Scripture: Psalm 31
Happy New Year!
If I wanted to really be on vacation the week between Christmas and New Year, I had to figure out the bulletin for today back before Christmas, which means coming up with enough of a theme in my head to choose a scripture and a sermon title and hymns that fit more or less. As many of you know, doing this sort of thing two weeks ahead of time is not my normal or preferred way of doing things, not because I’m so ornery as to insist on doing things at the last minute or because I’m opposed to planning ahead on principle, but because I so often find that when I come up with an idea for a sermon ahead of time, by the time I get to actually writing that sermon, my head and my heart just aren’t there anymore. Sometimes I look at a title I had chosen, and I can’t even remember what I had intended to talk about or why. In the case of today, however, I figured it was a reasonable guess that when I got around to writing this sermon, on January 2nd, that I would have new year type thoughts on my mind, and that turned out to be the case. So for today, some Biblical/theological reflections on the New Year.
I chose Psalm 31 for the Biblical part. There are a couple of curious things about that. One is that I honestly don’t remember how I came up with Psalm 31. I know a few Psalms by heart and a collection of others well enough to remember significant pieces of them that might relate to something I want to say. Psalm 31 is not one of those. There is no particular reason I would turn to it in connection with a sermon, or for any other reason for that matter. So I’m not quite sure how I found my way to this scripture or what led me to it—way back before the holidays.
What I do remember is what I found in Psalm 31 that made me settle on it. It was verses 14 and 15 that say, “But I trust in You, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God. My times are in your hands…’” That I would be drawn to that particular verse is in itself a little bit curious to me, because in all honesty, that’s a sentiment I’m not necessarily entirely in tune with. When people say something along those lines, that we just need to let God be in charge, put things in God’s hands, let go and let God, “He’s got the whole world in his hands”—when people express that kind of sentiment, I usually, fairly often, understand what they are getting at, and I sympathize with it, sometimes, maybe.
It depends on the circumstance. Sometimes we people who like to imagine that we are in control of things, at least in control of our own lives, sometimes we need a reminder that we are not…in control. Sometimes when things are not going exactly the way we had planned, it is a good thing to remember that our plans have no particular status in the universe, good to remember that the fact that things are not turning out quite the way we had envisioned them is not a cause for being offended or angry or for losing our faith. Sometimes people who are afflicted with privilege and positions of power need to be reminded that whatever the earthly appearances may be, that they are not the ones in charge here, that their wills are not what counts in the end, that there is a higher will that they cannot control. Sometimes for all of us, when we enter in to a time of prayer, it is good to remind ourselves, even if we think we already know it, good to remind ourselves that the spirit of prayer is not to lobby God with all the good reasons why what we want ought to come to pass, expecting God to make it happen, making God the servant of our wishes and desires, but that the spirit of prayer is always contained in the words of the prayer Jesus taught: “Thy will be done.” There are all sorts of circumstances where I can understand and sympathize with the idea of reaffirming that it is God who is in control, which is one way of understanding the phrase “my times (our times), O God, are in your hands.” But…
I do not believe that everything that happens here on earth happens because God has willed it. In that sense I don’t think it is quite right to say that God is in control either, not in that sense. I don’t believe in a God who dictates in detail what is to happen on earth. I don’t believe our prayers are made to a capricious God who may or may not grant our requests according to some holy whim, or even worse who may or may not grant our requests according to the sincerity, fervency, or eloquence of our praying. And if our saying that our lives are in God’s hands implies that God is this kind of a controlling power, then I would have trouble with the statement. I would have trouble relating to such a God even if I could believe in such a God.
