Sermon, Sun 8 March, Lent 2: 'Where does my help come from?'

READINGS Ps 121; Rom 4:1-5; John 3:1-17

SERMON
Let’s pray: May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer, Amen

‘I lift my eyes to the hills –
where does my help come from?’

A friend and I have an ongoing joke about Psalm 121.
We speculate that it was written by the psalmist just as he was preparing to go into battle.
Watching and waiting, hearing the clink and jingle of the oncoming army, he scans the hills anxiously...
Sweat begins to run down his brow as the hills remain ....quiet,.... empty...
As he looks at these empty hills, he’s getting a little twitchy,
and the ‘where does my help come from?’
is really more of a panicked –
‘Aaaaargh, where the heck is the rest of my army?
Where are my reinforcements?!’
And after a lot of very quick breaths, where he's close to hyperventilating,
he tries to steady himself with an:
‘okay, okay, 
breathe, 
breathe...
my help comes from the Lord...
my help comes from the Lord...
....LOOOOORRRRRRDDDDDDD!!!’....

Whatever caused the psalmist to compose his song, Psalm 121 became less a battle song,
and more a song for pilgrims.
At the beginning of the psalm you see the words:
‘a song of ascents’ 
a reference to ascending the road leading up to Jerusalem and the Temple.
The psalm became popular –
used as a form of prayer and blessing at the beginning of a journey.
Having been blessed,
off the travellers,
the pilgrims,
those journeying to wherever it may be,
would go –
some having a remarkably benign trip,
others having all sorts of unexpected and unlooked for adventures,
occasional mishaps,
or getting a little lost on the way.
To journey is to be prepared to take a risk...
And the word ‘journey’ is often used to describe not only physical travels,
but also the journey of faith.
We find this especially in times like Lent –
where there’s talk of wandering in the wilderness with Jesus,
talk of journeying with Jesus to Jerusalem
and of passing through the cheering crowds
and onwards to betrayal and pain and suffering and death on Calvary’s hill.

Sometimes, the word ‘journey’ feels a little overused, when it comes to faith,
and yet, even so, it’s a good metaphor:
just as in life’s journey,
so our faith journey can, at times, be remarkably straightforward, gently benign...
but as with other journeys,
there can also be bumps and diversions and even occasional disasters on the faith journey.
With the psalmist, we too, might be inclined to ask:
‘where does my help come from?’
And we find, it’s the same answer:
‘our help comes from the Lord.’
But how is that a comfort?
Well, the psalmist tells us about this One who is helping.
What do we learn?
The Lord is the One who is
‘the Maker of heaven and earth’.
We get to ask our question only because the Maker...
made us...
and everything there is:
the hills, atoms, snow, even those weird and wild looking fish
with built-in lamps that swim in the darkest parts of the ocean.
Our help comes from the One who is
the Maker,
the Creator –
inventive, imaginative,
who does, like the Sunday School song suggests,
hold 'the whole word in his hands.'
‘Where does my help come from?’
Wow – the all-impressive and powerful Creator of everything.
Well, that’s not too shabby, really, is it?
The One who shaped the seas and formed the mountains
is the One who will help little old you and me.
But is that it?

Well, according to the psalmist, wait, because there’s more –
and then we get a run down of the qualities of this particular helper.
Six times, in this short psalm, there’s a particular Hebrew word ‘shamar’ –
and in our English translation we have these variations on it –
'to keep', 'to watch over', 'to preserve'.
I was chatting with someone yesterday about publicity and advertising:
did you know that it’s only about at the 6th flyer through the door
advertising the same thing, that you tend to actually notice it?
Interesting coincidence that ‘shamar’ – to ‘watch over’ is mentioned six times.
It’s as if the psalmist really, really, really wants you to notice this:
it’s important.
So, the take-away here is that the great Maker of all
helps you,
and holds you,
and, watches over you.
When the wheels fall off the wagon
and the journey goes all pear-shaped,
this is the One who has your back.
But, what else do we find out from the psalmist?

God... never... sleeps.
This is a sly reference to the other gods who were worshipped
at the time of writing the psalm –
it was believed that they sort of hibernated over the winter, waking back up as spring began.
Our helper, says the psalmist,
doesn’t go to sleep,
doesn’t go on holiday:
our helper,
our God,
is constant, dependable,
sure and faithful and steadfast –
always with us,
always watching over us.

