SunAug152010
Title: Restore Us
Scripture: Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19
Text: Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved. – v19
Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19
1 Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth
2 before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might, and come to save us!...
8 You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.
9 You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches;
11 it sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the River.
12 Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
13 The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it.
14 Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, 15 the stock that your right hand planted.
16 They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down; may they perish at the rebuke of your countenance.
17 But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.
18 Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name.
19 Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.
PRAYER
Psalm 80 has been described as a prayer of desperation, but not despair. The nation of Israel had fallen far from the glory days when David and Solomon ruled a united kingdom. In the years that followed the nation had split in two: a southern nation, Judea, and a northern nation, Israel. By the time of this psalm’s writing the Assyrians had swept away the northern kingdom of Israel. The southern kingdom of Judea had been whittled away to little more than the city-state of Jerusalem. The tone of the psalm reveals a weak Judea ravaged by its neighbors. This was the situation during the reign of Josiah from around 640-609 BC, the probable period, when this Psalm was written. In Psalm 80 the priest-cantor cries out for YHWH to restore the former glory of the kingdom. Commentary(http://www.word-Sunday.com/ Files/Psalms/80.html)
1 Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth 2before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might, and come to save us!...19 Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.
POST OFFICE ILLUSTRATION. Working at the post office, he was used to dealing with a moody public. So, when one irate customer stormed his desk, he responded in his calmest voice, "What's the trouble?"
"I went out this morning," she began, "and when I came home, I found a card saying the mailman tried to deliver a package, but no one was home. I'll have you know, my husband was in all morning! He never heard a thing!"
After apologizing, the postal worker got her parcel.
"Oh good!" she gushed. "We've been waiting for this for ages!"
"What is it?" he asked.
"My husband's new hearing aid," she said.
Restoration is big business. Television programs these days are devoted to restoring things like old houses and old cars. Back in the mid-1950's my dad worked for Weyerhaeuser, the big timber company. His work involved overseeing the purchase and maintenance of all sorts of logging equipment, trucks and bulldozers and yarders.
I remember one time when he and his bosses had a disagreement over a 1956 Ford F750 delivery truck. Because of its condition, they thought it should be gotten rid of. He thought it had lots of good miles left in it and should be repaired. When he could not dissuade them from getting rid of the truck, he bought it, and restored it to like new condition. It became a primary work vehicle on our farm, during my growing up years.
Not only do homes and vehicles get restored, people do as well. My brother, Dave, who lives in Eureka, California, is a partner in Eureka Physical Therapy, a practice providing physical and occupational therapy services to Eureka and the surrounding communities.
For many years he and his coworkers have been involved in the physical restoration of people, people who have been injured in industrial accidents and auto accidents and falls in their homes, people who are recovering from strokes and joint replacement and other types of surgery.
The restoration of people falls into all kinds of categories from physical restoration to restoration of the mental and emotional and spiritual dimensions of our beings. A year ago in April you gave me a three-month sabbatical, the purpose of which, in part, was restoration of mind body and spirit.
In my sermon this week I would like to deal with the theme of restoration. Last week’s sermon dealt with what it means to be people called to a journey of faith. Sometimes the expectation is that people of faith should have an easier way in life. But that is not what we are promised. In fact the way for people of faith may be more difficult.
While we are not promised an easier way, we are promised a divine companion along the way. In the familiar words of Psalm 23 the author writes, “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Ps 23:4).
The problem arises, when God seems to play a game of hide & seek with us. Madeleine L’Engle’s book, The Irrational Season, is a reflection of her thoughts, written over the course of a Christian year. Beginning with Advent and ending with Advent the following year, she writes about the struggle to be human in our day and age. To be woman or man, to be a spouse, to be a parent, to have a career, involves conflict of all kinds, she writes. She goes on to say, she is not at all convinced that life without conflict is desirable. “There’s not much conflict in the grave,” she continues, “but while we’re alive, the only creative choice is choice of conflict.”
Sometimes the conflict in our lives is a conflict with God. This morning’s Psalm alludes to the psalmist’s struggle. Like Jacob in the Old Testament, Madeleine L’Engle frequently found herself in a wrestling match with God. At one point over the course of the year in which the book was written, L’Engle expresses her ambivalent feelings toward God. In a poem entitled Love Letter L’Engle writes:. (The Irrational Season, p172)
LOVE LETTER
I hate you, God.
Love, Madeleine.
I write my message on water
and at bedtime I tiptoe upstairs
and let it flow under your door.
When I am angry with you
I know that you are there
even if you do not answer my knock
even when your butler opens the door an inch
and flaps his thousand wings in annoyance
at such untoward interruption
and says the master is not at home.
I love you, Madeleine,
Hate, God.
(This is how I treat my friends,
he said to one great saint.
No wonder you have so few, Lord, she replied.)
I cannot turn the other cheek
it takes all the strength I have
to keep from hitting back
the soldiers bayonet the baby
the little boys trample the old woman
the gutters are filled with groans
while pleasure-seekers knock each other down
to get their tickets stamped first.
I’m turning in my ticket
and my letter of introduction
you’re supposed to do the knocking.
How can I write to you
to tell you that I’m angry
when I’ve been given the wrong address
and I don’t even know your right name?
I take hammer and nails
and tack my message
on two crossed pieces of wood.
