FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Sermon by Dr. George Bryant
Wirth
September 15, 2002
Scripture: Psalm 31:1-5, 14-15, 21-24; Luke 23:44-49
Last
Sunday, after twelve years of faithful ministry as Pastor of Central
Presbyterian Church, Dr. Ted Wardlaw and his family were given a farewell
reception by the congregation. I got
there toward the end of the celebration to give them a hug and to say how much
all of us will miss them as they move to Texas where Ted has been called to
serve as President of Austin Theological Seminary.
It’s
not easy to say goodbye and there was hardly a dry eye in the room. But Ted assured those good people of his
love and gratitude and continuing prayers, and they embraced him and his family
with the same kind of encouragement.
Just a week before, on the cover of their church newsletter, Ted tried
his best to express some of the emotions they all felt in the words of a poem
which a church member had shared with him:
“I tremble on the edge of a maybe,
a first time,
a new thing,
a
tentative start,
And the wonder of it
lays its fingers on my lips.
In silence, Lord,
I share now my eagerness
and my uneasiness
about this
something different
I would be
or do;
And listen for Your leading
to help me separate the light
from the darkness
in the
change I seek to shape
and
which is shaping me.”
(Poem
by Ted Loder)
And
then, at the bottom of the page, in his own words, this is what Ted wrote:
“Even when you tremble on the edge of
a maybe, you are still in God’s hands, and God will never let you go. Remember that…and I’ll see you on Sunday –
Rally Day!”
Ever
since our Rally Day on August 25, we have been talking together about the theme
for this new church year: “Christ at the Center: In the heart of the city…in
the hands of God.” And today, I want to
say that what Ted Wardlaw wrote to his congregation is just as true for all of
us here at the corner of 16th and Peachtree: we are in God’s hands,
and God will never let us go.
I.
When
King David wrote the 31st Psalm during a difficult and anxious time
in his own life, he looked up toward heaven and poured out his heart, saying:
Into Thy hands I commit my spirit…
Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord,
Faithful God …
Be gracious to me Lord, for I am in
distress;
My eye is wasted from grief,
My soul and my body also,
For my life is spent with sorrow,
And my years with sighing…
But I trust in Thee, O Lord,
I say, “Thou art my God” …
My times are in Thy hand. (Psalm 31:5, 9-10, 14-15)
I
can’t say for certain, but my guess is that the poet Robert Browning had those
very words in mind when he put pen to paper and wrote the familiar lines that
you may have seen on the cover of our church newsletter this past week:
“Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first
was made;
Our times are in His hand who
saith:
A whole is planned – youth shows but
half;
Trust God, see all, nor be
afraid.”
Now
it seems to me that King David, Robert Browning and Ted Wardlaw are on to
something important, something deep down and close to the center of our
relationship with the Lord.
Perhaps
that’s why I become concerned and even disturbed when it seems that people
trivialize what it means to put our lives into the hands of God. A college student who hasn’t studied or
applied himself all semester, shows up at the final exam and says, “Lord, it’s
in your hands now.” Driving into the
back parking lot, a mother, in a hurry to pick up her daughter from the weekday
pre-school, looks around and prays, “Please God, help me find an open
space. I leave it in your hands.” And a preacher, who hasn’t set aside the
time to prepare for the Sunday sermon, climbs into the pulpit and lifts up the
petition: “Father, give me the words to say today. I’m in Your hands.”
The
truth is, there are some things that God has put into our hands, certain things
that He expects us to do in cooperation with Him. God has given us gifts and talents to accomplish our tasks, and
the responsibility to get things done.
That’s
what the poet George Eliot was trying to say about Antonio Stradivari, who made
priceless violins. Stradivari did not
play the instruments he made, and when a fellow artist criticized him, Eliot,
the poet, has Stradivari answer:
“When any master holds
‘twixt hand and chin a violin of mine,
He will be glad that Stradivari lived,
Made violins and made them best of
all.
…While God gives them skill,
I give them violins to play upon,
God choosing me to help Him…
‘Tis God gives the skill,
But not without men’s hands.
He could not make Stradivarius violins
Without Antonio.”
Exactly
so! And that is why we need to be
careful not to play games with God, making excuses for our lack of preparation,
praying for a parking space or abdicating our own responsibilities to get
things done with the gifts and talents that have been entrusted to us.
II.
But
there have been and there will be moments in our lives when we have done our
best, and it is not enough…when the storm strikes and the going gets rough and
we don’t know where to turn or what to do and we need help to see us
through. It is then, when we call out
to God, as King David did in the 31st Psalm, that we will discover
we are in His hands, and underneath are His everlasting arms, holding us up,
holding us together and promising that He will never let us go.
