Defining your destiny
Commentary
One of Harry Emerson Fosdick's great sermons has the title "On Catching the Wrong Bus." He tells of a man who boarded a bus in New York, planning to travel to Detroit. The bus motored through the nighttime hours, making several stops along the way. Most passengers whiled away the time with sleep or reading. This man chose to doze for much of the trip. When the journey reached its end and the bus emptied at the terminal, the man stretched and wandered outside with the rest. But everything looked unfamiliar to him. He couldn't get his bearings.
Stopping someone on the street he asked where Woodward Avenue was. His query met with a blank stare. Woodward Avenue? No one seemed to have heard of that great street at the heart of Detroit? "Where's Woodward Avenue?" he yelled at passers-by. "Doesn't anybody in Detroit know where Woodward Avenue is located?"
That got a response. "I don't know why you're looking for Woodward Avenue here," said someone. "This is St. Louis!"
The man had bought a ticket for passage to Detroit, but had gotten on the wrong bus. While all who started out on the journey began in the same location, New York City, the further the man traveled on the wrong bus, the wider his distance from Detroit. Fosdick used that story as a reminder that our destinations are determined not only by our desires, but also by making sure we get on the right bus.
Today's passages are about choices that result in different destinations. In the Genesis record of the flood, the human race has made choices that result in death and destruction, while Noah's choices bring him life and salvation. Paul's introduction to his letter to the Roman church offers these same choices in the world reshaped by the critical event of Jesus' coming. And, Jesus' own teaching in the Sermon on the Mount places before his hearers the choice that determines eternal destiny.
Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19
It is possible to spend much time comparing the biblical story of the flood to other similar tales found in ancient literature, but that rarely blesses the congregation with a word of grace and direction. One must ask why this story is in the Bible. There are several reasonable answers to that question.
First, within the Bible's own frame of reference, the book of Genesis functions as the prologue to the covenant declared by God to Israel at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20). All major covenants of that time included a historical prologue that explained the reason for the formation of the covenant. In the case of Israel and God at Sinai, the stories of Genesis spell out a paradigm for understanding how life ought to operate. Why does God have the right to impress a relationship upon Israel? Because this God is the creator of all things and all nations are, in reality, the expression of God's creative goodness. But why is a covenant between God and Israel actually necessary? Because people and nations, left to their own devices, tend to wander away from God. Is it so bad to wander away from God? Yes, for when people wander from God they hurt themselves and one another, and stand under sentence of divine judgment. This is the meaning of the flood story in the context of Israel's existence.
Second, the flood story is about a family that moved through a body of water that destroyed an old way of life, and emerged on the other side with a mandate to begin again. For Israel the message was clear -- recently having passed through the Red Sea that separated them from Egypt and destroyed the power of Pharaoh, Israel was now on the way to a new life. What would it be like? How would it be shaped? By what standards would it function? The story of Noah and the Genesis flood served as a reminder for the people to make wise choices that connected them to God in the "righteousness" and "blamelessness" of Noah (6:9). For this reason the stipulations of the Sinai covenant would serve to shape their identity.
Third, there is inherent in the story of the flood a parallel to the original creation story in Genesis 1-2. Just as waters chaotically hid the goodness of God's world, so the floodwaters wiped out all that God had made. But again, just as God's word spoke into that chaos and established order and a kingdom for humans to investigate, so also God's word in this flood story will recreate earth's goodness, and then commission Noah and his family to renew the mission given originally to Adam and Eve.
For those who hear this story in later generations, several themes emerge. First, our existence is about choices, which ultimately lead toward either life or death. C. S. Lewis said that we all enter this world in roughly the same circumstances. It is our little choices that bend our hearts and our spirits toward destinies widely separated from one another. Either we are increasingly shaped into angelic creatures or we are being deformed into something akin to the beast of hell. While there is little biographical information about Noah that will help us understand the choices he was making, it is clear that God found him "righteous" and "blameless." Both of these words signify choosing: the first carries with it the idea of choosing those things that are part of God's ways, while the latter indicates choices that have deliberately refrained from taking part in evil.