Dear God,
is it too much to ask you to bother to be?
Just show your hindquarters
and let me hear you roar.
Love,
Madeleine.
I’m guessing, if we’re honest, most of us can identify with L’Engle’s love letter to God. In those times when we are feeling paralyzed by fear and uncertainty, when a struggling economy or the loss of a job or failing health or an important relationship is on shaky grounds or has ended–in those times God often seems distant or hidden.
In a book dealing with grief and loss, a book entitled After Suicide, John Hewett tells the following story. It was during the years when our country was involved in the war in Vietnam. A pastor was called to the family of a young soldier killed in that war. The mother was speechless with grief, but the father was livid with anger. Pacing the floor, he shouted at the minister: “Preacher, I just want you to answer me one thing. Where was God when my boy stepped on that mine? Where was your God when my boy died in Vietnam? The minister lowered his head and replied in a sad, soft voice, “Where was he? The same place as when his boy died outside of Jerusalem.”
God’s promise is not that we will be saved from, but restored in the trying and difficult times of life. In 1 Corinthians 10:13, Eugene Peterson translates Paul’s words to believers living in that faith community: “No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it” - 1 Cor 10:13 Msg).
The story was all over the national news a week ago. Dr. Tom Little, an American opthamologist from upstate New York, along with nine other aid workers were slain, while on a humanitarian aid mission in northern Afghanistan. They were conducting free eye clinics in rural and isolated parts of the country.
For over 30 years, Dr. Little had lived and worked in the wore-torn country. He and his wife raised three daughters there. Though very aware of the dangers, he moved easily through his adopted nation, learning the language and customs, while developing a knack for tact and diplomacy.
In many instances, his wife Libby would have been with him on the mission which cost him his life. However, when Tom was killed, she was in upstate New York with one of her daughters, who is expecting their first grandchild at the end of August.
In an interview with the Times Union, an Albany newspaper, shortly after learning of her husband’s death, there was not a hint of bitterness or desire for revenge in Libbly Little’s response.
She told Lauren Stanforth, the staff writer for the newspaper, of the family’s plans to travel to Kabul in the near future to bury Tom in a Christian cemetery there. "He worked and died there and that's where he'll be buried," Libby Little said.
She offers us a classic example, not of salvation from, but spiritual restoration in the trying and difficult times of life.
I close with another true story. It is the story behind the 19th Century hymn, It Is Well with my Soul.
The hymn was written by a Chicago lawyer, Horatio G. Spafford. You might expect a hymn with the title, 'It is well with my soul', to come out of a time in one’s life, when all was going well. But the words, "When sorrows like sea billows roll ... It is well with my soul”, were not written during the happiest period of Spafford's life. On the contrary, they came from a man who had suffered almost unimaginable personal tragedy.
Horatio G. Spafford and his wife, Anna, were pretty well-known in 1860’s Chicago. And this was not just because of Horatio's legal career and business endeavors. The Spaffords were people of faith and prominent supporters and close friends of D.L. Moody, the famous Chicago evangelist. In 1870, however, things started to go wrong. The Spaffords' only son was killed by scarlet fever at the age of four. A year later significant real estate holdings Horatio owned on the shores of Lake Michigan were wiped out in the great Chicago fire.
Aware of the toll of these disasters on his family, Horatio decided to take his wife and four daughters to England for a vacation. They traveled to New York in the fall of 1873 and planned to board a French steamer for the trip across the Atlantic. As they were about to set sail, a last-minute business development forced Horatio to delay. Not wanting to ruin the family holiday, he persuaded them to go on as planned. He would catch up with them later.
While Anna and her four daughters sailed east to Europe, Spafford returned to Chicago. Nine days later he received an ominous two-word telegram from his wife in Wales. It read: "Saved alone."
On November 22nd 1873, the ship on which his family were passengers, had collided with another ship. It sank in only 12 minutes, claiming the lives of 226 people. While Anna survived, all four of the Spafford’s daughters perished. Her last memory had been of her baby being torn violently from her arms by the force of the waters.
Upon hearing the terrible news, Horatio Spafford boarded the next ship out of New York to join his bereaved wife. While crossing the Atlantic, the captain of the ship he was on called him to the bridge one day and told him they were now passing the place where his daughters perished. The water in that part of the Atlantic was three miles deep. Horatio returned to his cabin and penned the lyrics to his great hymn:
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And has shed His own blood for my soul!
It is well ... with my soul!
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Dr. William Greathouse was president of the seminary I attended. He was an administrator, but also loved to get into the classroom from time-to-time. In a theology class I took from him, he used to quote a little poem that dealt with the relationship between feeling, faith and fact. It went like this:
Three went up on top the wall –
Feeling, Faith, and Fact
Feeling had an awful fall,
And Faith was taken back.
Faith was so close to Feeling
That when Feeling stumbled,
Faith stumbled and fell too.
But Fact remained and held Faith up
And that helped Feeling too.
Phillip Yancey, author of numerous books, including “What’s So Amazing About Grace,” wrote: "Faith is trusting in advance what will only makes sense in reverse."
Horatio and Anna Spafford, Libby and Tom Little and many others exemplify what it means to experience the restoration of God: God’s promise is not that we will be saved from, but restored in the trying and difficult times of life.