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This past month has been a steep learning curve for
me. I have been exploring the world of Facebook, an Internet
community of about 35 million people, most of them college students.
I have found a place to list friends, by the way, I am up to 128
Facebook friends. This is way more than I could have ever imagined
when I started this series of sermons. I have explored blogging notes
about things that matter to me. I am even getting familiar with The
Wall, where friends communicate with each other. I like discovering
people’s favorites – favorite quotes, favorite movies, favorite books,
and even favorite websites. One of the more popular websites is
called PostSecrets. It receives 3 million visitors a month. The site
was started by Frank Warren who in an effort to deal with his own
secret pain did an art project. He distributed blank post cards to
people coming out of the subway inviting them to decorate the card and
share a long-hidden secret, something never shared before. About
three years ago he displayed them in an exhibit and started a web site
to display some every week. Now Frank receives about 1,000 secrets
every week – like our secrets some are hopeful and some are tragic,
some are poetic and some are profane, some are cries from the brink of
despair and some are expressions from the pinnacle of joy. All are a
strange mixture of wanting to be heard - anonymously.
I am certain that some of our psalms began that way –
as private expressions of the soul that found their way into
circulation because the pain felt in isolation was discovered to be a
common experience. Psalm 22 is this kind of psalm. Listen to the
movement from private lament to public exhortation. I will read
verses 1-2 and verses 23-24. Hear now the Word of the Lord:
1My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far
from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2O my God,
I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest…
23You who fear the Lord, praise him! All
you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you
offspring of Israel! 24For he did not despise or abhor the
affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but
when I cried to him – he heard.
The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to
God. In this passage the psalmist escorted the reader into the
darkness of private pain to the light of a relational God. I have
spent years in the psalms and the last several weeks in PostSecrets
and what I have discovered is that everyone is afraid of the
dark. Everyone is afraid of the dark. There are
a couple of things that this psalm can teach us about the dark, things
that may be quite obvious, but often forgotten. The first thing we
discover is…
The dark is
dark.
As my children may
have said years ago, “Duh”. However, before you dismiss this as
absurdly obvious, let me warn you that we often forget this,
especially those of us who see some light. Look at the words the
psalmist used to describe the darkness around him – forsaken,
far, groaning, no rest. Each one of these
expressions of aloneness has thousands of echoes throughout our
world. Anonymous postcards tell secrets of abuse, innocence stolen,
abandonment, and fear. One postcard that I read said, “I will
never forgive you.” Another postcard had a classroom full of
children with hands raised and words written over the picture,
“When I was seven years old I had to pick out a rapist from a
line-up.” Another one had a fear inscribed, “I fear no one
will ever love me.” Still another simply read, “I miss feeling
close to God.” The dark is dark.
Twenty years ago,
Tammy, Chelsea, and I were stranded in Atlanta, Georgia because of
missing our connection at the airport. The airlines put us up at a
local hotel. I was having a hard time getting to sleep so I was
watching TV. Its glow filled the hotel room with light. Sometime
just after midnight I got up to walk to bathroom and as I came back
into the room I discovered that Tammy had turned off the TV. She
wasn’t having the same problem of going to sleep. Not wanting to
disturb her I decided to sneak back to bed in the dark. I mean, how
difficult could it be navigate through a simple hotel room? There
were just a couple of beds and a dresser. I walked out of the
bathroom and took a left toward the beds. Then I took a couple of
steps with confidence and BANG! - I walked smack into the corner of a
stand-up-wardrobe that stood just outside the bathroom wall. I caught
a cab to the hospital to receive several stitches that night. I did
not need someone to remind me that night that the dark is dark, and
that it can be quite painful. But do you know what our tendency is?
We say things like, “Didn’t you remember that the wardrobe was in the
middle of the room?”
I have known people to cry out, “My God, why have you
forsaken me,” only to have well-meaning friends rally around the
lamenter and assure him or her that God has not forsaken, that God
cannot forsake. While that may be a biblically founded doctrine and
theologically accurate statement, it does not take into account the
first observation about the dark – the dark is dark. You cannot see
the obvious, there is no light. There is only pain and confusion.
Get this – the psalmist hurt. This man after God’s own heart
experienced a time when he felt abandoned by God. He felt as though
his cries of pain were here and God’s help and presence were way over
there – far from him. He groaned like a lion roars in the wild, but
no one seemed to be able to hear him. His soul was in such pain that
he found no rest. Forsaken, far, groaning, no
rest – these are all expressions from the dark. The dark is dark
and everyone is afraid of the dark.
And yet, somehow the
psalmist made it out of the darkness. In fact, the very next psalm
will begin, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” How
did this happen? How did the dark get defeated? This brings us to
the second truth about the dark…
Being heard brings light into the dark.
You may have noticed that I changed the wording a
little as I read the scripture. I did that because earlier this week
when I had the chance to read this passage in Hebrew it struck me that
the answer to our fears in the darkness came in the last word of verse
24. The word is “shema”, which translated means – He heard.
There are other assurances given in these two verses – some very
important truths. God does not despise those who find themselves in
the dark of pain. God does not hide his face from the hurting one.
How did the psalmist know this? How did he move from the private pain
of verses 1 and 2 to the public praise of verses 23 and 24? It all
happened in one word – shema – He heard.
One postcard that I read this week had four female
models from some magazine. They all looked like they were having a
wonderful time. The message written with a sharpie over each of the
women from left to right read, “People don’t realize how lucky they
are to have friends who genuinely care about their well-being. My
secret is that I don’t have any.”
Last
week, we had some friends come by for a visit. They are friends who,
tragically, get Psalm 22. Five months ago their thirty-year-old son
died from acute depression that resulted in suicide. They have had
well meaning people tell them that God has not forsaken them, is not
far from them, hears their groans, and gives them rest – but they
cannot see that right now, because the dark is dark. Out of a sense
of genuineness and a desire to bring some light into the darkness,
Tammy asked them, “What does help? What can we do that makes a
difference?”
The father with
tears flowing down his cheeks said, “This helps. Being able to tell
someone how I feel and being able to remember my son with people who
knew him helps.”
Shema
– He
heard.
When my children
were little they would say the same thing to me that I said to my
parents, “Leave the door open a crack.” They wanted a little light in
their rooms to chase away the dark. When we are heard it brings light
into our lives.
When Joseph was restless over what to do with his
fiancé who was expecting a child, an angel told him to take her as his
wife. The child was God’s child and was to be named Emmanuel,
which means God with us. The door was opened a crack. When
the woman at Samaria came to the well alone, she met Emmanuel and he
knew her and he heard her and she ran to tell everyone she knew that
she had met Shema – He heard. The door was opened a
crack. This is what caused the psalmist to announce to all who feared
the Lord, to all the children of Jacob, to all the people of Israel
that God was to be glorified, “because when I cried to him, Shema
– He heard.”
Frank Warren does not share his secret with his
readers, but he does confess that a few years ago he wrote a secret,
that he had carried with him since the fourth grade, on a postcard and
mailed it to himself. It needed to be told and it needed to be
heard. He had spent too long in the dark and everyone is afraid
of the dark. I don’t know what the therapeutic benefits of
PostSecrets are, but I do know that there are times in life that are
too dark to see a single ray of light, the dark is dark, but it will
not last forever. I also know that so much of despair is lifted with
just one word – Shema – He heard. Amen.
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