Second, the idea of choosing is amplified through this story so that it is not merely about being nice people; instead, choosing the ways of God is intrinsically tied up with renewing earth and bringing in the eschatological kingdom. It was the wrong choices of those who went before Noah that caused this world to suffer and tremble under judgment and punishment. But through the wise choices that Noah makes, there is for the earth the possibility of renewal and restoration. Our choices carry with them both moral and redemptive value. When we make bad choices, our lives come under divine judgment, but we also diminish the quality of life on earth. When we choose to live for and with the creator, this creation itself springs back to life in some small way.
Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28 (29-31)
Paul wrote this letter at the end of his third mission journey. He had spent three years in Ephesus (51-53 A.D.), had established a strong Christian presence throughout Asia Minor, and had carried on a difficult but redemptive correspondence with the Corinthian congregation. Now he is wintering in Corinth for three months (Romans 16:23) and sends this letter to the Roman congregation in anticipation of his future plans to visit there on his way to Spain (Romans 15:23-24). Paul's few personal notes are limited to chapter 16; this reminds us that while Paul knew many people in Rome, he had not yet been there personally, nor had he given organizational shape to the church there. Instead, Paul's letter is more of a theological treatise that outlines his theology as a basis for discussion when he would later arrive.
Paul's gospel summary is found in the powerful words of 1:16-17, and echoed in the second part of this Romans lectionary reading, 3:22b-31. The major interpretive decision is whether to understand God's "righteousness" as a standard against which all of humanity falls short, or as an action of God by which rightness is reasserted in a world that has lost its way. Commentaries will help you find your way through this discussion. My perspective is the latter, that Paul's use of the word "righteousness" is not intended to place before us a high standard against which we all fall desperately inadequate, but rather that the revelation of God's righteousness is God's active attempt to restore goodness to this world and in so doing provide hope, health, and healing for all God's children that have felt the horror of evil and the terror of wickedness.
In this reading of these key verses of Romans 1 and 3, Paul's declaration is that God is finally restoring goodness to God's world. Too long we have struggled under the twisted and warped conditions that have followed our own hurtful choices (see Romans 1-2). In these recent days, God has given us hope. God has reasserted God's righteousness over against the damaging and disruptive powers that grip planet earth. God's new initiatives are based upon the recent work of Jesus. Now is the time to get on board. The only way we can step into the momentum of God's restorative work is to believe in Jesus.
Paul joins two themes in his exhortation. First, we have all made choices that have led to corruption and destruction. Now we are being offered a second chance. But the second chance we have is not to renew our misguided commitments to self or race or fallible moral code; instead, we must make a choice to go with Jesus. Jesus is the way and the means to entering again into the great righteousness of God, which is renewing creation (see Romans 8:18-27). Either we go with Jesus, making the choices that he did, or we miss the bus and end up at the wrong destination.
Second, Paul lays much emphasis in this process of choosing that bridges the ages-old divide between Jew and Gentile. Paul was well aware of how the Jew vs. Gentile problem had played out in Asia Minor (see Acts 15 and Paul's letter to the Galatian church), from which he had just come. He also saw remnants of this problem disrupting the church in Corinth where he was now a guest (see 1 Corinthians 1-3), so the issues were immediately on his mind. If God was reasserting God's righteousness in this world, it would not only show up in the moral and ethical choices God's people made, but it would also reshape the relationship between those who thought they were in and those who thought they were out. God's new declaration of righteousness is for all people, both Gentile and Jew.
The "power" of this gospel is twofold. First, it is God's power injected and inserted into our lives and into the world as a whole. Paul has a strong commitment to the sovereignty of God and the inability of humans to make things right again. Only if God intervenes in our mad dash toward destruction will there be any hope. It is God's power that makes the gospel powerful, and not our self-deluded psychological pep talks.
Second, the power of the gospel is that of transformation. It produces faith (ch. 4). It changes the character of the whole human race (ch. 5). It changes the behavior of those who receive it (ch. 6). It resolves the wrestlings of the human heart (ch. 7). It brings hope through troubling times (ch. 8). It transforms racism into relationships of care (chs. 9-11). And the pinnacle of this powerful gospel is found in chapter 12, where Paul tells us that it transforms our thinking, opens up our talents, and urges us on in commitments of love.
