Third Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2020
*This message will be broadcast by Facebook and Instagram Live
and posted to Youtube, but will not be preached to a live audience. We – America, the world – are in the midst of
the COVID-19 crisis which is causing people all over the world to avoid
gathering in groups of larger than 10, and diligently maintain “social
distance.” It’s an effort to curb the
rapid, worldwide spread of the Corona virus which can be deadly.
watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e83pyWg35A
A Christian I know, a true follower of
Jesus and a good friend, posted this status update this past week. (1) Logs onto Facebook; (2) reads
back-to-back posts of everyone arguing over COVID-19, calling each other names,
being hateful; (3) logs off of Facebook.
No thank you!” The ugliness,
amplified by the anonymity of social media is there all that time. In this time of quarantining, when more
people than ever are at home, more people than ever are on Facebook. And, they aren’t using it as an opportunity
to be nicer.
Well,
some people are. We’re in a worldwide
pandemic. We’re all in this
together. Let’s cooperate and get along. Some are taking this benevolent
approach. But others are as close-minded
and mean-spirited as ever, and with more time on their hands, they are more
liberal in expressing their malicious maledictions. A lot of people are saying mean things.
I also saw this, from the d365.org
daily devotion: a line from a Switchfoot song.
“It’s OK to grieve; it’s OK to learn to fall. It’s OK to believe, to admit you’re human
after all.”[i] Read devotionally, these words felt like
permission to pray from a tired, raw place.
I feel tired. I feel raw.
As I attempted to harness and control
these feelings, I read the lectionary passages for this Sunday. While
resurrection is the theme – it’s the season of Easter – I felt led away from
the Gospels. I read 1 Peter 1:17. “If
you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to
their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.” That hits!
Staying home, wearing a mask to Walmart or the gas station, hearing
daily death totals – it feels like exile.
Yeah, the 1 Peter prayer can be our prayer. We’ve already called God the Father we hope
will protect and uplift us.
Thus, 1 Peter tells us we are to
live in “reverent fear.” This is a
specific kind of fear. We may fear
catching COVID-19, or we may fear the economic collapse happening as a result of
the nation being closed down, or we may fear social isolation (the loneliness,
the cabin fever, the ennui). Each is a
real fear, but 1 Peter means something else.
Reverent for recognizes these things, but sees that God is bigger. The Holy God is more fearful (more awesome)
than these other things, big though they may be. Even during this pandemic, we who are in
Christ know that with God, we’re part of a bigger story.
Living God’s story, one of the
things we do is name the situation. The
singer of Psalm 116, also a lectionary reading for the third Sunday of Easter,
does this very thing. Before reciting
his woes, the singer says, “I love the Lord because he has heard my voice; … he
inclined his ear to me” (116:1,2). The
Facebook hate Grows, news overload of horribly sad stories never ends, politicians
fight instead of leading, and the
mounting death totals continue daily, but we live in the midst of it singing
our song; the Lord has inclined his ear to me.
To God, singing 1 Peter and Psalm
116 as our prayer, we sing, the snares of death encompassed me. The pangs of Sheol laid hold on me. Sheol is an ancient Hebrew understanding of
after-death. The soul becomes
disembodied and floats in an underworld, far from God. Rather than flames and painful damnation, this
picture depicts aimless wandering. For
the Old Testament God-worshipper, shalom (peace, prosperity, and wellbeing) is
the highest attainment of life. In
Sheol, shalom cannot be had.
Naming
his plight, the singer of Psalm 116 – you and I, because we pray these words as
our own – sings of death and separation from God. Imagine late-afternoon heavy eyelids, fatigue
but no rest, loss without the faintest hope of recovery. Perhaps many in our world can readily put a
COVID-19 spin on this expression of sorrow.
The Psalmist sings “I suffered distress and anguish.”
But
then … “I called on the name of the Lord.”
The turning point! In naming the
story, the words death, Sheol, and anguish were not the first words and will
not be the last. The Psalmist began, “I
love the Lord.” After naming the pain,
the only possible next movement is “I called.”
Many people that I meet in church life ask me to pray for them. Prayer is a pastor’s job. Prayer is a Christian’s job. I get the request, “Please pray for me.” I ask, “any specific request.” They respond, “Pray for my life. Just pray for my life.” So simple.
