God Believes in Resurrection
Psalm 46
April 3, 2005
When our kids were young, one of their favorite books was titled, “Alexander and the Terrrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” It seems as though Alexander had one of those days when nothing went right. It all started as soon as he woke up in the morning.
I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
The day didn’t get any better as troubles continued at school and during a visit to the dentist. At bedtime that night, he said:
There was lima beans for dinner and I hate limas. There was kissing on TV and I hate kissing. My bath was too hot, I got soap in my eyes, my marble went down the drain, and I had to wear my railroad-train pajamas. I hate my railroad-train pajamas. When I went to be Nick took back the pillow he said I could keep and the Mickey Mouse night light burned out and I bit my tongue. The cat wants to sleep with Anthony, not with me. It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
I can sympathize with Alexander when, at the end of the book he laments, “I think I’ll move to Australia” (“Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” 1972. Hartford: Connecticut Printers)
We’ve all had days like that, haven’t we? We’ve all had days when the stress of living just gets to be too much. The problem that we have to figure out is how bad our problems really are and if they can be easily fixed or if they require some greater investment and intervention.
Things that are easily fixed need to be handled right away so that they don’t become bigger problems down the road.
There was this guy who was having constant headaches. He went to the doctor and was asked if he smoked. “Yes, I do.” The doctor told him to quit smoking. So the fellow did just that, but the headaches kept coming back. He returned to the doctor. This time the doctor asked him if he drank alcohol. “Yes, I do” he said. The doctor told him to quit…so he did, but the headaches continued.
He came back to the doctor to get some more tests. The doctor asked him if he worked in a job that demanded hard, physical labor. “Yes, I do” he said. The doctor said “quit.” So he did…but the headaches didn’t.
The doctor finally had a hunch. He told the man to take off his shirt. He got a tape measure and measured the man’s neck. It was sixteen inches. He then looked at the shirt and noticed that the collar was fifteen inches. No wonder he had headaches. Sometimes, easily solved problems need to be taken care of right away (“What Works When Life Doesn’t.” Stuart Briscoe. 1976. Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books).
Real life doesn’t always have quick, easily solved problems like that. Real life stresses can often go deep down to the very depths of our souls and threaten to undo us. The answers to stress in real life are not always easy. The answers are not always readily available. In life, fear is real.
Have you ever been really afraid? In the summer of 1989, I got my first boat. It was a sixteen foot, aluminum row boat with a 9 horse outboard motor on it, and a trolling motor for fishing. One Saturday, we loaded up the kids, who were 9, 6, and 4 at the time and headed out on Lake Shaffer for the day. Lake Shaffer is a dammed up river and so we went all the way down to the dam, about 4 miles from where we launched the boat. We pulled up on a beach to swim for awhile and I didn’t get the motor out of the water in time. The prop hit the sand and broke off the shear pin. That is a pin that connects the propeller to the drive shaft. Breaking it meant that the propeller wouldn’t turn.
I had that boat a couple of years before I moved on to a bigger one and I don’t remember how many times I broke off that shear pin, but this was the first. After this day, I always carried a couple of extra ones and some tools in the boat, but this day we were stuck.
So I put the trolling motor in the water and also started rowing. The sun was beginning to set and storm clouds were coming in. We could see lightening in the distance. We had to go four miles back to the boat ramp and I had no idea how long the trolling motor battery would last. I was really scared. I was envisioning the next day’s headlines… PASTOR AND FAMILY DIE IN LAKE SHAFFER LIGHTENING STRIKE. My stress levels were over the top. As it turned out, an older couple came by in their pontoon boat and towed us back to the boat ramp. I was a nervous wreck by the time we got back to the car and had the boat back on the trailer.
Stress, over a long period of time can be very dangerous. Researchers have done significant amounts of work in the area of stress and stress-related illness. They have been able to quantify stress in terms of what they call “life-change units.” For example, the death of a spouse rates as 100 units. Divorce rates 73. Pregnancy is 40. Remodeling a home is 25. Christmas is 12. There are other things on the scale like: change of job, moving to another city, children in college, serious injury, and others. They have concluded that, in any given twelve month period, no one can handle more than 300 units without suffering some kind of physical or emotional illness within the next two years.
Psalm 46 is a psalm for the stressed. In it can be found a healing message for those who feel as though they are at the end of their ropes. It is a welcome communiqué for those of us who desperately search for relief. It is a wonderfully comforting announcement when the rocky times increase and the hard places threaten.
This is the psalm studied by Martin Luther as he wrote those words to his wonderful hymn, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.” The first words of the psalm are “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Notice that it promises help in the present time. We don’t have to wait for some future time when God has the leisure to assist. No, help is available now. God is surrounding us with care and strength right now.
