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SUNDAY, AUGUST 10, 2008

THE THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Matthew 14:22-33 (When we feel rejected by God)

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TODAY’S SERMON THEME:

At some point in our lives, sooner or later, we will all reach the absolute bottom. The deepest possible pit of spiritual despair and devastation. A place so low that we are convinced that God has abandoned and rejected us.  The truth is, however, that those moments are nearly ALWAYS the times when we are CLOSEST to God.  For those are the exact moments when God is embracing us.  And if we will simply reach out our hands to Him, He will rescue us.   

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1.   For millions of people around the world, today is a solemn, sacred and painful anniversary.  A very dark day in history.  On our Western calendar, today is the 10th day of August in the year 2008.  Liturgically, today is the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, or the 12th Sunday of Trinity in ordinary time (on the older liturgical calendar).  But on the Jewish calendar, today is the 9th day of the month of Av, in the year 5768.  And it was on this precise day, TODAY, in the year 70 CE, that the Roman legions under General Titus smashed their way into the tower at the Fortress Antonia in Jerusalem . . . And broke into the Holy Temple of the Jewish people, setting in on fire. The three-year revolt of the Jewish people against their Roman occupiers was thus stomped out, crushed, and reduced to cinder and ashes.  TODAY.  On the Jewish calendar today is known as Tisha b’Av. It is the day the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.  It was the day when Judaism was supposed to have been shattered beyond redemption, devastated beyond resuscitation.  It was supposed to have been the darkest moment of despair for God’s people.

2.   I bring this up because there is a strange story in the Talmud about what happened moments before the Temple was destroyed.  The story -- which dates from 50 years or so of this horrible event -- says this:  “When the pagans (the Roman soldiers) entered the Holy of Holies, they saw two golden cherubs cleaving to each other.” Two angels hugging each other.  In the moment when the greatest desecration of the holy Temple was taking place, the destroyers saw two angels embracing. Now, the significance of this little story cannot be overstated (for the Jewish people and for us), so let me make a few comments about it:

                  (1) First, the innermost chamber of the Temple was called the Holy of Holies, and it was the most sacred place in all of Judaism -- the spiritual epicenter of the universe.  It was a room kept completely dark, shut off from the rest of the Temple.  No one except the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, and the high priest could enter only one day a year -- the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.

                  (2) Second, the Holy of Holies was the place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept all by itself -- the golden chest containing the Tablets of Stone, the 10 Commandments, the laws given directly by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  The Talmud also says that the Ark of the Covenant was NOT present when the Romans destroyed the Temple. About 600 years earlier, according to the Talmud, the Ark was moved from the Temple into a deep hidden chamber in a mysterious maze of tunnels below the Temple Mount.  This is where it remains undiscovered and undisturbed to this day, according to the Talmud (Yoma, 54b), though the Hasidic rabbis in Jerusalem know its exact location.

                  (3) Third, the golden cherubim were two angelic statues who were fashioned and placed on the mercy seat covering the top of the Ark of the Covenant.  One was male, the other female.  And they represented, or signified, the sacred relationship between God and His people.  According to the book of Exodus, the two cherub were placed atop the Ark with their wings covering over it, and with their faces turned toward each other. The Talmud says, however, that when the relationship between God’s people and the Lord was strained, then the faces of the two cherubs were turned AWAY from each other.  Indicating severe strain in the relationship.  BUT WHEN THE LOVE BETWEEN GOD AND HIS PEOPLE WAS AT ITS HIGHEST, THE CHERUBIM WERE NOT ONLY FACING EACH OTHER . . . THEY WERE EMBRACING EACH OTHER.     

