The Evening Communion (last Sunday of each month at 6pm at St James’ Church) Sermon from Rev. Graham Crawford for 27 September 2015:

124 1-5 If God hadn’t been for us
—all together now, Israel, sing out!—
If God hadn’t been for us
when everyone went against us,
We would have been swallowed alive
by their violent anger,
Swept away by the flood of rage,
drowned in the torrent;
We would have lost our lives
in the wild, raging water.
6 Oh, blessed be God!
He didn’t go off and leave us.
He didn’t abandon us defenceless,
helpless as a rabbit in a pack of snarling dogs.
7 We’ve flown free from their fangs,
free of their traps, free as a bird.
Their grip is broken;
we’re free as a bird in flight.
8 God’s strong name is our help,
the same God who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 124 involves a whole catalogue of life events which are, at best, unpleasant.

When bad things happen

They are the things we like to keep hidden. The things that we do not like to talk about, in case they infect us with their unpleasantness.

There is the flood of rage that threatens to engulf and drown us. The sense that we are like a helpless rabbit, surrounded by a pack of wild dogs or a bird caught in a trap.

We all have our own personal stories of times in our lives when these have happened to us. The time when we were unfairly sacked from a job and felt so angry we would have gladly burnt down our old place of employment. The time when we felt we had no escape from an unpleasant situation, when all around us seemed intent on doing us harm, physically, mentally or emotionally. The times when we felt trapped, when there was no relief from pain, suffering, bullying or intimidation. This is no list of fairy-tale situations or things which you can dismiss as being disconnected from real life. This is a list of things that are real. For some people, they are not only very real but immediate and, in some cases, the most dominating fear in their lives.

Where do we go for relief?

In these situations, most people look for relief.

They might look for relief among medical experts or psychologists. They are never short of work.

They might try escapism, through TV or film. Look at the popularity of fantasy films like the Marvel series of films with Iron Man, Black Widow and Captain America.

They even try shopping therapy. Look at the average credit card debt of the country and you can see that people do literally try to buy happiness – yet one of their causes of unhappiness is the debt that they feel is crushing them!

The difference, between these people (who try to find relief in all these substitutionary methods) and the psalmist, could not be any more striking.

The realism of the psalmist

The psalmist never lives in denial of unpleasant things. He does not sweep them under a rug or try to run away from them. He doesn’t live for the diversions he can conjure up but, instead, he digs deeply into the trouble and finds God.

He finds that in the darkest recesses of life is God’s presence. Indeed, he states that in the details of our conflict, that is where the greatness of God is revealed. Oh, it is not immediately obvious – we have to dig and we have to search – but he is there all the time, waiting for us to find him.

The problems of our world

Let’s face it: Lossiemouth, in 2015, is not Utopia.

All is not right with the world.

We have a ruling class that demonises the poor, while letting the fat cats get away with widespread corruption and theft.

Someone wrote this week that the mistake Volkswagen made over the emissions scandal was that they are not bankers, for, if they had been, the government would have bailed them out and the directors received knighthoods!

We live in a world where the death of a lion gets more attention than the deaths of hundreds of refugees. We live in a world where our government is complicit in the sales of arms and weapons to corrupt governments and repressive regimes. We live in a world that is hellish, not just at a corporate level but at the level of individuals. What do you say to someone whose 45 year old wife has just died of cancer? What do you say to a 44 year old who just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, to a grandparent who has just lost their grandchild or the oil rig worker swimming in debt who has just lost their job?

And yet …

And yet, we are called to sing our songs of praise in this world that is messy.

We are called to live our joy among people who do not respect us, understand us or encourage us.

But I can stand here today and affirm quite categorically that faith develops not in the easy times of life but in the most difficult times and, what is more, I suspect that most of you could witness to the same reality.

It is when life is rough that we turn most deliberately towards God. It is when life is tough that we rely on our faith to see us through. It is God, not our culture, which shapes our faith. It is the help we experience through the turmoil of life that shapes us into the people we are. God’s strong name is our help, the same God – the same creator God, redeemer God – who made heaven and earth.

It is here, in this sacrament, that we are drawn into the fellowship of the trinity.

Here, we are closest to our God, as we take the cup of suffering and draw it to our lips, knowing that the God who suffered for us is with us in our suffering, upholding us in our trials, supporting us in our weakness. Here and now God invites us. It is he who says: “Come – eat and drink.” It is he who feeds us with his body and his blood. It is he who says: “I will be with you always, through thick and thin, to the end of time.”

So come, share in the feast that has been prepared for you, that, strengthened in your faith, you can face the world once more, with all the assurance that God will bring you safe to his Kingdom, which will prevail and against which all the armies of hell will always fail.