And that’s not the only trouble I might have. I remember something I once came across that had a title that was clearly a takeoff on the song “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands.” This title said instead: “We’ve Got the Whole World In Our Hands”. I don’t recall what the author actually said, or if I even read the piece, but it struck me as being an important balance to the notion that the world is in God’s hands. Sometimes, it seems to me, in subtle and perhaps not so subtle ways, there may be a tendency to think that since God’s will will win out in the end, that what humans beings do doesn’t matter in the end all that much. It matters, but it doesn’t really matter. We can hurry God’s will along according to what we do, or we can make things more or less difficult on ourselves depending on whether we are cooperating with God’s will, but in the end what we do doesn’t trump what God wills to happen. I’m not much inclined toward that way of thinking, though I acknowledge that there is truth in it. But what I want to say instead is that if justice is to be done in this world, if mercy is to be shown in this world, if the planet is to be cared for as though it were the precious gift that it is, then we are the ones who have to do it. To leave that up to God, to put that in God’s hands if you will, is just not right. It cannot be what faith is about. And if saying that we put our lives in the hands of God means making our own responsibility less compelling or less urgent, even just a little bit, then it would be better not to say it.
So, as I say, I sort of surprised myself by focusing in on this scripture because, as I’ve been explaining, when I encounter a thought like this in the Bible, urging us to turn things over to God, I react with mixed feelings. But I do remember why the verse attracted me, and continues to attract me, in this instance, in spite of all the iffiness it has for me. Standing at the edge of 2009 and looking forward into the coming year I also have mixed feelings, quite a bit more so than usual, I think.
On the one hand, Barack Obama is soon to be inaugurated as president of the United States, and speaking personally that is an event that carries with it not only a lot of satisfaction and joy, but also much hopefulness—for many reasons and at many levels including but also in many ways transcending policies and politics. The mixed feelings come of course from the fact that the world, with or without a Barack Obama administration in place in the United States, is not a very hopeful place. I don’t think I need to detail my reasons for making such a statement. I suspect many of you have the same feelings I do, even if the particular matters that are most disheartening for the one or the other of us may differ. I will simply say that right here at the beginning of 2009 the situation in Gaza underlines how cycles of violence continue, how difficult and how unlikely, at least in any short term, any real change will be. I am not an expert, most of us are not experts, but from where I sit it seems like only those with an active and robust belief in miracles will see salaam/shalom as a real possibility any time in the foreseeable future. It’s as if as 2009 begins Gaza presents itself to us just to make sure that we don’t get carried away with any hopefulness our souls may carry into the new year.
I find myself approaching the new year with more than the normal mixture of despair and hopefulness. More hopefulness than usual to be sure, but also at the same time more despair than usual as well. And so I find myself talking to myself. “Now don’t go expecting an Obama administration to work miracles. There’s only so much they can do. Having too high expectations is just setting the administration up for failure and others of us up for disappointment. Besides, from a Christian standpoint, we don’t invest our spirits in political leaders. It’s a kind of idolatry, no matter how much they may signal a new day practically or symbolically. On the other hand,” I say to myself, “wait a minute. Don’t give up on the possibility of a new day. You can’t allow yourself to give in to the cynicism that the world so often engenders. OK, so you can’t invest too much of your hopes in a political administration, any political administration. But you can’t give up on hope itself.” I’ve been talking to myself recently more or less along those lines, and I admit it doesn‘t sound really very religious. A lot of my thoughts are sort of secular type thoughts, but I share them with you today because of course in the end our secular thoughts are not neatly separate from our more religious or spiritual thoughts. And it’s all not just a question of how hopeful to be about a new administration or how despairing to be about the state of the world. It’s a matter, as we begin a new year, of trying to figure out how to set our hearts, which is fundamentally a matter between us and God.
It is important not to despair, which is of course what happens when we imagine all the possible bad things that can happen. But not despairing for the person of faith is not a matter of imagining all the good things that can happen, instead of the bad things. It is a matter of letting the outcomes remain uncertain, refusing to be daunted by the negative or seduced by the positive but instead, to go about whatever we see our business to be as people of faith while, at the same time, to use the language of the Psalm, putting our trust in God. For in a very real sense our lives do belong to God. Our lives are in the hands of One whose other name is Love. Amen.
Jim Bundy
January 4, 2009