Lost and Confused
Psalm 55:1-14 (12-13)
June 11, 2006
This is the second in a series of sermons about being lost. I would invite you this morning to remember a time when you were lost. I know you pretty well, and I don’t think that any of you have ever been lost on a desert island…at least no one has told me that. Still, I’m sure that you have all be lost to some extent or another over the years.
When Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel, I remember an interview she gave with one of the U.S. networks. She was lamenting the fact that Moses wandered around for forty years and finally settled in the one place in the Middle East that had no oil. She said,”If only he would have stopped and asked for directions.”
Perhaps you’ve been lost and haven’t stopped to ask for directions. How did it feel? How did you find your way back? What did the experience do for you?
I was appointed to the church in Shipshewana back in 1995. That was sort of like going home. My mother’s side of the family is all from that area, and many still live there. My great-grandfather, a veteran of the Civil War, was from Bristol. My mother was baptized in St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Goshen. I still have cousins who live in Millersburg.
My mother’s parents are buried in a cemetery just a little south of Middlebury, and she and my dad asked me one day if I would like to meet them there to put flowers on their graves. We hadn’t lived in that area very long and it was the first time I had visited their graves since their funerals and I didn’t know how to get there. My mom told me that all I needed to do was to go south of Middlebury on State Road 13 until I came to a house with a garage that had two white doors. Turn left, she said, and the cemetery is just a mile down the road.
Believe it or not, I found the place with no trouble at all, but if they ever replace that garage, I’ll be in trouble. Anyway, I needed gas on the way home. I didn’t have any cash in my pocket, just an Amoco credit card. I knew that there was an Amoco station in Topeka and thought that it wouldn’t be any trouble to cut cross-country. It should have only been six or seven miles. It shouldn’t have been that difficult.
But it took me about five minutes to get completely and totally lost. I had no idea where I was or even the direction I was going. Finally, after driving around until the little warning light on my gas gauge came on; I saw that I was coming into a town. I was relieved, but soon discovered that I had somehow made it back to Shipshewana.
To this day, I have no idea how I got there. The scary thing is that I crossed U.S. Highway 20 without knowing it. I’m really lucky that I didn’t become a hood ornament on a Mack Truck.
It’s not fun to be lost. It’s not fun to be in a place where you don’t know where you are or where you are going. If you are like me, you don’t like to be confused. I like it even less when others know I’m confused. When I was appointed to Waynedale UMC right out of seminary, I remember Harold Leininger, the senior pastor, telling me that I should never admit to anyone in the church that I was confused about something. What I’ve discovered over the years is that I’m not very good at hiding it when I’m confused, so I might as well admit it so that I can find the help I need to move on.
Confusion is something that stalks us most of our life. We seem to always be confused about something or other. It starts out when we are young. At every turn we ask our parents, “Why?” And we are never content with the answer we receive, which is usually “Because I said so.” Just a couple of weeks ago, Toni and I were on our way out to an appointment when Dominique asked me where we were going and why. Even at age 21, she wanted to know. I told her that there are some things that mothers and fathers don’t have to tell their children. And I left her with a very confused look on her face. Actually, that was sort of fun.
Sometimes, the things that confuse us are pretty trivial. I don’t understand why my stupid dog is so afraid of thunder. I am confused why my son thinks he needs another tattoo. After all these years, there are still things about having a wife that confused the heck out of me.
Often however, we are confused by some of the great mysteries of the universe. I have a book titled, “When Pastors Pray: The Prayers and Psalms of Pastors” (2002. Richard Leslie Parrott, ed. The Sandburg Leadership Center. Ashland Theological Seminary). These prayers and psalms were written by doctoral students and are intimate glimpses into the real lives of pastors. Some are hope filled. Some are joyous. Others however, share the deep passion of struggle, pain, and confusion. Listen to this particular psalm written by an active pastor.
I need you to listen to me God…
I have been set upon by forces
which I cannot name and cannot control.
Are they demons,
or are they bad decisions?
Are they supernatural,
or are they simply a result of my inability or
unwillingness to take control of my life?
Whatever they are, they haunt me.
Unless you have experienced it,
don’t try to tell me just to buck up and
cast my cares aside.
There are so many out there for whom depression
is simply a word in the dictionary.
They don’t know
the darkness and the depths of despair.
They don’t know what it means to be in a hole and unable
to find the footholds to climb out.
They don’t know
the loneliness and
the fear and
the unknowing.
Is this my fault?
Have I responded stupidly to life’s circumstances?
Or, is it simply brain chemistry gone awry?
It is sort of a “Catch 22,” this depression.
I need to get the juices flowing again,
get active again,
get a new perspective,
catch a glimpse of the possibilities,
expect miracles to happen.