Matthew 7:21-29
Jesus says that many people say, "Lord! Lord!" but their talk is cheap, and their walk doesn't make it into the kingdom. A woman once came running up to Arthur Rubinstein after he finished another spectacular concert. "Oh, Mr. Rubinstein!" she said, "I've always wanted to play the piano! I'd give anything if I could play like you did this evening!"
"No, you wouldn't," he replied. "I know what I've had to give up to be able to play like this, and if that's what you really wanted, you would have done the same."
That is what Jesus talks about in verses 21-23. We all want to take a shortcut. We are all looking for a quick fix, a get-rich-quick scheme, a way to double our income and cut our work in half. There are all kinds of voices out there telling us how to do it. Don't listen to them, says Jesus. They will only bring you ruin in the end!
In our choices we find ourselves. Jesus makes this clear in the story of the two builders, one foolish, one wise. Palestine is not a friendly place for construction. Much of the landscape is uneven with rocks and boulders. It takes a lot of effort to lay a straight foundation on the sloping and convoluted surfaces, where no spade will dig. There are, of course, the low spots in the waddies between the hills. Here the sands have trickled to form a flat and even bed. It is easy to begin construction, and the walls of the rocky waddies seem to stand as security all around. To the human eye, the builder who struggles to erect a house on the rocky slopes seems foolish -- his efforts exceed the return. Meanwhile, the builder on the sands of the waddies seems to have chosen wisely. Construction speeds ahead, and he is living in his mansion before the other house even has a roof.
But wise becomes foolish when the spring rains in the mountains wash in crazed tumult through the slits in the rocks and erase all memory of human construction on the sands. And foolish becomes wise when the house on the rocks above becomes a safe haven from the restless tide below.
The message is clear. When you have determined your own destiny, according to Jesus, your destiny begins to determine you. When you choose a future wisely or foolishly, your future begins to confirm your choice, for good or ill. Somehow, in the great grace of God, when we find ourselves on the road to God's house, to God's glory, to God's love, God is the one who makes sure that we go all the way. In the end it is God's strength and power that take us by the hand and lead us along the path to the kingdom. The old hymn put it so well:
I sought the Lord and afterward I knew:
He moved my soul to seek him seeking me!
'Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold,
As Thou, dear Lord, on me, on me!
I find, I walk, I love; but O the whole
Of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee!
For Thou wert long beforehand with my soul;
Always, always, Thou lovedst me!
Application
The message ought to end with some call to choose. Here are some helpful thoughts. Donna Hoffman, a young Christian mother who battled cancer for a number of years, wrote this poem in her journal. She was in the hospital at the time, and the cancer seemed so strong. She calls her poem "Journey":
My soul runs
arms outstretched down the corridor to you.
Ah, my feet may stumble
but how my heart can stride!
This can be the cry of those who know the troubles of life (Noah, Paul), but who also know the power of the gospel to bring the righteousness of God into our existence.
Perhaps you might find it fitting to end the service with the old Irish blessing:
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm on your face,
and the rain fall softly on your fields;
And until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of his hand!
An Alternative Application
Matthew 7:21-29. If you want to focus on the gospel passage alone, you might want to begin reading at verse 13 instead of verse 21, and use Robert Frost's famous poem:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Along with the exegetical materials above and the homiletic insights, you may want to retell the ancient story of Theseus and the Minotaur. In ancient Greek legends, the Minotaur was a terrible monster that lived deep underground in a labyrinth of caves and passages. Every year the Minotaur devoured young children. Someone had to put a stop to it, so young Theseus went down into the realms of darkness, took his sword, braved the beast, and slew it dead. But how would he get out of the labyrinth? Everyone who saw him enter the deadly chasm was sure that he would never return to the surface, even though the Minotaur had stopped its fierce bellowing.
There was one person, however, who never stopped hoping. She loved Theseus, and knew that he would return. She knew it because she had handed Theseus a ball of string before he left on his mission. And there, in the land where he was loved, in the place where he belonged, he tied one end of that string. When he destroyed the cruel beast in the maze all he had to do was follow the string of his love. The string given by his love helped him catch the right bus.
