Between Anointed and Abandoned (2 Samuel 1:17-27)

[This week Logan Kruck is preaching at our church.  He has graciously allowed me to share his sermon here.]

Superman Dies!  How can it be?  Superman can’t ever die!  Don’t you read the stories?!

Those who know me know that I love comics.  I read them all the time.  And Superman is the comic hero of heroes, the standard of what it means to be virtuous and good.  But, when I was 8 years old, I read this comic and was shocked.  Superman was dead.  It’s hard to separate fiction from reality when you are 8.  All of your favorite characters are very real to you.  So, when Superman died, a real hero died.  What could I say?  What should I feel?  As a child, when your hero dies, you feel very alone, as if all the good in the world died with him.  What do I do from here?

Listen now, to the words of David

Your glory, oh Israel, lies slain upon your high places!  How the mighty have fallen!

This isn't the song of Israel on opposite side of the Red sea watching Egypt drown.  It is not, "Horse and chariot are cast into the sea!  How the mighty God triumphs!"

It is a different song.  It is a song of shock and lament.  It is a song out of the midst of the horror of battle.  And our king, our representative to God, is dead.  

Faithfully Doubting God - Psalm 22

Most of the time, we think of faith and doubts as polar opposites.  We think of faith and doubt on a single spectrum.  We think that if we have more doubt, we have less faith, and if we have less doubt, we have more faith.

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Doubt                                          Faith

But that’s not what the Bible teaches.  The Bible’s perspective on doubt and faith is more like the father with a sick child who said to Jesus: “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).  Belief and unbelief are all mixed together - like overlapping ovals.  We have all these doubts of different shapes and sizes, but they can be enveloped by an even larger circle of faith.  Having doubts does not mean we don’t have faith.  Doubts can actually enlarge and enrich our faith.  True faith is not being doubt-free.  True faith is taking the leap to trust God even while the doubts are there screaming that we shouldn’t.  True faith is moving forward to follow Jesus - even if it means carrying a backpack full of doubts along the way.

Sometimes, we let our doubts drive us away from God and away from God’s people.  We can get very ashamed of our doubts.   We think, “If I was a real Christian, I wouldn’t feel like this.  If I really trusted God, I wouldn’t have these doubts.”  And so we end up hiding our true selves from other people at church and even from God in prayer.  We only say the nice things.  We only pray the nice prayers.  We stuff our doubts down.  We try to shoo them out the window of our souls.  

Here’s the thing about doubt and pain and fear.  It’s part of us.  It will always be part of us as long as we live in this broken world.  If we don’t bring God our pain and fear and doubt, then we are leaving a huge part of us in the back room of our souls.  If we don’t bring our church and our friends our pain and fear and doubt, then we are hiding huge parts of ourselves and preventing deep relationship from ever happening.  

We (as a church) and we (as Christians) have to find healthier ways of dealing with pain and doubt.  Thankfully, we have Psalm 22.  This is probably the single most famous “lament” or “doubting” Psalm in the Bible.  Listen for how it mixes together doubt and faith.  

1  My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?   Why are you so far away when I groan for help?

Feeling our Prayers - Isaiah 63-64

   Every single person I know has struggled with prayer at some time.  Most people I know struggle with prayer most of the time.  Praying can be hard.  Someone told me last week that he has just about given up on prayer.  Most people say they wish they had more time to pray, but most people don’t seem particularly interested in actually spending more time in prayer.  When it comes right down to it, most of us would rather do most other things.  If you have ever struggled with prayer or with not praying, you are not alone.  Most people are like you.

   We are entering the Season of Advent.  This is a season of waiting.  We are waiting in three ways. 

• We’re waiting symbolically with the people of the Old Testament for Jesus, the Messiah to come.  We’ll celebrate Jesus’ coming at Christmas time.
• We’re waiting for Jesus to come again and make our world right.
• We’re waiting for God’s coming and action to be more fully present in our world and in our lives.

    In the midst of all this waiting, prayer can be hard.  When I graduated from university, my Aunt Sue gave me a book by one of America’s greatest philosophers: Dr. Seuss.  It’s called O, the Places You’ll Go.  Dr. Seuss describes life as this long journey of ups and downs, celebrations and failures.  But one stage of life is often “The Waiting Place”:
        a most useless place … 
        … for people just waiting.
        Waiting for a train to go
        Or a bus to come, or a plane to go
        Or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
        Or waiting around for a Yes or a No
        Or waiting for their hair to grow.
        Everyone is just waiting.