5th Sunday in Lent 2014
Psalm 130 Hebrews 9:11-15 John 8:46-59
The Promise of the King
The sudden realization that I was
absolutely powerless to do anything to save my son and myself was as shocking
as the freezing cold water of the Eastern Atlantic .
Playtime on the beach with my children and their friends had suddenly turned
into a nightmare. A rogue wave had rushed up and snatched our oldest son,
Hanno, from the beach. I barely managed to grab hold of his arm before we both were
swept out behind the waves in a matter of seconds. Treading water, I found that
the undertow kept preventing me (with Hanno on my back) from getting in front
of the waves. No Life-Guard, even if there had been one, would have braved the
angry sea that day. I was a strong swimmer, but my strokes were no match for
the heaving and surging waters all around us and the undertow that tugged me
under repeatedly. I cried out to God. This just was not the way I wanted to
exit this world. And my son…I cried out for the life of my son.
After struggling for what seemed to
be an age, we managed to get in front of a monstrous wave that barreled us into
the rocks, but I was so cold and so weak by that time that I simply could not
grab hold of anything, much less lift us out of the water that appeared to be
reluctant to let us go. And then the dark spots began…I knew I was going to
black out soon and then we would both be lost. I summoned every ounce of
strength left in me, and thrust Hanno toward a group of young would be rescuers
a few feet away from us. When I knew he was safely in their arms, I let go.
The young men turned all their
attention to Hanno. They had seen me swept out once again and concluded that my
fate was a foregone conclusion. But our neighbor happened to be on the beach that
day as well…an older man who knew the sea well. He stood on the rocks watching
as my body was sucked under the swirling water and then thrust back up again.
As I was no longer conscious, I was no longer resisting the currents, and they
eventually burrowed me into a large bed of seaweed adjacent to the rocks. Our
neighbor grabbed the only visible part of me – my ankle – and dragged me out of
the seaweed, up the rocks, and onto the beach. I was no longer breathing and he
could not find a pulse. Initially he thought he would simply clean up my body
for my wife’s sake, but then the sun broke through and shone on my ring. For
some or other reason the sight of the ring made him pull me up into a sitting
position and when he did this, water and sand came gushing out of me and I
breathed for the first time. Later he confessed that he did not know what to do
so he kept hitting me in the chest to keep me breathing…truth is, he quite
literally beat me up! But I was alive and the method of resuscitation surely
does not matter.
I retell this story because I
believe the powerlessness Hanno and I experienced in the Eastern
Atlantic that day is something similar to what the Psalmist was
trying to convey in his opening sentence. “Out of the depths I have cried out to
you, O Lord.”
From a place where my feet cannot
touch the ground…where I cannot save myself…where I am helpless, weak,
vulnerable, hopeless. We all know the feeling…we have all vocalized the cry at
one point or another. We hear it in the Scriptures time and again…out of the
mouth of Job, Habakkuk, Jeremiah…we hear it in the cry of the father on behalf
of his son, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!” We hear it in the plea of the
Syro-Phoenecian woman, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is
severely demon possessed.” We hear it in the cry of Peter, sinking in the
waves, “Lord, save me!” We've all been there before…we recognize that
prayer…when a loved one was diagnosed with an incurable disease…when a loved
one died…whenever we face irreversible situations or impossible circumstances.
We know the cry…we know the despair…we know the depths.
It is at that time when we come
face to face with something far greater than ourselves, that we realize that
“self-help” is really no answer to the depths of our distress. It is in this
dark place that we become aware of our need for someone far larger than this
world and the forces that govern it. And so we cry out, “Lord, hear my voice!”
But behind the prayer of the
individual Psalmist, we hear the collective cry of the people of God. We first
encounter this cry in Egypt
where the children of Jacob had been reduced to the status of slaves. When the
Lord spoke to Moses out of the burning bush he said, “I have surely seen the
oppression of my people who are in Egypt , and I have heard their cry
because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.” Then when Israel found herself in bondage once again, this
time in exile in Babylon ,
they looked back to this God who had heard their ancestors for comfort. “Are you not
the one,” Isaiah asked, “who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep;
that made the depths of the sea a road for the redeemed to cross over?”
God’s willingness and his ability
to help in times past became the foundation upon which the Exiles' hope for future
deliverance was based. But more importantly, just as Israel’s delivery from
Egypt was not based upon their own worthiness, or upon their ability to keep
the Law, or even their own strength to save themselves, so with those in Babylon...their
deliverance from exile, the restoration of the Monarchy, and the restoration of
the kingdom of Israel, was not based upon anything save God’s merciful
intervention…God’s gracious willingness to redeem his people in spite of
themselves and their circumstances.