That is the gospel for us. Long ago, when the labyrinth of life around us was roaring with the rough meanness of the Minotaur, a young man came into our caves and our dark passages. He found the beast and slew it. Then he did one more thing. He handed us a golden string: the way out; the way of life; the ticket on the right bus. Listen to the words of William Blake. They are really the words of Jesus. He says to us:
I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 31:1-5, 19-24
(This is the alternative psalm for Proper 4)
"You are indeed my rock ..." (Psalm 31:3a). This may seem, at first, a strange title for God, for rocks do not rank high, for most of us, on our list of things of value. Yet consider the people who first coined the phrase. The Hebrew people began as desert wanderers: shepherds, hunters, gatherers of wild berries and edible plants. They lived a hand-to-mouth existence, dependent on the goodness of the earth to sustain them.
Sometimes the earth was not good. Sometimes the desert sun waxed hot and unrelenting. In such a time, a large rock provided welcome shade. Sometimes there were wild animals, or other enemies round about; a rock could be a point of defense. Sometimes there was flash-flooding: a terrifying, rushing torrent of muddy water that threatened to carry away shepherd and sheep alike. Then, a rock provided firm footing, and a place to wait out the natural disaster. Sometimes a traveler was lost in the wilderness. The only landmark, then, might well be a rock: either a natural formation, or the type of stone set upright in the ground by a traveler who had passed that way before -- a little shrine to the God who comes to shepherds in the gloom of darkest night, and reminds them all will be well.
All these insights, and more, are encompassed in this little word "rock," as applied to God. C. S. Lewis was once asked to speak to a company of the Royal Air Force about Christianity. At the end of the lecture, a tough old officer stood up and said, "I've got no use for all that stuff. But mind you, I'm a religious man, too. I know there's a God. I've felt him out alone in the desert at night. That's why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about him. To anyone who's met the real thing, they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal."
We can't find God the Rock in a book of theology, or in a self-help group, or within the walls of a favorite church. God does not reside in such places -- although God may occasionally be found there. No, the wonder and the glory of it is that God finds us. God reaches us. God touches us -- at the moment we most need it, and in the way we most need it. Then, in the aftermath of such an encounter, we can pray with the psalmist (using the words our Savior himself uttered in his moment of greatest need, on the cross), "Into your hand I commit my spirit" (v. 5a).
Stopping someone on the street he asked where Woodward Avenue was. His query met with a blank stare. Woodward Avenue? No one seemed to have heard of that great street at the heart of Detroit? "Where's Woodward Avenue?" he yelled at passers-by. "Doesn't anybody in Detroit know where Woodward Avenue is located?"
That got a response. "I don't know why you're looking for Woodward Avenue here," said someone. "This is St. Louis!"
The man had bought a ticket for passage to Detroit, but had gotten on the wrong bus. While all who started out on the journey began in the same location, New York City, the further the man traveled on the wrong bus, the wider his distance from Detroit. Fosdick used that story as a reminder that our destinations are determined not only by our desires, but also by making sure we get on the right bus.
Today's passages are about choices that result in different destinations. In the Genesis record of the flood, the human race has made choices that result in death and destruction, while Noah's choices bring him life and salvation. Paul's introduction to his letter to the Roman church offers these same choices in the world reshaped by the critical event of Jesus' coming. And, Jesus' own teaching in the Sermon on the Mount places before his hearers the choice that determines eternal destiny.
Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19
It is possible to spend much time comparing the biblical story of the flood to other similar tales found in ancient literature, but that rarely blesses the congregation with a word of grace and direction. One must ask why this story is in the Bible. There are several reasonable answers to that question.
First, within the Bible's own frame of reference, the book of Genesis functions as the prologue to the covenant declared by God to Israel at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20). All major covenants of that time included a historical prologue that explained the reason for the formation of the covenant. In the case of Israel and God at Sinai, the stories of Genesis spell out a paradigm for understanding how life ought to operate. Why does God have the right to impress a relationship upon Israel? Because this God is the creator of all things and all nations are, in reality, the expression of God's creative goodness. But why is a covenant between God and Israel actually necessary? Because people and nations, left to their own devices, tend to wander away from God. Is it so bad to wander away from God? Yes, for when people wander from God they hurt themselves and one another, and stand under sentence of divine judgment. This is the meaning of the flood story in the context of Israel's existence.
