songs of the heart: from awful to affirmation

from my message on 3/4/12 from psalm 22

It is going to take me a few minutes to get to the good news, because this message is going to mirror this 22nd Psalm, which begins with what is awful. I want you to reflect on something awful. It may have happened to you. It may be something you read about. Go to that awful place. As I was driving around this past week, I reflected over 34 years of ministry and some of the awful places that had taken me. I share just one. It was on the last Sunday before Christmas out in San Saba. The tradition in that church was to go sing Christmas carols on that Sunday evening to those who were homebound or in nursing homes. Some of my ranchers had gotten a flatbed trailer with hay bales on it, pulled behind a pickup truck. We drove through the streets singing Christmas carols. At one stop, a deputy sheriff pulled up, and asked to see one of the moms on the trailer. What he told her caused her face to be crushed. I went up to her to see what had happened. She said, "My son ended his own life today." That is awful. At times like these, we pray, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me?

So I asked you to go to an awful place in your life. It may have been at work, where you walked in and got blind-side by allegations and lies, and in the span of just a few hours, you were fired, let go, terminated. And you are a good person, a faithful person, and you cry out, My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?

Or you are a student at school, and you are too slow, too fat, too short, too gay, and you get picked on. You go to worship and Sunday School. You read your Bible, but others bully you, and you cry out, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

Or you put your husband through school, through multiple degrees. He now has his Ph.D., and you have your Mrs. But now that he is through school, he is through with you. He decides to trade you in for a newer model, and initiate d.i.v.o.r.c.e. And you are a Christian believer, and you cry out, My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?

What's awful for you may be some big thing or it may be a lot of little things that have added up to something big. Or it may be that your reserve has been depleted. You are tired and have little energy to cope. You pray to the God who seems to have gone AWOL, who is distant and uncaring, who has gone missing. The song of your heart is one of abandonement. You cry, My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?

We have heard these words before. Who says them? Jesus. What is the context? He is on the cross. These are some of the last words that Jesus says before his death by crucifixion. Jesus prays with us, for us. Jesus joins with everyone who feels deserted by God. He joins our scream, our complaint. So today Jesus prays with the people of Homs, Syria, who are surrrounded by the army that is picking them off like ducks on a pond, crying with them, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus prays with the families who have had children killed in school shootings. He joins those parents of the stillborn child.

When things are awful, we Christians claim that God is with us, Emmanuel, because Jesus has joined us in our pain, in our feeling of abandonement. No other God has wounds like ours. The Gospel writers clearly had Ps 22 in mind as they remembered the passion and death of Jesus. We Christians have the hope that Jesus joins us in our prayer when things are awful.

There is another bit of good news that I didn't realize until I read some commentaries this past week. It was the convention of that time that when one began quoting a passage that the first words were a shorthand for identifying the whole passage. So this passage begins with what is awful. There is terror. The animals, bulls and dogs represent terrible people or demonic forces. The broken body parts communicate "I'm as good as dead." Yet the passage has a "yet." In fact more than one as the pray-er remembers that yet you are the God who has saved us in the past and yet you have brought me from my mother's womb. And the passage ends with a glorieus affirmation. The poor shall eat and be satisfied, like at this communion table today. May your hearts live forever can be better translated as "May you always be in good heart." It says that all people shall worship before the Lord who rules over all the nations. Even those who die and future generations shall acknowledge the Lord and proclaim his salvation.

I have a story that captures this going from awful to affirmation. I went to the Bishop's Convocation this past week. One of our speakers was Greg Jones, former dean at Duke Divinity School. He has written extensively about forgiveness and reconciliation. He talked about one of his heroes in the faith, Maggie who founded the House of Peace in Burundi. Maggie is a tutsi who never married, but she adopted 7 children, 4 tutsi and 3 hutu. You may remember that Burundi was a hotbed of warfare and ethnic cleansing between these 2 peoples. Her people the tutsi came to her village and demanded to know which children were hutus so that they could kill them. She refused. "God does not separate the children. They are all his." They made her watch as they killed 72 hutus in front of her. This is awful, about as bad as things get. AS they were leaving, she was desperate to find her 7 children. She prayed to God, she called out their names, and she went looking for them. She found them in the sacristy of the chapel. All 7 were alive. She decided she was going to start a new village. She found all the money she could and went to the tustis and bought, redeemed 25 more children. She began the House of Peace where children could find a safe place to prosper. It became an orphanage, a school where the older children taught the younger ones. There were shops where new skills were learned. She said that life should have fun in it. She built a movie theater. Enemies from the bush would come, "Can we watch a movie?" "Of course, all are welcome here," she replied. She built a swimming pool. ON the very spot where the children were massacred, where their blood soaked the soil, she built a pool of water of refreshment and new beginning like baptism. A man came to kill her. He pointed his AK-47 in her face. It is very hard for things to bother you when you have faced what is most awful in life. She didn't flinch. She said, "You don't want to kill me. Look at you. YOu are hiding in the bush. You don't know where your next meal is coming from or where you are going to sleep at night. Come join us." And he did. Her assassin became her driver! Maggie says, "I know I can never stop the war, but I can stop it in my heart and in the hearts of children." Over 10,000 children have come through the HOuse of Peace since 1993. Her model has been taken to many other countries in the world.

I invite you to keep praying. Especially when things are the most awful. God has a way of bringing an affirmation out of what is most awful. We Christians say that God brings life out of death, resurrection our of crucifixion. That is the good news I have to share on this second Sunday of Advent.