Hope for Realists Jamie Maciejewski Psalm 22:L,7-7,t4-18,26-3t; Psalm 16 (NLT) December L,2024
Happy first day of Advent! Can you believe the year has entered the final lap? One of my favorite Christmas stories is 'A Charlie Brown Christmas." lsn't it great? The highlight is when Linus tells Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about by reading the nativity story from Luke 2. But do you remember what happens just before that? Lucy is trying to get Schroeder's attention, leaning on his piano. She wants him to play Jingle Bells He plays severalversions, all of them beautiful but none of them satisfactoryto Lucy. "No, no. You don't get it at all. I mean 'jingle Bells.' You know, Santa Claus and ho-ho-ho, and mistletoe and presents to pretty girls." Disgusted, he answers with the tinniest, one-finger version possible, and it's just right for Lucy.
I suspect we are more like Lucy than we want to think. The glitter of the holiday season masks the imperfections of disappointment, stress and commercialism. The realists among us resort to cynicism and pessimism.
The Advent candle we littoday is named the Hope candle. As lworked and prayed mywaythrough our readings, I found myself asking what kind of hope there is for realists. Not in the sense of hope that they can be different than they are, less prone to see what is disappointing and broken in the world. But hope that is real, hope that speaks into the darkness of our disappointing, broken, sin-marred world. ls there that kind of hope for realists?
l'm convinced the unease with which realists view the world is criticalto developing an honest spirituality. Why? Because if we brush off the hardness of life in favor of unrestrained optimism, we miss out on learningto trust God. We learn to trust God precisely when it's hard to trust God.
Our texts this morning are two David psalms. One is a psalm of trust; the other is a prayer for help. Both include prophecies that are fulfilled in Jesus. The Holy Spirit speaks through David. That's what identifies David as a prophet, as someone who speaks for God. When David prays for help in Psalm 22,the prayer belongs as much to Jesus on the cross as it does to David, maybe even more so.
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far away when I groan for help?
Every day I callto you, my God, but you do not answer.
Every night I lift my voice, but I find no relief. (Psa 22:1-2 NLT)
Jesus prayed these very words from the cross:
At noon, darkness fell across the whole land untilthree o'clock. At about three o'clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, 'Eli, Eli, lemo sobachthani?" which means "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" (Matt 27:45-46 NLT)
Abandoned. What a hard wordl When I was writing this sermon, I found myself protesting that word. I wanted to soften it. lt's hard to look such suffering full in the face. l'm not sure any of us can. Jesus's suffering included the physical pain, sure, but more than that, it was this abandonment by God as the Son took the sin of the whole world on himself. David, by the Holy Spirit, gives it voice. And Jesus lived it, chose it, for a broken and sin-filled world.
Suffering marks the lives of people God creates in his image. The Holy Spirit prayed through David on behalf of Jesus and allwho suffer deeply. Even today, through Psalm 22,we are urged to cry out to God on behalf of those who suffer. I may know someone who suffers; maybe I am suffering. Maybe it is people I only know by watching the news. Sometimes I save a story from the news so I will remember to pray. On Friday I heard an interviewwith the UN's newtop humanitarian and relief officialabout histripthisweekto Sudan. lt'sthe country he identifies as the "world's worst humanitarian crisis." And there are a lot of them - Ukraine, Gaza,
Haiti, Myanmar. Here's what he said: "We have to remember how to care again." (W*WW,tp-r,q-IH "Nothing prepares you",ILf29l2O24) Sometimes I get lost in the policies or politics and forget that these are human beings made in the image of God. "We have to remember how to care again." One way to do this is by praying on behalf of another, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken..." _? Fill in the blank: him, her, them, me, the people in _ town, _ country...
It's fitting that Pastor Don chose to pair Psalm 22, a prayer for help, with Psalm 16, a psalm of trust. Sometimes life stretches us beyond our own reserves, and all we can pray is, "Help." That's when we learn to trust God. David says, "The Lord is mychosen portion and mycup; you hold my lot." (Psa L6:5 NRSVUE)Sometimesthe portion is a rich feast; sometimes it is abandonment by God. Sometimes the cup is one of blessing and sometimes it's one of suffering; the cup we share each week speaks of both. Our lot in this life may be pleasant ol like Jesus, we may find ourselves flanked by criminals; either way, God promises that he holds our destiny.
Pastor and theologian Frederick Buechner wrote
The preacher tells the truth by speaking of the visible absence of God because if he doesn't see and own up to the absence of God in the world, then he is the only one there who doesn't see it, and who then is going to take him seriously when he tries to make real what he claims also to see as the invisible presence of God in the world? (Telling the Truth)
This world where God is so visibly absent, where suffering people cry out to know why God has abandoned them, is the same world where Christ will establish his kingdom forever; where God and the Lamb will be its light and there will no longer be need of the sun.
David the prophet looked ahead to the coming of Christ, listening for echoes from the time to come and letting what he heard shape his prayers. From those echoes, it was clear the Messiah's path would not be easy, wouldn't all be mistletoe and presents and ho-ho-ho. Suffering would mark the way of Christ, who would experience viscerally and literally the absence of God. Peter quotes Psalm 1-6 in his first sermon after Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection:
King David said this about him:
'l see that the Lord is always with me.
I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me
No wonder my heart is glad,
and my tongue shouts his praises!
2
My body rests in hope.
For you will not leave my soul among the dead
or allow your Holy One to rot in the grave. You have shown me the way of life,
and you willfill me with the joy of your presence.' (Acts 2:25-28 NLT)
Look at how Psalm 16 answers Psalm 22! Suffering in the one, and resurrection in the other. Abandoned by God, and living the presence of God. A heart melting like wax, and a life filled with joy. One hand holding the reality of a world visibly absent of God, the other holding the promise of Jesus to never leave or forsake us. When we tell the gospel story - and when we pray - we need both truths firmly in hand.
As we open the little doors of the Advent calendar our homes may use, the Holy Spirit of God invites us to move past presents, mistletoe and Santa Claus. We're invited to deeply enter the mystery of living in a fallen world where Christ's resurrection is no longer only promise but reality. To hope is to live this tension between reality and promise, absence and presence, death and resurrection. Pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson wrote this:
"Every day I put hope on the line. I don't know one thing about the future. I don't know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, personal, or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection. I don't know what the future holds for me, for those whom I love, for my nation, for this world. Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will and cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing separates me from Christ's love. (Living the Message)
ls there hope for realists? Just this: Advent isn't a celebration in the usual sense of the word, of what Peterson calls "tinny" optimism. Advent is a season of waiting, with a heightened sense of the gap between what is and what we long for. We weep with those who suffer while we watch for Christ's return, when he shall establish his kingdom here on earth, when there will be "no more death or sorrow or crying or pain." (Rev 21:4) And in the meantime, we declare that the Lord is my portion, my cup, and my destiny. (Psa 16:5)