Second, the flood story is about a family that moved through a body of water that destroyed an old way of life, and emerged on the other side with a mandate to begin again. For Israel the message was clear -- recently having passed through the Red Sea that separated them from Egypt and destroyed the power of Pharaoh, Israel was now on the way to a new life. What would it be like? How would it be shaped? By what standards would it function? The story of Noah and the Genesis flood served as a reminder for the people to make wise choices that connected them to God in the "righteousness" and "blamelessness" of Noah (6:9). For this reason the stipulations of the Sinai covenant would serve to shape their identity.
Third, there is inherent in the story of the flood a parallel to the original creation story in Genesis 1-2. Just as waters chaotically hid the goodness of God's world, so the floodwaters wiped out all that God had made. But again, just as God's word spoke into that chaos and established order and a kingdom for humans to investigate, so also God's word in this flood story will recreate earth's goodness, and then commission Noah and his family to renew the mission given originally to Adam and Eve.
For those who hear this story in later generations, several themes emerge. First, our existence is about choices, which ultimately lead toward either life or death. C. S. Lewis said that we all enter this world in roughly the same circumstances. It is our little choices that bend our hearts and our spirits toward destinies widely separated from one another. Either we are increasingly shaped into angelic creatures or we are being deformed into something akin to the beast of hell. While there is little biographical information about Noah that will help us understand the choices he was making, it is clear that God found him "righteous" and "blameless." Both of these words signify choosing: the first carries with it the idea of choosing those things that are part of God's ways, while the latter indicates choices that have deliberately refrained from taking part in evil.
Second, the idea of choosing is amplified through this story so that it is not merely about being nice people; instead, choosing the ways of God is intrinsically tied up with renewing earth and bringing in the eschatological kingdom. It was the wrong choices of those who went before Noah that caused this world to suffer and tremble under judgment and punishment. But through the wise choices that Noah makes, there is for the earth the possibility of renewal and restoration. Our choices carry with them both moral and redemptive value. When we make bad choices, our lives come under divine judgment, but we also diminish the quality of life on earth. When we choose to live for and with the creator, this creation itself springs back to life in some small way.
Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28 (29-31)
Paul wrote this letter at the end of his third mission journey. He had spent three years in Ephesus (51-53 A.D.), had established a strong Christian presence throughout Asia Minor, and had carried on a difficult but redemptive correspondence with the Corinthian congregation. Now he is wintering in Corinth for three months (Romans 16:23) and sends this letter to the Roman congregation in anticipation of his future plans to visit there on his way to Spain (Romans 15:23-24). Paul's few personal notes are limited to chapter 16; this reminds us that while Paul knew many people in Rome, he had not yet been there personally, nor had he given organizational shape to the church there. Instead, Paul's letter is more of a theological treatise that outlines his theology as a basis for discussion when he would later arrive.
Paul's gospel summary is found in the powerful words of 1:16-17, and echoed in the second part of this Romans lectionary reading, 3:22b-31. The major interpretive decision is whether to understand God's "righteousness" as a standard against which all of humanity falls short, or as an action of God by which rightness is reasserted in a world that has lost its way. Commentaries will help you find your way through this discussion. My perspective is the latter, that Paul's use of the word "righteousness" is not intended to place before us a high standard against which we all fall desperately inadequate, but rather that the revelation of God's righteousness is God's active attempt to restore goodness to this world and in so doing provide hope, health, and healing for all God's children that have felt the horror of evil and the terror of wickedness.
In this reading of these key verses of Romans 1 and 3, Paul's declaration is that God is finally restoring goodness to God's world. Too long we have struggled under the twisted and warped conditions that have followed our own hurtful choices (see Romans 1-2). In these recent days, God has given us hope. God has reasserted God's righteousness over against the damaging and disruptive powers that grip planet earth. God's new initiatives are based upon the recent work of Jesus. Now is the time to get on board. The only way we can step into the momentum of God's restorative work is to believe in Jesus.
