Home Sermons Sermon on Mark 10:46-52 & Psalm 34

Sermon on Mark 10:46-52 & Psalm 34

Oct 25/09 Is everybody getting ready for Halloween? By the way don’t forget to turn your clocks back to or you’ll cheat yourself out of an extra hour of sleep, and end up coming to church and having to be the only one here for 60 minutes. How many of you are going to put up Halloween things? I’ve been thinking about Halloween this week and paying attention to some of the ways people are celebrating it. I’ve seen • cobwebs draped over front porches and skeletons in rocking chairs • cardboard graveyards with bloody plastic hands emerging from the graves and all the spooky sound effects that go with it. • witches nailed to telephone poles in such a way that it looks like the witch has crashed into the telephone pole face first. • pumpkins. How many of you are going to carve a pumpkin? How many already have done so? I learned this week that Halloween has been around for over 1300 years! That’s a lot of skeletons and pumpkins, and costumes and trick or treating. I wonder if Halloween has stood the test of time because it has a great underlying message in it for people like us. Children going about their business, collecting candy in the neighborhood, walking unafraid past witches, and cobwebs and skeletons and graveyards and scary pumpkins, is what Halloween is all about and it is also a very appropriate image for Psalm 34, which doesn’t talk about Halloween per se but it does talk about fear and maybe it’s the underlying fear that is being addressed on Halloween and has kept it going for all these years. I don’t know. I’m just suggesting it might be. Psalm 34 says in effect, “Give all your troubles and fears to God and then fear God” The phrase, ‘fear the Lord’ doesn’t mean fear of punishment, or that God is a scary God to be afraid of. It means being filled with reverence, and awe and wonder and amazement at our holy, sovereign God who gives us good things that we can experience, see, hear, touch, and even taste. The song, ‘Amazing Grace’ captures the meaning of this Psalm: Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. That’s the message of Psalm 34 and also the underlying message of Halloween, I think. So when you see the little ones coming up to your doorstep walking unafraid past the skeletons and the cobwebs next Saturday evening let that image be a reminder to you that just like they turn to their daddy’s or their mommies for security and safety, all we need to do is to turn to God in our fears and God will take care of us. I say that so easily don’t I, in this safe place up here. But I also know that giving God all our fears is not a natural thing to do. We’d rather just keep being afraid. Or sometimes it’s just a matter of forgetting that we can turn to God when we’re afraid. When I was in my twenties, I remember once going with a group of my friends to a cross country ski weekend at Camp Wannacomeback in Riding Mountain National Park. We went by bus and on the way all my friends talked about was which of the steepest and the most advanced ski trails they were going to start on the next morning. I didn’t want to admit that I was the wimp of the group and so I went along with their plan. But I was scared out of my wits. What was going to happen to me tomorrow? I went to bed that night and I never slept one wink. I just knew that I was going to crash at breakneck speed into a tree or off the cliff and break my back or my head and end up in a coma. I just knew it. It was horrible. Well, according to the Psalmist those are the kind of fears we’re supposed to give to God. We’re just not good at dealing with them. Everybody has their own type of fear. We fear war and poverty. We fear getting a phone call in the middle of the night about our children. We fear gangs and crime, and certain diagnosis, H1N1. It’s not only adults. Children have fears too. When I was about 10 years old we lived in the upstairs of a house in Germany. In order to get to our apartment we had to go up about 18 good sized stairs. And everytime I went up those stairs for 4 years (multiple times in a day), I had to run as fast as I could up those stairs to get away from the stair monster who was following me. As long as I could make it to the top and look back I was safe. We all have fears. I don’t know if you can be a human being and not have some fears. Think of all the phobias you can list. Fear of spiders, snakes, heights, deep water, enclosed spaces, tunnels and bridges, social rejection, fear of failure fear of public speaking, fear of being unloved or abandoned, fear of losing control, fear of death even. Fear is not only an individual phenomenon. Fear can drive whole communities to act in ways that people by themselves wouldn’t act. A community will shun one person if they’re different. That’s a form of fear. Peer pressure is a form of fear. Psalm 34 tells us that we can give all our fears to God and then turn to God. Sometimes turning to God means crying out to God for help. I don’t know what you fear. I wish could get to know you a little better to talk about it. But God knows what they are. And you can turn to God for help, says the Psalmist. That’s what the blind beggar in Mark’s gospel did. He cried out. “Jesus, help me!” The disciples tried to shush him, but he cried out all the more. “Jesus, help me!” Have you ever said that out loud? I did. It was when I first began at seminary in 2004. I was taking six courses that term and in the first week every professor told us what we had as far as assignments went. One course I had to read 10 books! Another course I had to do two major presentations and read 6 books, and on and on it went. I went to bed that night with a one-word prayer, “Help!” And God answered me. God said, “Barbara, you don’t have to go alone. I’m here. Take my hand and we’ll hold hands for the whole 12 weeks, and everytime you need me I’ll be here at the end of your hand.” And so it was a great and amazing term with God and me holding hands and reading all those books together. We are in the hands of an incredible awesome God! All we have to do is to turn to God in every moment. Talk to God in prayer, lean on God, love God by loving the people around you, walk with God by enjoying all of God’s creation, stare at God—if you have no words just being quiet and that’s all. You can even taste and see how God is good. Perhaps when you eat supper tonight pay attention to how the food tastes in your mouth and be grateful for it. Turn to God. Set your mind on God, says the Psalmist. And when you do your life will start looking like those sweet little children walking around the neighborhood unafraid on Halloween passing by all the scary stuff, confident that they are in good and amazing grace-filled hands, ready to bless and to bring life in all its joy and all its goodness!