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Walking With God

Sermon by Peter Terpenning
January 20, 2008

Psalm 40, John 1:29-42

            People sometimes ask me where I get ideas for preaching. Well, usually I start with the lectionary reading and try to figure out what it says to us today. If totally without ideas I pray for guidance. But here’s one for you. In writing this sermon I couldn’t make any progress so I gave up and went running. On the trail I met a large white dog. At first I was afraid, but he was clearly friendly and jumped all over me, so I kept running. He started following me, and despite my urging to “go home”, and “get lost”, “Where do you live, big fellow?” he just stayed with me. All along my run he followed me, and if he lived near where I met him, he was clearly quite far from home after we had run for awhile. He had no tag on his blue collar and so I ran along thinking I would head back the way we’d come and see if he lived near there. Since he was there, I just talked to him about my sermon, or lack thereof. He turned out to be a big help, for I got to thinking about what it was like to be lost. For lost he was, that dog. I ran all the way back to where I first met him, hoping he’d remember where he was, but he didn’t. Finally, I had about decided to take him home and give him water and another runner came by. The dog turned and followed him as happily as ever. But I still I hope he’s ok.
            The reason the lost dog got me thinking is because of the Psalm for today, Psalm 40, “I waited patiently for the Lord; God inclined to me and heard my cry. God drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure…happy are those who make the Lord their trust”. To be drawn out of a miry bog is a great image. As a little boy, my friends and I would walk back to Plumb Creek and fish and swim. There was a bog back there where’d we play. If you got chased in or were imagining escaping from the enemy you have to cross by jumping from one little tuft of grass to the next. Some tufts would collapse and you’d sink. One wet foot. Inevitably, I’d end up wetter and wetter until I gave up and just plowed through the bog, up to my knees and soaking wet. Finally, you’d get to the other side, or perhaps find a nice dry rock on which to sit and let your shoes dry out.
            So it is in life sometimes. We leap from grass clump to grass clump, trying to keep dry, but as often as not we end up in water up to our knees. When I first gave up and asked God for help I was about 21 and I was lost. The place I was in felt like a miry bog with no solid ground in sight. It was a feeling of emptiness, purposelessness. It was a horrible feeling, and more often than I’d like I find myself there again in new ways. Finding faith that first time felt like God reached down and lifted me up and set me on a dry, solid rock. I found a direction for my life, and a path to walk with God and started making secure steps. This is one of the most common themes in faith. To be lost and then found, to walk with God, to be lifted out of trouble, to follow God through dark valleys.
            The reading from John for today tells of John the Baptist telling some of his followers who Jesus was and telling them to follow him. They do and they go and ask Jesus where he is staying. “Come and See”, he says. They follow him, and Andrew goes and tells his brother to come and see. Jesus meets him and names him Cephus, which means, what else, “rock”. Nathaniel comes along, and the rest and they follow the path of Jesus. So are we invited to follow the way of our God, to build our house, not on shifting sand, but on the solid rock.
            Jamie and I were talking about another story of walking. The disciples were out in their fishing boat alone and a storm comes up and they are afraid. Then they see Jesus walking to them over the water. Now we can get all caught up in whether Jesus really walked on water, but I suspect that is not what the Gospel writers intended, for listen to the rest of the story. The disciples see Jesus and are afraid of him too, but he says he’s not a ghost and to trust. Peter, ever the rock of faith, dares to step out of the boat himself and follow Jesus over the troubled water. But halfway out he loses faith and immediately begins to sink. He was walking fine, but without faith, down he goes, just like I do, over and over again. He cries out, as perhaps you have, “Lord, save me”. Jesus reaches out his hand and lifts Peter, saying, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” This is not a story about whether Jesus walked on water; it’s a parable about what we experience in the life of faith, over and over again. If we just ask for help and reach out again, the Lord takes our hand. Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand, I am tired, I am weak, I am worn, through the storm, through the night, lead me on, to the light, take my hand, Precious Lord, lead me on.
            To live and face death and illness without faith in God can result in paralyzing fear. Tolstoi wrote in his Confession concerning the aloneness and emptiness he felt before his conversion: “There was period in my life when everything seemed to be crumbling, the very foundations of my convictions were beginning to give way, and I felt myself going to pieces. There was no sustaining influence in my life and there was no God there, and so every night before I went to sleep, I made sure that there was no rope in the room lest I be tempted during the night to hang myself from the rafters…” For abnormal fears and phobias there are many cures from psychiatry and other methods, but for the fear of death, nonbeing and nothingness, the best cure I know is faith.
            This was the belief of Martin Luther King, Jr. In his sermon, “Our God is able” he wrote about his “kitchen table experience” (pp.508-09, A Testament of Hope)In the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott King was just a young man. “After a particularly strenuous day, I settled in bed at a late hour. My wife had already fallen asleep and I was about to doze off when the telephone rang. An angry voice said, “Listen, Nigger, we’ve taken all we want from you. Before next week you’ll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery”. I hung up, but I could not sleep. It seemed that all my fears had come down on me at once. I had reached the saturation point. I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. Finally, I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing to be a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had almost gone, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. ‘I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.’ At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced him. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, ‘Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.’ Almost at once my fears began to pass from me. My uncertainty disappeared, I was ready to face anything. The outer situation remained the same, but God had given me inner calm.
            I can only witness that this has been my experience as well. As you face fears and you need courage, as you face death and disease, turn to God and God will lift you out of the miry bog and place your feet on the rock.