Coming to Faith

Coming to Faith

John 20:19-31[1]

Faith is not easy. It never has been. And it’s certainly not easy in this day and time. In a skeptical world that demands proof of just about everything, faith is something impossible to prove. How do you prove something so inward, so personal, and so mysterious? It can seem nearly impossible to get a firm grip on faith.[2] Living a life of faith can leave you feeling like you’re hanging in mid-air at the end of a rope, and you have no idea what that rope may be attached to![3] After all, how can we ever be certain about things like salvation, the afterlife, and eternal destiny? Those are matters of faith. The plain truth is that faith is not easy. It never has been!

Yet we live in a time when many of us want “easy” answers to all our questions. Especially our questions about faith. I’ve never found that helpful. For me, the questions I’ve had about faith have always been as real as my faith itself. In fact, I would say my questions have played just as significant a role in shaping my faith as anything else. But it’s not easy to face those questions. In fact, it can be positively frightening. It can leave you wondering whether there’s some “line” out there you may cross over in the process of asking your questions, and find yourself lost and alone, without a hope or a prayer left in the world! Whether we want it to be so or not, faith simply is not easy. It never has been!

I believe our Gospel lesson for today addresses this issue. It recounts the familiar story about “Doubting Thomas.” In our lesson, Thomas, one of Jesus’ hand-picked apostles, refused to believe that Jesus was alive after his death on the cross. Refused to believe! No matter what the others told him, he simply would not accept it. Unfortunately, this incident earned him the nickname “Doubting Thomas.” As a matter of fact, when Jesus addressed Thomas, saying, “Do not doubt, but believe” (Jn. 20:27), the word translated “doubt” should probably be rendered as “faithless.” Jesus told him, “Do not be faithless, but believe.” I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Thomas found that having faith in the resurrection of Jesus wasn’t easy for him, at least at first!

But in fact, if you look at the way Thomas is depicted in John’s Gospel, he was by no means “faithless” in his relationship with Jesus. Quite the opposite. When it became clear that Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem to die, it was Thomas who said to the others, “let us go, that we may die with him” (Jn. 11:16). That doesn’t sound much like Thomas was “faithless.” And it’s important to note that Thomas was absent the first time Jesus appeared to the apostles. While the others were hiding in fear behind locked doors, Thomas was out there somewhere. We don’t really know where he was or what he was doing, but he wasn’t hiding with the others!

I think it’s entirely appropriate for us to wonder why Thomas didn’t believe the report that Jesus was alive. I think it’s appropriate to wonder whether he may have had a good reason for that! I wonder whether it was his devotion to Jesus that made the pain of his death hard for Thomas to move past. I also wonder whether it was because he’d seen some of the others falter in their faith, especially Peter who had denied knowing Jesus, and he wasn’t prepared to rely on their word alone. What Thomas said was, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (Jn 20:25). Thomas, one of Jesus’ hand-picked apostles, refused to believe!

 Whatever the reason for Thomas’ “doubts,” a week later Jesus appeared to them again. This time Thomas was there, and Jesus invited him to see for himself that what the others had said was indeed true. When Jesus appeared to them, he let Thomas see the wounds he still bore on his body. He invited Thomas to do just exactly what he said he would need to do to believe: he invited touch Jesus’ wounds. Jesus overcame Thomas’ apparent “faithlessness.” And in response, Thomas made one of the strongest confessions of faith contained in the Bible: he called Jesus “My Lord and my God!” (Jn. 20:28).

It’s a fair question to ask what it takes to convince people in this day and time to put their faith in the message we proclaim: that Jesus died and rose again to bring us all new life. I don’t pretend to be able to answer every question we might ask about how that was even possible. But I think that our questions can help us come to faith. Asking questions can help us make the faith that we have been taught by others into our own faith. Many of us here today know by experience that pursuing our questions can be the path to deeper faith. It’s not an easy journey to take, but coming to faith never has been easy.

I would have to say that the context in which you set out on this journey makes all the difference in where you wind up. Having the support and encouragement of a family and a faith community plays a crucial role. We have role models who have shown us how faith has made a difference in their lives. Our role models didn’t have answers to every question. But if you’re like me, those role models had a faith that was real. By living out their faith in the push and pull of life, they shaped my faith and encouraged me to continue the journey. Our families and our faith community give us all the support we need to continue coming to a faith that is real for us.

Faith is not easy. The truth is that it never has been easy. I would say faith boils down to a choice: choosing to look at life from the point of view that God’s love creates at least the “possibility of goodness” in this world.[4] In some respects, we only find faith by having faith. It’s very much like setting out on a journey without even knowing where you’re going, like Abraham and Sarah did. Today is the day when we celebrate a group of our students who are in a sense “setting out” on their faith journey. I would be shocked if they all didn’t still have questions. Maybe a lot of questions. Because this isn’t the end of the journey for them. It’s another step along the way. Just like them, “coming to faith” is something we’re all continually called to do. As we face challenges and opportunities that we could never have expected, if we are going to respond with a faith that is both true to life and true to who we are, we’ll need the courage to wrestle with our questions honestly. As we do that, as we continue the journey of faith, life will always challenge us to “come to faith” in new ways. Because faith is a journey, it’s not going to be easy. But it’s always worth it.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/27/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 15, where he speaks of faith as longing for “a reality beyond reality.”

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Dogmatics 2.1:159, where he describes faith as feeling as if we are “suspended and hanging without ground under our feet.”

[4] Cf. Keith Ward, God: A Guide for the Perplexed, 209, where he defines faith as “committing ourselves to the continual possibility of goodness.”

Because He Lives

Because He Lives

Luke 24:1-12[1]

Today is the day when we celebrate one of the most important events in our faith: after Jesus gave his life for us all, God raised him from the dead on the third day. But, let’s face it, that first Easter Sunday happened a long, long time ago. And, truth be told, for most of us it’s something we only talk about in church. It’s not really something that impacts our lives on a daily basis. We may view faith as something that relates to our “eternal destiny.” But for many of us that feels like a future so remote that we may not really give it much thought. There are just so many other things going on in our lives that seem so much more pressing. Some of us may even wonder how something that happened so long ago and so far away could have much to do with our “real lives” right here and right now.

Of course, there are many of us who look to Jesus as an example for our lives on a daily basis. We find meaning in his teachings about how to live and how to love. But that doesn’t distinguish Jesus from any of the other great teachers throughout the ages. And the hard truth of this world is that from a certain point of view you could say it hasn’t really made much of a difference. There are plenty of people in this world who are still caught in vicious circles of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair. Right now, millions of people, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of human beings are at the mercy of those who put their faith in ideas like “might makes right.” In the face of all that, “love your enemies” can feel pretty empty.

But I believe that our Gospel lesson for today points us in a different direction—toward a hope that never dies, a hope for new life that makes a difference right here and right now. The story of the women discovering that Jesus’ tomb was empty doesn’t necessarily in and of itself prove anything. But there is more to it than just the empty tomb. Whatever you may think about “angels,” the gist of their message is couched in the question, “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead?” The point of the question is to make it clear that the one they thought was lying dead in a cemetery is actually “the Living One.”

Now, to fully appreciate this, we need to look at the background of that phrase in the Bible. Throughout the Bible, God is “the Living One.” He is the one who gives life to all creation, including those of us who are living and breathing here today. In contrast to the idols made of wood and stone and precious metals, the “Living” God is the one who is able to make a difference in people’s lives here and now. I’ll admit that doesn’t always happen the way we expect, but I will also insist that the God who is “the Living One” shows up in our lives in surprising ways. I don’t know about you, but in my experience, those surprises usually come at just the right time.

So when the angels at the empty tomb call Jesus “the Living One,” the idea is more than just a dead man who has come back to life. Rather, the idea is that Jesus again shares God’s own life. And the first Christians became convinced that this was true not primarily because of the empty tomb or the angels’ message, but because they encountered Jesus as “the Living One” personally. Those encounters made all the difference in the world for them. Instead of a tragedy that stole all hope away, the cross was transformed into good news. The cross shows us not the heartbreaking end of a failed would-be religious leader, but rather the suffering love of the God-who-is-always-with-us and the God-who-is-always-for-us. It shows us that not even death can prevent God’s love from claiming us all.

But more than that, encountering the risen Lord Jesus as “the Living One” points us to the power of God to bring new life even from death. That’s not just something that applied to Jesus all those centuries ago. It’s a promise that the goal toward which God has been working and continues to work even now is a whole new creation. Although it’s a pretty big concept to try to wrap your head around, that’s precisely the promise of Easter. It’s a part of God’s “plan” that I alluded to in our Good Friday service the other night. God’s plan is not only that Jesus would die to absorb all the vicious circles of sin and death into himself. God’s plan also includes raising Jesus from the dead, and in so doing restoring everything in all creation. I believe the plan has always been to return all of creation to the way it was intended to be in the first place.

As our affirmation of faith for today puts it, Jesus’ resurrection brings the promise of “a new world … in which God is really honored as God, human beings are truly loving, and God will … make all things right on earth.”[2] That may sound too good to be true, but it’s a theme that runs through the entire Bible. At the end of the book of Revelation, God declares “now I am making everything new” (Rev. 21:5). And we see it in the way the Bible ends where it began: with a whole new garden, on a whole new earth, in a wholly renewed creation. There the river of the water of life is available freely to all who are thirsty. There the tree of life is available to all, and its “leaves” are for “healing” all the nations. That’s where the Bible ends, where it began!

And what makes all this more than just “pie in the sky” wishful thinking is that God raised Jesus from the dead. In Jesus, “the Living One,” God’s new creation already breaks into this world. It changes our world by promising that all the pain and suffering will be turned into good, and all the death and destruction will be changed into new life. I know it seems too good to be true. But that’s the promise of what happened on that first Easter! It still has the power to change our lives right here and right now. One way it does that is the assurance that Jesus “the Living One” is with us gives us courage to face the present challenges of our lives. But more than that, as “the Living One,” Jesus points us to the final hope that we will all share the life of God with him in the end. We have this hope because Jesus is “the Living One.” Or, to borrow a phrase from the hymn, we have this hope “because he lives” in our hearts even now.

Without Jesus “the Living One” and the hope we have in him, life in this world can seem empty. When all you can see is the vicious circles of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair, there’s not much left to give life meaning. But the fact that Jesus overcame even death to become “the Living One” points us to the promise that nothing, not even death itself, can separate us from the hope we have through him. Because Jesus lives even now, the new life that raised him from the dead spreads from him to everyone who encounters him. And as we encounter the “Living One,” we each take our place and do our part in spreading that new life throughout all creation until finally God makes the whole world new again!

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/20/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Adapted from “The Study Catechism: Full Version,” Approved by the 210th General Assembly (1998), qq 85, 87, 88.

Forsaken?

 Forsaken?

Psalm 22[1]

On Sunday we talked about the prayer that Luke’s Gospel places on Jesus’ lips as he was dying: “into your hands I commend my spirit” (Ps 31:5). I mentioned how hard it is for us to understand that as a prayer entrusting all of life into God’s hands because it has become associated with Jesus’ death. Our Psalm for this evening, Psalm 22, is equally difficult for us to hear for the same reason. Matthew and Mark recount Jesus’ final cry with the words of Psalm 22: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 26:6; Mk 15:34). They actually report variations of the Aramaic words Jesus used: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” But because Matthew and Mark associated those words with Jesus’ death, we tend to hear them as a cry of desperation, not a cry of faith.

I’ve chosen this as the final Psalm in our series on “Faith in the Psalms” for this very reason. Because while the cry, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” in Psalm 22 clearly express the anguish of the psalm-singer, it is not a cry of desperation, but most definitely one of faith. The same person who asks at the outset, “why have you forsaken me?” can also affirm that God “has not forgotten those who are hurting. He has not turned away from their suffering. He has not turned his face away from them. He has listened to their cry for help” (adapted from Ps 22:24, NIRV). And yet, I think that initial cry, “why have you forsaken me?” haunts us all at times. We wonder whether God might actually abandon us in our time of greatest need.

Again, I would say that fear is actually engendered by the way we’ve heard Jesus’ cry from the cross. The prospect that God abandoned Jesus at the moment when he fulfilled his commitment to God’s purpose most completely is hard for us to process. I think Jesus knew he had to give up his life. And yet he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” I think Jesus trusted that God would raise him from the dead. And yet he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” What troubles us about all this is the question where God was while Jesus was hanging on the cross and crying out in anguish.

I know the standard response: “God had to turn away because Jesus took all the sin of the world on himself, and God cannot look upon sin.” That just doesn’t cut it. It never has for me. How can we find any meaning in the promise elsewhere in Scripture that “I will never abandon you” (Dt 31:6; Josh 1:5; Heb 13:5) if God abandoned Jesus on the cross? And yet the question still haunts us: where was God during the awful silence that followed Jesus’ prayer, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”? It is a prayer after all, addressed to God. Jesus wasn’t just acting out some sort of elaborate play. This was the real thing. And when the agony of the cross overwhelmed him, Jesus cried out one of the most heartbreaking prayers of the Bible. And God’s response was … ? Actually that’s precisely the question. What was God’s response? Did God really forsake Jesus on the cross?

Maybe we’ve been looking at this in the wrong way all along. We tend to equate silence with abandonment. But maybe that’s not what’s going on at all. Sometimes we’re silent with those who are suffering because we’re suffering with them. I believe that’s where God was; rather than abandoning Jesus, God was right there, experiencing all the anguish that heartbreaking prayer expresses.[2] God was silent because God was suffering with Jesus. To some of us it might seem even more deeply unsettling that God would allow himself to become so apparently powerless and weak.

Again, I think it depends on how we look at it. The Scriptures tell the story of how, time and again, God reveals his power in precisely in weakness.[3] This is a mystery as deep and as hard to explain as any in the Bible. In the moment when Jesus uttered that heart-rending cry, God made it clear once and for all that his suffering has become our redemption, that his apparent weakness was actually his powerful love transforming all creation. Yet it also communicates the absolutely essential truth that God suffers with us. Especially when God is silent. Especially when we may think God has abandoned us! In fact, I would say that’s one of the lessons of Psalm 22: God is with all who suffer. He never abandons anyone. And his presence with us, his support for us is so real that God actually suffers with us when we’re suffering. I think that’s what Jesus’ cry on the cross teaches us. I think that’s also what Psalm 22 teaches us.

I think it’s also important, however, to notice that the psalm-singer expresses his faith in God in the form of a question. And it’s certainly not a question we might use in prayer to God! It has an edge on it: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest” (Ps. 22:1-2). That’s quite a question to put to God in prayer! Most of us probably wouldn’t feel comfortable being that “in your face” with God. But not only did the psalm-singer ask that question, so did Jesus! And they’re not the only ones. Prophets and sages and spiritual guides from Bible times to the present day have expressed their faith in God by asking what we might consider to be “impolite” or maybe even “irreverent” questions. It might seem like “expressing faith” and asking “irreverent” questions of God couldn’t possibly go together. But I think that’s one of the lessons of Psalm 22: when we feel abandoned by God and we wonder where God is, it doesn’t threaten God at all to be that honest with him in our suffering!

But the psalm-singer discovered what Jesus knew when he made that cry: God is with all who suffer. Prophets and sages and spiritual guides throughout the ages have discovered the same truth: God is the one who’s on the side of those who suffer, all who suffer. Again, the psalm-singer says it this way: God “has not forgotten those who are hurting. He has not turned away from their suffering. He has not turned his face away from them. He has listened to their cry for help” (Ps 22:24).[4] I particularly like the way Gene Peterson puts it in The Message: “He has never let you down, never looked the other way when you were being kicked around. He has never wandered off to do his own thing; he has been right there, listening.” And I would add: “and suffering every bit as much as you, maybe even more”!

As we bring our discussion of “Faith in the Psalms” to a conclusion, it seems to me one of the most important lessons for us to learn is that God is always “God-who-is-with-us.” Most particularly when we are suffering. God is always the one who is giving us the strength to go on, always the one who is comforting us in our sorrows, always the one who raises us up when we fall, always the one who hears our every cry for help. That is the lesson of the Psalms. God is the one who never abandons us, even and especially in the worst of the pain we may have to undergo in this life. And his presence with us, his support for us is so real that God actually suffers with us. The lesson of the cry that opens this Psalm, the lesson of Jesus’ cry from the cross, is that we are never, ever forsaken by God!

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm Phd on 4/17/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] In several of Jürgen Moltmann’s works he holds in tension the idea that Jesus died a “God-forsaken” death together with the idea that Jesus was never more closely aligned with God’s will than when he died on the cross. He resolves this tension in different ways in several of his works, but in The Way of Jesus Christ, 173, he says that far from being unconcerned about what was happening, far from abandoning his Son, “in the surrender of the Son the Father surrenders himself too.”

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV:244-48. Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 205: “God is not greater that he is in this humiliation.  God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender.  God is not more powerful than he is in this helplessness.  God is not more divine than he is in this humanity.”

[4] Cf. J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters Bible IV: 764: “The affliction is still very real, but the affliction itself has somehow become an answer (v. 21b). What the psalmist now affirms is that God is present with the afflicted.”

Before We Know To Ask

Before We Know to Ask

Psalm 31:1-5, 9-16[1]

Trust is a precious commodity these days. It seems the more divided we become as a people, the less we’re willing to risk trusting anyone. Many of us live by the motto, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” We’re just wired that way. Self-reliance has been a virtue for generations, since long before Emerson wrote an essay about it.[2] We believe in pulling ourselves up by our own “bootstraps.” And that can make it difficult to trust—really trust—anyone. After all, making the choice to trust someone, anyone, means taking the risk that our trust will be broken. It’s simply one of the costs of living fully. It’s much easier to withdraw into our protective shell and isolate from anyone who might hurt us in any way. But if we want to experience the full spectrum of what it means to live this human life, we’ll have to learn to trust.

I think our general attitude about trusting anybody for anything rubs off on our ability to trust God. As we’ve seen in our journey through the Psalms during Lent, the psalm-singers framed trusting God as a matter of relying on God wholly and completely for every aspect of our lives. That cuts directly against the grain of our self-reliance. From my perspective, trusting God means acknowledging that there’s nothing we can do to come up with a better version of our past. It means accepting our lives just as they are in the present moment. And it means entrusting our future entirely into God’s hands. It’s hard to do that when we’re busy trying to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Even and especially when we can’t even find any straps to pull ourselves up by, or when we’ve lost the strength to even take hold of the straps, let alone pull them up.

I believe our Psalm for today addresses this question of trusting God with every aspect of life. It may be difficult to hear that, however. Because Luke’s Gospel has Jesus cry out, “Into your hands I commend my spirit” as his dying breath (Lk 23:46), we tend to hear Psalm 31 as a “prayer for the dying.” We think that the Psalm is about giving up our “spirit” into God’s hands at death. But the prayer in Psalm 31 is better translated, “Into your hands I commit my very life,” as in the New International Reader’s Version we used in worship today. I’ve mentioned before that the Hebrew word translated “spirit” in the Psalm means more than we may think. It refers to one’s whole existence, heart and mind, body and soul. It’s like the way we use the word “self.” Entrusting one’s very “self” to God in this way is not a prayer for dying, but rather a prayer for living.

 In Psalm 31, the psalm-singer recalls all the hardships of life, including the “frenemies” who sought to undo him, along with all the anxiety and sorrow that caused.[3] As a result of the anguish he had borne, the psalm-singer could say, “I am as forgotten as a dead man” (cf. Ps. 31:12, TEV). He likens himself to so much “broken pottery.” And yet, in spite of all the pain he’s had to endure, at the end of the day he summed up his trust in God by saying, “my times are in your hand” (Ps. 31:15). Again, this points us in the direction that the Psalm is a “life-prayer.” In this song, the psalm-singer expresses his faith in terms of relying on God wholly and completely for all of life.

Another reason for seeing Psalm 31 as a “life-prayer” is because the psalm-singer expresses his confidence in the “faithful God.” That’s the second part of the prayer: “Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God” (Ps. 31:5, NRSV). In Hebrew the idea of God as the “faithful God” is literally worded, “the God of truth” (el-emeth). One could also translate this as “the God of trustworthiness.” This phrase points us to the one whose very character is defined by dependability. The psalm-singer entrusts his entire life to “the God who can be relied on … because [God] is true to himself.”[4] Being dependable, being reliable, being trustworthy in relationship to us all is what it means for God to be true to himself. The psalm-singer shows his confidence in the God who is always faithful by essentially praying, “it is up to you, God, what becomes of me, and I am willing to have it so.”[5]  

As we’re learning about “Faith in the Psalms” during Lent this year, I think that may be the foundation for everything else. To be sure, like the rest of the Bible, faith has different facets in the Psalms. Sometimes we learn faith by hearing about all the ways God was faithful to people in the past. Sometimes we learn faith from their affirmations about God, like “God’s love never fails.” And sometimes we learn faith by following the example of those who entrusted their lives wholly and completely to God. When we take that step of faith, we’re not just engaged in so much wishful thinking. In the Psalms, faith is based on the firm foundation that God’s love for us never fails. And through the stories of those who entrusted their lives to him, God has demonstrated time and again that he is the God we can rely on. More than that, we have our own experiences of God being there for us, through good times and bad times. Again and again, God has been true to himself by being true to us. God does this simply because that’s who God is. God is the “faithful God” in whose hands we can “entrust” our “times,” all our times, past, present, and future.

If you’ve been in worship here for a while, and if you’ve been paying attention, it’s likely you recognized the title of my sermon for today, “Before We Know to Ask.” It’s a phrase I’ve used every week in my pastoral prayer since before I came here over ten years ago. I don’t use that phrase because it’s something I just memorized or it’s an “easy” way to close my prayer. I composed that phrase years ago as a way of concluding my prayer with the kind of trust this Psalm expresses. It’s a way of formulating in words that I hope we can all relate to the faith that the psalm-singers encourage us to embrace. It’s the faith that God always shows us grace, mercy, and love in little ways every day. Theologians call it God’s “prevenient grace.” I know that’s not likely a phrase you’re familiar with. One of the things I love about the Reformed Christian tradition to which we in the Presbyterian Church belong is that we believe God’s grace is always “prevenient.” That means it always precedes anything we might do. A theology of grace teaches us that God is constantly at work in all our lives, even and especially when we’re not aware of it. God is “for us” in many more ways that we can know simply because that’s what it means for God to be true to himself. And God’s unfailing love always precedes our asking or even knowing what to ask for!

Our faith is not about “pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps”! Our faith teaches us to recognize that we don’t have any bootstraps strong enough to actually pull ourselves up at all. Every grace, every mercy, all the goodness in our lives comes as a gift from God’s love. Our faith is not about relying on ourselves for every little thing. It’s about acknowledging that there’s nothing we can do to come up with a better version of our past. It’s about accepting our lives just as they are in the present moment. And it’s about entrusting our future entirely into God’s hands. We do that when we follow the psalm-singer’s example and entrust our “times,” all the times of our lives, into God’s hands. We do that when we live out the faith that the God whose essential character is reliable, trustworthy, and faithful will bring grace, mercy and love into our lives before we even know to ask.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/13/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series, 1841; accessed at https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/selfreliance.html

[3] Most modern versions follow the (Greek) Septuagint version which reads “misery” in v. 10 rather than “iniquity” in the Hebrew text (and KJV, ASV, NASB, ESV, CEV, NET, NLT [2015; NLT 1996 has “misery”]; contrast GNV, “pain”).  Cf. H.-J. Kraus, Psalms 1-59, 360; Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50, 258.

[4] James L. Mays, Psalms, 143; cf. also Kraus, Psalms 1-59, 363, who renders it “the faithful, dependable God.” He also adds (p. 365), “The truth of God is the confirmation of [God’s] grace and faithfulness.”  See further, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.1:459-60, where he relates this to the doctrine of God’s “simplicity,” or the idea that God is entirely true to himself when God relates to us with love, mercy, grace, and patience. God does so because God has chosen to do so, and because God always faithful to God’s self. It is a matter of “the unity of grace and holiness, mercy and righteousness, patience and wisdom, in the total work of His love” (ibid, 460).

[5] This is Mays’ interpretation of “into your hands I commit my spirit.”  Cf. Mays, Psalms, 144.

Tears and Joy

 Tears and Joy

Psalm 126[1]

Like many of you, I grew up in the days of the “Jesus movement.” Preachers like Billy Graham were taking advantage of the still relatively new technology of Television to preach the gospel to huge audiences. They called people to faith in Jesus in order to be “born again” and to receive “abundant life.” Of course, that language was taken straight from the Bible. But while the promise of “abundant life” here and now is true to the Bible, the way it was presented didn’t always take into consideration the realities of life. I wrestled for years trying to understand what “abundant life” was supposed to mean for people who carried deep and very real scars from the wounds that had been inflicted on them, sometimes in early childhood. The “reality” just didn’t seem to live up to the “hype.”

I think what I’ve learned over the years is that a lot of people got caught up in the enthusiasm of the time. Musicals like “Godspell” presented faith as something mainly positive. New songs (which are now “old favorites”) called people to follow Christ with joy. It was all very upbeat. But even the relatively upbeat “Godspell” had some features that were meant to call attention to the tensions of faith. Jesus’ followers are meant to be dressed like clowns at the beginning of the play. Over the course of the story, they eventually trade their “false” costumes for a more realistic appearance. It’s meant to symbolize the fact that the changes Jesus calls us to make in order to follow him don’t always come easily, and they can take time.

We’re decades removed from the “Jesus movement.” But there are still plenty of people who present the change of life that faith in Jesus calls us to as something that happens relatively quickly and easily. But that simply has not been my experience. The troubles of this life continue in the midst of the peace, hope, and joy we experience through our faith. The “abundant life” that Jesus promised to those who follow him doesn’t magically happen overnight. The new life God offers us through faith is something that takes root in our lives and changes us very slowly.[2] So slowly that at times we are tempted to think that there’s really nothing happening at all. But when we look back over years, or even better, over decades, we can see the difference faith makes in our lives.

I think this lesson applies to the faith in the Psalms as well. As I mentioned at the outset of our journey through Lent this year, the way the Psalms speak of the joy of those who know God’s comfort, care, and relief can lead us to think that this is the “norm” for everyone all the time. But again, we have to read each Psalm as a whole, the Psalms together as a collection, and set it all in the context of the Bible’s total message. As I’ve tried to demonstrate during our journey through “Faith in the Psalms” during Lent, the joy that God’s unfailing love brings into our lives takes place in the midst of the normal sufferings and troubles of this life. Our faith doesn’t exempt us from hard times, but it gives us a resource with which to get through them.

We see that reflected in the backdrop for our Psalm today. It very likely comes from the time after the people of Israel had lost everything and had spent decades living in exile far from their homeland. At the end of that exile, the prophets promised that the God who brought the people safely out of Egypt in the past would now bring them safely through their long journey home from Babylon. The same God who made “a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” (Isa 43:16) at the Exodus promised to do something brand new: he would make a “way in the wilderness” (Isa 43:19). And the prophets promised that God would restore their lives when they returned to Jerusalem. I would imagine they kept that promise close during the long journey home.

But when they completed their journey and made it back to their own land, instead of finding the home they remembered and loved, what they found was an abandoned city in ruins. More than that, having made their dangerous journey, they found themselves in even more danger. The stories of Ezra and Nehemiah tell us how dangerous it was for the people who worked to rebuild the ruined city. Rather than the safety of home, they found themselves under attack from enemies who had taken control of the land in their absence. At one point, while working on rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem to provide them with some protection, Nehemiah had to have everybody carry their swords with them as they worked (Neh. 4:17-18)! 

It’s likely this was the context for our Psalm for today. It’s true that the psalm-singer speaks of their return from exile as a dream come true. But we know from the historical accounts that the dream took some time to realize fully. They may have come home, but they had all kinds of challenges to face. Not only did they have to fend off their enemies, but they also had to find a way to establish a reliable supply of food and water. They had their work cut out for them. And so they prayed that God would continue to “restore their fortunes” (Ps. 126:4). 

In fact, they prayed that God would work in such a way that those who went out to sow their seeds in tears would come back rejoicing in the harvest. I can imagine that those who were sowing seeds in tears may have been like farmers who have endured several bad years, and they’re planting the last of their seed stock. If they don’t get enough rain to provide a good harvest this year, they might just be finished. And so they prayed, “Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb” (Ps. 126:4). Now, the Negeb is a desert in the southern part of Israel, where there are gullies that are dry most of the year. During the rainy season they fill up with water that the farmers would use to make their crops flourish. Essentially, they’re looking at their situation, one that seemed difficult at best and dangerous at worst, and they’re putting their faith in God to provide for their needs.

What stands out to me about this Psalm is the way it portrays God’s work of restoration. We might say, “God’s work of salvation.” It’s not all joy, all the time. It doesn’t promise that God’s deliverance makes us “happy all the day.”[3] It promises us that we can trust God to see us through the tears we may have to shed in this life. But I think the key to this Psalm is that the joy and the tears go together. There are times when we find ourselves crying out to God, desperate for his help, not even able to imagine what it would look like for God to answer our prayer to “restore our fortunes” (Ps 126:4). Those are times when we express our faith through tears. There are other times when we find relief, right here and right now, and we can say with the psalm-singer, “the LORD has done amazing things for us! What joy!” (Ps 126:3).

In my experience, that perspective on what God is doing in our lives is more true to life. Yes, the hope and joy and peace that our faith brings us makes it possible for us to live in a way that can be more genuinely happy. But those times of joy are combined with times when we are doing the work of sowing seeds of faith, “planting in tears” in the hopes of one day “harvesting with shouts of joy” (Ps 126:5). While we have times when we see the fruits of our labor and rejoice, at this stage in my life I tend to believe that the “harvest” of our faith is one that takes a lifetime to realize. We continue to plant seeds of faith, hope, and love throughout our lives. The work of cultivating the “harvest” of our labor, sometimes with tears and sometimes with joy, takes our whole lives. That’s the “abundant” life we’re called to live. Not a few simple steps that lead to non-stop happiness, but rather a lifetime of doing the work of God’s kingdom, sometimes with tears and sometimes with joy. But always trusting in the God who takes our efforts and uses them for good in this world.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/6/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed., 337, where he says that “To be a Christian … is not to have arrived but to be constantly on the way,” constantly growing toward “the whole or complete humanity of Christ.”

[3] We can see this in the way the hymn “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed” was altered in the version known as “At the Cross.” The original hymn was written by Isaac Watts in 1707 to express gratitude for the way Jesus’ death on the cross helps us with our burdens. In 1885 Ralph Hudson added the refrain, “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away—it was there by faith I received my sight, and now I am happy all the day.” It was characteristic of the “revival” hymns of that time. But the refrain completely alters the tone of the hymn from one of thoughtful reflection on the gratitude we feel for what Jesus did to lift our burdens to an almost pollyannish approach to salvation that results in being “happy all the day” (in my opinion)!

The Burden Lifted

The Burden Lifted

Psalm 32[1]

If we live in a world defined by dissatisfaction, as we discussed last week, we also live in a world defined by competition. There’s probably no better time of year to talk about this. “March Madness” isn’t just about basketball. It’s a symbol of how deeply competition is drilled into our lives. In every area of our lives, from school, to work, to sports, to even the games we play for entertainment. The level of competitiveness in our world can leave us feeling like life itself is a “zero-sum game.” That’s just a fancy way of saying that somebody has to lose so that somebody else can “win.” In a tournament like “March Madness,” a whole lot of “somebodies” have to lose so that just one team can win.

I realize that this competitiveness is so much a part of our way of life that some of you may seriously ask whether there is any real alternative. We see it when more than one company has to “compete” for our business. That can be a good thing. To be sure, we also see many ways in which cooperation brings people together for mutual benefit. I think of how communities rally around a farmer who has been injured or is sick and can’t get their crops planted or harvested. But at the end of the day, when the driving force is to “win,” that means “beating the competition.”

I think that’s at least one of the reasons why the message of God’s grace gains so little traction in our culture. The idea that God’s unfailing love is unconditional, unqualified, irrevocable, and unlimited, and that it extends to everyone, everywhere regardless of who they are, where they’ve been, or what they’ve done, just doesn’t compute for us. Like everything else, we view love as something we have to “win” by outdoing others. Even many of us who sing God’s grace in church every week may try to “win” God’s love for ourselves with our morality and our religious devotion. But the very effort means we view others as the “competition.” Maybe that’s one reason why the church has lost so much spiritual credibility with so many in our day. The idea that God extends his grace and love to all people everywhere solely because that’s who God is gets lost in the drive to “outdo” others. We just cannot envision a world in which everyone “wins.” But maybe that’s part of our problem.

You might think that’s a surprising way to introduce our Psalm for today. We hear the language of “righteousness” and we think we have to “measure up” to some kind of standard. In some of the Psalms, the bar for being “righteous” is set so high it leaves us wondering who can ever reach it.[2] But that’s where the Psalm for today comes in. We discussed last week that in the Psalms being “righteous” means trusting in God completely and wholly. Our Psalm for today expands on that: the “righteous” who are “blessed” or truly “happy” are not those who by their own efforts achieve some unreachable standard of morality. Rather, the “righteous” are those who know that they are embraced by God’s love.[3] They’ve learned to be vulnerable enough to admit their pain not only to themselves, but also to God. When they do that, they know the meaning of the psalm-singer’s words: “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!” Unfortunately, we tend to hear this kind of language in terms of guilt and shame. But this Psalm isn’t about guilt or shame, it’s about grace.

This is more than just religious jargon. The psalm-singer knows by experience the pain of feeling “not good enough.” To paraphrase the ancient words of the Bible, when we try to hide that pain, it becomes a burden that crushes us. It grinds us down as long as we keep silent. Many of us may know by personal experience the suffering that comes from keeping silent about our burdens. Some things are too painful to admit, even to ourselves. That’s because we may we think we’re unworthy of love and acceptance, by God, by others, or even by ourselves. But the burdens we carry don’t disqualify us from God’s love. We’re more than our worst failure. We’re more than the labels people put on us.

The psalm-singer also speaks of the freedom that comes from honesty. The promise of the Psalm for today is that when we admit all the ways in which we feel unworthy or disqualified, we find God’s total and complete acceptance. Even the language of sin and forgiveness demonstrates this. The variety of Hebrew words for sin and forgiveness in Psalm 32 offers the promise and the hope that our all guilt and shame in all its dimensions is resolved in every way that is necessary.[4] And this total and complete acceptance is available to us just for the asking. All we have to do is open ourselves enough to admit to ourselves and to God who we are, what we’ve done, and how we feel about it. We may be able to share this burden with a trusted friend or a counseling professional. The offer of healing held out to us by God’s grace applies not only to what we’ve done, but also to the pain we may carry for what has been done to us. When we name what hurts in a safe environment, we find that we’re still loved by God. Always have been and always will be. The joy and the freedom that comes from this kind of honest vulnerability is rooted in knowing that we are accepted for who we are, now and to all eternity.

In this Psalm, as in the Psalms as a whole, the key to finding this kind of freedom to learn to trust God’s unfailing love. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Psalms are filled with testimonies of the “blessings” that come from trusting God’s unfailing love. It’s about more than just comprehending God’s love as a concept. It’s about embracing God’s love wholly and completely with our whole hearts as well as our minds, even with body and soul. It’s about entrusting all that we are and all that we will ever be to God’s care! It may be hard to wrap our heads around something that big. Maybe we need to bring it down to a level we can grasp by taking the risk of trusting a friend enough to share our deepest pain. When we do, and we find love and acceptance in the place of the rejection we feared, the burden is lifted.

More than that, this process of healing can lead us to a whole new sense of worth, value, and acceptance. When the burdens we carry are lifted by God’s unfailing love, or even by the love of a friend, we find the freedom to accept that we are accepted. We find God’s unconditional, unqualified, irrevocable, and unlimited acceptance. That’s what “grace” means.[5] It means we’re accepted by God for who we are, now and forever. Always have been and always will be. When we find this level of freedom because the burdens that may have weighed us down for years have been lifted, we’re free to live fully in the present in a way that’s grace-filled and loving. We’re free to pass on to others the acceptance we have received. It transforms us and everyone around us, as God’s unconditional love is meant to.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/30/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Psalm 15 is a great example: the psalm-singer asks a question that boils down to who may live in God’s presence, and the answer is, “Those who obey God in everything and always do what is right, whose words are true and sincere, and who do not slander others. … They always do what they promise, no matter how much it may cost” (Ps 15:2-4, GNT). I think we all tend to assume that “I could never live up to that.”

[3] J. Clinton McCann, Jr. “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters Bible IV:806, where he points out that one of the purposes of this Psalm is to demonstrate the truth that “to be righteous is not a matter of being sinless but a matter of being forgiven.”

[4] Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1–50, 266.

[5] Paul Tillich, “You are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations, 162. He says that we truly experience “grace” not by anything we decide to believe or do, but rather it’s as if “a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!’” (emphasis added). See also James L. Mays, Psalms, 146: “Calvin observed that all that the Scripture says about blessedness in other beatitudes depends on the blessedness commended here, ‘the free favor of God, by which he reconciles us to himself’ (Calvin I:526).”

 

Satisfied

 Satisfied

Psalm 63:1-8[1]

We live in a culture defined by dissatisfaction. In fact, we live in a world defined by dissatisfaction. I’m not talking about our “little world” around here. I’m talking about the great big world of all 8 billion people! In 2022, Gallup concluded a 15-year survey of people from all over the world measuring their sense of “happiness.”[2] They did over 5 million interviews, and they determined that “happiness” or “wellbeing” was based on five metrics: fulfilling work, little financial stress, great communities, good physical health, and loved ones to turn to in crisis. And their survey concluded that, in 2022 people felt “more anger, sadness, pain, worry and stress than ever before.” I don’t think that’s changed for the better. One of the reasons they offer for this situation is that most world leaders have been preoccupied with measuring income inequality. Of course, that’s important. But what the survey suggests is that the world’s leaders need to be paying much more attention to “wellbeing inequality,” or this global rise in dissatisfaction. I would say it’s all interconnected.

We don’t have to look around the world to see this for ourselves. It plays out in our lives and in our families’ lives every day. As a people we’re driven to do more, to have more, and to be more. We’re obsessed with perfection. All we have to do to verify that is open any of our social media accounts. We tend to want to put on the façade of “perfection” in the version of ourselves we present on Facebook or Instagram. But what all the pictures are hiding is the fundamental sense of inadequacy we feel. Not everyone posts out of insecurity, but the constant stream of “perfection” we scroll through can convince us we’re not “enough.” When that happens, it’s likely that we’re stuck in the rut of measuring our worth solely by external means. Living in the “right” neighborhood. Having all the “right” friends. Driving the “right” car. But all too often, what all this “striving” leads to is growing depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. And it leaves us incapable of any real contentment with what we have, where we are in life, or who we have become. But the wisdom of the ages has taught us time and again that it is precisely through that kind of contentment that we find lasting happiness.

Our Psalm lesson addresses this issue of where happiness is to be found. In fact, it’s one of the fundamental themes in the Psalms. We find it in the psalm-singers’ use of the language of “blessing.” It’s the first word of the first Psalm, and the idea of a life that is “blessed” resonates throughout the Psalms, echoing some 26 times. And the gist of what the psalm-singers have to say about “blessing” or happiness is that it “derives from living in complete dependence upon God.”[3] As we discussed in a different light last week, the Psalms clearly emphasize that this “blessing” or happiness is something we experience in the present. It happens right here and right now, even and especially in the midst of hard times. The reason for the ability to find “blessing” or happiness in the present is because of the confidence we have that it is the LORD who reigns over all things with “unfailing love,” and with justice that promotes peace and freedom for all peoples everywhere.

We find this general perspective reflected in our Psalm for today, even though it doesn’t begin in a way that sounds “blessed” or happy. Rather, the psalm-singer is so weary with longing for God’s help that he can liken his present experience to living in a “parched and weary land where there is no water” (Ps 63:1, NLT)! Even though he had worn himself out with looking for God’s deliverance, the psalm-singer had a resource in the past experiences of deliverance not only in the life of the people of Israel, but also in his own life. As he looks back over that history, he says, “I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory” (Ps 63:2). And the display of “power and glory” that he recalls, the reminder that despite it all God does indeed “reign,” is defined by remembering that God has always been true to his promise to show “unfailing love” (Ps 63:3).

The way in which the Hebrew Bible presents this kind of “blessedness,” this promise of happiness, is with the language of being “satisfied” as if one had just finished a fabulous feast (Ps 63:4). In fact, the idea that God’s “blessing,” or even God’s “deliverance” is to be found precisely in being satisfied with more than enough food echoes throughout the Psalms and the Hebrew Bible itself.[4] We heard it in our lesson from the book of the Prophet Isaiah as well: “Come, all you who are thirsty. Come and drink the water I offer to you. You who do not have any money, come. Buy and eat the grain I give you. Come and buy wine and milk. You will not have to pay anything for it. Why spend money on what is not food? Why work for what does not satisfy you? Listen carefully to me. Then you will eat what is good. You will enjoy the richest food there is” (Isa 55:1-2 NIRV). Joyful feasting is a recurring image in the Bible for the way God satisfies us with his love.

The key to finding this kind of satisfaction in life, come what may, is to learn to trust God’s unfailing love. As I mentioned earlier, the way the psalm-singer saw God’s “power and glory” was through God’s faithful exercise of unfailing love. So much so that he can say, “Your unfailing love is better than life itself” (Ps 63:3, NLT). I think this is the point of the psalm: we find satisfaction in life by trusting God to be faithful to show us his “unfailing love” right here and right now, through it all. To see that, however, we have to do what the psalm-singer did. We have to look back over the course of our lives and recall all the ways that God has done that in the past.

It may take some doing to adjust our focus to see that, especially when we’re going through hard times. In those times our experience may be like that of the psalm-singer. We may search for God and feel only silence. And we may continue the search so long that we feel worn out. But like the psalm-singer, when we continue to seek out the God we have known as our deliverer before, we find God’s unfailing love at work even in the midst of the pain. This kind of faith isn’t a “quick fix.” The psalm-singers knew what it was to suffer and to wonder where God was. But they kept looking back over the course of their lives. And as they did so they saw again all the ways God had been faithful to keep his promise of unfailing love.[5] That invitation is open to us as well. When we continue that search in our lives, in my experience we usually find ourselves at some point able to say with the psalm-singer, “You satisfy me more than the richest feast” (Psalm 63:5, NLT). People can find joy in many ways, as it should be, but this psalm invites us to a deeper joy that’s rooted in the God whose love for us is better than life itself. We can be satisfied when we remember that God has been our help in ages past, and that same God will be our hope for years to come.[6]  

We live in a world defined by dissatisfaction. In our culture, I wonder whether the narrative that fuels that dissatisfaction isn’t the myth of the “American Dream.” We should be able to do better and have more than our parents, and our children should be able to do better and have more than us. But the realities of our economy and our society make it clear that narrative may actually drive us to be deeply dissatisfied with our lives as they are. What if we turned the narrative around and learned to be truly content with what we have? Can you imagine a world in which we were more concerned about communities thriving together than we were with outdoing our neighbors? Can you imagine a world in which we’re more interested in lifting up all those who are broken, or hurting, or displaced, and offering them what they need rather than being so obsessed with getting everything we want. I think that would be a world filled with people who are happier, more content, and truly blessed. I think that would be a world full of people who know what it means to be satisfied. That vision of the world, one where we seek to lift one another up rather than beating others down, might sound like fantasy. But through God’s unfailing love, the dream becomes reality right here and right now.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm.  A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/23/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Jon Clifton, “The Global Rise of Unhappiness,” Sept 15, 2022, accessed at https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/401216/global-rise-unhappiness.aspx on 20 Mar 2025.

[3] J. Clinton McCann, Jr. “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters Bible IV:666.

[4] In the Psalms: Ps 22:27; 37:19; 81:17; 103:5; 104:28; 107:9; 132:15; 145:16 (“every living thing”!); 147:14.

[5] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed., 183: “the Christian doctrine of providence is not based on what we can figure out for ourselves from our own experience or observation of the world, balancing evidence for and against faith in God. It is a Christian doctrine based on what scripture tells us about the presence and work of God in the story of ancient Israel and above all in Jesus Christ” (emphasis original).

[6] McCann, “Psalms,” NIB IV:667: “To be happy is to entrust one’s whole self, existence, and future to God.” Cf. also Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 184: “Remembering the past gives hope for the future. Again and again the psalmist expresses his confidence that the God who has been present to help, protect, liberate, and save will do it again. The memory of the powerful love and justice of God in the past brings hope for the powerful love and justice of God in the future” (emphasis original).

God's Goodness in This Life

God’s Goodness in This Life

Psalm 27[1]

You’ve heard me preach enough that you know I try to focus on how our faith shapes how we live here and now. I do that on purpose, because I believe Jesus focused on that. On the other hand, I’m well aware that for centuries our faith has directed our attention away from “this life” to the promise of eternal life to come. This shift took place for a lot of reasons. Essentially about 1800 years ago the church shifted its focus from what the kingdom of God challenges us to do with our lives here and now to the promise of going to heaven when we die. Since that time, our faith has been oriented toward what happens “in the sweet by and by” rather than “I’m gonna live so God can use me”!

The psalm singers had an interesting way of doing something similar. They tended to view “danger” as something that happens to us “out here” in real life, while safety is to be found “in there” in God’s presence. And God’s presence was identified with the Temple in Jerusalem. It was there, in “the Lord’s house” that the psalm singers sought refuge. As our Psalm for today puts it, “he will shelter me in his own dwelling during troubling times” (Ps 27:5, CEB). In a sense, “locating” God’s deliverance in a particular place, like the temple in Jerusalem, was similar to thinking of salvation in terms of what happens at a particular time, after we die. There’s nothing wrong with either one of those notions, as far as they go. But to limit God’s deliverance to a particular place or time runs counter to the fundamental assurance that God is sovereign and reigns over all of life, everywhere, all the time.

