What’s Your Faith Posture?

A sermon based upon Psalm 22: 1-5; 19-24

By Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Second Sunday in Lent, March 4th, 2011

Last year I had some neck problems.   Actually, the pain was in my shoulder and back, but it was coming from my neck.  After taking anti-inflammatory medicine for a month without success, the doctor prescribed some treatments of physical therapy.  When I went in for the first therapy session, the therapist told me to turn my head to the side so he could check my posture. 

“Yep,” he said.  “I see part of your problem.  You do not have proper posture.  You are leaning too far forward.  We’ve got to work on that.”  

After a couple of months of therapy and learning some really great neck exercises, he had helped me to improve my posture.   This helped to relieve my problems coming from either a pinched nerve or a bone spur.   The therapist gave me his final word of advice: “Any time you get that pain in your neck, stop what you are doing and do your exercises to improve your posture.  This should relieve the pain and the tension and promote healing.”  

Proper posture promotes health and healing.  It’s one of those first lessons of life we easily forget, especially among those of us who use computers.    Promoting good posture in our spiritual life is also necessary for promoting the health of the soul and the human spirit.   Have you ever thought much about your “faith” posture, that is—the way you show and express your faith to God and to other in everyday life?     Our text today invites us to do just that.

POSTURING FOR TRUE FAITH

This Psalm should grab our attention quickly, as it opens with a line which Jesus quoted as one of his last words on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”   It was such an important word to early Christians that they authenticated Jesus’ words by leaving it in the original Aramaic language which Jesus spoke in everyday life.   Eloi, Eloi, lama  sabachthani? (Mar 15:34 KJV).

When I was given exercises to straighten and correct my posture, it seemed difficult and awkward, at first.   It may also shock us to realize that asking God “why” can also be a part of the proper posture of faith?   Most of us would consider this questioning God as doubt and a lack of faith.  But when we put these words in the mouth of Jesus and consider that this was also a very important spiritual song of the ancient Hebrews, this should both shock and bring change to our perspective of what good faith “posture” should be.   People of faith are not always people who are living on a “high” of spiritual experience.  People of faith are people who live, by faith, in the real world where faith is tested and sometimes God seems like an absentee landlord.

Most of the songs in our Hymnals are positive and optimistic.   That’s a good thing.  When we worship our primary purpose is to strengthen our faith.   Think of some of those songs: “I Will Sing the Wondrous Story”, or “I Stand Amazed in the Presence”, and other songs like, “Redeemed, How I love to Proclaim it.”   Our singing is normally directed toward the celebration of faith and the positive life experiences which come to us because we dare to “believe” and “trust” our way through life.  It is right to sing “hopeful” songs as a testimony to both the substance and value of our faith in daily life. 

But what we don’t have much of in our hymn books, and desperately need at times, are songs which reflect all the postures of faith, including songs which express the negative moments, which also come to us.   Sometimes we feel like we “Stand Amazed in God’s Presence”, but other times, we, like Jesus on the cross, can feel like God’s presence is very far away.   Sometimes in life we go through moments when we walk and talk with Jesus through the Garden, singing “He walks with me and talks with me, but there are also times with we walk with Jesus and wonder: “My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me”.  

The very next line tells a deep feeling that can also come to the faithful: “Why are you so far from helping me?”  These words are just too gloomy for most publishers to put in a modern day song book.   Publishing companies just don’t risk putting songs like this, except for a few funeral dirges or a couple that speak of Christ’s suffering at the cross like “Where You There When they Crucified My Lord”.  The “politically” correct or “theologically favorable” are most preferred.  Too much reality could cause churches to refuse to buy the book.   It’s hard to put “real life” Bible-like experiences in a hymn book. 

However, I saw an exception to this approach in the hymnbook I had in my German Baptist congregation.  There were songs in that book like I had never seen before in American hymnbooks.  Many of those songs were inspired by German Christians during the 30 year war (1618-1648), a life-long struggle of faith between the Lutherans and Catholics.  Can you imagine how the faith of normal people was threatened when two Christian churches were fighting and killing each other?  Can you imagine the feelings and doubts that went through people’s minds when they realized what atrocities they were doing “in the name of Jesus”, the very Jesus who taught them to “love their enemy”?    Most of us would want to forget such feelings, but many of these songs, written and sung out of great pain, suffering and doubt, show a posture of faith that is strange, but also strangely real to us.  

