CELC Fifth Sunday in Lent

The Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 13, 2005

Psalm 130

In having, doing, being less we have, do, and are more…this is what Lent is about.

Perhaps it was the moment that your doctor sat at the end of your hospital bed and in conversation with you said, “This time two out of five people die. You know there is little we can do for you. I hope you are not one of the two who die.”

Perhaps your moment wasn’t the loss of your health and almost your life. Perhaps your moment was the death of your loving spouse or parent or child and the deeply felt grief that followed.

Perhaps your moment was the letter arriving stating that you are no longer needed and are now unemployed and the shock took your breath away.

Perhaps your moment was acknowledging the addiction that had ruined your marriage, your work and anything else left in your life.

Some folks call it “hitting bottom,” and that may be an excellent name for it. Whatever you call it, it is the moment you know you are trapped in the “depths” and you can’t get yourself out.

It is at that moment, and everyone has them, that your voice joins the voice of the psalmist in Psalm 130, “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord…” Indeed from the lowest moments of your life you cry out to God…”Lord, hear my voice…”

The psalmist continues, “…let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.” You want God to listen. Your plight is so intense that your voice cries out to God to deliver you from the depths that surround you and make claim on you. It is dark, cold and confining. You cannot see a way out. You can only turn to God and plea. “Why me? Why my child? Why at this time? Why can’t I live without the addiction that is killing all my relationships and me at the same time? “

When you ask these questions and others like them, your prayer becomes, “O God, listen with your ears of love and hear my plea…” This is your prayer, your cry for deliverance.

Then the psalmist reveals the reality of your relationship with God: you are cutoff from God and unwilling to acknowledge it. You have gone your own way, seeking after the false gods of comfort and success. The psalmist hits the nail on the head: “If you, Lord, were to note what is done amiss, O Lord, who could stand?”

You don’t like to admit it, but in the depth of your heart you want to play god. You want to be in charge and in control and you fool only yourself. When the moments of utter depths come to you, you face the stark truth about yourself: if God is counting your sin against you, no one survives, no one is exempt. Not you, not me.

You sink a little deeper into the depths. You thought you had “hit bottom.” You discover there is more to the depths than what you had first fathomed.

Yet it is at this moment, the deepest moments of knowing how far you have wandered from God that you hear the word of forgiveness you desire so deeply. The psalmist addresses God for you: “For there is forgiveness with you, God; therefore you shall be feared.”

Hitting bottom you hear the truth of God’s love for you. Again you hear that God is forgiveness. Again you hear that God draws near to you. That is the story of the cross of Jesus. The cross is God with you, coming to you, forgiving you and reaching down to lift you from the depths of your deepest despair.

In this Lenten season the psalmist counsels you to respond to such love, such life-giving forgiveness by patiently waiting. As a culture Americans are not very patient. You don’t like to wait. Often in conversations with those about to have surgery you will hear something like this: “I am not worried about the pain. But, I just don’t want to be the last case of the day. That means not eating after midnight and I know it will make the wait longer. I’d like to be the first one into the operating room.”

The psalmist encourages patience. The psalmist encourages patience given you in the cross. Wait, patiently, for God to be falsely accused. Wait, patiently, for God to be drug to a cross and nailed there, dying that you may live always in his kingdom yet to come.

Wait, patiently, for your God who hung on the cross and whispered with what little voice he had, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Our Lord, crucified on the cross, claims the words that open another Psalm, Psalm 22. In these words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” you know that Jesus has gone to the deepest depths, to hell itself, to defeat death. Indeed, it is in the deepest depths that God knows the victory over the ultimate enemy, death.

The promise you wait under then, is the promise of the same resurrected life Jesus knows. Here is your hope and your future. Your future is not being trapped in the depths, but being free for new life in Christ.

Your hope is in God, whose steadfast love gives you a future you have no other way. Amen.

Pastor Robert F. Holley