2021 03 07 Sermon
Sermon for March 7, 2021 Lent 3 B House of Prayer Lutheran Church
John 2:13-22; Job 14:1-10; Psalm 130 Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Sermon Series: The Blessing of Adversity
Today’s Theme: Meet the Challenges of Dark Days
I was in the middle of my second-ever long-distance backpacking trip, hiking 40 miles through the mountains of central Pennsylvania. If you’ve never been there, the mountains in that part of the country tend to form long ridge lines with steep sides and flat narrow tops. They don’t get real high and pointy like the Rockies out west, but they are quite rugged, covered in rocks and forest. We were on our third mountain of the day, it was day two--hot and humid--and we had just come to the top of a steep climb. We had a very brief time on top of the mountain and now it was time for an even steeper descent, and I had fallen way behind my two buddies, Brian and Lars. I couldn’t see them or hear them anymore, they had gotten so far ahead of me. My backpack was too heavy, my shirt was soaked through with sweat, my knees were killing me, and the only sound I could hear was the voice in my head saying “I can’t make it.” I started thinking of alternatives: I could try rolling my backpack down the mountain; but then I would lose or destroy all my gear in the process. I could try camping on the mountaintop for the night; but then I would run out of water, and Brian and Lars would wonder what happened to me, and I couldn’t do that to them.
I had only one choice: keep going and endure the pain, until finally I limped into the campground at a remote state park known as Poe Paddy: tucked into a wooded valley, surrounded by mountains, with a pristine trout stream running through it. I found my buddies and as we pitched our tents a neighboring family wandered over to us. They said, “Hey, we have plenty of extra food. Would you like some ice cold Coca-Cola? Would you like some grilled sausages?” After putting my body through hell, I now felt like I was being welcomed into heaven. This was just the encouragement we needed to find new life and keep going. And before we left the next morning, they even fed us pancakes.
Have you ever felt like giving up? Has life ever thrown you one trial after another? A hardship, then a difficulty, then a setback, until you just lost hope? I think most of us have been there at one time or another. What did you need to keep going?
We’ve all just been through a year of challenging dark days with very few easy answers to the problems we’ve been facing--and it’s not just us, but the whole world. Even as we’ve each done our part to help one another, and to protect the vulnerable, and to support struggling people and businesses and organizations, and even as we’ve tried to stay safe and healthy ourselves, I know that many of us are feeling exhausted by it all, tired of the limitations we’ve lived with; we’re ready to be done. And we are getting closer every day--I can hardly believe it’s been a year of this pandemic already. But we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel--we’re almost there, but it’s still hard. I think many of us, at least once and probably a lot more times during this past year, have looked up to God and prayed: “How am I going to make it?”
When we turn to the Word of God, we find God’s promises for us when we are going through the challenges of dark days: God knows how to bring blessings out of life’s dark seasons. We worship a crucified God who has defeated death itself by bursting forth from a sealed tomb. We know a God who knows how to somehow find ways to bring good out of anything!
As much as we don’t want them, dark days are a natural part of life. We hear this expressed poetically by Job in today’s first reading. Job had lost everything good in life. He laments the frailty of human life, and mourns that he’s lost his sense of hope. Job isn’t the only one, though--this kind of thing could happen to any of us. But when it does, we can learn from the wisdom of Job--and surrender control of our lives to God. To say, “I can’t do this on my own, but I can put myself in God’s hands, trusting that Christ can raise me to new life.”
One of the best ways I know of expressing how to surrender control of my life to God is in the words of Psalm 130--this Psalm is a good starting point for prayer. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. With you is forgiveness. I wait for you, O Lord. My soul waits; for with you there is steadfast love. In your Word is my hope.” This is a prayer of humility. When you get to the point of being humbled, of having a humble heart before the Lord, of leaning not on your own limited human power but instead on God’s eternal power--that’s when you can “let go and let God.” That’s when you can say, “God, I don’t know what to do. But you know what I truly need. So I put it all in your hands.” This is the kind of prayer that opens our hearts to the presence of God all around us--acknowledging that we can’t control God, but that God can transform us, and form us in the way of Jesus.
We see a rather strange example of this in today’s gospel reading--the story of Jesus driving the moneychangers out of the temple. This “angry side” of Jesus doesn’t seem like a very prayerful attitude. But being angry--in and of itself--is not sinful. There are some things that it’s appropriate to be angry about. If you see injustice, if you see someone being harmed--you just might get angry about it. The question is then, “what do you do with your anger?” How can you channel it in a productive way that will help others, not hurt them.
And this is what Jesus was up to, when he drove the moneychangers out of the Temple, and poured out their coins, and overturned their tables. This was at the time of preparation for the Passover. People were supposed to be purifying themselves, but instead they were turning their faith into a commodity that could be bought and sold. It wasn’t the sacrifices themselves that were the problem, but that the focus in the temple had shifted away from God and prayer, and toward wealth and profit. It reminds me of a saying I’ve heard: Problems come when we love things and use people. We need to love people and use things. This is a temptation that Jesus was addressing in the Temple, and it’s something that can happen in any church, any faith community, any religious organization. And in the temple as Jesus found it, people were loving things and using people. So Jesus was trying to get them to remember the whole point of all their sacrifices and worship: God is the point. Help people connect with God. Make that your priority, Jesus is trying to teach us.
The way you get back to that true point is by turning to the true nature of prayer. Prayer is the way God fills us with the hope we need to keep on going. Prayer means making space for God in your heart, and mind, and soul each day--so that you can allow Christ to have full access to your life. Prayer means talking to God, it means handing over to Christ the good and the bad, all your worries and stress and sins--and also being still enough to just listen. To wait patiently for the Lord. Sometimes you don’t even need words to pray--all you need is an open heart. Prayer teaches us that God is always all around us, and that the Spirit of the living Christ is active within us, even when we don’t realize it. So, prayer is how we begin to meet the challenges of dark days. Amen.