Sermon preached by John A. Huffman, Jr.
June 11, 2006
Copyright © 2006, John A. Huffman, Jr.
All rights reserved.
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? (Psalm 42:1-2)
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. (Psalm 42:11)
It is so good to be back with you after a great one-third sabbatical.
You, St. Andrew's, are so generous to provide for most of us on the program staff a three-month sabbatical in our seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth year of ministry. You have specifically designed it not to be vacation but to be a spiritual, physical, emotional and intellectual time of renewal, set apart from the normal pressures of day-to-day parish responsibility.
My responsibilities have been such that my sabbatical has not always been taken in that precise format but, when taken, has been highly productive. In 1987, I spent three months as minister in residence at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, taking a course there from Dr. Garth Rosell in American Church History, a course at Harvard Divinity School from Dr. Ron Thiemann on "Readings on Religion in the Public Square," with my primary work being done with Dr. Robert Coles of Harvard University in "Literature of Social Reflection."
My next sabbatical was divided into two six-week segments in 1994 and 1995. One segment was spent in creative reading and reflection here in the United States. The other was spent teaching at Nanchung and Beijing Seminaries in China.
My third sabbatical was spent as visiting scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary and Princeton University, doing course work in pastoral care, as well as a PhD seminar at the graduate school in "Problems in American Intellectual and Cultural History."
This time, I'm dividing my sabbatical into two or three segments. The first third, for four weeks, was spent in Scotland, with Anne joining me for the last five days, followed by a ten-day vacation together, traveling through Scandinavia on a cruise that took us to: Denmark; Sweden; Finland; St. Petersburg, Russia; Estonia; Poland and Norway.
The first week of the four-week sabbatical I spent at Deans Court, the graduate living quarters of the University of St. Andrews. The final three weeks were spent in the Highlands north of Inverness near Dornoch as a house guest of my dear friends Flora and Roderick MacKenzie. They have a room they refer to as the "Prophet's Chamber" set aside for me in their manor house on a 1,600-acre farm named Geanies on the Portmahomock Peninsula overlooking the North Sea and the Dornoch Firth.
The four weeks were spent reading, walking, meditating on the Scriptures, praying, journaling and playing an occasional round of golf. In addition to wide-ranging reading of journals and other periodicals, I did a careful reading of the following books in this order: a Generous Orthodoxy by Brian D. McLaren; Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene H. Peterson; The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham by Harold Myra and Marshall Shelley; John Adams by David McCullough; The Transformation of American Religion by Alan Wolfe; and Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I will spare you any tedious book reviews, but deep into the soul of your pastor is inscribed the valuable nurturing of such an experience.
I can't resist, though, sharing one whimsical item I came across that has nothing to do with the topic of today's sermon, although it could be a sermon in itself with two or three possible messages. It reads:
A parish priest was being honored at a dinner on the 25th anniversary of his arrival in that parish. A leading local politician, who was a member of the congregation, was chosen to make the presentation and to give a little speech at the dinner, but he was delayed in traffic, so the priest decided to say his own few words while they waited.
"You will understand," he said, "the seal of the confessional can never be broken, however I got my first impressions of the parish from the first confession I heard here. I can only hint vaguely about this, but when I came here 25 years ago I thought I had been assigned to a terrible place. The very first chap who entered my confessional told me how he had stolen a television set, and when stopped by the police, had almost murdered the officer! Further, he told me he had embezzled money from his place of business and had an affair with his boss's wife. I was appalled! But as the days went on, I learned that my people were not all like that, and I had, indeed, come to a fine parish full of understanding and loving people."
Just as the priest finished his talk, the politician arrived full of apologies at being late. He immediately began to make the presentation and give his talk.
I'll never forget the first day our parish priest arrived in this parish," said the politician. "In fact, I had the honor of being the first one to go to him in confession."
Do with that what you want. It hits my funny bone! At the same time, whole sermons could be based on it, including the themes: Hypocrisy; The Dangers of Showing Up Late; Not Letting Your Public Utterances Get Too Personal.
But today, my message is highly personal. It's titled "How the 42nd Psalm Saved My Life--and Continues So to Do!"
Read Psalm 42. Linger over each phrase in it.
This Psalm is pregnant with meaning.
Although it has been one of my favorite Psalms since my teenage years, I have never preached a sermon based on it. It took our sanctuary choir's presentation of Felix Mendelssohn's As the Hart Pants (Psalm 42), combined with other choirs here a couple of months ago and then two weeks ago at Carnegie Hall in New York City, to inspire me to actually preach on this text.
This is the honest prayer of a deeply troubled man of faith.
Are you ever in this situation?
You are a follower of Jesus with a deep faith in God. But now somehow God seems absent? Your life is in crisis, even when you technically are His follower, a person of faith.
I've been there and, even now to some degree, am there.
Let me present to you three questions that you can ask of yourself, questions that come naturally from this text.
Question #1: Do you have a real yearning/hunger/thirst after God?
