O Lord, stir up in us the flame of that love
which burned in the heart of your Son as he bore his passion, and let it burn
in us to eternal life ✠ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We continue through Holy Week with the Psalms as our guide, and this evening we have before us Psalm 71. We see the idea mentioned in verse 9 with the reference to “old age,” this Psalm has a superscription, a title, “God’s help in old age.” Now, how we define “old age” is open to interpretation. At 38, I don’t really fall into the category of “old age,” but that doesn’t mean this Psalm isn’t for me. Sure, in another 30 years I might hear it differently, but this is a Psalm about the precariousness of life. All of us face trials, calamities, challenges, and the reality of death. Unfortunately, being younger doesn’t exempt me from any of those things. “Old age” is just another way of saying “when time is short” and it’s short for us all.
Time
is the only non-renewable resource. We can lose money and then make more. We
can lose strength and flexibility, but we can train and build some of that
back. We might face difficulties, but they can be overcome. Time, at least as
we experience it, moves only in one direction and there’s no getting any of it
back. For all of us, regardless of age, time is running out. This can be a very
unsettling realization and we consider it in Holy Week because, for Jesus, only
three days remain until Good Friday.
Instead
of despairing over the passage of time, the impermanence of life, or the loss
of vigor, Psalm 71 would remind us that God is our rock. Through the Psalm, we
pray that God would be our strong rock, a castle to keep us safe; for God is
our crag and our stronghold and has been our confidence since we were young.
There is no shortage of instances in which God has been with us and been our
rock. Scripture is full of such stories of salvation, as are the lives of the
saints, and we all have stories of unexpected strength and comfort being given
to us by God’s gracious love.
This
is why prayer and meditation are so important to the life of faith. If we never
take a moment to stop and breathe and reflect, we’ll miss out on the fact that
God is, indeed, our rock, a cavern in which to find safety. Yes, asking God for
things that we need and want is a fine way of praying, but if neglect
thanksgiving then we’re missing out. A wonderful way to do this is called the
Ignatian Examen, named after St. Ignatius of Loyola. You can look it up online
later and you’ll find there are different steps involved. But at the most basic
level, the Examen is best done in the evening and we take 5 minutes to review
the day. Think about the both mundane and the spectacular things that happened.
The idea of the Examen is to see how God was at work throughout the day, where
we were aligned with the love of God, and where we got off track. The Examen
helps us to notice those places in which God was our refuge and strength and
then to pray for God’s continued guidance tomorrow.
The
reason why knowing that God is our rock is so valuable is that we need that
solid foundation to make through life. Whether it’s interpersonal conflict at
home or work, health concerns, discerning what God is calling you towards,
anxiety around what’s in the news, or personal struggles, life has a way of
unsettling us. There’s a lovely prayer from the nighttime liturgy of Compline
in our Prayer Book that includes that prays, “Be present, O merciful God, so
that we who are wearied by the changes and changes of this life may rest in
your eternal changelessness.” It’s a prayer for God to be our rock.
The
world will offer us other foundations – strength in the forms of high-powered
attorneys and militaries, money to move or buy our way out of challenges,
confidence so we can either steamroll over others or blindly ignore problems. Society
will tell us that faith is just wishful thinking, or it’s a crutch for
weak-minded and superstitious people. This is nothing new. In his letter to the
Corinthian church that we hard from this evening, St. Paul writes “The message
about the cross is foolishness… Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but
we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to
Gentiles.”
Even
to those of us in the Church, we can question the foundation of faith. The
pandemic that we’re (hopefully) coming out of has made this abundantly and
painfully clear. Many people have not attended church in two years and they’ve
probably not noticed any appreciable change in their lives. Or, if they have,
it doesn’t appear if the Church is something foundational. Now, a lot of people
like to talk about the difference between Jesus and the Church. They say that
they find Jesus at their kitchen table, or in walks in nature, or in devotional
time at home. And, to be sure, those sound like exactly the sorts of places
that would show up. But none of those are the rock of faith.
Jesus
gave us the Church, the Body of Christ, to be our foundation. He gave us
Sacraments like Baptism, Eucharist, Confession, and Anointing to sustain,
comfort, and nourish us in faith. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we have been
given a beloved community to read Scripture with, to pray prayers with, to be
responsible for, to be accountable to, to rejoice with, to mourn with, to serve
alongside. And the unique and wonderful thing about the Body of Christ is that
it includes anyone who walks the way of faith. Small groups can be wonderful, a
circle of friends is great, a book club is good, but none are the Church. None
of those make us be with people we otherwise would not associate with. The
Church brings us into the stream of God’s faithful witness throughout space and
time. The Church is the gift of Christ’s very Body to the world and this is
that refuge, that castle, that stronghold that Psalm 71 has us to pray for. In
the Church, we are assured of God’s mercy, we are fed from the riches of God’s
grace, we are given to one another in love. The Church is the foundation that
we need amidst the changes and chances of this life. It is a place where we can
grow old and know we will not be forgotten but rather we will be cared for and
valued to the end.
This
is exactly what Jesus has in mind for Holy Week. In John, we heard Jesus say
“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” In Holy
Week, Jesus is creating the community that will gather around the cross. It is
a blessed and beloved community where young and old alike find the foundation
on which to build their lives. The salvation we receive through the Cross is
that Jesus draws us together into the mighty fortress of his love. As that
great hymn of our faith puts it, “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for
years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.” Amen.
