From Whence Cometh Our Help?
God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Note—In this time of great anguish a powerful word and promise from Coleman Brown:
“It’s a great question from Jesus—we heard in the gospel lesson— “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?”
“I would if I could,” may be our reply.
We are tired. In many ways we are tired.
Those who originally sang the song with which we were called to worship this morning were also tired. They were probably pilgrims on a weary march—if not in the rain, then across the desert.
Here again some of their words: “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord, the One who makes heaven and earth… God that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, God that keepeth Israel will neither slumber nor sleep...”
The Psalm foretells—however, subtly and unintentionally—the drama in the Garden of Gethsemane. Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Jesus asked—and without waiting reply from those who have been sleeping, he goes on: “It is enough,” he says. “The hour has come. The Son of Man [Christ] is betrayed… Rise, let us be going.”
Of course, if you remember, nobody goes very far except Jesus. He had not slept in the Garden. Now, within minutes those around him all forsake him. He goes on—alone—to condemnation, crucifixion, and burial.
Yet ordinary people can cry out in hope this morning another question, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
This is the great claim: the Christ will not be stopped until all is accomplished.
God is not tired that is the deep word we are given in response to our tiredness.
I’m tired, we mutter or groan.
God is not tired, comes the good news.
Don’t repress your protest. But listen also to this claim—even allow it to begin to work on you, amidst your protest and doubts:
There is ultimately no stronger support for human beings in their despair than knowledge of the reality of the living God, no cure for our weakness equal to seeing the strength of God’s love, no answer to our weariness so adequate as realization of that eternal watchfulness and active care.
That God lives, watches over us, cares and loves us seems to some of us – all of us at times, I think – too good to be true.
Did you notice what we sang a couple of minutes ago the hymn: “When we are strong, Lord, leave us not alone.” Some of us are in great confusion, indeed full of anguish this morning. We are in confusion, even anguish, because we cherish a vision of ourselves as strong by ourselves, sufficient, in ourselves, to whatever may come. We cherish the vision in which we control our lives; in which we are self-sufficient.
Our tragedy may be that we have come to love that vision above all else; that ideal. And at hidden places in ourselves, hidden levels, we are resentful of whatever gods there be— or of God—resentful as we are brought to experience, that we do not control our lives, that we are not self-sufficient.
Often when we begin to experience our own insufficiency for all that faces us, we begin to tighten (some of us are almost paralyzed with tightness); we try all the harder to control it at all, or try to try harder to do that; we become angry (or depressed). We keep our inward eyes down—at most we raise them to immediate dangers and rewards.
We refuse to lift up our eyes! We do not want to look beyond ourselves. We do not want to look beyond ourselves for strength, nor hear of One, really, who keeps us, who preserves our soul.
May we be set free to pray—in fear and trembling: “When we are strong, Lord, leave us not alone,” lest we grind ourselves to nothing, resisting Your life and sacrifice and care and love for us – while we go on, trying to establish as true our delusions of self-sufficiency:
“I will lift up my eyes onto the hills.”
“My help comes from the Lord, the One who makes heaven and earth.”
God is not tired.
The 121st psalm —on which we are drawing— was probably a song used by pilgrims who traveled across the desert to attend the great festivals in Jerusalem.
Israel is a pilgrim people. Jesus, if you will, is the great pilgrim— the one who rises and goes on. Our lives, of course, are pilgrimages…
We too seek in our heart of hearts, a city, whose builder and maker is God; we seek to become fully the men and women we are meant to be, and company with men and women, likewise willing to receive the full gift of life. We are called to be on the move toward the goal of truly human life, together. We know that even when we despair of it.
Let us see the pilgrims, who in all likelihood originally sang the 121st psalm: on their way up to Jerusalem. Miles away, out in the desert, they are plodding along under the blazing midday sun. They’ve been marching for hours, so that the joints are beginning to ache, and the weary feet seem detached from the mind as they clump automatically forward step-by-step. Only two things will drive a person forward when they get to this state of exhaustion, it has been observed: a guard with spear or bayonet, or else the burning vision of a great goal. The limbs are leaden, the brain is numb, and the eyes are on the ground immediately ahead – for if the foot should slip on some uneven ground you can come easily crashing down.
“From whence cometh my help?” From the knowledge that the man or woman beside you is equally tired? From an analysis of the combined effects of the noonday heat, the distance traveled, and the burden on the back? From your neighbor’s glib assurance that “it won’t be long now?” No, “my help comes from the Lord, which makes heaven and earth. God will not suffer thy foot to be moved: the One that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.”
