Text: Psalm 130
I occasionally go on a laundry folding spree which
necessitates watching a little Stargate Atlantis. It’s a SCiFi about a group of civilian and
military personnel from earth who live in the lost ancient city of Atlantis which is located in another galaxy where
there are also humans. They are at war
with an alien species known as the Wraith who live by sucking life out of
humans. In one particular episode called
The Seer they’ve come across a man who has the ability of showing them
brief glimpses of the future one of which shows the destruction of
Atlantis. In this episode they are
secretively collaborating with a Wraith commander on a weapon that could
destroy a common enemy. The Atlantis
team has the Wraith commander in custody on Atlantis so that his ship which is
in orbit won’t destroy the city. Then
they discover betrayal number one: there is still needed information aboard the
Wraith ship to insure that Atlantis won’t just blow it out of the sky. To complicate things, no other Wraith are
supposed to know this particular commander’s whereabouts or that Atlantis even exists. Yet, Atlantis detects another Wraith ship
approaching and the question arises: Has the Wraith commander betrayed them
again and set in motion the Seer’s vision of the destruction of Atlantis. What are the Atlantians to do? They could believe the Wraith commander that
the other ship does not know about Atlantis and take his advice to lower the
shields and cloak the city until the other ship leaves. Or, they could attack it which would
certainly give away Atlantis’ location when the other ship called for help. Add to that, the Wraith commander’s ship
along with the information it contains would most likely be destroyed in the
attack as well. The super weapon that
would help billions of people would be lost forever.
A key moment
in the episode for the purpose of this sermon was a conversation that the Atlantis
mission commander and the chief military commander had about the situation and
the decision that needed to be made. The
military commander notes that there is too much information on the table. You only need a few details to make a
decision. Any further details, like the
visions that the Seer had shown them of the destruction of Atlantis, are really
useless and only complicate the decision.
You decide your number one priority (the safety of Atlantis) and relying
on your own judgment and training, you do what is best to accomplish that
priority. To the military commander
blowing the two ships out of the air would be the best way to ensure the safety
of Atlantis. But, then they note that
simply maintaining the safety of Atlantis would cost millions of lives
throughout the galaxy. So, they decide
to risk trusting the Wraith and lower the shields to cloak the city leaving them
vulnerable to attack and the fulfillment of the Seer’s vision.
Trust and take a risk that would help everybody or
take control and do what’s best for yourself; that’s the rock and hard place
that we usually find ourselves in when it comes to major decisions in life and
it also holds true for when we are trying to discern the will of the LORD and
find ourselves waiting on his move before we ourselves can move. There is a broad school of thinking out there
that thinks that God does not make his desire for what we should do with our
lives known. If God did, it would be
like the visions of the future that the Seer gave—to much information that only
complicates things as there is no way to know for sure what God wants. Rather, they say decide your own number one
priority and then relying on your moral judgment and training do what’s best to
make the priority happen. The assumption
is that if your own priorities are moral and you don’t intentionally hurt
others, then the LORD will see to it that his will gets done through your
diligence.
I wish it were that easy. Following Jesus is what we are called to
do. Our next move is determined not by
our own priorities or life-goals, but by his next move. Therefore, following/faithfulness involves a
lot of waiting. Waiting on the LORD is
not easy. It is painful. People judge you. You judge yourself. Your resources run thin. Your training only gets you so far. If you pardon my pun, waiting on God is self
destructive. Waiting on God changes who
you are. It makes you doubt and second
guess yourself. It puts you in a dark
place from which the LORD can only show the way out. The Psalmist says: “I wait for the LORD, my soul
waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen
for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” Those words are often spoken to us as words
of encouragement. Yet, we have to
remember that it is from out of the depths that the Psalmist is calling out. It is by waiting that the LORD teaches us to
rely on nothing but him and to hope in nothing but his word.
The number one priority of the spiritual life is
Jesus teaching us who he is so that we may be like him. A huge chunk of his efforts in this task not
our own will be set on showing us who we are our in our very selves. There will come a point where if we truly are
serious about Jesus, he will show us who we are and, it doesn’t matter if
you’re Mother Teresa, you’re not going to like what you see. There will come a point where you will learn
than sin has clouded everything about you.
You find that you can’t trust your own judgments, that your skill set that
has got you thus far in life is no longer reliable, your character is
flawed. The Frank Sinatra mantra of “I
did it my way” comes up way short when you find yourself face to face with
Jesus; Jesus crucified.
Waiting on the LORD is a form of judgement. The Bible teaches us that God’s judgment upon
us ends well. It’s transformative,
healing. The Psalmist writes: “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who
could stand? But with you there is
forgiveness, that you may be revered.”
God is not out to “get us” for every little thing we’ve done wrong in
life. If God counts our sins, we’re all
doomed to die. We’re all going to do
that anyway, thus God, on the other hand, is forgiving. God seeks to give us reason to worship him. God takes us, twisted as we are, and like a
kinsman redeemer in the Old Testament buys us back from our wasted-ness with
the currency of his own life, the gift of the Holy Spirit by whom we are raised
to new life in Christ.
The way of new life in Christ is
more of the same waiting. Waiting
doesn’t mean sitting back and doing nothing.
George Campbell Morgan who was a prominent British evangelist prior to
World War II wrote: “Waiting
for God is not laziness. Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God
is not the abandonment of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under
command; second, readiness for any new command that may come; third, the
ability to do nothing until the command is given.” Also, “Waiting for God means power to do nothing
save under command. This is not lack of power to do anything. Waiting for God
needs strength rather than weakness. It is power to do nothing. It is the
strength that holds strength in check. It is the strength that prevents the
blundering activity which is entirely false and will make true activity
impossible when the definite command comes.”
It takes great strength to fight the inner compulsion that we all have
to take control of our lives and do with them what sees fit to us and our
priorities especially when God is taking too long and staying too silent, when
the voices that are the loudest are not the supportive voices, not the
encouraging voices, not the voices that say “Hang in there, the LORD is still
going to do great things through you.”
To close, Psalm 130 is a lament. Jerome Creach, professor of Old Testament at
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary writes: “Lament is a form of speech that allows
the worshipper to complain about injustice and to call on God to hear the cries
of those who suffer; as did our biblical forbears…lament also is praise, and a
very important expression of praise at that. It gives evidence of faith worked
out in the midst of hardship, hurt, and loss. Perhaps this is the reason the
editors of the Psalter labelled the book ‘praises’ even though it is dominated
by the lament genre.” When we read the
Book of Psalms, lament is what we hear the most. Therefore, that leads me to conclude that
with respect to our relationship with God in Christ if we’re going about it the
right way and letting him be in control, lament will dominate our side of the
conversation; lament not just for ourselves, but also for one another, for the
church, for the world. After all, you’ve
never really loved someone unless you’ve stood with them in their suffering and
suffered with them and learned to hope.
Amen.