So profound. Call on the Lord.
The
singer then names God. God is
gracious. God is righteous. God is
merciful. God is abundance. God is all these things. Yes, in this life, we have troubles, but God
sees us, God knows and loves us, and God acts for our wellbeing and
flourishing.
The
Psalmist of Psalm 116 uses these words to name God; praying 1 Peter 1, we
discover the prayer speaks to our experience in relation to God. In a sense, as pray, we tell ourselves own
story. If you will pray this, then
believe it. First Peter 1:18, “You were
ransomed.” Snared in the bonds of death,
powerless to break free, God liberates us by paying ransom “with the precious
blood of Christ, like that of a lamb, without defect or blemish” (1 Peter
1:19). Jesus dies our death for us. You were ransomed!
Through
Jesus, 1 Peter continues in v.21, you have come to trust in God. God raised Jesus, Jesus makes relationship
with God possible, and you now walk with God, bound for resurrection
yourself. This is a long way from the
sedentary plight of stay-at-home orders, from the toxic allure of hate-filled
Facebook rants, and from the magnified grief we daily feel during the
pandemic. Continuing prayer through 1
Peter, we continue talking to ourselves, telling our selves our own
stories. “You have purified your souls;
… you have been born anew” (1:22, 23).
For
the final portion of prayer, we again turn to Psalm 116 for our words. This is a pledge we make to God, a response
to God’s grace. “I [will] walk before
the Lord in the land of the living” (116:9).
I won’t sequester myself and become an evil internet troll whose design
is to ruin others. I will let my light,
my knowledge of the risen Jesus, shine.
Of
course, this means witness, testifying.
In our heritage as people of the book, the Bible, and of the spoken
word, it means we tell what God has done for us. Our goal in telling is that God’s story be
heard, and that people, upon hearing, turn to faith in Jesus. This is what it is to walk in the land of the
living in Jesus’ name. We tell of his
goodness and we do good works to help other flourish and also to invite them to
turn to him in faith.
The
Psalm though goes beyond just a pledge of walking in faith as response to God’s
saving grace. The singer also pledges
worship. “I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people. … I
will offer a thanksgiving sacrifice. … I
will call on the name of the Lord (116:14, 17).
Worship of God is a centerpiece of my life and a centering activity in
my life. Besides testimony and working
to help others, in this prayer, I declare I will worship God; worship will be a
normative action of my life.
Of
course, if you are watching this livestream, you have already made this
decision. You’ve decided, in your home,
to mark out this time as worship. You
revere the scriptures, and so when I say, we’re going to pray Psalm 116 as a
healing balm, soothing the rash of negativity and loss from the Coronavirus and
the quarantine it has imposed, you say, ‘OK.’
It makes sense to you to treat the Bible as authoritative and to look to
God in faith.
Did
you catch, in this Psalm 116 prayer, the note of festive celebration? God saves.
Reading from a Christian perspective, we add, “Jesus has risen. He is risen, indeed.” Psalm 116:13 has the singer say, “I will lift
up the cup of salvation.” We can take this
in the way that it sounds. We can raise
a glass to God! We offer a toast! “To Jesus!”
Everyone in church raises his or her beer or wine, or Coke or coffee,
and repeats, “To Jesus!’
What? You don’t think of toasts as something done
in church? That’s only for wedding
receptions? What party is bigger than
the one where we celebrate that we are saved – saved from death, saved from
hate, saved from degradation? What is
more toast-worthy than that? Maybe we
should start raising the glass to Him.
“To
Jesus!” And the people repeat, “To
Jesus! AMEN!”
What,
at the last wedding you attended, they didn’t shout “AMEN” after the toast, a
“here, here?” AMEN literally means let
this be true; this is so. It is a
verification that what has been said is accurate and true. ‘AMEN’ is not the traditional response to a
toast? Maybe it should be.
The
current crisis that forces us to stream worship and has forced society to
effectively shut down is bad. People are
suffering and dying. But God saves. God has delivered his people from death and
will continue to do so. In Jesus, risen
from the grave, God has defeated death.
Even now, we can celebrate that he gives us life.
To God! To
Jesus. Here, here. AMEN.
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