When writer Reynolds Price fought for his life with spinal cancer about ten years ago, he was left paralyzed but alive. But here is the amazing thing – the experience transformed him. In his story of those trials entitled, A Whole New Life – a kind of 34th Psalm – Price tells how the ordeal actually deepened his faith. Made him a new person. So it wasn’t surprising when a young medical student by the name of James Fox, also diagnosed with life-threatening cancer, facing his own mortality, sought out Price. What Fox wanted to know from Price was the answer to two ultimate questions: Does God exist? And: Does God care? Those questions are asked in every generation. They are linked to the human condition in every age. Every wound, every broken dream, every fractured relationship, every unfulfilled hope, every death has the potential to raise those questions for you. Does God exist? Does God care?

I begin here today because these questions are the headwaters of personal faith. Humans usually do not just ask those questions. We need a reason to inquire about God. And here’s another truism: We won’t find God unless we’re looking for God. Like a colleague whose friend was given a Bible by his grandfather for his wedding. The young newlyweds thanked the grandfather, wrote him a note of gratitude, then moved the Bible in its box from the pile of wedding presents to their bedroom closet. The grandfather kept asking the young couple every time he saw them what they thought of the Bible. Why does he always ask us that, they wondered? Until one day, months after the wedding something caused them to get the Bible out of its box and open it. That’s when they discovered a brand new twenty dollar bill on the first page of every book of the Bible. We won’t find God unless we are looking for God. Unless we open our Bibles, open our hearts and minds to one another, to great music, to the needs of the city. As we begin this stewardship season today – talking about covenant – I invite you to open your life to the riches of Psalm 34.

Psalm means song, as you may already know. There are psalms of lament, psalms of thanksgiving, and psalms – like the one we have today – of new orientation. These words were written to be sung. Sung in times of danger and despair to bring hope and strength. The writers of these psalms boldly affirm faith against all the voices that say there is no hope or purpose. Like Luther emerging from his study after sequestering himself there for days. The text of “A Mighty Fortress” in hand. The hymn he composed coming out of the deep depression from which he so often suffered. Psalm 34 is a mighty fortress of a hymn for our time and every time. It is for those who hold out hope for an Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement; for those in eastern Europe who long to rebuild their society after a decade of death and destruction; for the families of those Russian sailors; for you and me and this city in whatever circumstances of despair we face today.

Consider with me the headlines of good news this psalm proclaims. I said you can’t find God unless you’re looking for God. A life-threatening disease. A broken relationship. A failed dream. It takes something that redefines your reality. Obliterates the status quo. Something that doesn’t rock the boat but threatens to sink it. That’s when we start asking: Does God exist? Does God care? Psalm 34 is a story of good news, of one person’s triumphant discovery of the answers to those questions. “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears…I was saved from every trouble.” Headline number one: God exists and God cares for you personally. When the psalmist says this all we know of his life, all we need to know, is here is a person who was supposed to have perished but is saved. You and I have been there before. In those very shoes. Does God exist? Does God care? Maybe those questions are on your lips this morning.

As I said this psalm is a story. An unfolding ballad. Each line an aria not of static praise but of dynamic trust in God the Savior. A plea for those who, like the psalmist was, are broken, hopeless, and defeated. An invitation to discover, serve, praise this God.
Good news headline number two: “Look to him and be radiant so that your faces shall never be ashamed,” God frees us from shame and fear. Of all the human emotions shame is the most lethal. Toni Morrison tells of a poor, rural shame-filled black girl. Oppressors invoke shame for control. Morrison’s poor black girl loathes her condition in life, blames herself for everything wrong with her world, finds in her shame justification for those who abuse her. “We were beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness,” confesses one of her contemporaries.  “Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health. Her inarticulateness made us think we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous.”

Whether shame is invoked by politics or disease or racism or even by ourselves as it sometimes is when things go wrong, we turn inward and away. Cast our faces down. Hide our eyes from the eyes of others. But the psalmist who was ashamed is now radiant. There was a wonderful moment last Friday morning at Kleinhans Music Hall. I went over at Carol’s suggestion to see an exciting young African-American conductor lead the orchestra in a concert for school children. When I walked into the hall the seats were filled with kids. Orchestra playing magnificently. At the podium was Maestro Wilkins. He exuded passion for telling children about music. Beethoven and Tschaikovsky and Dvorak. Times they failed and struggled and failed again until they finally triumphed with their music. Then he surprised us. “Who wants to conduct?” he asked as if he’d just thought of it. A thousand skinny arms rose like blades of grass on newly seeded lawn. He chose a large, 7th grade black boy. He came to the stage. Nervous. Awkward. Eyes cast down. Surprised to find himself there. Mr. Wilkins gave him the baton. Stood him on the podium. Started him tapping a simple one/two count. The orchestra soared. When they finished the boy turned around to thunderous applause. His face was radiant.

God is the source of radiance and joy because when we turn to God – like that young, awkward boy last week – we are surrounded by beauty and grace and wisdom. But we have to look to God. Raise our hands. Risk stepping to the stage and being seen. I am convinced God wants to take each one of us and set us in the spotlight of his love on center stage and say to us, you are special, you are loved, you are my child. Delight in my creation. Partake in the symphony of life I have composed for you. The boy was radiant. I saw him after the concert in the lobby, walking to his bus, clutching the baton that the conductor gave him. “Way to go,” I called out. “You’re famous! A hero!” He raised his smiling eyes to mine. Radiant, whole, made somehow new by the music of grace.

Good news headline number three: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them all.” God protects and watches over us. The boy had to get back on the bus. You and I have to leave today, go out into the world, return to our homes and work and school. We have to face the world and all the voices of despair and meaninglessness in our world. Angels encamping is a military metaphor. Can you imagine that God, or any great general, would commit troops for no purpose. Fort Knox is surrounded by an army base for a reason. It is the repository of the United States gold reserves. God’s angels encamp about you because you are more precious to God than gold!

Each one of us is God’s investment so to speak. Made in his image. The object of Christ’s sacrifice. God does not protect us arbitrarily or accidentally. God protects us so that we can grow to maturity and live with confidence. This psalm bolsters the downhearted and depressed. Not living in shame or fear we can, as the psalmist says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him.” That’s good news headline number four: God wants us to discover the fullness of life. You can’t discover the fullness of life if you are afraid. If you second-guess your every step. If you believe that you will fail before you enter into some new task. Confidence makes all the difference. With God as our refuge we are freed from past shame and fear. Freed to sample the whole of life. A great buffet to taste and see. Trying new, life-affirming ideas, behaviors, relationships. Yet, often we nervously nibble at the banquet table of life. Afraid to dive into the richness of all God offers.

This psalm is an invitation to know and trust God in case we never have or forgotten how. Like Bartimaeus who regains his sight or Job whose life is given back today. The title of the sermon is “Not Just Freedom From But Freedom For.” That’s the crescendo of the psalm today.  This person has been freed from death. But he knows he has not just been made free from his dire straits. He has been made free for telling others about and serving the one who freed him.

A parent in our congregation told me recently about coming home one night and finding her son cleaning the kitchen. Unsolicited. When she asked him what was up he replied he just thought it might be a nice thing to do, the right thing to do, and might help her out a little. Her heart soared. What seems like a little thing to you and me was one more significant sign to this mother of late that her teenager was willing to share not only the glory but the grit of the household. That’s what I mean by “freedom for.” It’s what covenants are about. At some stage in our relationship with God we get to the point where we are willing to share not just the glory but the grit of this world with God. We look around and ask, “what needs to be done?” We say, “maybe I can teach this Sunday School class or tutor this child or sing in the choir or volunteer with hospice; or raise my pledge this year because I can afford to and because God has used this church to bless my life, so maybe I can help use it to bless others.”

The question each of us is asked in this season of stewardship is what has God saved me for. How can I use my life now that I recognize it is a gift given to me not just once but again and again and again because God has pulled me through countless times? Does God exist? Does God care? The Psalm you will hear gloriously sung in a moment says yes. But it doesn’t end there. The last chapter of Psalm 34, the last good news headline is the one you write with your life in the ways you respond to the invitation to know and praise and serve the Holy One of Israel. “I promise to love you forever no matter what.” God says to us in so many ways. It is a fantastic pledge. Many can never bring themselves to trust it.  Fortunately for us Job and blind Bartimaeus and Alice Jordan and Thomas Swan and the writer Psalm 34 did.

Does God exist? Does God care? You bet. In fact, you can bet your whole life on it.

Amen.


* On the fourth Sunday of most months from October through April we will conduct our Questions of Faith series. The series consists of the following: sermon preached on one of the primary themes of the new Presbyterian catechism, a gathering in Parish Hall over a light luncheon for families with small children and church members of all ages for a sermon “talk back” and time of crafts for children.