3.   Let’s sum up this strange story:  At the moment of greatest devastation and catastrophe for the Jewish people -- on Tisha b’Av, the ninth day of Av, a day when the people’s relationship with God was at its lowest point -- the conquering Romans found the two cherubs embracing in the Holy of Holies.  At the precise moment when the Temple was being destroyed, stone by stone, the angels were embracing.  At the precise moment when the few surviving Jewish people were being exiled and dispersed for the next 2000 years, the golden cherubim were embracing.  As Judaism itself was on the verge of total extinction, as the Temple ruins lay smoldering in the dirt, the golden cherubim were embracing. IN OTHER WORDS: Rather than being REJECTED by God for their transgressions, the Jewish people in the year 70 were in reality never CLOSER to God.  The moment when they felt FARTHEST from God, they were actually being held CLOSEST to Him.  EMBRACED by Him. And, indeed, Judaism flourished miraculously in the decades and centuries following the destruction of the Temple -- as the Jewish people were scattered into the world.  These were the years that gave birth to the Talmud, the Mishnah, the Midrash, the Kabbalah.

4.   The primary point I want to make today -- as we look at our amazing Gospel lesson -- is this: 

            At some point in our lives, sooner or later, we will all reach the absolute bottom. The deepest possible pit of spiritual despair and devastation. A place so low that we are convinced that God has abandoned and rejected us.  The truth is, however, that those moments are nearly ALWAYS the times when we are CLOSEST to God.  For those are the exact moments when God is embracing us.  And if we will simply reach out our hands to Him, He will reach down and rescue us.

5.  Our Gospel lesson this morning proves this important spiritual truth -- that at the moment we think we are perishing, GOD is actually very near to us, reaching out and inviting us to reach back.  Our Gospel passage is taken from Matthew Chapter 14, and it contains some of the most astonishing scenes in the entire Bible.  Let’s look at our text:

            (1) Jesus had previously fed a huge crowd of 5,000 families (an entire village) with only five loaves and two fish.  As we heard in last Sunday’s lesson, Jesus SHOWED the apostles how to STOP fixating on problems and lack of resources, and to FOCUS instead on HIM.  When they did, they found that the Lord was able to use their resources, however meager, to feed an entire village.

            (2) After dinner, Jesus sent the apostles away and stayed behind to dismiss the crowd.  The apostles got into their boat and set sail, at dusk, to go back across the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus stayed behind on top of the hill overlooking Tabtha (where I have been twice), to pray in solitude.

            (3) As the apostles were sailing, a fierce storm rose up -- in the middle of the night.  It was such an intense thunderstorm (probably blowing down from the mountains of Lebanon onto the sea) that these experienced fishermen were terrified . . . Thinking that they were going to perish.

            (4)  In the midst of their panic, the apostles look into the wind and into the waves to find Jesus walking to them -- on TOP of the water.

            (5) Peter sees Jesus and says:  “If it IS you, Lord, bid that I come to the water and walk with you.”  (Peter, as you probably know, was given to rash statements, rash actions.)  Jesus tells him:  “Come!”

            (6) And Peter does.  He steps out of the boat and finds that he, too, is able to walk miraculously on top of the water.  As long as his eyes are on Jesus, he is able to do the impossible.

            (7) But then Peter notices the wind, the waves, the lightning.  His eyes shift AWAY from Jesus to the STORM, and he begins to sink.  He cries out to Jesus:  “Lord, save me!”  And Jesus does.

6.   What we see immediately in this story is:  (1) There is no storm in life too difficult for our Lord.  (2) There is no limit to what can be accomplished if our focus remains on Him. (3) When we LOSE focus, we sink.  And it is SO easy these days to lose focus on God!  Without daily perseverance, without daily prayer, without daily discipline, we slip BACKWARDS in our faith.  And when days and weeks and months and years go by without prayer, without worship, without scripture, without FOCUS on the Lord . . . We inevitably find ourselves in a deep spiritual pit.  And it is almost certain that we will convince ourselves that God has abandoned and rejected us.  In fact, it is the other way around.

7.  Let us remember:  At some point in our lives, sooner or later, we will all reach the absolute bottom. The deepest possible pit of spiritual despair and devastation. A place so low that we are convinced that God has abandoned and rejected us.  The truth is, however, that those moments are nearly ALWAYS the times when we are CLOSEST to God.  For those are the exact moments when God is embracing us.  And if we will simply reach out our hands to Him, He will rescue us.  When we think God has deserted US, we are usually looking in the wrong direction.