40 (U2)

Jason Freyer

Finding God in the Music • Sermon • Submitted 9 months ago • Presented 9 months ago

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Scripture

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Psalm 40

1 I waited patiently for the LORD;

he inclined to me and heard my cry.

2 He drew me up from the desolate pit,

out of the miry bog,

and set my feet upon a rock,

making my steps secure.

3 He put a new song in my mouth,

a song of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear

and put their trust in the LORD.

4 Happy are those who make

the LORD their trust,

who do not turn to the proud,

to those who go astray after false gods.

5 You have multiplied, O LORD my God,

your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;

none can compare with you.

Were I to proclaim and tell of them,

they would be more than can be counted.

6 Sacrifice and offering you do not desire,

but you have given me an open ear.

Burnt offering and sin offering

you have not required.

7 Then I said, “Here I am;

in the scroll of the book it is written of me.

8 I delight to do your will, O my God;

your law is within my heart.”

9 I have told the glad news of deliverance

in the great congregation;

see, I have not restrained my lips,

as you know, O LORD.

10 I have not hidden your saving help within my heart;

I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;

I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness

from the great congregation.

11 Do not, O LORD, withhold

your mercy from me;

let your steadfast love and your faithfulness

keep me safe forever.

12 For evils have encompassed me

without number;

my iniquities have overtaken me

until I cannot see;

they are more than the hairs of my head,

and my heart fails me.

13 Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me;

O LORD, make haste to help me.

14 Let all those be put to shame and confusion

who seek to snatch away my life;

let those be turned back and brought to dishonor

who desire my hurt.

15 Let those be appalled because of their shame

who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”

16 But may all who seek you

rejoice and be glad in you;

may those who love your salvation

say continually, “Great is the LORD!”

17 As for me, I am poor and needy,

but the Lord takes thought for me.

You are my help and my deliverer;

do not delay, O my God.

Kids to the Knowing Place

Introduction- Finding God in the Music

We are continuing our series on finding God in the Music.

Last week, you totally let me get away with playing free form jazz in church, and I will be forever grateful for that!

Because I hope it set the table that no matter what your musical tastes are, and we’ll cover some ground in this series, God can be found in the music we are surrounded with all the time.

Today is no exception, as we’re going to be looking at a little band from Ireland.

U2

Background:

Who are they?

Bono

The Edge

Adam Clayton

Larry Mullen Jr.

Formation and early years- Post Punk Music

The band started in 1976, in what was a politically rather turbulent time in Ireland.

And particularly in the early music of U2, you can hear that kind of angst.

While we know them more as pop rock today, they were definitely a group that came out of the post punk era, kind of a fight the establishment band.

But they went on to become arguably one of the biggest rock and roll bands of all time.

It almost fell apart:

Charismatic Renewal

This was like the Irish version of the Jesus Freaks movement in our own culture.

Think a bunch of hippies who made a Christian commune.

The band, but particularly Bono and The Edge, got tied in with this community.

They particularly appreciated the Christian ethics of the group.

But this led to a problem.

You can either be with us, or do rock and roll.

The band ultimately decided to do rock and roll, but to make sure that it was rock and roll that pointed to this faith that had taken hold of them.

In every album U2 has ever made, if you’re listening even a little bit, you can find God expressed through their lyrics.

Faith is a matter of great importance to these Irish Lads.

There were lots of good choices.

When love comes to town

Pride (In the Name of Love)

In God’s Country

40

This is a direct quote of the psalm we read this morning, except for one line.

In fact, I almost played this as our scripture reading, but you know I’m a preacher so I can’t help myself!

Sorry to the online folks again, but we hope you’ll join us back in just 3 minutes or so this time.

This is 40.

<Play 40>

“How long to sing this song?”

A Psalm that cuts both ways.

I have always very much appreciated the psalms for their brutal honesty.

Some psalms are majestic praises for what the Lord has done in and through the writer.

But actually most are laments, cries for help, pleas for justice, and brutal honesty at how unfair the world can be.

40 is actually both in one.

The singer is so blessed.

God is the driver of all the action here.

What does God do in this psalm?

He answers the cry of the singer.

God takes the singer from a desolate pit and sets him on solid ground.

God puts a new song in the singers mouth, one of praise and adoration.

The Lord keeps the singer front of mind, even in the midst of his suffering.

The singer actually doesn’t claim any credit for anything good that happens to him in this psalm.

We could learn something from that.

The singer is ready to give all the credit for all the action to God and God alone.

What God has done for us allows others to see God’s goodness.

When enough goodness flows from God, it’s hard for others to not take notice!

Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.

Because the singer is proclaiming the goodness of God, everyone else is taking notice.

In fact, because of what God has done for this singer, others are able to rejoice and be glad, and to say “Great is the Lord!”

God has done so so much!

I will sing! Sing a new song!

The singer needs so much more blessing.

God would not have needed to set our feet on solid ground if we hadn’t found the quicksand.

We know this, right?

Like we spoke about last week, the chaos of life is such that when we have our feet on solid ground, we probably only know what that feels like because we’ve spent so much time in quicksand.

How many of us have wanted the chaos of life to give way to solid ground, to a quiet moment, to catch our breath?

We wouldn’t know what it feels like to have God set us on firm ground if we weren’t already in the miry clay.

By verse 11, the psalmist is in trouble again.

How long can you hold on to that goodness of God?

Apparently according to the singer, 11 verses or so.

That tracks for me!

The same God that did all the goodness in the beginning of this psalm is now called on again.

The singer needs more mercy.

The singer needs more love.

The singer is surrounded by evils.

The singer needs yet another new song.

How long, how long do I have to sing this song?

The psalmist is leaning on the goodness of God in the past to help in the future.