But it seems the Psalmist was
concerned with more than just physical redemption. True, Israel had been
delivered before and would be delivered again because that is what God had
promised and God cannot deny himself. But unless something more than another
exodus took place, they would soon find themselves in the same depths out of
which they longed to be delivered. So it does not surprise us to hear this cry
again in the New Testament. The crowds that flocked to listen to the teachings
of Jesus all yearned to see an end to foreign domination…they all wondered when
he would restore the kingdom to Israel .
The end of the Babylonian Exile or the Medo-Persian, Greek, or Roman occupation brought only temporary relief as there is
a greater bondage and a greater exile from which humanity needs to be
delivered…an enslavement so powerful that no human can ever free themselves
from it…a depth from which only God can extricate us…a claw from which no one
is excluded…that of sin itself.
Sin and its devastating results is
one of the major themes that runs through the Scriptures from Genesis through
to Revelation. But there is an even greater theme that triumphs over sin and
its consequences…it is a theme that recognizes our powerlessness to do anything
about the predicament we find ourselves in, in a fallen, broken world. It is
the theme of unmerited pardon…the theme of unearned forgiveness...the theme of undeserved grace. In the words
of the Psalmist: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities (if you should keep
tally…if you should keep score), O Lord, who could stand? But there is
forgiveness with you, that you may be feared.”
This is the ultimate freedom for
which every human being strives, whether they know it or not. Freedom from that
which binds us…freedom from that which renders us incapable of escape…freedom from that which bars us from Paradise…freedom from sin.
Unfortunately, all too often this
freedom is seen only in negative terms...as an escape from punishment...but we are
not only set free from sin so that we might escape the fires of hell. We are
also set free from sin so that we might live as we were originally created to
live…in harmony with God, with creation, and with each other.
This is the great hope of
Christianity. No other so-called god ever broke into our world to do what we
could not do. Genesis through Revelation demonstrates too clearly the fact that
humanity cannot help itself. Even though we were given the perfect, holy Law of
God, we still fail because we are inherently sinful…we are born in sin as we
saw in Psalm 51 and therefore we are doomed to bear the penalty for that sin. Nothing
in this world could ever pay the penalty – no sacrifice, whether animal (the
blood of bulls and goats could not atone for sin) or human – as everything in
this world was under the curse of God because of the sin of our forebears.
Nothing outside of this world could pay the penalty because it is ours to pay.
That simply would not be just. So we were locked…trapped…sucked under…stuck
fast in the mire of our own making and sinking ever deeper and deeper into the
depths.
But God in his mercy took upon himself
the form of a man so that as a man he could pay what was man’s to pay. He who
was without sin…he who was not subject to the curse…he took upon his own
sinless self the curse of the world and paid our penalty of death in full so
that we…we who are the guilty might be forgiven and set free.
TITLE: "Sarah's Testimony: Psalm 107" ARTIST: Walter Bowen MEDIUM: Oil
Thus when we – we who know our God
as deliverer, as rescuer, as savior – when we find ourselves in the
depths…whether they are directly related to our own personal sins or
not…whether they are the consequences of our own lack of right living or
not…when we find ourselves in a place where we simply cannot stand, we suddenly
realize that there really is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper
still…that there is no place so far that God’s hand of mercy and grace cannot
reach us, because he loves us and because he wills to forgive us. This is the
primary message of the Scriptures – both Old and New Testaments. Remember, it
was God who loved the world so much that he sent his one and only Son into the
world to forgive sinners such as you and me. And in his Word he progressively
reveals to us his plan and his purpose to set his world to rights…to fulfill
his promises to Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, and to David. And so we may hope in
his Word, as his Word is as sure as his deeds…we may actively wait on the Lord
with the full assurance that he will rescue us out of the depths.
Now, this conviction that the same
God who heard the cries of Israel in Egypt and of Israel in exile, still hears
the cry of his people today – this conviction that there is no place or
circumstance beyond the reach of his care and concern – this conviction leads
us to believe firmly that our God is a God who is moved to compassion by the
struggle of his children in a fallen and broken world. This means that although
we will have to live with the consequences of sin’s destructive force and with
the suffering that is a result of the curse, our God – our rescuer, redeemer,
deliverer, savior, liberator, if you will – our God is willing and able to set us
free to live as we were intended to live – to set us free so that we might live
a life of obedience and faithfulness to his Word. Such is the power of his
committed love and grace.
And so, when we approach his throne
of mercy and grace to eat as his table, let us remember that there was one who
also cried out of the depths, not for his own sins, but for ours. “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do!” His prayer has echoed across the
mists of time and saved sinners throughout the ages bear witness to the divine
answer to that cry. So, along with the Psalmist, we may boldly declare that our
hope is most certainly built on absolutely nothing less than on the broken
body and shed blood of our King and our High Priest, Jesus, the Christ.
© Johann W. Vanderbijl 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment