Always in God's Care

Always in God’s Care

Psalm 31[1]

This morning I’d like to share with you another of my occasional stories about my experience with a particular passage of Scripture. I’d like to share with you my journey with Psalm 31. Like many of you, I probably first heard the words “Into your hands I commend my Spirit” from the story of Jesus’ death on the cross in Luke’s Gospel (Lk 23:46). My first serious Bible was a King James Version, and it had every verse divided separately, so it was hard to tell when people in the New Testament were quoting from the Old Testament. I soon switched to the New International Version, and they print things differently, so you can tell when someone is quoting from the Old Testament. That’s probably where I first noticed that Jesus was quoting from the Psalm. I don’t remember the exact timeframe for this, but it was a while ago.

I took my first Hebrew class in College, and then I took the required year of Hebrew in Seminary. But I found Hebrew to be harder and more confusing than Greek, and I wanted to try to master it. So I took a “Hebrew Exegesis” class to help level up my skills. It wasn’t until I started digging into the Hebrew Bible more consistently when I was in my mid- to late-twenties that I began to notice some interesting things going on with the language of the Hebrew Bible that weren’t always reflected in the English translations. And I was especially drawn to the Psalms. Along with Isaiah, they’re probably my favorite part of the Old Testament.

A case in point is the English translation of Psalm 31:5, “Into your hands I commend my Spirit.” It sounds like a prayer someone might pray when they’re dying. That’s likely influenced by the fact that Jesus prayed that prayer as he was dying. But just the language of “giving up” one’s “spirit” seems to lend itself to that understanding. When I read the verse with that in mind, I’m not sure I really paid all that much attention to the rest of the Psalm.

It was during the year that I spent living and studying in Germany in 1989-90 that I really began digging into the Psalms. One of the things I discovered about Psalm 31 is that the Hebrew word typically translated in English as “spirit” here refers to the psalmsinger’s whole life. That insight enabled me to read Psalm 31:5 more like “Into your hands I commend my life,” or as the Good News Version we read today puts it, “I place myself in your care.” It helped me see that, at least in the original context of the Psalm this is a prayer for living!

That helped me to hear the words of the whole of Psalm 31 better. A lot of us still have a problem with just lifting out verses of the Bible that we like. The reason that’s a problem is because we’re meant to read the whole Bible. And in this case, that means we’re meant to read Psalm 31 as a whole. The Psalm as a whole is the prayer of a person of faith struggling with the painful and sometimes unfair ways people can treat us. And as I mentioned above, Psalm 31:5 is not a prayer for dying, but a prayer for living with faith in God, no matter. We see that in other ways in the Psalm. The psalmsinger recounts all the hardships of his life, enemies who sought to undo him, the anxiety and sorrow he experienced from opponents. And yet, in spite of all the afflictions he endured, at the end of the day he could pray, “my times are in your hand” (Ps. 31:15). Or, as the Good News Version translates it, “I am always in your care.” With all of that in mind, it’s hard not to conclude that the whole Psalm is a prayer of trust, a prayer of confidence in the “faithful God” (Ps. 31:5). And the prayer “into your hands I commend my spirit” is a motto for living, not a prayer for dying.

In Psalm 31, as in other Psalms, the psalmsinger expresses the decision to entrust his life—his whole life—into God’s hands. That’s not an easy decision to make. Most of us like to keep the “important parts” of our lives in our control. But when try to do that, we learn that there is so much about life that is outside our control. For me, knowing that we can entrust all of that, all the things that seem too big for us, to God’s loving care relieves us of the heavy burdens we try to carry ourselves.

One of the last stages in my journey with Psalm 31 was when I read through the commentary on the Psalms by James Luther Mays in the Presbyterian commentary series called Interpretation. Yes, I did actually read through a whole commentary. I’ve done it more than once! One of the things I like about that commentary is that Mays, who himself was a Presbyterian Old Testament professor, really seems to pull together all the Psalms around some key themes. It helped me to read each Psalm, not as a whole in itself, but in the context of the entire collection of Psalms. And that only reinforced my conviction that the prayer, “into your hands I commend my life” is a motto for living, not a prayer for dying.

One of the things that Mays does is to inform the readers of his commentary how various Psalms have been used not only in the New Testament, but also throughout the history of the church. It should come as no surprise that, following Jesus’ example, a number of prominent Church leaders, including Martin Luther, used this prayer at the end of their lives. But as Mays says in his commentary, “in Hebrew and in the context of the psalm” the prayer is a confession of ultimate “dependence and trust” in God. He adds that this prayer, “Into your hands I commend my life” is essentially “a way of saying in the midst of affliction, ‘It is up to you, God, what becomes of me, and I am willing to have it so.’”[2] I find that to be a wonderful way to affirm my trust in God. I think Jesus paraphrased that prayer with his prayer in the Garden, “not my will but thine be done.”

If you think of it, what better place could we ever want to be than in God’s loving care? What more could we want than what God wants for us? That’s what I think about with this prayer, “It is up to you, God, what becomes of me, and I’m willing to have it so.” When you put it that way, the prayer, “into your hands I commend my life” really does become a prayer for living. In fact, it has been one of my primary prayers for living for over fifteen years. I haven’t prayed it every day. But I’ve prayed it most days. And many days I’ve prayed it more than once. I think one of the significant spiritual breakthroughs in my life’s journey was when I finally realized that I needed to consciously turn to God and entrust my life, all my hopes and dreams, into his care on a regular basis. This prayer has gotten me through a lot of up’s and down’s in life, and I think it will continue to see me through whatever may come in the future. Telling this story is my way of inviting you to join me in praying the prayer, “into your hands I commend my life,” following Jesus’ example, and the example of many faithful people who have gone before us. It’s a way of entrusting all of our lives into God’s hands. As we do so, may we discover that our lives are always in God’s care, and that there’s no better place we could be.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/29/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] James Luther Mays, Psalms, 144.

Looking for What God is Doing

Looking for What God is Doing

John 9:1-7, 13-41[1]

We turn to faith for comfort. That’s one of the main roles faith plays in our lives. It offers us comfort when the realities of life can feel like they’re too much to bear. That’s why we love Scripture passages like Psalm 23. It’s a beautiful expression of the comfort our faith offers us. But when we only look to faith for comfort, it’s too easy to focus only our ourselves, and lose sight of those around us. That’s why our faith also challenges us. Faith that’s worth its salt not only offers us comfort, it also challenges us to see the suffering of our sisters and brothers in the human family. Especially those who suffer the most in this world, the very ones we may prefer not to see. When we let our faith turn in on itself, it becomes too easy to convince ourselves that their suffering is somehow their own fault. Instead of seeing them as beloved children of God who are suffering in the same way we all can suffer, which can be a scary thought, we convince ourselves that they must have done something to bring it on themselves. The idea that they must have done something to deserve their suffering somehow assures us that it won’t happen to us. But in the process, we let our desire for comfort and safety blind us to the compassion God wants us to give to the people who suffer the most in this world.

Our Gospel lesson for today addresses this issue. It’s the story about Jesus’ encounter with a man who had been born blind. But the irony is that it turns the tables on how we might expect the story to go. In this story, the “religious” people who claimed that they could see were in fact blind. They were blind to the compassion of God, they were blind to truth that Jesus restored this man’s sight. But it was a man who was despised as an ignorant vagrant was the one who was able to see what they couldn’t or wouldn’t see. The narrator emphasizes this irony by calling the one Jesus healed “the man who had formerly been blind.” But irony is that in this story, he was the one who was able to see the truth about Jesus. On the other hand, the “religious” people were blinded because of their assumptions.

The basic assumption in this story that blinded the “religious” people is that anyone who is suffering must have done something to deserve it. That’s an assumption that we still make. In the Gospel story, it was Jesus’ own disciples who voiced this assumption, asking, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). The very fact that he had been born blind meant that someone had to have done something wrong to cause his suffering. But Jesus exploded the centuries-old myth that suffering comes from sin. I like the way Gene Peterson translates Jesus’ response in The Message: “You’re asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do” (John 9:3, MSG).

The hard truth is that we live in a world where any kind of suffering can affect anyone at any time. And we tend to use rationalizations like “they must have brought it on themselves” to assure ourselves that we won’t have to suffer the same pain! But Jesus turns all that on its head. He says that the suffering people experience in this world isn’t about blaming or shaming. Rather, it’s an opportunity for those of us who claim to follow him to demonstrate “the works of God” (John 9:4): kindness, compassion, and mercy! The suffering that people endure is an opportunity for us to “look instead for what God can do” (John 9:3, MSG), even and especially in the worst of the pain people can suffer!

Because Jesus healed “the man who had formerly been blind” on the Sabbath day, the religious people believed he had “broken” the Sabbath and therefore he must have been a “sinner” (John 9:16). They believed that following their “rules” about the Sabbath carefully and completely would act as a kind of magical protection from the suffering in the world. Because Jesus didn’t follow their rules about how to observe the Sabbath, he called into question their assumptions about God and the world. To keep their assurances intact they concluded that he must have been a sinner! Only if Jesus was a sinner could they keep their assumptions intact, assumptions that gave them false and shallow assurances that they would never have to deal with that kind of suffering. We still do that: we tell ourselves that if we follow all the rules, we’ll be spared from the worst hardships of life. And we reinforce that line of thinking by assuming those who suffer the worst must have “broken the rules,” and therefore they must be “sinners.” I would think that most of us have had enough experience with life to know that’s not the way life works. We can follow all the rules and still be hit with some of the worst kinds of suffering.

Again, in the Gospel story it was “the man who had formerly been blind” who exposed all these false assumptions. The religious leaders kept pressing him, trying to find a way to avoid the obvious conclusion that Jesus restored his sight. Finally, in exasperation they said, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner” (John 9:24). And an unlearned, marginalized, ragged, and dirty man, who just that morning had been living on the street, showed a depth of insight beyond all that they possessed. He said simply, “I do not know whether he is a sinner” (Jn 9:25). There’s probably a lot of wisdom in that when it comes to using the word “sinner” about someone else. But he said, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (Jn 9:25).

This man who had been blind was able to see the truth about Jesus. Those who claimed to see and know God’s truth were blinded by their false assumptions. That’s what the story is about. We see it in the end when Jesus makes an ironic and somewhat confusing statement about enabling those who are blind to see and making those who can see blind. The Message translation puts it this way, “I came into the world … , so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind” (John 9:39, MSG). I don’t think Jesus ever meant to keep anyone from seeing the truth about God, the truth about themselves, or the truth about life. I think what he was trying to do was to expose those who “make a great pretense of seeing” as people who can actually be blind. The story is about bringing to light something that happens all too often: those of us who think we see the truth about God and therefore view ourselves as “holier” than others are the ones who can at times be the most blind to God’s grace and mercy and compassion!

The hard truth about life is that we never know what we may have to go through. There are times when suffering just happens, not because of what we have done, but in spite of all we may have done. It’s natural in those times for us to look to our faith for comfort. But when we take that to an extreme and try to use our faith as an assurance that it won’t happen to us, we’ve missed something. Jesus made it clear that we’ve missed something when we use our “faith” to brand those who are suffering as “sinners” as a way of reassuring ourselves that we won’t have to suffer like them. What that really boils down to is an elaborate means of making ourselves feeling better at the expense of others. But Jesus framed the suffering people experience in this world entirely differently. He framed it as an opportunity for us to “look instead for what God can do” (John 9:3, MSG).

The Bible says that “nothing will be impossible for God.” We oftentimes think that some people may be beyond hope. And we tend to point the finger at them and assume that they must have done something to deserve it. It’s their fault somehow. But we really don’t know what life experiences have brought people to where they are. We really don’t know the burdens that people are carrying. I think that’s why Jesus taught his disciples and us to look at the suffering people experience not as a reason to point the finger and blame but as an opportunity to “look instead for what God can do.” Instead of shaming people, he challenged us to look for the good that God can do even and especially in the worst of human pain. After all, God raise Jesus from the dead after his suffering on the cross. If that’s true, what experience in this life is there that God can’t bring good from? And when look for what God can do when someone is suffering, not only does it change our whole perspective, but it also helps us to see that we have the opportunity to share God’s mercy and compassion with them. Maybe that’s what God “wants” to do. Maybe God wants to open our hearts to show kindness, compassion, and care, especially toward those whose suffering challenges us. I think Jesus challenges us to find the faith to look at the sufferings of this life and trust God enough to look for what God can do in any situation, come what may, and then try to join him in doing that.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/15/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Windblown!

Windblown!

John 3:1-17[1]

We live in a place where the wind blows. It always has. Maybe in former days, before trees were planted more widely, it “blew” even more. Or at least it may have seemed like it. So much so that there are stories of early pioneers who were driven to madness by the constant blowing of the wind on the open prairie. These days, the wind can still be dangerous. Most of us remember the historic “derecho” storm that destroyed an almost 800-mile swath of crops in Iowa in 2020. More recently, and more locally, on a weekend when the weather was supposed to be calm, a storm brought down a lot of trees, some of them fairly large. We live in a place where the wind blows!

Like other aspects of the weather, we really can’t know the way the wind is going to blow on a given day until we see it. I learned that living on the Texas Gulf Coast, where we dealt with Hurricanes. The weather service had a five-day “cone of probability” for where the Hurricane would make landfall that was just about worthless because usually covered the whole Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida. Basically about 24 to 48 hours ahead of time we could get an idea of where the storm was going. That’s true here. Maybe the day before, we can see what seems to be happening. But really, we have to wait until the day to know what the weather is going to do. Is it going to snow this afternoon? We’ll have to wait and see.

Unfortunately, that unpredictability that exposes our trees and crops, not to mention our homes and gardens, to the risk of damage from a storm. That’s not something most of us relish. Unlike the people who originally settled here, we tend not to be great risk-takers. We want our lives to be safe and predictable. And we turn to our faith to provide us with that safe and predictable life. We want our faith to be something we can count on. So we take faith and turn it into a kind of certainty that I’m not sure it was ever meant to be.

At least that’s been the way some people approach faith. It’s “the Truth,” the one and only truth with a capital “T” that has been delivered “once for all” to the faithful (Cf. Jude 3!) and has been preserved intact throughout the centuries in an infallible Bible by an infallible church. Before we point the finger at other Christian traditions for this kind of thinking, we should look to our own roots. The Reformed confessions from the Sixteenth Century speak a similar language. It seems that the uncertainty and upheaval of the Protestant Reformation when people wanted certainty about their faith. They debated whether the Catholic tradition or the Protestant tradition had the “true” faith. They attacked each other back and forth about who had the true faith or who didn’t. One our Reformed confessions talks of faith as “a most certain apprehension of the truth of God.”[2] That doesn’t leave much room for doubt. And the Westminster Confession, which was the confession of faith of the Presbyterian Church for a long time, hardly even speaks the language of faith. It makes our faith all about knowledge and absolute truth and certainty.

It’s easy to understand why we look for this kind of certainty in our faith.  It’s comforting and reassuring to have something firm and unchangeable to hang onto with all that’s changing in our world. But I’m not sure that our faith was meant to be like that. I would say that the Bible speaks very differently about faith. Yes, there are times when the prophets and apostles spoke of faith as something firm that provides us with a sense of being grounded. But they also speak of faith as something we can’t always pin down into nice, neat packages.

Our gospel lesson for today is a great example. Jesus speaks about faith in a way that was so confusing to Nicodemus, who was one of the “teachers of Israel,” that he completely misunderstood. Jesus said, “you must be born from above,” but the way he said it could also be understood, “you must be born again.” And Nicodemus thought Jesus was talking about somehow physically climbing back into the womb. But Jesus was talking about a different kind of birth. In John’s Gospel it’s called being “born from God,” or “born from above,” or “born of the Spirit.” It’s talking about a birth that brings us a whole new kind of life from the Spirit of God.

That’s something that may be hard for us to grasp, because this life can so often feel “old” and familiar rather than new and unexpected. But that’s the way Jesus described the “life” he came to give all people. And Jesus said this new life works the way the wind blows. He said, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8). Now, Jesus wasn’t speaking about weather forecasting. Even with all the modern technology we have at our fingertips, sometimes a wind comes up suddenly, and you’re just as surprised and baffled as if you were living in the First Century. The new life that Jesus points us to, and the faith that opens the door to that new life, is just as much a mystery today as the wind still can be.

Because it is beyond our ability to understand, there is something inherently uncertain about what God is doing in our world to bring new life to us all. Like a sudden wind that takes us by surprise, the new life that God brings to us is something that can surprise us. Sometimes it can leave us feeling overwhelmed or even scared. When God’s Spirit blows into our lives, it’s not something we get to control. When we feel “out of control” we may find ourselves feeling vulnerable or even threatened. In those times, to be sure, our faith is like a lifeline that we hold onto. And there is much about our faith provides us with assurance, like the promise that God’s love for us never fails. But because our faith sometimes takes us to places we never expected to go, we may find ourselves in a situation where all we can do is fall on our knees and pray with all our hearts, “Lord, help me!”

If it’s true that God’s ways are as much higher than ours as “the heavens” are above the earth, then I think that means we will likely wonder, or question, or even doubt at times. I don’t think any of those responses to the unexpected nature of our lives is the opposite of faith. Rather, I would say that for me, those paths have led me to deeper faith! It’s natural for us to turn to our faith when life feels out of control. We all have favorite hymns, or Scripture verses, or prayers that give us the courage to face uncertain days. But we must not confuse assurance with absolute certainty. One of the main reasons for that is when our faith is something we view as absolutely certain, it becomes safe and predictable. And when our faith is safe and predictable, we can become complacent. I don’t think Jesus envisioned the new life he spoke about with Nicodemus on that night as something safe or predictable, or something about which we could ever become complacent!

Rather, our faith, and the new life it leads us to live, is always going to lead us out from the comfort of our safety and complacency. Jesus’ faith led him to the cross, and he said that it would be the same for all those who would follow him. If we’re going to take that risk of faith, if we’re going to let the wind of God’s Spirit blow new life into our lives, we’re going to have to expect that it’s not going to be safe and predictable. And rather than seeking safety or comfort, faith means opening up our hearts to the new life God brings by allowing ourselves to be changed. That’s how we experience faith, and that’s how we experience the new life Jesus promised to us all. It’s like being blown by the wind!

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/1/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] “Second Helvetic Confession,” The Book of Confessions 5.112. 

What Joy!

 What Joy!

Psalm 32[1]

Christian worship can seem strange to people who aren’t used to it. Especially a traditional service like ours. Everything we do in worship has a reason for it. But because the way we worship was shaped literally centuries ago, it can reflect a mindset that some people just don’t connect with. I think that’s especially the case with our unison “Confession of Sins.” Even if we’re actually praying the prayer as a way of confessing our sins to God, and not just “saying” the words because that’s what comes next in the service, it might seem strange that we all “pray” the same confession. As I said, the way we worship can seem strange to people who may not be used to it.

Some of us these days may be uncomfortable simply admitting that we have sinned. Some of us are even more uncomfortable admitting that we are sinners. But from the biblical perspective, both are true: we have sinned—that relates to our actions. And we are sinners—that relates to who we are. But it’s not something that’s easy for us to admit. Especially out loud. The pride that can lie at the heart of our personal insecurities can also lead us to make our own selves the most important thing in our world. We name that choice “sin” because it means turning away from the love that shapes our true humanity and therefore it means turning away from God.[2]  

I think this can be a problem even and especially for those of us in the church all the time. In the evangelical world, people can tend toward the thinking that “I’m saved, I asked Jesus into my heart and confessed my sin on such-and-such a date.” They may feel the need to confess “really bad” actions here and there, but they tend to think that they’ve already confessed to being a sinner. They’ve got that part covered. In our branch of the Christian world, we can tend toward the thinking that “I’m a good person, I go to church, I try to help people and be kind to them, I volunteer my time.” Given all of that, some of us may feel like the demand to confess that we “are” sinners is offensive and even harmful. Rather than confessing our sin, some think we should be affirming that we are good enough just as we are.

In the midst of all this incredibly complicated approach that we have toward the simple fact that we all can do and say things that we regret, the Psalmist in our Scripture lesson for today insists that confessing our sin is something that’s important for our spiritual health and well-being. Despite the fact that this lesson was written before Christ was even born, it still remains a truth of our human existence that when we refuse to acknowledge our wayward behavior, it tends to fester inside us and comes out in all kinds of ways that aren’t pleasant. Pride, anger, and bitterness are just some of the ways that we can behave when we try to repress a feeling of guilt for what we have done.[3]  

From the Psalmist’s perspective, refusing to clear his conscience by admitting his wrongdoing made him feel like God’s hand was “heavy” upon him (Ps. 32:4). I think most of us can relate to that “heavy” feeling. And it’s one more clue that we all need the relief and release the Psalmist says comes as a “blessing” when we confess our sin (Ps. 32:1-2). And that is precisely what the Psalmist promises in response to the heartfelt, genuine confession that “I have sinned, and I am a sinner”: relief from the burden of guilt. That’s why the confession of sin is so important. As long as we hold back, as long as we refuse to acknowledge who we really are and what we’ve really done, we will always have lingering doubts about whether God really accepts us as we are. But when we admit our wrongdoing, we find God’s love embracing us, God’s grace abounding, and God’s mercy healing us.  More than that, when we come to God with the confession, “I have sinned, and I am a sinner,” and we experience not condemnation or rejection but acceptance and love and forgiveness, we walk away from that experience with a stronger sense of trust in the God whose love for us never fails. 

Unfortunately, for too many of us, “confession” is only something we do at the beginning of a worship service. And even then, because we do it every Sunday, in the same way, and at the same time, it can begin to feel like something routine. But for confession to be genuine, it has to be more than a routine. It has to be something that is heartfelt. It cannot be relegated to a few words we mumble on Sunday morning. Ongoing confession is an integral part of the life of faith. If we need to be reminded why it is so important to confess our sin, all we have to do is remember that, as we say in one of our Presbyterian Confessions of faith, it is God’s love poured out for us in Jesus’ death on the cross that exposes our sin.[4] Jesus’ death on the cross shows us that there is something about sin so damaging to us that God felt it necessary to die for us in order to do something about it. If our sin is that serious to God, maybe we should take it more seriously.