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
We live with the knowledge that nature can be ruthless and the forces of the natural world can cause devastation far and wide. We don’t have to try very hard to remember the earthquake and tsunami which occurred in South Asia during the last week of December, 2004. Just this past week, the very same area was hit by another earthquake. Many more people died.
The psalmist says that even if the earth should shake, the mountains quake, and the fire roar, God is still our bridge over troubled waters. Let me point you to some other places in Scripture which tell the same story. Isaiah 41:10 says, “Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.” II Timothy 1:7 says, “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” Psalm 27:1 says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life; whom shall I dread?”
Psalm 46 continues.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The Lord almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress.
I look around and weep at the things I see happening. I watch the news accounts of kidnapped and murdered children; another teenager has gone on a rampage killing his fellow students in Minnesota. Bernie Ebbers has gone to jail; perhaps to be followed by a number of other corporate CEO’s who ravaged their companies by making millions while stockholders went bust. Sudan as well as numerous other nations are torn apart by ethnic differences and territorial disputes. I have seen firsthand, both here in the United States and in other countries of the world how poverty and hunger rob millions of people of life. The only thing for certain is that there will be more of the same.
Actually there is something else that is certain. The psalmist said that when the city is under siege, the nation under threat, or whenever an individual is afraid, God will not be moved. In a time of uncertainty, whatever those uncertainties might be, God stands fast.
I have been putting off saying anything about this from the pulpit…probably because there are many heart-felt and passionate opinions on both sides of the issue. Some of you may very well disagree with what I am about to say. If you do, that’s OK. We can talk about it. But I think that I need to say just a few words about the Terri Schiavo case. You all know of her case: the brain damaged woman in Florida who died this past week in Florida and became a political symbol for so many people who wanted to make her one.
First of all, this is a terrible situation. I think that we have to acknowledge that there are good people on both sides of the argument of whether or not to cease life support even as they argue to come to an agreement on what life support means.
Passions run hot and deep. On one side, we have the husband who argues that she wouldn’t want to continue to exist in this state. Her parents see her as much different than Hillary Swank’s character in Clint Eastwood’s movie, “Million Dollar Baby.” If you’ve not seen that movie, Eastwood’s and Swank’s characters are faced, at the end of the movie, with a decision about life support for a severely injured boxer. To Terri Schiavo’s parents, she is a lovely daughter to whom they can’t bear to say goodbye.
The first thing we have to do is to stop demonizing people. All of the actors in this drama were caught in an incredible situation. Few of us can say for certain how we would act. Even fewer of us have ever felt the agony of similar circumstances. It behooves us to be very careful about the stones we throw.
Timothy Merrill, who is the editor of the preaching journal, “Homiletics” acknowledges in an e-mail to subscribers that, of course we want to drag God into it. He says that it appears that God’s will has little to do with this. He continues on and says, “…human intervention – messing with God’s way of doing things – is precisely what prevented her from dying around the time of her heart failure in the first place…so… there’s little theological weight to the argument that removing life support is contrary to God’s will.” At the same time, I am somewhat troubled with nourishment being identified as life support.
Merrill admits that we value life in America, but we often don’t have time for resurrections. As I think about it, the future seems clear. Tragedy will continue to plague us. Natural disasters will continue to remind us of nature’s great power. These bodies in which we live will continue, from time to time, to remind us of their great fragility. People will continue to have passionate disagreements over events and situations almost too horrible to imagine. Stress will continue to wear us down, threaten our sanity, and rob us of physical health.
In the meantime, we continue to live in the Easter season. We are an Easter people. We believe in resurrections. We believe that nothing on earth can separate us from God. As the Apostle Paul said, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
Stress comes in so many guises, in so many situations, and in so many unexpected moments. Death, near-death, tragedy, fear, anger, disaster…these things and more always seem to be lurking around at the fringes of our lives. But the message of the psalmist is that God is our refuge.
There are no promises that the faithful will be spared from tragedy. You know as well as I do that Christians are killed by stray bullets, suffer heart attacks, succumb to cancer, and are caught up in floods, fires, and earthquakes. There are no guarantees that Christians will live stress-free lives.
As I see it, the stress points in life are simply an invitation to climb into the arms of a loving God. People who believe in Easter can live without fear because they know that there is no power on earth that can compete with resurrection power. It is God whom we can trust. It is God on whom we can depend, even when things don’t go as planned. It is God who is our ever-present help in trouble. God believes in resurrection. Can we also believe?