Listen to how a few of those songs begin:  “Shake you mountains, fall down hills, break in two, o rocks and stones!   Let the world become all rubble, but God’s grace will still remain. “(My translation from German text by Benjamin Schmolck, 1723).   Another remarkably honest song in the German Baptist hymnbook comes from Martin Luther which begins: “Out of deep pain, I cry to you.  Lord, hear my calls.  Bend your hear to me.  Be open to my prayer.  See what sin and injustice takes place.  O Lord, who can stand before you!  ....No one can get comfortable with you O God.   Everyone must live in fear and hope for your grace….” (Translated from M. Luther’s text based on Psalm 130) 1524).     

While I’m on this subject of differing faith-postures, another “questioning” might shake us to our Christian core is from Friedrich August Tholuck.   He wrote a whole song in the form of a question put to his own heart.  It goes something like: “Each day, all day long my one worry and one question is, does the Lord truly rule my heart?  Do I have his grace?  Do I follow his will?  Do I go where he leads?    Do I only dream for an easy life and do nothing for the burden of his cross?   Is Jesus my truly my all and all, and do I strive to be like Jesus in every way? (Translated from selections from the text by F.A. Tholuck, 1839).  

We all have questions in life.  Some of these we want to ask God and others we don’t want to mention at all.   But the ability to ask questions is part of what makes us human.   The true posture of faith cannot deny honest doubt or the asking hard questions---even bringing our deepest questions and longings before God.   My point is this: A faith that only has answers does not have good posture.  It is not balanced.  It may feel good now, but finally it will, like leaning to far forward,  finally bring a strain to your Christian life.   As Jesus said, “Humans can’t live on bread alone!”   Sometimes we need must do without.   If we don’t stop and feel both the hunger and the thirst for justice and righteousness in our own lives, we will lose the ability to hunger and thirst for righteousness in this world.    None of us can afford that.

Before I move, take a moment and notice the differing “postures” of faith in the Psalmists opening words.  Faith form him is not static, or stationary and it is not stagnant.   His faith more like a journey that requires changing postures from time to time.  He begins with complaint in the opening of Psalm 22:1-2, then moves toward words of “trust” (Psalm 22: 3-5), and on to hope for rescue (Psalm 22: 6-8) and calls for all toe “commit your cause to the Lord” (Psalm 22:8).  Faith does not stand still in the Psalmist words.  He opens with questioning, but it is a questioning that moves toward stronger, greater, and deeper faith. 

FROM A POSTURE OF COMPLAINING TO CELEBRATION

Perhaps the greatest lesson from this Psalm is that you and I cannot fully celebrate and live our faith most fully, that is, assuming the best posture possible, until we have also lived through days of complaint, struggle, pain and hurt.   There is no such thing as a faith that is only can be called “a fair-weather faith.”   True faith can only grow through the storms and struggles of life.  A faith only has a “fair-weather” posture will finally breakdown, like a person who has developed pour posture, and ends up having no strength left at all.  

This is why I believe Psalm 22 was quoted by Jesus, and was also the posture of the faith of Job in the Hebrew Bible.   Jesus cried out asking God “why” just like the Psalmist and also when Job cried out to God, and many others have too and still will.   They cried out of their “real”, “honest” and “sincere” hearts, because only when one brings their “complaints” and “hurts” to God, do they also bring him their true hearts.    We should hide nothing in worship, from the God of which nothing can be hidden.  

