When we cannot give thanks to God, we cannot be in full relationship with God. The scholar Walter Brueggemann explains the form of thanks from the

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1 Good Words in Bad Times July 11, 2010, The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Psalm 30 Douglas T. King, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York All ministers have stories of good liturgy gone bad - moments in worship when the best laid plans have gone astray. A communion plate will fall to the floor. A microphone will be left on at an inopportune time. One of my personal favorites is one that I did not experience firsthand. It was told to me so long ago, I cannot even remember who the teller was, and I suppose it is possible that the whole thing is apocryphal, but I love it nonetheless. One element of our Reformed theology of baptism is the notion that in participating in being baptized, as we know Jesus was, we participate in all that Jesus did. We join him in a life of faithfulness to God; we join him in his death; and we join him in his resurrection. Some baptism liturgies will have a line speaking of dying with Christ to sin. In our prayer before baptism we say, we are buried with Christ in his death. One Sunday in worship the minister and the family, the baby, an older brother who is four or five, and mom and dad, are gathered around the baptismal font. The four-year-old brother is excited to be this close to all of the action in front of so many people but a little anxious as well. As the minister gets to the line - 1 -

2 about dying with Christ to sin, the four-year-old runs down the center aisle and out the sanctuary, screaming, but I don t want my little brother to die! It was certainly a moment to be remembered. I suppose that is what you get when you start throwing around words like death in the midst of a lovely, shiny moment with wide-eyed babies. When we lift these little ones up and sprinkle water on their foreheads, celebrating God s love for them, we do not even want to think about skinned knees and stomach aches, let alone anything more serious. We want the fact that they are claimed in love by God to be a guarantee that each of their just-begun lives will be nothing but clear skies and sunshine and smooth sailing, day after day, for time immemorial. Then, every once in a while, we remember that we were once little ones being baptized, and our parents and congregations had the same strong wishes for us, of lives unencumbered by pain or challenges or difficulty. Many of us are having pretty wonderful lives in a lot of ways, but none of us are going through this life without our own set of bumps and bruises. On a bright summer morning baptisms are a wonderful nicety. The reality is, our baptisms become a necessity in the more challenging moments of our lives. This is where our reading from Psalm 30 comes into play. I have a deep appreciation for the psalms because they speak the truth about the twists and turns of our lives. We receive the truth right in the first verse of this psalm, I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me

3 It is an exclamation of praise to the divine. But it is not an exclamation of praise for being given a perfectly easy life to lead. Right away, the writer of this psalm acknowledges that he has foes. The psalmist has adversaries, obstacles in his or her life. Whatever the challenge that was faced, it does not fall into the category of minor inconvenience. The psalmist speaks of Sheol, of the Pit - these are places of death. The threat that has been averted was life threatening. Some commentators believe this is a psalm written in response to recovering from a serious illness. The state of death in this biblical context is a place of absolute silence where no word of praise to God is offered, or even can be offered. In response to being freed from silence into speech, the psalmist calls upon all to join him in praising God, Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name. The psalmist wants to multiply his joy by encouraging everyone to worship the divine. Being freed from the nightmare of silence, of the inability to praise God, the psalmist does not want anyone to experience what he just has. It is one of the terrible ironies of our human existence that oft times, when we most need God, we are least capable of calling out to God with praise. In the midst of crisis, our ability to worship God often disappears. Any effort to raise our voices in prayer to the divine is muted. In the midst of a crisis in our lives, a serious medical condition, or economic uncertainty, or a crumbling marriage, we - 3 -

4 may call out to God, but the only words that come from our lips are How could you let this happen to me? and Help me, help me, help me! We are too worried and, or angry to praise God, to offer words of worship. And when we lose the ability to worship God a part of us is dead inside. When we lose the ability to praise God we lose a part of who we were created to be. In verse six the psalmist speaks of an earlier time before his crisis, As for me, I said in my prosperity, I shall never be moved. By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain; When times were good, when the psalmist was healthy and wealthy and the sun was shining, it was easy to worship God. The psalmist was confident, even cocky, in the notion that it would always be easy to worship God. But then circumstances changed. A crisis arose, and the only words that the psalmist could call out over and over were, O Lord be my helper! The psalmist is like a singer that can only sing a single note over and over again. In the midst of crisis, his only words to God were help me, help me, help me. Now, do not get me wrong. Nobody consistently calls out for God s help more than I do. Even in the midst of the smallest challenge, a broken shoelace, I am looking heavenward, seeking assistance and explanation. Let alone the ways I cry out in the larger crises of life. But when our only words to God are help me, it leaves our entire relationship with the divine stilted and one dimensional. It leaves part of us numb inside, dead inside. When we cannot give thanks to God, we cannot be in full relationship with God. The scholar Walter Brueggemann explains the form of thanks from the - 4 -

5 Hebrew term used in the original text: It means a confessional acknowledgement of who it is that has given new life. Thanks is more than just being grateful. It is a confessional statement, in some sense relying upon and committing one s self to the other. (Brueggemann, p127) Worship, praise, and thanksgiving are a much deeper proclamation than Hey God, thanks for the good time I am having right now in my life. When we give thanks to God, we are making a statement about the very nature of reality. We are acknowledging that all that we are and all that we have is provided by our creator. We are living out the reality that our lives cannot be complete unless we offer praise to the source of all being from which we come. The trick, of course, is to worship God when there is little to celebrate in our lives, when the only words that come naturally are complaint and calls for help. In verse six of the psalm we heard the psalmist speak of how he offered up praise when all he knew were good times. Hey, that s not too hard to do. In fact, it is so easy we can do it without much thought or effort at all. But at the end of the psalm, the psalmist says, O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever. This is a word of thanksgiving from a pair of lips that has known pain and suffering and knows that pain and suffering may return. This is a vow to praise God even in the midst of suffering. The psalmist now understands that we can only reach the deepest places in our relationship with the divine if we can offer praise even, and perhaps especially, when we are in pain

6 The fair question to ask at this point is How can we ever do that? I have no simple answer to that question, but I think the first place for us to look is back over at that baptismal font. That four year old brother was exactly right. We do not want the ones we love or ourselves to die or any pain to find itself into our lives. But it will. However, in baptism, as we share in the vital ritual in which Jesus participated, we are not just joining him in his life and death; we are most importantly joining him in his resurrection. In baptism, God claims us and promises to never let us go. Even in the worst moments of our lives, God has us in the divine grasp with a sure promise of healing and transforming grace. Baptism is a reminder that God s love is more powerful than any pain or difficulty in this world. We are forever claimed by God. When we firmly hold onto that promise we have reason to praise God in all times and all places, even the most painful ones. A clergy colleague friend of mine tells the story of dropping off his older daughter at her college campus for her freshman year, two thousand miles from home. No doubt it was an exciting time for her and an exciting and traumatic time for her parents. How will she do on her own? Who will protect her from the hardships of life? Will she remember all we tried to teach her to prepare her for this time? All of these thoughts ran through the mind of my friend. As he was slowly driving away, he looked in the rearview mirror. His daughter was standing in front of her dorm looking back at him. She met his eyes and then reached up with her hand and made the sign of the cross on her forehead that was made at her - 6 -

7 baptism. She was letting him know she knew who she was and whose she was, forever belonging to God. There is perhaps no greater gift in this life than the gift of baptism when we carry it in our hearts; when we know to whom we belong we can praise God in every time and place, in every moment of joy and of sorrow, of ease and of challenge. And in that praise we can find a depth and breadth in our relationship with God to sustain us throughout this life and the life to come. Thanks be to God. Amen. Brueggemann, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, Augsburg Publishing, Minneapolis,