March 5, 2009 - Community Mid-Week Lent Worship

Journey of Lent, Journey of Faith
Psalm 77 & Romans 8:31-39
Community Mid-Week Lent – March 5, 2009

Lent is a journey. Christians of all flavors seem to talk about Lent this way, as if we are going on a trip. And so we spend the 6 weeks of Lent following Jesus as he heads to the cross, trying to model our lives after his example. Lent is a time when we focus on our relationship with God and try to draw nearer to God.

But the journey of faith has its ups and downs, and there are some times when it seems no matter how hard we try to draw near to God, God remains far away. That's certainly how the words of Psalm 77 sound to me. For 10 verses, we hear the lament of a person who is in the middle of the muck and mire of life, stuck in some sort of crisis. And so the Psalmist cries aloud to God, yelling at the top of his lungs to get God's attention. He's looking for the Lord. He thinks and meditates and prays, but his soul refuses to be comforted. This poor guy is so stressed out, so anxious about whatever is going on, that he can't sleep. He spends his nights searching his soul, thinking about the past, wondering what has gone wrong. He can't even find the words to say what's going on inside of him.

But the crux of the problem is that his cries and his prayers seem to go unheard. God doesn't answer. God seems far away. And it leaves our writer full of questions: “Will the Lord spurn forever & never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love ceased forever? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” To put it another way: Doesn't God love me anymore? Has God forgotten all about me? Where is God???

I imagine these types of questions are familiar to most of us. We've all gone through hard times in our lives, times when we're overwhelmed, when we lie in bed at night with our thoughts racing with regrets for the past and fear about the future, times when we try to pray but can't find the words, times when we seek the Lord but feel like God can't be found. And we wonder where God is, why God doesn't do something! We feel alone and abandoned, hurt and confused, and filled with questions.

It's quite a contrast to what we hear from the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans tonight: “If God is for us, who is against us? ...Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword?... I am convinced that 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.”

How wonderful it is that the Bible gives us these stories that come from two completely opposite ends of the faith spectrum! It's great for us who are on this journey of faith to look at fellow travelers who've been down this road before us and know that we aren't alone in our experiences. Sometimes we will claim the utter confidence of Paul, knowing that nothing can separate us from God, and other days, our hearts will echo the Psalmist, wondering if God has forgotten all about us. And it's okay when we have those days – that is the witness of Psalm 77 for us; we don't have to stuff those feelings inside and pretend everything's okay. We can bring it all to God and lay our feelings, our questions, our doubts on the table. God can handle it.

But once we've done that, the Psalm encourages us not to stop there. He says, “I will call to mind the deeds of the LORD; I will remember your wonders of old. I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds...” Even in the middle of his questions and doubts, he remembers what God has done for him and for God's people throughout all of history. This is the God who works wonders! This is the God who redeems God's people! This is the God who has power over the earth and the sea.

This is the God who leads God's people through the chaos of the mighty waters, leading them through the sea – not around it, not over it, but through it, leading them safely to the other side, yet God's footprints were unseen. That is the mystery of this journey of Lent, our journey of faith. We spend this time trying to draw nearer to God, looking for God's footprints, footprints that we can't always see. But as we hear the stories of the faith, as we remember our God who works wonders and does mighty deeds, we find the God who has been with us all along, and will never leave us alone.

"For I am convinced that 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."

Amen.