One of the challenges we face when dealing with the faith of the Psalms, as we’re doing this year during the season of Lent, is that they were written before Easter. All that we’ve discussed recently about how Jesus’ death and resurrection has changed everything for everyone everywhere was only something the psalm singers might have a vague hope for. While it’s still also our “hope” in that we have only tasted the salvation God has in store for us, we do have good grounds for that hope. Jesus’ death and resurrection happened. That’s not just a matter of “wishful thinking.” We have ample testimony to Jesus’ death and resurrection, not only in the writings of the Apostles, but also in the faith of believers throughout the ages, and in our own encounters with God in our lives.

Even without knowing the hope we have in Jesus’ resurrection, the psalm singers held a hope that was just as real and just as powerful for them. Their hope was in the God who created all the heavens and the earth (Ps 121:2; 146:6). Their hope was in the God who, although he is “Lord” over even death, does not promote death, but rather as the Creator of all things “affirms life and only life.”[2] Their hope was rooted in the belief that God brought order from chaos and life from nothing. More than that, their hope was in the God who had delivered their ancestors time and time again (Ps 22:4; 78:3). Particularly, despite the fact that they continually turned away from him, God was the one who “led his people out of Egypt and guided them in the desert like a flock of sheep” (Ps 78:52, CEV). They affirmed God’s power over even the dangers that his people still faced based on the many times he had delivered them from dangers of all kinds.

The psalm singers, like the prophets, affirmed their faith in God in the face of all that would threaten them. Psalm 107 particularly recounts the many ways God delivered His people when all hope seemed lost. Psalm 107 repeats the refrain “so they cried out to the LORD in their distress, and God delivered them from their desperate circumstances” four times (Ps 107:6, 13, 19, 28, CEB). The people had centuries of testimonies behind them already at the time the Psalms were collected and made into the “prayer book” of the faithful. Their hope in God as their refuge, as their deliverer, as their safe shelter, was based on their own experience, as well as the experiences of the people as a whole.

That brings us back to our Psalm for today. The psalm singer affirms that “The LORD is my light and my salvation” and “the LORD is a fortress protecting my life” (Ps 27:1, CEB). As I’ve observed before, this affirmation of trust in God as deliverer was not made in a time when all was right with the world. Rather, this psalm singer was engaged in a desperate struggle for his very life.[3] He speaks about brutal and vicious “evildoers” who were trying to “devour” him. He describes being surrounded by a vast army determined to destroy him (Ps 27:2-3). The situation is so dire that he truly feels afraid that God might “hide his face” from him, which would mean abandoning him to his enemies.

It’s in that setting of real danger and real fear that he can affirm his faith that God will bring good, not harm, into his life: “I have sure faith that I will experience the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living” (Ps 27:13, CEB)! That’s quite an astounding statement! He’s not just saying that whatever happens in this life, he trusts God to fulfill his promises ultimately. He’s saying that he’s firmly convinced that he will see God’s goodness in this life. And the way this affirmation is worded in the Hebrew, we might say that this psalm singer had “established” or “solidified” his life by trusting in God.[4] In a very real sense, the God who Created all the heavens and the earth, the God who had been Israel’s Deliverer throughout the centuries, had become the “solid rock” on which he staked everything! In the midst of very real danger and equally real fear, the psalm singer puts his trust wholly and completely in God.[5] That’s the pattern of faith throughout the Psalms.[6] At the end of the day, that kind of faith allows him to say that since God is on his side, there’s no one and nothing in life that truly deserves his fear!

Bringing this back to our lives, the question this Psalm poses for us is whether we can put our trust in God as wholly and completely as the psalm singer did.[7] To be sure, it’s not an easy thing to do. And it’s not something that you start your faith journey being able to do. It takes time and experience to build up that kind of faith. And we learn it precisely by doing what the psalm singer calls us all to do: “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Ps 27:14). As we “wait” in faith and hope, in essence “relying” on God to bring good into our lives here and now, we’re staking everything on God, just as many others have done before us.

I think the essential factor in being able to do this in the face of real dangers and real fears is that we have to let go of our expectations about what God’s “goodness in this life” will look like. We all tend to have some expectations about that: “If God’s going to be ‘good’ to me, he’s going to give me what I want, or he’s going to make this problem go away.” Faith in God does not guarantee specific outcomes in life’s hardships. Sometimes life and faith are mysteries we simply can’t explain. Sometimes, we have to go out on a limb, and say with St. Paul, “If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” Sometimes we have to go out on that limb a little further and say with Paul, “nothing can ever separate us from God’s love” (Rom 8:33, 38, NLT). Nothing that life throws our way, nothing that anyone brings down on us, can ever separate us from God’s love! Even when our hardships don’t come to an end in the way we want them to, when we stake everything on God, come what may, we find God’s goodness in surprising places, sustaining us through it all, despite it all.[8] In a sense, this kind of faith, this level of trust, is about developing the capacity to see the good that God is always bringing into our lives, no matter what we may have to go through.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm.  A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/16/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.3:616.

[3] H.-J. Krauss, Psalms 1-59, 337: “Even though still far from the sanctuary, the psalmsinger puts his confidence in Yahweh. He longs for the redeeming bestowal of salvation in the temple area and for being sheltered in the holy place (v. 4*). But the God of salvation (אלהי ישׁעי, v. 9b) is also present in the midst of the battle, in the midst of the external danger of his servant (vv. 1–3).”

[4] Krauss, Psalms 1-59, 336; cf. also H.-J. Krauss, Theology of the Psalms, 161: “האמין (“believe”) contains the root אמן (’aman), which means ‘to be firm,’ so that the hiphil of the verb could be translated as ‘make oneself firm,’ ‘have unshakable certainty’ (cf. Ps. 27:13).”

[5] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 132: “Trust is active and real precisely when one is aware of one’s vulnerability, of one’s ultimate helplessness before the threats of life, ‘in the day of trouble,’ as the psalmist puts it.”

[6] Indeed, Karl Barth would say that is the faith of the Hebrew Bible. Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.3:618, “That God exists, and is true to Himself, is Israel’s help and consolation in death, its deliverance from death, and its hope.” While Barth speaks primarily of the “danger” posed by death, I think his observations relate to faith in God in general. He says further (p. 620), “All man’s [sic] deliverance, redemption, preservation, and salvation in and out of death is enclosed in God, in His existence in faithfulness. That it is all enclosed in Him and to be expected from Him, is the hope of the Old Testament in relation to death.”

[7] In fact, that is the testimony of the Psalms as a whole. As J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters Bible 4:667 puts it, in the Psalms to be “blessed” or “happy” “is to entrust one’s whole self, existence, and future to God.”

[8] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed., 189: “Remembering what God has done in the past and promises to do in the future,” which is the biblical foundation for trusting in God’s ongoing care, “recognizes signs here and now of God’s presence and work in our lives and the world around us.” (emphasis original)