The way the New Living Translation of Psalm 32 words our lesson is with the exclamation, “what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven” (Ps 32:1, NLT). It might seem like a strange thing to some of us. We have a difficult and complicated relationship with aspect of ourselves at times. And admitting, even to ourselves, that we have fallen short in some way, can be deeply disturbing. It can challenge our sense of self-worth. But when we take that approach, we let our own pride get in the way of the acceptance that God offers us freely. We’re only harming ourselveds. The very words, “I am a sinner” get caught in our throats as we say them. Yet, they are so important for us to say. Only when we confess—to ourselves, to one another, and to God—that we have done what we regret do we fully experience the joy of God’s unconditional and unfailing love for us.[5] But as the ancient words of Scripture promise, if we’re willing to take that step, we find what people of faith have experienced for millennia. When we confess our sins, we know the joy of being embraced by God’s acceptance and love. A love that claimed us “before the foundation of the world” as Paul says, and a love that will never let us go, world without end! And what joy it is to know that our God loves us in that way. What joy indeed!

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[1] © 2026 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/22/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, II:50, where he defines sin essentially as “hubris” or pride.

[3] Cf. Karl Menninger, What Ever Became of Sin?, 178: “I believe that all the evildoing in which we become involved to any degree tends to evoke guilt feelings and depression. These may or may not be clearly perceived, but they affect us. They may be reacted to and covered up by all kinds of escapism, rationalization, and reaction or symptom formation.”

[4] Cf. The Confession of 1967, 9.12: “The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ exposes our sin in the sight of God.”

[5] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 146: “God’s way is to forgive sinners, and we do not acknowledge his grace unless we present ourselves to him as sinners.”

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).”

 

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)

God is our Refuge

 God is Our Refuge

Psalm 91[1]

I’d like to share with you another in my occasional stories of my personal interaction with Scripture. Psalm 91 has been a companion on my journey for almost 45 years. I still remember reading it the first time it made an impression on me. I was a 19-year-old sophomore ministerial student in college. I can still picture in my mind the first time the words of Psalm 91 really sank in for me. I was sitting at my desk in my dorm room, and the words of this Psalm “jumped off the page.” It felt like God was speaking the promises of this Psalm to me personally. The one that stood out was “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you” (Ps 91:7, NRSV). I found that deeply reassuring as I wrestled with the uncertainties and fears I faced as I was trying to find my way as a young man.

Fast-forward twenty years, and my relationship with the promises of this Psalm became complicated by the disappointments of life. I had lost my marriage, my family, and my career. It was a time when I felt like I was living through my worst nightmare, only it had somehow become real. I wondered, oftentimes out loud (literally) what those promises of protection from harm meant in light of all I had lost. “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you” seemed an empty promise at best. At worst, I wondered if it offered false hope. In my mind, it felt like all the calamites Psalm 91 promised God’s protection from had come down on me in one fell swoop. I felt (and said out loud in prayer) that God had somehow let down his end of the bargain.

What I know now is that this was a necessary step in my relationship with this Psalm, with the Psalms, and with the Bible as a whole. Simply taking a particular Bible verse as if it were promising that I would not have to endure the hardships of life was not realistic. What I discovered is that the Psalms themselves, and this Psalm in particular, address that very issue. One of the major themes of the Psalms deals with a person who has done everything in their power to live out their faith in God and yet finds themselves in dire straits, suffering loss or grief or pain so great that makes it feel like God has abandoned them. One of the Psalmists actually asks God (out loud) “Why are you sleeping?” (Ps 44:23, GNT). And then, of course, there’s the Psalm Jesus quoted from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1, NRSV). Long before Jesus uttered that cry, it was the prayer of someone who felt like God had let them down.[2]

The Psalms as a whole deal with this troubling question. To be clear, it’s not just the question of “why do bad things happen to good people?” That’s a hard one, but the Psalms wrestle with a different question: “why do bad things happen to people who put their trust wholly and sincerely in God?” At times, the Psalmists lay the blame for these calamites at the feet of the “wicked.” In the Psalms, the “wicked” are not people who have typically been singled as “immoral” or “sinful.” The “wicked” in the Psalms are deemed so because their only value, their only “moral compass” is about gaining power, influence, or wealth. God’s purposes, God’s truths, God’s ways mean nothing to them. And they demonstrate that attitude precisely by taking advantage of the most vulnerable people.[3]

But not all of life’s hardships have a single, clear-cut cause. There are times when those who put their trust wholly and sincerely in God, who are called the “righteous” in the Psalms,[4] simply find themselves in dire straits. In a very real sense, the suffering of those who trust in God is just part of the mystery of life. That’s an essential perspective I had to learn. Despite the language of this Psalm to the contrary, the promise is not that hard times won’t come. The promise is that that the hard times that inevitably come won’t last forever. The “righteous” may “fall,” but they will not “be utterly cast down.” The reason for this is because the Lord “upholds” them him with his hand (Ps 37:24 KJV). Or, as the Good News Translation puts it: “If they fall, they will not stay down, because the Lord will help them up.”[5]

That brings us back to Psalm 91 and the affirmation of faith that “the Lord is my refuge.” One thing we have to keep in mind as we read this Psalm is the human perspective of the Psalms as a whole. We’re used to dealing with Scripture as “the Word of the Lord,” and we sometimes forget that all Scripture also has a human component. That’s particularly on display in the Psalms, because they’re prayer-songs that came from the life experience of the people who lived out their faith in God. Sometimes we find very human hurt and anger expressed in the Psalms. Other times, like in Psalm 91, we find the personal testimony of someone knows the joy of having been delivered by God from suffering. And those testimonies of personal faith were incorporated into the worship of the people as a whole and became a part of the collection of the Psalms. I would say that there are times however, when the psalm-singers may have gotten a bit carried away. That’s understandable. They’re expressing thanks to God for deliverance from suffering and they’re trying to praise God in the highest ways they can. But at times they promise more than God has promised. And throughout the ages, sincere people have staked their faith on the promise of protection from any and all harm that we find particularly in Psalms like this one.[6] When life doesn’t turn out that way, it leaves us wondering what comfort this Psalm actually offers us.

