This sermon was preached at Glenwood and Canoe Ridge Lutheran Churches, Decorah, Iowa on August 26, 2018. It’s based on Psalm 34:15-22. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson.
Psalm: Psalm 34:15-22
15The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and God’s ears are open to their cry.
16The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to erase the remembrance of them from the earth.
17The righteous cry, and the Lord hears them and delivers them from all their troubles.
18The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those whose spirits are crushed.
19Many are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them from every one.
20God will keep safe all their bones; not one of them shall be broken.
21Evil will bring death to the wicked and those who hate the righteous will be punished.
22O Lord, you redeem the life of your servants, and those who put their trust in you will not be punished.
Our mailman was a dance teacher at night and I would watch him sometimes to see if he would deliver mail differently than the others. I expected him to leap over bushes with his toes pointing like arrows, but all he ever did was walk.1
This is from a Story People print entitled Dancing Mailman, and strangely enough, I think it might help us get at today’s psalm.
As I considered the scripture readings for this Sunday, I kept returning to the psalm. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those whose spirits are crushed. Many are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them from every one.
It seems there’s a lingering expectation that people of faith are somehow immune from the sorrows of life. Or, to put it another way, that if something goes terribly wrong in one’s life it must be the case that he or she has done something terribly wrong to deserve such trouble. It’s almost as though we expect that as Christians we should be dancing mailmen—leaping over troubles with our toes pointing like arrows — but all we ever really do is walk like everybody else, right through hardships of every kind.
The psalmist, smack dab in the heart of a worldview that would have presumed one’s trouble to be the result of sin on one’s part (or on the part of one’s parents), makes the radical claim that many are the troubles of the righteous. The righteous. The ones getting it right with God and with their neighbors. Many are the troubles of the righteous.
It’s not exactly good news, but it’s strangely comforting, isn’t it? Yes, there are times when our sin has terrible consequences. But so many of the sorrows we encounter just are. They’re not a reflection on our character. They’re not a result of anything we’ve done or left undone. They just are. Many are the troubles of the righteous.
We are not dancing mailmen—leaping over troubles with our toes pointing like arrows. We walk right through hardships of every kind, with God at our side.
The psalmist assures us, God’s eyes are upon us. God’s ears are open to our cries. God hears us and delivers us. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who spirits are crushed.
Caroline Meeker addressed the ELCA Youth Gathering this year, sharing her life-threatening struggle with anorexia. At only nine years old, she thought she had lost everything. But then something changed. Caroline said, I wish I could tell you the exact moment when I decided to really fight, but I was only nine. So I can’t tell you exactly why or how or when I started to get better, but I can tell you who. God was there. God was there through my doctors. God was there through my family. God was there through prayer from my church and friends. God was everywhere. God’s love and presence gave my parents the hope and strength to continue to fight for me through this disease.2
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those whose spirits are crushed.
You might not be able to feel it now, see it now, believe it now. You might have the words of another psalm on your lips, the words Jesus himself cried from the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Psalm 22:1). Your broken heart is real. Your sense of abandonment is profound. So we will believe for you; God is there. Whatever your cross is today, God is there. Your doubt only strengthens God’s faithfulness. Your despair only draws God closer. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those whose spirits are crushed.
This is a promise that has worked its way into my heart this week. I pray it will work its way into yours. I pray it would comfort you, encourage you, give you hope. I pray it would compel you to be the love of God in the lives of the brokenhearted around you—that through you, those whose spirits are crushed would know the love of the God who created them and calls them by name.
Leslie Jamison writes in her book, The Empathy Exams, about writing a story once from an open wound. The story was a story of breakup and heartbreak. She says, I wrote the ending first. It was an assertion. ‘I had a heart. It remained.’3
God has written our ending for us. In it, we have a heart—broken though it may be—that remains. We have a heart close to God’s heart. We have a heart that will one day be free from mourning, crying, and pain.
We follow a Savior who is, in essence, a dance teacher. Jesus teaches us the way—he is the way—of love and life and joy, even in the midst of heartbreak. He himself refused to leap over hardships with his toes pointed like arrows. Instead, he walked that long, lonesome road to the cross, enduring all that it means to be human for our sake.
On the third day after his death, he danced out from that grave that could not hold him. So now, we too, can dance the dance of death defeated even while we walk this painful road.
Leslie Jamison says this about the ending she wrote to her story of heartbreak, I liked it because it felt true and optimistic (my heart’s still here!) but also sad (my still-here heart hurts constantly!).
This is the life we live as followers of a dancing mailman, a dancing deliverer. We walk through hardships with God at our side (our still-here hearts hurt constantly), but we also dance to the truth that nothing can separate us from God’s love (our hearts are still here!).
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those whose spirits are crushed.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
1 Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas by Brian Andreas. Learn more at http://www.storypeople.com.
2 Listen to Caroline Meeker’s entire talk at https://www.youtube.com.
3 The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison. Learn more at https://www.graywolfpress.org.