The tired traveler finds their repose in the tirelessness of God, the weary pilgrim is refreshed by the presence of the almighty wakefulness.
God is not tired. God has not dozed off over your life. There is, in fact, time for us to sleep on our pilgrimage; we may sleep in confidence that our lives and the lives of those we love are in the hands of God…
From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord, the one who makes heaven and earth.
God is not tired.
Can we learn like the pilgrims who sang the 121st Psalm to find peace and refreshment and new strength in the discovery that God is not tired?
Yes, I know: how many of us are tired: up too late, all the rain, overcommitted, and how many ways in which are tired...
Some of us are tired of being asked questions that we realize are not really attempts to learn our hearts and support us in our struggles; rather they are questions asked in order to signal to us who we must be if we are to be acceptable to the one who asked the question.
We’re tired of being asked questions we can’t answer.
There are many ways in which we’re tired. Let me mention just one other: our tiredness as a nation, as a people today. We are tired of hearing that we may be destroying Earth with our consumption and waste. We are tired, as a people of hearing about the threats of nuclear war, even as we are tired of threats to our being number one in the world. We are tired of the world that won’t conform to American style “common sense.” We are become tired of those who are hurting, tired of hearing about them— about poor people, about children starving in other lands; and tired of hearing about the underfed and the homeless within our borders. Such reports confuse our image of America, and threaten to spoil our enjoyment of our comforts and opportunities…
I’ve been haunted for many years by the scene sketched by one of the great preachers of the gospel in Germany during and after World War II. He describes Jesus thus:
When Jesus takes his place and sees the great crowd of people gathered around him he begins to read what he sees in the multitude of eyes directed at him.
To begin with, there are the miserable, the guilt-burdened, the lonely, the careworn, the afflicted... They gaze at him with inscrutable eyes that can be fathomed only by the Savior himself.
Normally we never see the miserable gather together in this way. Suffering and sorrow usually creep away and hide themselves.
Just suppose—the preacher’s sketch continues—just suppose that suddenly all the hospitals and institutions were emptied. Could we bear the sight of the suffering and sorrow…the hopelessness?
So all the miserable, burdened people are gathered around Jesus; for in some mysterious way Jesus attracts the miserable.
This preacher, whose word pictures stirs me as well as haunts me, goes on to say: People sense in Jesus something they do not see in others. They see that he stands the test of misery. He does not act as do the influential of this world who build exclusive residential districts, where they cannot see it, cannot see the world’s misery.
God is not tired.
God is not tired—of leading us forward to new stewardship and care for the Earth, and away from our compulsive consumption and waste
God is not tired of warning us— not yet—that they who take the sword will perish by the sword; in our time that they who take the nuclear arsenal, shall perish by the nuclear arsenal. “Let the children come to me,” says the Christ, “and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” God is not tired: and we are being asked by God if really, we are seeking to make a world fit for children, and for future generations of children.
God is not tired—of those who are hurting, of the poor; not tired of the underfed, the homeless, the miserable.
Let the preacher be careful. Let us all be careful.
God is not tired is the word this morning.
Do we then say, if God is not tired, then let God take care of them?
Am I not right if I remark that to say that I do not love God, that I do not believe in God.
Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane asked that this cup might be removed from him. Yet not what I will, but what thou wilt, he went on to pray. Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? we are asked. Will you be men and women for the pilgrimage of these days? Have you heard that when you feed the hungry, give the thirsty to drink, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and those in prison that you do it onto the Christ of God?
It is too much you say: you have too much to do? You are too tired? You’re hurting too much yourself?
God is not tired, God is not tired of you.
Do you not know, have you not heard that you are to look beyond yourself, beyond the immediate rewards and dangers?
From whence does our help come?
Our help cometh from the Lord, the One who makes heaven and earth; he that keepeth thee shall neither slumber or sleep.
The Lord shall preserve they going out to be yourself, to do mercy and justice, and thy coming in, from this time forward, and even forever more.
God is not tired.
This table is spread that in our tiredness, we may know the tireless love of God and so be able both to sleep and to waken: to sleep content, and to waken with a new heart to do Christ’s work on earth, until we meet face to face, the One who stands the test of misery, the One who is not tired, the One from whom our help comes—now and forever.”
Amen