Based upon the music of Psalm 22, perhaps we too need to design worship services, or at least make room in worship, for songs, words, and prayers that bring our broken and bleeding hearts to God.  This is of course, what most of us do at a funeral or a time of tragedy, but don’t we also need to realize that there are people who are going through troubles, problems, hurts and pains today.   We must never reduce worship to coming to church to put on a happy or triumphant face.  We must also have room in church for those who must put on a hurting face, a troubled face, and a struggling face.   Worship that only “works” to manipulate or manufacture some synthetic, human made “high” in God, will not find the true source of hope and celebration, which is God alone.  True worship finally expresses the truth that in this world, we will lose everything and everyone, and the only one we cannot lose is the true source of our salvation and strength.   You just can’t make this up; you must face that God is your only hope or you can’t fully worship at all.

I’ve told you about the Christian who lived in New York and could not go to worship immediately after 911.  That person told a fellowship worshipper, “I just can’t go in that church and pray that part which says, “Father forgive us, as we forgive those who sin against us”.  When his friend heard of his struggle and knew that this is when he needed God most, he said, “Please come with me to church anyway, and when we get to that point of the service where we pray the Lord’s prayer, you can be still and I will pray that part for you.   We all need to have room in our worship and in our churches for people who need to bring their protest and their complaint to God.   Faith that pretends to be a bed of roses has no real roses and has no true faith, without also learning how to navigate and deal with the thorns.  

You might call this Psalm that goes from complaint to celebration as a kind of bi-polar prayer.  It goes quickly from deep despair to the highest heights of praise, when it concludes that “those who seek the Lord shall praise the Lord” (22.26).   Once a psychiatrist told me about a book to read about the the life of child actress, Patty Duke.   Patty Duke wrote this book herself, entitled “A Brilliant Madness” and shares biographical stories about the many tremendous “heights” and the most depressive “lows” of the illness of bi-polar disorder and how it impacted her life as a child, a teenager and as an adult.   But what struck my attention is how she described her reluctance to take the medication which could help.   Even though the medicine did help control her high and lows, she said she did not like to take the medicine because when she was on it, she did not feel as much "alive."  The roller coaster shape of her life gave her mind and spirit a “brilliance” most people could never imagine nor experience.   After she had been on the mountain and in the valleys, a ‘normal’ life would never compare, even though both extremes challenged her sanity and cause great pain for others.  

I don’t dare think Patty Duke is trying to glorify or glamorize the struggle millions of Americas have with Bi-Polar disorder.   But I do think she seeks to find some needed redemption in it.  She gives us all insight into the human experience we all have of living in a world where life is not always “up” nor is it always “down”.    Even if we wanted to always feel like we are on the mountain that would not finally be good for faith or life, just as it would not be good to be always down and never have a hopeful word or outlook.  We need to acknowledge both experiences of life to have a balanced faith.  We especially don’t need to rush to say a “good word” when everything around us is “bad”.  We need to have room to “express” both kinds of experiences in life and faith, and not force ourselves to “repress” them.   As good psychology and healthy spirituality teaches us, repressing our true feelings leads to more depression.   When we push our negative feelings down, or fail to express them, all that negative stuff builds up until our soul grows dark.  If we want healing and health, we have to find constructive ways to get the feelings out. 

In this Psalm, as a hymn of true worship, it is the expression of fear, doubt and worry that also leads to the fullest healing, celebration and hope.   Notice in verses 14-15 how the Psalmist lays all this fears and feeling on the altar of God, saying: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.”    But immediately after this,  when God’s deliverance comes, the Psalmist is able to rejoice and celebrate in the highest fashion.  In verse 21, the transition comes sudden.   Immediately he moves from praying: “Save me from the mouth of the lion!” to proclaiming God’s “name…in the midst of the congregation” (22) saying:  “From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me! (21)…. He did not abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard me(24)!   Now, that is the full expression of faith posture we all need.

FROM A POSTURE OF HOPELESSNESS TO HOPE

As we conclude, we cannot overlook where we are on the journey of faith at this moment.  We must take note of our own spiritual posture and strengthen how we balance our lives in faith, hope and love.  Do you find yourself on the mountain celebrating God’s goodness, grace and rescue; or are you in the valley complaining to God that life is not the way it should be and you are filled with fear and pain?

