Psalm 43: 1-5 (links validated 9/13/23)
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Sermon Starters (Proper 26A)(2023)
Nearly thirty years ago at the Festival of Faith & Writing at Calvin College (now University), Holocaust survivor and brilliant writer Elie Wiesel gave a memorable plenary address to a packed Fieldhouse. At one point he told a story that illustrated what he meant in the speech when, speaking of the Psalms of Lament, he said that “A Jew can be for God, happy with God, against God, angry with God but a Jew can never be without God.” It seems that in one of the Nazi concentration camps a number of imprisoned Jews decided to put God on trial for covenant unfaithfulness given the suffering of his people in those dark days. They asked a rabbi who was also in the camp to preside as judge. Testimony was given, cross examinations happened, and in the end the verdict came in on the charge of God’s covenant unfaithfulness: Guilty as Charged. They were about to announce the sentence but they had to break off before they got to that part. It was, you see, time for evening prayers.
Resources from 2016 to 2022
Sermon Starters (Proper 26A)(2020)
In a sermon, the preacher Tom Long once told the story of a minister he knew whose wife—on the day before Easter one year—fell suddenly ill in the morning, got worse in the afternoon, and by evening was dead. The pastor obviously could not preach the next day, though he still showed up at worship somehow. But he could not sing that day. He could not, he said, even believe in the resurrection. Not that day, Easter or no. And so he said he let the faith of the others in church carry him that day. They had to believe for him that day. They had to sing for him that day. And that’s just the way life goes sometimes. Like the psalmist of Psalms 42 & 43, we just have to acknowledge to God that when times are bad, we may just have to wait a bit until God smooths things out or heals us in some other way before we can go to the house of God with rejoicing in our hearts again. That’s just being honest with God. And God surely understands that. The Bible tells us so.
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Beyond Despair
Horatio G. Spafford is a name with which you are probably not familiar. Mr. Spafford was a successful Chicago lawyer who lost most of his wealth in the financial crisis of 1873. He sent his wife and four daughters on a trip to France, but on their way, their ship was struck by another, and sank. Of 225 passengers, only 87 of them survived. Mrs. Spafford was among the survivors, but the four daughters perished. As soon as she reached land, she telegraphed to her husband: "Saved alone. Children lost. What shall I do?" Spafford left for France to join his wife and return her to Chicago. In the depth of this bereavement, he wrote something that keeps his name alive, a hymn (his one and only): When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrow like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, "It is well, it is well with my soul."...