I think we find a clue in Psalm 91 itself. Much of it reflects the Psalm-singer promising God’s protection to other faithful people by using “you”: “a thousand may fall at your side, … but it will not come near you.” And those promises reflect an honest but human perspective on the assurance of God’s protection. But the last couple of verses shift to a declaration of God’s intent with “I”: “I will rescue those who love me.” In order to keep a balanced perspective on what this Psalm promises and what it doesn’t, we have to read the whole Psalm. At the end, when God “speaks,” he says: “I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue and honor them” (Ps 91:14-15, NLT).

The bottom line for our faith is that God doesn’t promise anyone what they will never have to deal with hard times.[7] Notice, when God “speaks” at the end of Psalm 91, he acknowledges that those who trust in him will have times of trouble. But the promise is, “I will be with them in trouble.” That’s what it means to trust in God as our “refuge” in life. Trusting in God as our refuge, as this Psalm calls us to do, is something that takes place in the midst of the hard times we face in life. It means trusting those hard times will not last forever, and in the end God’s love will have the final word: “I will be with them”; “I will protect them”; “I will rescue them.” God is, and always will be, our refuge!

Learning to take what I would consider a balanced perspective to Psalm 91 didn’t happen for me overnight. I still cherish the promise, “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.” But it took years of experience to come to a more balanced perspective on what that promise actually means. I had to learn the hard way that it doesn’t mean that God will somehow exempt those who trust him from the hardships of life. I learned that from my experiences, but also from reading this Psalm more carefully, and from reading this Psalm in light of the rest of the Psalms, as well as the witness of Scripture as a whole. What I also learned was that with promises like the ones made in this Psalm, we have to hold our faith in tension with the challenges of life. We may not see God’s promises fulfilled immediately, but the assurance of Scripture is that we will see them ultimately. That may feel like small comfort while we’re struggling, but it is a comfort nevertheless. As we take our journey through Lent this year, we’re going to continue looking at what the Psalms teach us about faith. I hope that it will make the promises in the Psalms, and in the Bible as a whole, make sense in the light of the experiences in life that often contradict them. I hope that it will help us all learn more fully what it means to affirm that God is our refuge.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/9/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Another example is Psalm 77:9: “Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?” (NIV). I think it’s important to remember that “merciful” and “compassionate” are two of the essential characteristics in the basic declaration of who God is in the Hebrew Bible, Ex 34:6: “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth” (NASB). Essentially, the Psalmists asks whether God has forgotten to be “God”! Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed, 183: “The Old Testament writers are very realistic about the contradiction between what their life was really like and what they believed about the God who chose and promised to help them. The psalmist expresses it most clearly. Over and over again throughout the Psalms he complains about the distance, silence, absence and hiddenness of God… .”

[3] Cf. Hans-Joachim Krauss, The Theology of the Psalms, 129, the “wicked” is “not only one who denies God in some sense yet to be defined; he is above all a person who has no shame before God or humans when he carries his evil, deceitful, deadly murderous plans into action. … With unshakable confidence he goes his way. He relies on the destructive power of his words and asks in his hubris and sense of superiority, ‘Who is our master?’ (Ps. 12:4).” See further J. Clinton McCann, Jr, “Book of Psalms” in New Interpreters Bible IV:667, where he defines the “wicked” in the Psalms as those “who consider themselves autonomous, which means literally ‘a law unto oneself.’” He continues, “Self-centered, self-directed, and self-ruled, the wicked see no need for dependence upon God or for consideration of others.”

[4] They are also called “the poor” in the Psalms. Cf. Krauss, Theology, 150-57. The “poor” in the Psalms are those who “find comfort and support” in God, and who “rely on Yahweh alone” (ibid., 152). On the “righteous” in the Psalms, see further McCann, “Book of Psalms” NIB IV:667, where he defines “righteousness” or “the righteous” in terms of “fundamental dependence upon God for life and future” which he observes is definition of happiness in the Psalms: “To be happy is to entrust one’s whole self, existence, and future to God.”

[5] This reminds me of St. Paul’s affirmation that “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:7-8, NIV).

[6] James Luther Mays, Psalms, 297, puts it even more bluntly: “The Psalm itself poses a danger. Because its assurance of security is so comprehensive and confident, it is especially subject to the misuse that is a possibility for all religious claims, that of turning faith into superstition.” He points out that “bits of the text have been worn in amulets that were believed to be a kind of magical protection for those who wore them”! McCann, “Book of Psalms” NIB IV:1048, picks up on this and insists, “We must not use Psalm 91 as a magical guarantee against danger, threat, or difficulty. Rather, this psalm is a reminder to us that nothing ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God’ (Rom 8:39 NRSV).” He continues, “In fact, Jesus’ and Paul’s faithfulness to God and to God’s purposes impelled them into dangerous situations” and he points out that “when Jesus did claim the assurance of the Psalms, it was from the cross” (emphasis original)!

[7] Cf. Mays, Psalms, 298, where he says in response to the misuse of Psalm 91 in the temptation of Jesus that “Real trust does not seek to test God or to prove his faithfulness”! Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.3:518: “we must remember that the protection of angels consists in the fact that by their witness to God they keep those committed to them in fellowship with God” (when he says “those committed to them, he clear means those angels [plural!] to whose care individuals may have been entrusted by God). Cf. also John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.14.12, p. 171, where he insists that “whatever is said concerning the ministry of angels” the purpose is that “our hope in God may be more firmly established.”