      YOU ARE NOT ALONE   If you find yourself where the Psalmist was, where Job was, and where Jesus was, your hope and healing begins as you realize that you are not alone.   We all need redemption and God’s grace, or faith would not claim such truth.   We are not alone when we hurt.   We are not alone when we are in need.  We are not alone, because in this world of struggle and opportunity, even the “righteous” suffer in this life.   “If any of you suffers as a Christian,” Peter writes, “do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear his name” (1 Peter. 4.16).  He can say this because he say, “Christ also suffered….(1 Pet. 3.18).  We do not suffer alone.

          SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE   We can deal with our personal struggles and hurts in life because we can gain “the big picture” through honest and sincere worship.   We need to bring our true feelings and expressions of worry and fear to God because we need to see our struggles as part of the struggles we share with each other so we can be fully healed.  What does Paul write, but that we “comfort one another” with the very “comfort we have also received in our times of trouble”.  If we don’t express these differing postures of “faith” with each other, how can we see that we belong to each in both good and bad times?  We need to see bigger picture that “complaint” can lead to gaining “comfort”.  We must not walk away or hide form the pain others share with us in their times of need, but we need to hear them to help them.   We must learn to listen to pain as well as to the praise, because one day we will want someone to hear our complaint, so we can celebrate together when help comes.  

       WORK FOR THE SALVATION OF OTHERS   A third way that faith postures itself, even in pain, is that we learn how not just to focus on our own pain.  I like the fact that when help comes to the Psalmist, he learns to think more about the needs of others.   In verse 25, we read, “From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him…The poor shall eat and be satisfied… (26).   Only after being in dire straits himself, has he become fully aware of the difficulties of others.  If there is any answer to why suffering comes to us in this life, some of that answer must be for us to learn to feel the needs and hurts of others.  The fears, worries, struggles, hurts and pains we feel, will make us more empathetic to others, if we are open to God’s help and healing.   We only learn how to care, by being cared for, just as we only learn how to love, by being loved.   The greatest way to win over your worries is to learn to care for someone else.

         LIVE IN COMMUNITY WITH OTHERS   The final and most overlooked factor in the Psalmist’s healing from his hurt, is that he learns “praise in the great congregation” (25).   We cannot improve our faith posture alone.  Life is not a “lone-ranger” deal.   You can’t get through hurts, find help, find strength or gain hope without a community to give you the strength you need.   Jesus says: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Mat 18:20 KJV).  Jesus does not say that he is where the church building is, but he is where the people come together to gain strength from his presence which abides within their midst.    The only way we can say with assurance, that God does not forsake us, is that we do not forsake each other.   I tell this to people all the time.  If we give up on each other, whether it is in a marriages, in a family, in a church, or in our community---if we give up on each other and forsake each other, each time we forsake someone we've been close to we lose something within ourselves.  You can't leave another without losing something in your heart, that can never return.  To forsake another leads to ending up forsaken yourself; but to remain with each other, in community of faith, is a way that to gain the strength from knowing we are never alone.

I find it most interesting, is that the final part of Psalm has the Psalmist saying things he knows nothing about.  How can you declare that “all who sleep in the earth bow down?” when you haven’t died?  How can you say, “future generations will be told about the Lord” when you can’t see the future yourself?   How does the Psalmist claim to know all this?  Is it not though the posture of faith, a faith that he has clung to in both good times and bad, that he has come to better know the Lord?  It’s amazing what you can know, what you can see, what you can get through, and what you can learn to believe when you “know” "walk" daily with the Lord.   Don’t miss this most important key to the Psalmist own redemption and hope that is found in the very way he brought his complaint to God in the first place: He didn’t say: “You God… Why?"  nor did he say, “Hey God, why?"  but he said right from the very first:  “MY God, MY God…Why?”   Because he knew the Lord as his “own” he also came to know the rescue he could later proclaimed.  Know this for sure: You can’t fully complain to God nor celebrate God's rescue until you “know” him as your own.  Do you know him?  Amen.

© 2012 All rights reserved Dr. Charles J. "Joey" Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.