That's the starting point for deep faith, even when God seems so absent.
The psalmist writes:
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, "Where is your God?" (Psalm 42:1-2)
The picture is of a deer during time of drought in a desert environment. This magnificent animal is desperate for fresh water. With all of its being, it thrusts its head back, antlers skyward, throat parched, with all of its being yearning for the refreshing waters from a cool stream.
Some of you have traveled with me or Bill Flanagan to the Holy Land. You'll remember how our bus wound its way down the Kidron Valley from the old city of Jerusalem to the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. There, in the midst of that olive grove, is the Church of All Nations, a magnificent place of worship for pilgrims at the very heart of that sacred sight. What many tourists do not notice is what is mounted at the very top of the entrance to that church. If you step back to get perspective, you see two mighty deer facing each other with their necks and heads thrust up to the heavens, antlers backwards. The sculpture was inspired by Psalm 42 and this phrase, "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God."
Be honest with yourself. After what does your soul thirst? Does it thirst for God?
Or does it thirst for a new BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes or Lexus?
Or does it thirst for a new spouse--a husband or wife if you are single or out of a troubled marriage to a better one if you are married?
Or does it thirst for an exotic vacation to some exotic part of the world?
Or does it thirst for a chemical high or a sexual orgy?
Or does it thirst for a huge bank account?
Or does it thirst for a new job and the image of greater success?
Do you have a real longing and thirst for God? Can you sing along with the psalmist and the choir these words:
As a deer longs for the flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
or the living God.
When shall I come and behold
the face of God?
This is a bottom-line question. It's the great starting point for having your life saved!
Question #2: Are you realistic about your situation?
Some of us are masters of living in denial.
The psalmist refused to do so. He was determined to let it all hang out.
In fact, this is what prayer is all about. Prayer isn't elaborate, ornate, pious expressions about how we would like to see life and ourselves. Prayer is the deep, honest utterances of a soul that yearns to be in right relationship with the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer God whose name is Jesus Christ. There's no value to ornate religious utterances that deny the reality of where you are at any given point. If you feel joy, express it. If your heart is full of thanks, be specific. If things have gone south, you're discouraged or brokenhearted, your soul is cast down and disquieted within you, say so.
The psalmist remembered better days. He writes, "These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival" (Psalm 42:4).
Do you remember "those" days? If so, talk to God about them. Remind yourself of those better days.
The psalmist was honest in declaring how his soul was disquieted, cast down, vexed, when he cries out, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" (Psalm 42:5).
Are you cast down? Are you dispirited? Are you vexed? Do you feel caught up in the thunder of cascading flood waters, waves and billows pounding down on you, threatening to sweep you away? Talk to God about it. Face up to it realistically.
The psalmist feels like God has forgotten him. He writes, "I say to God, my rock, 'Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?' As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, 'Where is your God?'" (Psalm 42:9-10).
If you can remember days, if your soul is disquieted, if you feel like God has forgotten you, tell God about it. Don't live in denial. Be honest with Him. That's authentic prayer! I've been there, and I am there.
It was God's Word that saved my life and, once again, is saving it. That's why it's so important to give these third-grade Bibles and to encourage our children to read the Bible. How sad it is to try to get through life at whatever age we are on our own human wisdom, when God's wisdom and insight is available to us.
I don't remember ever having heard a sermon on this text. And, as I've told you, I have never preached a sermon on this text. But, as a teenager, I stumbled across it all on my own in my daily devotional reading. It saved my life then and has, subsequently, right down to the present day.
It saved my life as a teenager struggling with doubts about God. I wouldn't claim to have not had any doubts since then. Doubts and questions are part of life, but most of them have become resolved through decades of walking with the Lord. I remember a couple of my daughters getting me aside when they were in their university years, challenging me with their doubts and accusing me of not having wrestled deeply enough with the great unresolvable questions of life. Their eyes grew big as I shared with them my own horrendous struggles of those years between 1954 and 1960, when I was age 14 to 20, when I would periodically cry out, "God, if there is a God, reveal yourself to me. God, if there is a God and your name is Jesus Christ, help me to believe. God, if there is a God and your name is Jesus Christ and the Bible is your reliable Word, validate that to me in some way. God, if there is a God and your name is Jesus Christ and the Bible is your reliable Word, where are you in this world in all of its brokenness, hurt and pain?" Sometime early in that process, I came across this Psalm and, in my anguish, I would cry out, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God."
For me, it goes back to times of romantic crises, when I genuinely was seeking for God's will for a life partner. A couple of the young women I dated in college certainly were viable prospects. But I didn't want to make a mistake. I remember one person I dated with whom I was very much in love, but somehow the Holy Spirit conveyed to me that there were questions about the relationship. I remember breaking up with her and the torture it was for both of us. And a few days later, we got back together again. But still, there was something about it that was not right. Again, we broke up. This time, it was final. I remember crying myself to sleep, because my love for her had not gone. It was clear that this was not God's will. Again, I cried out, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God." I finally came to the period of a year and a half, starting in the middle of my senior year in college, that I decided it was better to back off from romantic relationships and let God take charge in that area. But it didn't happen overnight. I'm talking about a period that ran from around 1958 through 1963, when I finally met Anne. We became engaged and were married in 1964.