The Depth of God's Love

 The Depth of God’s Love

Philippians 2:5-11[1]

Sometimes our faith can seem to contradict the reality of our lives. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the reality of our lives seems to contradict our faith. Last week we talked about Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension to the Father as the crucial event by which God is working in the world to make everything new, already here and now. Just as the light dispels the darkness, Jesus spoke of his being “lifted up” as depriving the so-called “the ruler of this world” from any and all power. But in reality, that’s something we all have to choose to believe, and choose to see in this world. And I choose to believe that’s the truth about God and the truth about us and our world. But as I mentioned last week, there’s all too much evidence that the darkness in this world is just as deep and just as powerful as ever.

 However strong our faith may be, there is a dark side to life that I think most of us would rather avoid. But whether we’re willing to look at them or not, there are dark places all over the world. There are dark places in our country, in our State, in our county—and in our town! For some, the darkness consists of a loneliness that may feel like it’s choking the life out of you. For others, it may be a sense of grief that you just cannot process. For still others, it may be a job that’s suffocating, or addictions that slowly erode the soul. For all too many, the darkness consists of mistaking what may feel good right now for “happiness.” However much we may believe that God is truly in the process of making all things new right now, there remains a dark side to life.

It’s no wonder that most of us would rather avoid facing the darkness in our world or in our own lives. But the hard truth of the matter is that the only way to overcome darkness is to have the courage to face it squarely. And that usually means taking a journey into that darkness that can be painful and frightening. The only way out of the darkness that we feel trapped in is to go through it. As we allow ourselves to wrestle with the pain and fear and doubt within, the very process itself heals us. And as we become healed, we grow strong enough to recognize the darkness without giving in to it. We grow strong enough to enjoy the freedom to live in the light. We grow confident that our faith is not misplaced, but rather that we have good reasons to believe that God is working in and through us for good right now.

I believe that’s a part of what our New Testament lesson from Philippians for today is about. It’s about Jesus’ journey into the very heart of the darkness that oppresses the human family in order to set us all free from its power. That journey led him not only to give up his rightful place with God to become a human being, just as vulnerable as the rest of us. His journey took him farther than that: he not only “emptied himself” to become human, he also subjected himself to the humiliation of a cruel execution and actually tasted death for us all. He went into the very abyss of all the darkness and suffering we can experience in this world and took it upon himself.

If we had not heard this story all our lives, I think at least some of us would venture to ask why Jesus would do such a thing. When you look at our world and the darkness in it today, you do see a few brave souls who are willing to enter some aspect of it, at least for a time. But the idea of someone actually taking on all the darkness of this world strains our ability to understand how anyone could possibly do such a thing. In the death of Jesus on a Roman cross there is something more going on than simple human compassion in action. In Jesus we see the depth of God’s love in all its life-changing power at work. I think that’s the key to understanding how Jesus could take on all the darkness in this world. And we learn from this that God’s love is a love that will not rest until it reaches out to every dark place we can possibly go to bring all of us back home to the light.

Of course, that answer is also a part of the faith we’ve been taught all our lives. But it seems to me that if we think about it, this too raises questions that may not be easy to answer. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to at least wonder why this particular expression of God’s love was the one chosen to set us free from the darkness. Many have tried to understand this in human terms and imagine that Jesus volunteered to take God’s wrath toward us all on himself. The idea is that his death was the punishment that we deserved. It’s embedded into our faith not only through Scripture, but also through the hymns we sing. But I don’t find that perspective to be very compelling. That only reinforces the idea that we have to cower in fear before an angry God who may strike us down at any moment. And I don’t think that’s what was going on when Jesus embraced his death on the cross.

Jesus embraced the suffering of the cross because that’s who God is: a God who loves us enough to suffer for us so that we can be whole. The God of the Bible is not an angry God, but rather one who constantly suffers on behalf of his chosen people. That’s the lesson of much of the Hebrew Bible. And beginning with some of the prophets, and especially in Jesus, we see that love extended to the whole human family. That’s how the God of the Bible chooses to love us all, time and again. And the God of the Bible is a God who never quits loving us this way. Part of the mystery of our faith is that it was God who was suffering on our behalf on that cross. St. Paul said it this way, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). Somehow, some way, it’s God who takes on the suffering we endure when we wander into the dark places of this life. That’s the depth of God’s love for us all!

Now some of you may be feeling like I’m only taking you further down the “rabbit hole.” The love of God poured out for us in Jesus on the cross is indeed, as one of our confessions puts it, a mystery beyond our understanding.[2] So if you’re wondering how God could suffer for us on the cross, the only answer is a short one, though it is far from being a simple. The answer is that in Jesus we see the mystery of God’s love. It’s a mystery how God could suffer for us on that cross. In Jesus, we see the God who is the redeemer of the despised, the savior of the hopeless, the one who chooses the unwanted. It bears repeating: the death of Jesus on a cross shows us that God’s love reaches into the very depth of any darkness into which we can go and will not rest until we are all back home with him.

The good news of the Gospel is that there is no depth of suffering that Jesus did not reach in his death on the cross. Truly does our affirmation of faith state that “An abyss of suffering” has been “swallowed up by the suffering of divine love.”[3]  That means Jesus’ death on the cross has set us free from all the darkness we could ever experience —the loneliness, grief, agony, alienation, cruelty, abandonment, estrangement, despair, shame, rejection, and self-destruction. Jesus has taken all of that on himself. God has taken all of it into his love. For me, that means that no one can sink so deep as to be beyond hope, beyond the reach of God’s love. However far we may fall, the love of God has already been into the depth of the abyss in Jesus Christ and is waiting there to bring us back home.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/24/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] The Book of Confessions 2016, Confession of 1967 9.15, p. 289.

[3] “The Study Catechism,” question 45 (approved by the 210th General Assembly of the PCUSA, 1998).