This is a helper who protects.
When the sun is at its height, this is a helper who provides shade.
When the moon is making its nightly pilgrimage through the skies, again the helper keeps watch.
And here’s a thing:
what’s the problem with the moon?
Here’s your fun quiz fact for the day to tuck away:
the root of the word ‘lunatic’ comes from the Latin word for ‘moon’.
And, the root of the word ‘epileptic’ comes from Greek word used for ‘moon’...
so the expression to be ‘moonstruck’ meant having a fit.
Both the sun and moon in their different ways were things to be wary of for a traveller,
and the One watching over us, according to the psalmist,
makes sure that we are protected from sun and moon;
protected
for the whole journey of life,
for the whole journey of faith;
from our beginning
to our end...
our coming into the world
and our going out from it.
Ever faithful,
always watching,
always with us.
The One who is our helper.

It is the same One who called to Abraham and said:
‘Leave this place. Go to a land of promise, of hope. 
You will have so many descendants that it will be 
as impossible to count them as it is to count the stars.’
And wealthy, comfortable Abraham left his comfort zone
and went on a great journey with Sara...
and a whole lot of assorted servants and possessions.
He travelled to a far off, unknown land –
the journey of a lifetime,
a journey not without difficulties.
There were times he really made a hash of things.
Nevertheless, he followed God –
the One who is our helper and our guide.

Thousands of years later, the One who also watched over Nicodemus
guided his footsteps at night through the twisty, narrow alleyways of
Jerusalem to where Jesus was staying.
Nicodemus was also a man of privilege and power – he was among the religious elite.
And yet, he too, made a journey:
and found himself face to face with Jesus chewing over matters of the faith.
I like Nicodemus – there’s a humility to this man that enabled him to ask questions
of this maverick peasant from the northern wilds.
He has an interesting faith journey:
later we see him standing up and defending Jesus...
and much later, Nicodemus is there, at the Cross, with Joseph of Arimathea,
organising the logistics of burial.

Remember the hymn that has the words:
‘we are pilgrims on a journey’?
So we come back to the pilgrim psalm, psalm 121.
It is as much a psalm for pilgrims heading to Jerusalem centuries ago,
as it is for each one of us who follows in faith today.
And we, too, find that there are times when we ask the age-old question:
‘where does my help come from?’
It’s a good question in the midst of conversations about the Coronavirus,
and where we’re hearing all these stories of panic buying.
I’m not quite sure what the panic is about loo paper, but that seems to be
‘the’ panic buying item of choice...
I’d prefer chocolate, personally.

Earlier in the week I bumped into someone and we got into a conversation about this virus.
And the person I was talking with was very concerned – terrified.
They were not alone, judging by all that panic buying.
But something perhaps useful to remember:
throughout the whole of human history there have always been terrible and frightening things:
plague, natural disasters, wars...
The world can truly feel a frightening place.
We can feel lost, alone, isolated.
In life, in faith, as we journey, we look at everything happening around us,
we look at the hills filled with so many frightening, worrying things, and we cry out:
‘where does my help come from?’
The preacher Frederick Buechner once said:
‘Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.’
Why not?
Because when we ask ‘where does my help come from?’
the answer is the same as it was for Abraham.
It is the same as it was for the pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem,
it is the same as it was for Nicodemus slipping through those
darkened streets seeking illumination.
Our help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth,
who watches over us every moment of our lives -
the One who is constant even when at times, we are less so:
the One who is dependable, who can be relied upon, and who loves us in this manner:
that he became one of us,
and, in becoming one of us,
knew fully what it was to bear the burden and the joy of being human.
He is the One who loves us in this way:
that he challenged those who created systems that helped to make the world
more terrible and frightening, systems that hindered people from being all that they could be.
He is the One who loved us like this:
that, having challenged the powers that be, he was arrested, punished, and executed.
He is the One who loves us in this way:
that, he showed us that death is not the end –
that we are a people not of darkness,
but of light;
that we are a people not of despair,
but of hope;
that we are a people not of death,
but of life everlasting...
Our help comes
from the One who loves us,
who cherishes us,
and who is the guardian of our hope.
He is the One to whom we can cry out when all seems lost –
and find that, as we journey to him, and he to us,
that, in the end, all is found –
for God is our all in all.
Whatever it is that causes you to be fearful as you journey in faith and in life,
take courage, people of God,
for the Lord, your God, is with you –
always and forever.

‘I lift my eyes to the hills –
where does my help come from?
My help comes the Lord, 
the Maker of heaven and earth’
...Amazing grace indeed. Amen.