Psalm 130. Help

This sermonette was preached at our Harvest Sunday where we were taking part in the 90kg of Rice Challenge organised by Just Trading. If a congregation manages to sell 90kg of Malawian rice at a fair price, it allows a farmer to send one of his children to secondary school for a year. We had just a few bags left at the end of the day - well done folks! 

There’s an old story about a man who gets caught up in a great flood, and ends up sitting on the roof of his house as the waters rise all around him.

As you do in those circumstances, he starts praying and asking God for help.

About half an hour later, a lifeboat comes roaring across the water, and stops beside the man’s house. And the lifeboatmen urge him to jump into the water and swim across. But he just refuses. “No – you’re ok. God’s going to save me”, he says. And though they try to talk him round, he just won’t be persuaded. And with so many other folk to rescue, the team eventually lose patience and zoom off to the next village.

So the man keeps praying. And an hour later, a helicopter appears, and the pilot spots him clinging on to the chimney, because the water’s right up over the roof now. And they lower a rope down to him, but he shouts up – “I’m all right – God’s going to save me”. And they try to reason with him, but he’s having none of it, and in the end they decide they have to leave him to his fate.

And you can guess what happens. Eventually he gets swept away and drowned. And he turns up in heaven with a bit of a face on him, as they say in Ireland. “Some God you are!” he says to the Almighty. “Where were you when I needed you?”.

“Well, I sent you a lifeboat and a helicopter”, says God. “What more did you want?”

We’ll return to that story shortly, but I was reminded of it this morning because today’s Psalm, Psalm 130, is all about someone who needs help.

“From the depths of my despair I call to you, Lord".

Despair is a powerful word.

I wonder how many of us know in our gut what it is to despair. I don’t doubt that a good number of us do.

A child who, despite your best efforts, goes off the rails.

A calamitous year or two on the farm that threatens to leave your business in ruins.

A diagnosis you weren’t reckoning on, and hadn’t prepared yourself for.

A situation that’s become virtually impossible to cope with.

Some of us know those kinds of stories, and the profound feelings of loss and worry and pain that go with them. We may have trailed those feelings behind us into church today, and it’s right that we should.

But even those of us who’ve been spared those kinds of trials know what it is to get to the end of ourselves. We know what it’s like when patience runs out, and options close down and there seems to be no way forward.

Where do we go, then?

Where do we go when there’s nowhere left to go?

The answers we get from our culture aren’t especially helpful. They usually involve anaesthetising the pain with something – could be Jack Daniels, could be television, could be a new project or a new hobby. Anything that helps us forget the problem long enough so we can keep up the pretence that we’re fine, when in truth we’re really pretty far from fine.

Anaesthetise, ignore, deny, cope. That’s how our culture disciples us to deal with our suffering.

The Psalmist offers us another way. There are two things you need to do, he says. Accept the reality of your suffering, but then accept the greater reality of God.

With those twin realities in mind, the Psalmist feels free to bellow out his pain and ask for help. He doesn’t hide it. But he knows that God is deeper than the depths he find himself in, and it’s that that gives him hope.

Years ago I travelled to Morocco with some friends and we were warned to be careful on the trains. Groups of young guys were mugging tourists leaving Tangiers to travel inland. We were warned to look out for 'the 4 S's' - snazzy shirts, cool shades, expensive shoes and dazzling smiles!

The five of us - two girls and three lads - caught the train and within minutes there were a group of guys sitting opposite us, a group of guys exhbiting all 4 S's and while being superficially friendly were clearly checking out us and our luggage with their eyes.

We got up, smiling, and moved down the carriage.

They followed.

This time they weren't so nice - they started to get abusive and threatening.

We got up again, and started moving to another carriage. I was the last one out, and one of the guys hissed at me - "I remember your face, I will follow you and I will f***ing kill you".  

Welcome to Morocco!

Well, we did the things you do in those circumstances. We started shoving our money down our socks, hiding our passports and so on. And then, being a holy bunch, we prayed, individually, where we were sitting. And a strange thing happened. Independently, we all felt a deep sense of peace.

It wasn't a peace that nothing was going to happen. It was a peace that if anything did happen, God was bigger than the circumstances we would find ourselves in.

And though the guys came and checked out the carriage through the window, for some reason they didn't come in and bother us, though we were sitting ducks for the next three hours. We got off in Meknes, and went for pizza. And it was the best pizza I've ever tasted!

God was bigger than what we were facing. That's the lesson we learned on that train: the same lesson the Psalmist learned in his adversity.

“Israel, trust in the Lord, because his love is constant, and he is always willing to save”.

I don’t know how you are as you come to church this morning, but I do know that you need to be saved.

Not in the pulpit thumping way – at least, not just that.

Some of us need to be saved from ourselves and our self-destructive tendencies.

Some of us need to be saved from the things that weigh us down, or hold us back, or fill us with fear.

Some of us need to be saved from wrong ideas about God, or about the church.

Some of us need saved from the delusion that we’re quite all right, thank you very much, and we don’t really need a saviour.

The Psalmist’s word to us this morning is a good one, for those with ears to hear:

“Israel, trust in the Lord, because his love is constant, and he is always willing to save”.

But let me finish with one last thought.

God is always willing to save. But are we?

In the wee story I told at the beginning of the sermon, God wanted to save the man on the roof but he couldn’t because the man wasn’t listening properly.

But what if it were the ones supposed to be doing the saving who weren’t listening? What if the lifeboatmen missed the call to help because they were watching the football on Sky; or the helicopter pilot missed the flashing red light because he had his nose in his Kindle?

What if there were people out there who needed saving, but those charged with saving them didn’t hear, or worse still, didn’t care to hear?

One of the most awful facts to emerge in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster is that there was enough room in the lifeboats for many more people to be saved. Most of the fatalities were due to hypothermia from being in the freezing water, not drowning.

But as those poor souls bobbed up and down in the water, gasping, those with the power to do something stayed away and didn’t help. They kept the lifeboats at a safe distance where there was no risk of desperate people grabbing onto the sides and capsizing them. Some led the survivors in singing so they wouldn’t be able to hear the groans of those perishing in the water.

God is always willing to save. But are we?

I ask because there’s a man in Malawi at church today. A farmer. Like us he prays about the things that worry him – mostly his livelihood and his family. He urgently asks God for help, because his situation’s pretty helpless. He waits with hope for the dawn.

And God hears the prayer. And God wants to save him, in the midst of his troubles. And the miracle he sends is a very ordinary one. A group of folk come alongside the farmer and his neighbours and help them set up collectives. Together they stand up to the purchasers who’d exploited them as individuals. They get a fair price for their rice. It’s shipped to the UK and bagged here, then sent round the country ready for distribution to communities like ours; communities with the means, and the God-given responsibility, to help people just like him.

Today we’re not the man sitting on the roof as the flood waters rise. We’re the helicopter pilot or lifeboat crew. We’re the ones commissioned to do the rescuing. In God’s provision, the simple act of buying a bag of rice can be part of the answer to one man’s prayer.

God is always willing to save, says the Psalmist. That’s the promise of the gospel.

But are we willing to save? That’s the challenge of the gospel.

Thanks be to God for the promise and the challenge of his word on this Harvest Sunday