But you need energy to do that and
depression saps your strength,
destroys your confidence, and
convinces you that
this is as
good as
it gets.
Do you hear the confusion here. The pastor knows the right answers; or at least thinks he knows the right answers. But he’s not always sure. He knows up from down, right from left, and north from south; but then he’s not sure. And he’s not sure what God’s part is in all of this. I don’t know if you have ever felt that way before or not. But I do know that many people have. This sort of confusion is not new to the human race.
The psalmist who wrote Psalm 55, was struggling with some of the greatest issues imaginable. Do you remember how the pastor began his psalm by saying, “I need you to listen to me, God?” The writer of Psalm 55 says, “Come close…I really need you.” There are people who are out to get him and he doesn’t understand. He is so afraid that he is shaking in his boots. Perhaps he is describing Jerusalem, although this is a psalm that could have been written in downtown Chicago, or New York, or Los Angeles, or Fort Wayne. “I’m appalled,” he says, “how they’ve split the city into rival gangs prowling the alleys day and night spoiling for a fight, trash piled on the streets. Even shopkeepers gouging and cheating in broad daylight.” But what is worse is that God seems to be the main problem. The writer of the psalm could handle it if it was his enemies who were the problem, but it is God. God doesn’t seem to be there to take care. The psalmist just doesn’t understand. He is confused. He is lost. He can’t make sense out of any of this.
This psalmist isn’t the only person in the Bible to be confused over his state in life. Later on in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul was wrestling with some of the same issues. In II Corinthians 12:7, he says that he was given a handicap. Traditionally that has been translated as a “thorn in the flesh.” We don’t know what that was. It could have been any number of physical ailments. He couldn’t understand what he had to suffer like that. His confusion was evident as he prayed and prayed and prayed. In fact, he asked God three times to heal him of his handicap.
Back in the Paul’s day and age, armies would place sharpened wooden stakes were in pits. The expectation was that enemy soldiers would fall on them and be impaled. If you want to think about them in this way, they were the roadside bombs of the ancient world. This is the image that Paul used to describe his thorn in the flesh. He considered this affliction to be a painful trap or torture designed to take him out of the spiritual battle plan. At first, it took some time to understand what was going on.
In the autumn of 2005, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Hilbert Caesar was in command of a 155 mm self-propelled howitzer near Baghdad when the roadside bomb went off. When the smoke from the explosion cleared, he looked down and noticed that one of his legs was missing.
No one can ever understand how or why those things happen. He was a young man, at the peak of his physical power, proudly doing the job he was trained to do. How do you make sense of a tragedy like that?
It is quite possible that you have never had the sort of confusion that comes with terrible injury or sickness. Perhaps you have never felt as though God has abandoned you or turned against you. But I bet there have been times in your life when you have been lost and confused. I bet there have been times in your life when you haven’t really understood what is going on. If not, I bet that there are some of those times waiting for you in the future.
What are you looking for when you are confused? You are looking for answers. You are looking for some sense that you are not alone. You are looking for a way not to be afraid. Sometimes it just comes down to trust.
Still haven’t found what you’re looking for? Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust God from the bottom of your heart, don’t try to figure out everything on your own.” The writer of Psalm 55 finally understands and says, (55:18, 22) “Even while thousands are lined up against me, God hears it all…Pile your troubles on God’s shoulders – he’ll carry your load, he’ll help you out.”
When Paul was struggling with trying to understand what had happened to him, he heard God tell him to trust God. “My grace is enough, it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.”
Staff Sergeant Caesar was depressed, lonely, and confused when he lost his leg in combat. He couldn’t understand his predicament. But little by little, he realized that he was fortunate to be alive and that he was not alone. There was a higher purpose in his life. Now he races in wheelchair marathons and meets with other injured soldiers to help them put their lives back together after traumatic injuries.
I think you need to hear the last stanza of the psalm written by the confused pastor. He concludes like this:
What else can I do but trust God
to walk with me through this deep valley?
What else can I do but expect God to
keep me at all times,
even during the dark
night of my soul?
There is no promise that I know of which says that life isn’t confusing sometimes. But there is a promise that, despite seeming evidence to the contrary, we are never left alone by God.
When you are confused, there are three very important things that can help you through the time of trouble. These three things, I believe, are vital for faith and life. First, always stay in constant communication with God. Even when the psalmist didn’t understand God’s ways, he never quit talking and listening to him. Secondly, realize that you cannot do everything on your own. Like the Apostle Paul, move from self-reliance to God-reliance. Remember that God’s grace is enough. It is all we need. Thirdly, never give up. Staff Sergeant Caesar, even though giving up was an option, never chose that option. He chose instead to remain optimistic and to look for ways to continue to be productive and active.
Confusing times may come and go, but God is constant. God is the place where we place our trust.