Paul joins two themes in his exhortation. First, we have all made choices that have led to corruption and destruction. Now we are being offered a second chance. But the second chance we have is not to renew our misguided commitments to self or race or fallible moral code; instead, we must make a choice to go with Jesus. Jesus is the way and the means to entering again into the great righteousness of God, which is renewing creation (see Romans 8:18-27). Either we go with Jesus, making the choices that he did, or we miss the bus and end up at the wrong destination.
Second, Paul lays much emphasis in this process of choosing that bridges the ages-old divide between Jew and Gentile. Paul was well aware of how the Jew vs. Gentile problem had played out in Asia Minor (see Acts 15 and Paul's letter to the Galatian church), from which he had just come. He also saw remnants of this problem disrupting the church in Corinth where he was now a guest (see 1 Corinthians 1-3), so the issues were immediately on his mind. If God was reasserting God's righteousness in this world, it would not only show up in the moral and ethical choices God's people made, but it would also reshape the relationship between those who thought they were in and those who thought they were out. God's new declaration of righteousness is for all people, both Gentile and Jew.
The "power" of this gospel is twofold. First, it is God's power injected and inserted into our lives and into the world as a whole. Paul has a strong commitment to the sovereignty of God and the inability of humans to make things right again. Only if God intervenes in our mad dash toward destruction will there be any hope. It is God's power that makes the gospel powerful, and not our self-deluded psychological pep talks.
Second, the power of the gospel is that of transformation. It produces faith (ch. 4). It changes the character of the whole human race (ch. 5). It changes the behavior of those who receive it (ch. 6). It resolves the wrestlings of the human heart (ch. 7). It brings hope through troubling times (ch. 8). It transforms racism into relationships of care (chs. 9-11). And the pinnacle of this powerful gospel is found in chapter 12, where Paul tells us that it transforms our thinking, opens up our talents, and urges us on in commitments of love.
Matthew 7:21-29
Jesus says that many people say, "Lord! Lord!" but their talk is cheap, and their walk doesn't make it into the kingdom. A woman once came running up to Arthur Rubinstein after he finished another spectacular concert. "Oh, Mr. Rubinstein!" she said, "I've always wanted to play the piano! I'd give anything if I could play like you did this evening!"
"No, you wouldn't," he replied. "I know what I've had to give up to be able to play like this, and if that's what you really wanted, you would have done the same."
That is what Jesus talks about in verses 21-23. We all want to take a shortcut. We are all looking for a quick fix, a get-rich-quick scheme, a way to double our income and cut our work in half. There are all kinds of voices out there telling us how to do it. Don't listen to them, says Jesus. They will only bring you ruin in the end!
In our choices we find ourselves. Jesus makes this clear in the story of the two builders, one foolish, one wise. Palestine is not a friendly place for construction. Much of the landscape is uneven with rocks and boulders. It takes a lot of effort to lay a straight foundation on the sloping and convoluted surfaces, where no spade will dig. There are, of course, the low spots in the waddies between the hills. Here the sands have trickled to form a flat and even bed. It is easy to begin construction, and the walls of the rocky waddies seem to stand as security all around. To the human eye, the builder who struggles to erect a house on the rocky slopes seems foolish -- his efforts exceed the return. Meanwhile, the builder on the sands of the waddies seems to have chosen wisely. Construction speeds ahead, and he is living in his mansion before the other house even has a roof.
But wise becomes foolish when the spring rains in the mountains wash in crazed tumult through the slits in the rocks and erase all memory of human construction on the sands. And foolish becomes wise when the house on the rocks above becomes a safe haven from the restless tide below.
The message is clear. When you have determined your own destiny, according to Jesus, your destiny begins to determine you. When you choose a future wisely or foolishly, your future begins to confirm your choice, for good or ill. Somehow, in the great grace of God, when we find ourselves on the road to God's house, to God's glory, to God's love, God is the one who makes sure that we go all the way. In the end it is God's strength and power that take us by the hand and lead us along the path to the kingdom. The old hymn put it so well:
I sought the Lord and afterward I knew:
He moved my soul to seek him seeking me!
'Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold,
As Thou, dear Lord, on me, on me!
