So what do we, as people of faith, do in the face of lives that are constantly at risk of being affected by suffering?

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1 WHO ABIDES IN THE SHADOW OF THE ALMIGHTY? September 29, 2013, The Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time Psalm 91 Douglas T. King, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York I pray in a multitude of ways for a multitude of things. I pray by meditating. Sometimes I pray by pacing in circles and gesturing with my hands like I am stuck driving in midtown traffic. Oftentimes I mumble under my breath to God throughout the day. My prayers can be lofty words eloquently praying for people who are hospitalized or for peace in our war-torn world. My prayers can be joyous simple words as I count the many blessings I receive each and every day. My prayers can be filled with doubts and questions and a laundry list of personal complaints peppered with salty language. And then there are what I refer to as the dentist-chair prayers. I think they are a form of prayer we all offer at one time or another. At least I hope so; I would feel silly to be the only one praying like this. A dentist-chair prayer occurs when you are sitting there and the dentist has both her hands in your mouth. She is drilling away at some cracked filling that needs to be removed and smoke is rising off the drill and the anesthetic is not quite doing the job. A dentist-chair prayer is when you call out to God and announce, Look God, I have tried to be a good and faithful person. Maybe you could just repay me by not having this hurt so much. It is a prayer seeking to be protected and rewarded in some way for what we think is our good behavior. Sometimes it is a prayer uttered over something as minor as an unpleasant trip to the dentist. And sometimes it is a prayer prayed fervently before major, life-threatening surgery. It is the kind of prayer that wants to lean heavily on our text this morning from Psalm Ninety-one. It calls upon verses nine and ten, Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. We want these words written out as a legal contract with God s John Hancock affixed to the - 1 -

2 bottom. Throughout history, both Christians and Jews have placed this psalm inside of amulets and worn them in an effort to protect them from all misfortune. We so want it to be true. We so want ourselves and everyone we love to be ensconced in divine bubble wrap. But there is other scripture to be heard regarding this topic as well. In the gospel of Matthew Jesus says, God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. And in the gospel of Luke we experience a painful irony. As they are on top of the temple the devil tempts Jesus to throw himself down by quoting from the eleventh and twelfth verses of this psalm, For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. We know that Jesus was not sheltered from the painful realities of this life as he made his journey to the cross. So what do we do with this text that offers a big bold promise that runs the risk of being seemingly hollow? When I think about the conundrum of this text I am reminded of a parishioner I had in Buffalo. Shortly after his wife, a soul-mate of over thirty years, had died, we were sitting and talking. I asked him how he was doing. He paused for a moment, looked me deeply in the eye, and quoted Romans chapter eight, verse twenty-eight to me, We know that all things work together for good for those who love God It had been a line of scripture I had disliked for a very long time. It was one of those lines that made me cringe. It appears to ignore the fact that sometimes life is really hard and things do not work out that well. But in the moment I heard this man speak those words with conviction in the midst of one of the most devastating moments of his life I gained a deep and abiding appreciation for them. I could tell he was not using those words to whitewash over what was a tragedy in his life. He was not denying how the world can break us. He was not in any way minimizing the death of his beloved wife Ann. What he was doing was proclaiming that there was something more powerful than everything that can harm and break us in this world. He was proclaiming that when we choose to be in relationship with that power, when we choose to love God, we are given the opportunity to recognize that nothing will deny God s ultimate purposes for us

3 In his book Be Still and Get Going, Rabbi Alan Lew describes a fascinating conversation among a group of highly esteemed rabbis. In it, one of the rabbis asks another the question, Are your sufferings beloved to you? This disarming and disturbing question that flirts with masochism is roundly debated by the rabbis. One of the ideas that is argued about is whether God actually brings suffering into peoples lives as a means of teaching them faithfulness. What an awful thought. What a depressing thought. If that is the case, Lord, I am just faithful enough the way I am right now, please do not do me the favor of increasing my opportunity to be faithful. Rabbi Lew, who does not argue that God brings suffering into peoples lives, tells the story of one of his colleagues, Rabbi Gerald Wolpe, whose wife was stricken with a debilitating stroke. Eventually she recovered most of what was lost, but it took a long time, and for many months she hovered on the brink of total incapacity. She could neither speak nor move, and it wasn t clear what, if anything, was going on in her mind. During these months, Rabbi Wolpe delivered one of the most powerful talks I had ever heard to a convention full of his rabbinic colleagues. Before my wife s stroke, he began, I only had a professional relationship with God. God was just an idea to him, something he was paid to talk about and explain. Now, of course, God was an intimate reality, a part of his momentby-moment experience. Every second of his life now, he questioned God, accused God, poured out his rage at God, turned to God for consolation and deliverance. His wife s stroke had drawn Gerald Wolpe into a intimate embrace with God, and as painful as that bear hug may have been, it gave him an immediate and constant sense of the presence of God in his life. 1 Let me just stop and offer a heartfelt prayer in this very moment. Dear God, Please lead us into closer relationship with you but please, please, please do not lead us there by devastating our lives with suffering. Amen. I do not believe that God brings suffering into our lives, as a teaching tool or for any other reason at all. I also believe that there is no way that our personal faithfulness can guarantee that God will keep us immune from suffering in this life

4 So what do we, as people of faith, do in the face of lives that are constantly at risk of being affected by suffering? There are three choices that come to my mind. The first is to live in denial; to somehow convince ourselves that we are so unique and special that we can live our lives untouched by suffering. The second choice in response to suffering in this world is neurotic fear. We can panic over every little ache and pain as a precursor to catastrophic illness and hide under our bed every time a siren goes down the street. The third option is, oh and here s a hint, the third option is usually the best option, we can remember Psalm Ninety-one and say to ourselves and to our God, My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. These words do not have the power to magically transform the world into a place devoid of suffering. But these words have the power to transform us. These words have the power to change how we relate to everything that happens in our lives. These words rest upon two fundamental truths about the divine, two truths in which we can stake our entire lives. The first truth, is that God is always, always, always seeking us out; always seeking to bring us into closer relationship with the divine self; always seeking to open our hearts and minds to God s intimate presence in our midst; always seeking to bridge the gap between our mortal limitations and God s boundless being; and always inviting us into divine shelter no matter what may be happening in our lives. The second truth is that nothing will ever separate us from the love of God. As Paul says in Romans, For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. What makes Psalm Ninety-one efficacious in a world of suffering; what makes the question of Are your sufferings beloved to you? even a remotely sane query, are these two truths. If God is always seeking us out, no matter what the context of our lives, God is seeking us out, even in the midst of our suffering, especially when we are suffering. And if nothing, not even suffering, will distance us from the love of God, we are never beyond the reach of being transformed by that love. God can speak to us through our suffering. God s love can care for us and transform us through our suffering. If we doubt in these two truths, God is always seeking us - 4 -

5 out, and nothing will ever separate us from the love of God, we need only view the cross and God s willingness to climb inside of suffering for our sake. Believing in these truths we can choose to both face the uncertainty and suffering of this world and live in the shelter of the Most High (and) abide in the shadow of the Almighty, (and) say to the Lord, My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust. Thanks be to God. Amen. 1 Lew, Alan, Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice For Real Life, Little, Brown and Company, 2005, pp