Jesus
Christ came to that same moment in His own life. The description of our Lord’s crucifixion in the 23rd
chapter of the gospel of Luke reminds us that as Jesus hung there dying on the
cross between two thieves, the crowd mocked Him, saying “He saved others…let
Him come down and save Himself!”
The
Roman soldiers also taunted Him, and having shoved a spear through His side,
they began to deride Jesus with the others, shouting, “If you are the King of
the Jews, save yourself!”
Looking
down at all of those hateful, angry people with divine love and deep compassion
in His eyes, He forgave them. And then,
lifting His blood stained head toward the dark sky, He cried out in a loud
voice, Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit! And He died with those words on His lips,
the same words King David had lifted up centuries before, seeking the help and
the healing and the hope of God.
All
these years later, we who believe that Jesus died on the cross to save us from
sin and rose from the grave to give us life here and now and forever in heaven,
we Christians can take hold of those same promises still today.
When
we walk through the valley of the shadow, we can know that Jesus has been there
before us and now walks alongside us so that we are not alone. When we suffer from pain and sorrow, we can
know that Jesus identifies with us, and that He has the power to heal our
hearts and help us to on instead of giving up.
That’s
what Ann Weems found out. She’s the
Presbyterian author who lost a son named Todd at the age of 21, and in her
grief she wrote a book, “Psalms of Lament,” and this is how the book begins:
“Jesus wept,
and in his weeping,
he joined himself forever
to those who mourn.
He stands now throughout all time,
this Jesus weeping,
with his arms about
the weeping ones:
“Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.”
He stands with the mourners,
for his name is
God-with-us.
Jesus wept.
“Blessed are those who weep, for they
shall be comforted.” Someday. Someday God will wipe the tears from their
eyes.
In the godforsaken, obscene
quicksand of life,
there is a deafening alleluia
rising from the souls
of those who weep,
and of those who weep with
those who weep.
if you watch, you will see
the hand of God
putting the stars back in
their skies
one by one.”
-
Ann Weems
And
when we finally come to the end of our journey on earth, we can know beyond the
shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ, the risen Savior and Lord, will be waiting
with open arms to welcome us home on the other side.
And so it is, from the minute we are born until the moment that we die: we are in the hands of God, and underneath are His everlasting arms. King David believed that was true, and so did Robert Browning the poet and so does Ted Wardlaw the preacher and Ann Weems the author and so have the saints down through the ages of time: all of them believed it was true. So the only question that really matters today before we pronounce the benediction is: Do you believe it too?
III.
In Alcoholics Anonymous meetings across this country, including the groups that meet in our church, men and women who are struggling with that disease come for help, looking for hope. They recite the 12 steps, beginning with the confession that “they are powerless over alcohol, that their lives have become unmanageable” and moving on toward the affirmation that they have “come to believe in a power greater than themselves that can restore them to sanity.” They also support and sponsor one another and learn the Serenity Prayer, written by Reinhold Niebuhr:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept
the
things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.”
And
there is another phrase which is often quoted, a phrase I first heard when I
was invited to attend a meeting in Pittsburgh:
“Let go and let God.”
In
that meeting, someone told a story about a mountain climber who was scaling the
side of a cliff one day and lost hold of his rope. As he started to fall, he grabbed a branch jutting out from the
side of the cliff and held on for dear life.
A few minutes passed and then he shouted out, “Is anyone up there who
can help me?” Another minute passed,
and a voice boomed down, “Yes, I am the Lord.
Let go of the branch and I will catch you.” The mountain climber thought for yet another minute and cried
out, “Is anyone else up there?”
Well,
that’s an old story, but it works for the members of AA and I think it is
profound for each of us and all of us in this church. Because, unless and until we are willing to let go of the defense
systems and the control mechanisms that we use to run our lives, it will be
difficult for God to get through to us and to give us the faith that we seek
and the help and healing power and hope that we need.
So
before we close, I want to ask you to do something this morning that we’ve
never done before. Don’t worry: we’re
not going to take another offering!
It’s really very simple. First,
lift up your hands and close them into a fist.
Squeeze tight and realize that when we come to God that way, not much
can get out and hardly anything can come in.
Now,
open your hands and keep them lifted up.
Do you feel the difference? Open
hands are receptive, and so are open hearts.
That is how God asks us to come to Him, and when we do that, reaching
out, we will soon discover that He is there, in the good times and in the hard
times, reaching back to take hold of us.
“Our times are in Thy hand, O God”…And “Into Thy hands, we commit our
spirits.” We are in God’s hands my
friends – underneath are His everlasting arms … and He will never let us go!
In
the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.