plea to stay alert and the determination to stand firm. Because what we’re standing on is the promise that God will never forsake, that God will walk each step we take if only we put our trust in him. God will continue to cradle us with a hope that with God all things are possible, because in God our lives were formed from before the moment of our baptism. And with that baptism, just as with Rosemarie Lynn’s baptism this morning, each one of us is assured of life that began before we were born and will continue after we leave this earth, indeed, a life that will have no end.
Thanks be to God,
Amen