Now is the Time

Now is the Time

John 12:20-32[1]

Our faith makes some pretty big promises. Of course, the biggest promise is that if we trust in Jesus, we’ll go to heaven when we die and spend all eternity in the presence of his love. For some of us, that may have been what drew us to faith in the first place. But the problem with that promise is that we really have no way to test it in this life. We won’t “know” whether it’s true until we die. In the meantime, we do have reasons for confidence in that promise. The most important one is that Jesus defeated death on the cross and God raised him to new life on that first Easter Sunday. But then, that did happen a long time ago. So I can understand why some people may have doubts about it. We also have the experience of Jesus living “within our hearts” as the hymn puts it. But again, that’s not something easily demonstrated to someone with questions.

There are other promises that do relate to this life, however. One of them is a promise that we often use in our Assurance of Pardon: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor 5:17). I think the point is made a bit clearer in the New Living Translation: “anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” We might be tempted to think that this is just one particularly dramatic promise. But that’s not the case at all. It’s one of the themes of the Christian faith: those who trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and who entrust their lives to him become whole new people. We heard it last week in our lesson from Ephesians: “because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ” (Eph 2:4-5, NIV). It’s the promise I like to use when we observe Ash Wednesday: just as God raised Jesus from the dead, so we too may live a new life (Rom 6:4).

Of course, the problem is that there’s a lot about our lives that doesn’t look or feel very “new.” We might very well agree with the objection quoted in 2 Peter: “From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created” (2 Pet 3:4, NLT). Or even before that, we might agree that “there is nothing new under the sun,” as the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes put it (Eccl 1:9). I’m afraid that’s one of the changes that’s taken place in the last generation or two. People have lost the optimism that used to define our culture. At least for some of us. These days skepticism is much more widespread. I’m not talking about conspiracy theories. I’m talking about the fact that my children’s generation, and the generation after that, look at the world and they see the rich getting richer at their expense. They see people abusing power for their own benefit, regardless of whom they hurt. They see a world that doesn’t look like there’s much reason to believe in the promise that God is “making all things new” (Rev 21:5).

This point of view relates to our Gospel lesson for today. Jesus makes a pretty big promise in this passage. He says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:31-32). It’s a pivotal point in John’s Gospel. The Jewish leaders have just made the decision that Jesus must die to keep them from losing their position and power. Up to this point, Jesus says his “hour has not yet come.” But now, the way events have unfolded convinces him that he has indeed come to his “hour.” But then just what that “hour” means takes a little more attention to John’s Gospel as a whole.

The theme of Jesus’ “hour” in John’s Gospel signifies that Jesus has a sense that his life and ministry are heading toward a conclusion. We saw something like that a few weeks ago in Mark’s Gospel when he told the disciples there that he “must” be handed over, rejected, killed and then raised from the dead. In John’s Gospel, the idea is similar, but a little different. We see a glimpse of that in our lesson when Jesus speaks of being “lifted up.” Of course, we would understand that to mean being “lifted up” on the cross to die. But the whole idea here is that the “hour” toward which Jesus is heading is the entire set of events that would lead to him “glorifying” God, and through which God would “glorify” him: his death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension to return to his place in God’s presence. That gives the idea of being “lifted up” a whole different meaning.

There is a sense in which John’s Gospel presents Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension to the Father as the crucial event by which God would change everything. Jesus says it this way in our lesson: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:32). The fact that Jesus will draw all people to himself also means depriving the so-called “the ruler of this world” from any and all power whatsoever. Just as the “light of life” that Jesus has brought means that the darkness has been dispelled once and for all, so also Jesus’ “lifting up” on the cross, in the resurrection, and at the ascension deprives the powers of evil of any further ability to control our lives.

Well, that’s a really big promise, isn’t it? And the truth of the matter is when we look at the way life goes in our world, we can see all too much evidence that the powers of evil are thriving as much as ever. How many people in this world are affected right now by war, hunger, poverty, addiction, or abuse? How many more are subject to injustice, violence, and oppression? When you look at the fact that those who align themselves with evil in this world seem to be gaining power, not losing it, it can make you wonder whether we can trust Jesus’ promise at all.

But I think it comes down to how we choose to look at things. We can choose to focus on the negative things in this world. We can choose to focus on the negative things in our lives. And when we do, it should come as no surprise that we see a lot of evidence that life in this world is getting worse, not better. Or we can choose to look at things differently. We can choose to look for glimpses of “the beginning of the fulfillment” of God’s promise to make everything new again.[2] We see it every time someone stands up in the midst of all that’s wrong with this world and demonstrates their hope by choosing to make a positive difference for others. We see it every time someone turns away from all that would keep them trapped in darkness and chooses to believe that God loves them and to live their lives in the light of that love.

We all constantly stand before that choice. Whether to focus on all that’s wrong and surrender our lives to the control of those who would harm us and others. Or to focus on the good things that show God is indeed already working among us to make all things new. Jesus’ “hour” came for him to “lifted up” in his death, resurrection, and ascension to reign at God’s right hand. Since that time, the time has come for us everyone in every generation. And so, for us now is the time to decide what we believe is truly real: the hatred, violence, corruption, and oppression in this world, or the new life that God has begun in all of us through Jesus. We can choose which one we believe, and now is the time to make that choice. Now is the time for deciding whether we will give up our lives for the sake of others. Now is the time to decide whether we will open our eyes to see the “beginning of the fulfillment” of God’s promise to make all things new among us and around us already here and now.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2024. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/17/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey: A Diary of his Final Year, 166-167: “life is not empty waiting. It is to wait full of expectation. The knowledge that God will indeed fulfill the promise to renew everything … makes the waiting exciting. We can already see the beginning of the fulfillment. Nature speaks of it every spring; people [speak] of it whenever they smile; …and all of history speaks of it when amid all devastation and chaos, men and women arise who reveal the hope that lives within them … .”