I find, I walk, I love; but O the whole
Of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee!
For Thou wert long beforehand with my soul;
Always, always, Thou lovedst me!
Application
The message ought to end with some call to choose. Here are some helpful thoughts. Donna Hoffman, a young Christian mother who battled cancer for a number of years, wrote this poem in her journal. She was in the hospital at the time, and the cancer seemed so strong. She calls her poem "Journey":
My soul runs
arms outstretched down the corridor to you.
Ah, my feet may stumble
but how my heart can stride!
This can be the cry of those who know the troubles of life (Noah, Paul), but who also know the power of the gospel to bring the righteousness of God into our existence.
Perhaps you might find it fitting to end the service with the old Irish blessing:
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm on your face,
and the rain fall softly on your fields;
And until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of his hand!
An Alternative Application
Matthew 7:21-29. If you want to focus on the gospel passage alone, you might want to begin reading at verse 13 instead of verse 21, and use Robert Frost's famous poem:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Along with the exegetical materials above and the homiletic insights, you may want to retell the ancient story of Theseus and the Minotaur. In ancient Greek legends, the Minotaur was a terrible monster that lived deep underground in a labyrinth of caves and passages. Every year the Minotaur devoured young children. Someone had to put a stop to it, so young Theseus went down into the realms of darkness, took his sword, braved the beast, and slew it dead. But how would he get out of the labyrinth? Everyone who saw him enter the deadly chasm was sure that he would never return to the surface, even though the Minotaur had stopped its fierce bellowing.
There was one person, however, who never stopped hoping. She loved Theseus, and knew that he would return. She knew it because she had handed Theseus a ball of string before he left on his mission. And there, in the land where he was loved, in the place where he belonged, he tied one end of that string. When he destroyed the cruel beast in the maze all he had to do was follow the string of his love. The string given by his love helped him catch the right bus.
That is the gospel for us. Long ago, when the labyrinth of life around us was roaring with the rough meanness of the Minotaur, a young man came into our caves and our dark passages. He found the beast and slew it. Then he did one more thing. He handed us a golden string: the way out; the way of life; the ticket on the right bus. Listen to the words of William Blake. They are really the words of Jesus. He says to us:
I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 31:1-5, 19-24
(This is the alternative psalm for Proper 4)
"You are indeed my rock ..." (Psalm 31:3a). This may seem, at first, a strange title for God, for rocks do not rank high, for most of us, on our list of things of value. Yet consider the people who first coined the phrase. The Hebrew people began as desert wanderers: shepherds, hunters, gatherers of wild berries and edible plants. They lived a hand-to-mouth existence, dependent on the goodness of the earth to sustain them.
Sometimes the earth was not good. Sometimes the desert sun waxed hot and unrelenting. In such a time, a large rock provided welcome shade. Sometimes there were wild animals, or other enemies round about; a rock could be a point of defense. Sometimes there was flash-flooding: a terrifying, rushing torrent of muddy water that threatened to carry away shepherd and sheep alike. Then, a rock provided firm footing, and a place to wait out the natural disaster. Sometimes a traveler was lost in the wilderness. The only landmark, then, might well be a rock: either a natural formation, or the type of stone set upright in the ground by a traveler who had passed that way before -- a little shrine to the God who comes to shepherds in the gloom of darkest night, and reminds them all will be well.
All these insights, and more, are encompassed in this little word "rock," as applied to God. C. S. Lewis was once asked to speak to a company of the Royal Air Force about Christianity. At the end of the lecture, a tough old officer stood up and said, "I've got no use for all that stuff. But mind you, I'm a religious man, too. I know there's a God. I've felt him out alone in the desert at night. That's why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about him. To anyone who's met the real thing, they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal."
We can't find God the Rock in a book of theology, or in a self-help group, or within the walls of a favorite church. God does not reside in such places -- although God may occasionally be found there. No, the wonder and the glory of it is that God finds us. God reaches us. God touches us -- at the moment we most need it, and in the way we most need it. Then, in the aftermath of such an encounter, we can pray with the psalmist (using the words our Savior himself uttered in his moment of greatest need, on the cross), "Into your hand I commit my spirit" (v. 5a).