For me, it was when my family was in financial crisis. Some of you have heard me allude to this before. My father was simultaneously the president of a summer theological seminary in Indiana, which took approximately four months of his year, working for a foundation eight months of the year in New York City and, on the side, had a little travel agency geared to enabling pastors to travel on study trips to Europe and the Holy Land. He made a couple of bad business decisions, personnel-wise, in the travel business, which caused it to go under and raised questions that caused him to lose his job at the foundation and the financial support from the wealthy man who was the money behind the foundation. It was one of those situations where a couple of innocent mistakes triggered circumstances that compounded themselves as rumors, taking away two parts of his life while he tried to hold the seminary together for the next seven years. I was away from home in seminary and the early years of my ministry, but there was never a day I did not anguish with the pain my father and mother were going through. Mother went back to teaching school to support the family. My sister had to go from having her way paid through college to doing housecleaning in the very homes of the friends in whose homes she used to attend parties. Where was God in all of this? My parents were good, faithful servants of the Lord.
Part of what kept me together and saved me during those years of anguish from 1963 through 1970 was crying, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God." As no relief came year by year, I almost lost hope for them. Never then could I believe that, starting about 1970, circumstances would begin to reverse, light would be seen at the end of the tunnel, and Mother and Father would reemerge deeply in their faith, stable, not affluent in their finances, and Dad literally would end up working in ministry until he was 85 years old. He had no pension, but the equity had built up in their home. and Mother now lives modestly but comfortably, joyfully looking back on God's faithfulness through the years, even those darkest of years.
For me, God seemed so absent when my daughter Suzanne battled her cancer and finally died. Those years, 1990 through 1993, were horrendous. I remember when the phone call came from her at Princeton saying that she had been to the infirmary and had a chest x-ray. They thought she might have Hodgkin's Disease. The biopsy at Harvard Medical School, chemotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania, her graduation from Princeton wearing a turban over her bald head, her radiation at Stanford--could you ask for better medical care? Then, during Holy Week of 1991, it came back with a vengeance, and she died on 9/12/91. I didn't know if our family could make it. How many times I cried out, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God." Ah yes, we miss her, and I'm certain the grief will never end in this life. But there is healing, and God is faithful; and the family is stronger than it's ever been, and we celebrate the joys and sorrows of life, as do you. I thank God for this 42nd Psalm, which helped save my life.
Now, once again, life crowds in. I would never have imagined that, in my forty-second year of ordained ministry and my twenty-eighth year as your pastor, I and your church leadership would be faced with frivolous ecclesiastical and civil lawsuits that do nothing but distract from ministry, raise questions, mount up costly legal bills, demand time for lengthy depositions, all designed to further the will of two people. These persons have clearly declared that they are determined to have their way, forcing their viewpoints and strategies on the staff and Session of St. Andrew's, or they will do everything in their power to remove both the duly-elected clergy and lay leadership that stands in their way. At the same time, your leadership, for good reason, is told by our lawyers that we dare not make any comment. In the meantime, the legal bills roll up to over $13,000 as of today. My salvation now is crying out, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God."
Do you have these feelings? If I called on you to stand up, could you give vignettes from your own life that parallel to some extent my past and present experiences?
None of us is exempt from this. Just a few days ago, Pope Benedict XVI visited the Nazi death camp Auschwitz during his visit to Poland, the birthplace of his predecessor, John Paul II. He declared, "In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence--a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?" That's the heart cry, a question from a man of faith.
Even Rick Warren, at this moment unquestionably the best known clergy person in America, in an interview, said:
Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one.
The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort.
God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.
This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer.
I used to think that life was hills and valleys--you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.
Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.
No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.
And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.
You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, "which is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.
We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.
You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy.
It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease.
Question #3: Are you willing to look backward so as to look forward?
The psalmist declares, "These things I remember, as I pour out my soul. . ." (Psalm 42:4).
And the psalmist declares, "Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God" (Psalm 42:11).
What is he saying here? What is he teaching us? It appears to me he's saying that if you and I are in the middle of some crisis, some tragedy, some pain, when God seems absent, whether our problems or the problems of others, that brought us into what is referred to as the "long, dark night of the soul," we still are privileged with hindsight and foresight.
He models for us what it is to look back to better days when God seemed so real and present, and to look forward to better days when we will feel and see the reality of His promises fulfilled. When we look back, we realize God was there all the time in the previous crises of life. This, buttressed by the promises of His Word, gives us a hope for the future. We dare not let our feelings overwhelm the reality of God's promises. Thank God for God, for His incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ, the Bible, His written Word, and the presence of His Holy Spirit that does not candy-coat reality but undergirds our reality with God's faithfulness-- past, present and future!