I think this is vital for us as believers today:

We need to do a decent job of documenting what God has done for us in the past so that when the ground falls out from under us, we can lean on that love.

Every morning, I sit down at my computer (because I’m hip and techy) and I journal at least three things I’m grateful for.

This does two things:

1) It starts my day with a spirit of gratitude, which is kind of important to maintaining a joyful spirit through the day.

2) On days where I’m struggling to come up with something to be grateful for, I start flipping back through other day’s gratitude.

I remind myself of the actions of God in my life when it feels like I’m in miry clay again.

It turns out the psalms aren’t the only place we see this balancing act.

The boy and his father.

A pandemic sermon

My friend Marko preached this once on a zoom call worship service (remember those?), and so I’m stealing here shamelessly.

Jesus is just back from a mountain top experience with his three closes disciples.

There’s a great commotion when they get back.

A father has brought his boy, suffering from a demon, to the disciples.

And they’re blowing it.

They can’t cure him.

The father says to Jesus “if you can do anything, please help.”

And Jesus says “If? Anything is possible for the one who believes!”

And the Father gives this incredible line, “I believe! Help my unbelief!”

The child is cured, and then the disciples gather Jesus to ask what happened? Why did they fail?

Jesus responds “This kind only comes out through prayer.”

I believe-help my unbelief.

My friend Marko pointed out: Where’s the prayer in this story?

The disciples don’t pray. That’s why they failed.

Jesus does the miracle, but he doesn’t say anything that looks distinctly like a prayer.

The only thing that even kind of resembles a prayer?

This is the prayer.

I believe. Help my unbelief.

So often we think of prayer at best as kind of God’s vending machine.

We throw a couple of prayers in there, and then God gives us what we need.

A new car.

An A on the test.

For the Penguins to make the playoffs.

But then we get super disappointed when it feels like our prayers go unanswered.

We have to drive the same old jalopy.

It turns out that not studying and getting an A on the test don’t often go together.

And the Penguins still lack a solid number one goalie, no matter how much time I spend on my knees!

So we feel like either God has failed us, or we have failed in the prayer.

What a better prayer “I believe help my unbelief” would be!

I believe that Jesus has unending love for me.

Help my unbelief in the times that I feel unlovable.

I believe that God has my best interest in mind.

Help my unbelief when I see more miry clay than solid rock.

I believe that God has called us, his faithful ones, to be a source of justice and redemption and reconciliation in the world.

Help my unbelief when I fall victim to division, or hatred, or politics, or anger.

I believe that the church is called to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ.

Help my unbelief when I get caught up in declining membership or shrinking budgets.

Or maybe to put it another way:

I will sing a new song of praise.

How long do I have to keep singing the song I have now?

Life is about holding both together.

Be aware of what God has done for us.

Your pastor wouldn’t possibly do two videos in one sermon would he?

Yes he would!

This is an awareness test. Let’s see what you’ve got!

<Play new awareness test video>

I didn’t do very well the first time around!

But I think this is a bit what life can be like for us.

We focus on one particular thing.

Maybe it’s a focus on what’s wrong in our lives.

Maybe it’s a focus on what we can do to solve our own problems.

Maybe it’s a focus on our neighbors, and how they’re getting ahead of us.

But when our focus is on the wrong stuff, we can loose sight of what God is doing all around us.

We might be so focused on what’s wrong in our lives we loose track of what God has done in our pasts to set us on the right path.

We might be so focused on our own efforts that we think we found our own way to the solid rock, rather than God putting us there.

We might be so focused on the rat race with our neighbors that we forget that what God has done in our lives can be a reason for rejoicing and praise in theirs too.

So we owe it to ourselves to ask the question every day:

What’s God up to in my life?

Write it down, journal it, keep it on the dashboard of your car.

What has God done for you?

What new song are you singing because of God’s goodness?

Be honest about where we are still in the struggle.

I have grown quite tired of a breed of Christian I call the Happy Camper Christian.

These are the folks who are just literally sunshine and rainbows all the time.

And we’ll get to how much I surely appreciate celebration! There’s nothing wrong with that.

But the problem with this type of person is that they’re so unable to be honest about suffering, so unable to open themselves up to the hurt of our world, that they can actually do more harm than good.

I have had one Happy Camper Christian say to a mother who just recently lost a child “Well, I guess God just needed one more angel.”

Spoiler alert: That’s not the thing to say in that moment.

I have heard Happy Camper Christians who avoid difficult topics around race and poverty because “Those are total downers! We shouldn’t talk about that in church!”

Spoiler alert: A Matthew 25 church does not have that luxury. We have to talk about difficult topics.

I have heard a Happy Camper Christian come up to me just days after Sarah and I suffered a miscarriage, one of the worse seasons of pain in my adult life, and say to me “I know how you feel: We had to put our dog down a few years ago...”

Spoiler alert: there’s no scenario where that’s the right thing to say.

It turns out that our lack of ability to get honest about our pains, to lament well, can be rather harmful to those around us.

Soong-Chan Rah said that lament is “A liturgical response to the reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and suffering.”

How long?

How long do we have to sing this song?

How long do we have to sing the song of injustice?

How long do we have to sing the song of loss?

How long do we have to sing the song of division?

How long do we have to sing the song of pain?

How long do we have to sing the song of war?

How long do we have to sing the song of sin?

How long? How long? How long?

The good news of course is, as the psalmist writes, God hears us when we cry out like this.

But we have to cry out.

We have to get honest.

We have to lament.

Celebrate when we find the joy.

We need to sing the new songs when they find us.

When you are met with that new promotion at work: Sing it out!

When you are met with an end to pain and suffering: Sing it out!

When you suddenly find yourself with your feet planted on solid ground: Sing it out!

Some of you can carry a tune in a bucket. Don’t worry about it!

When you are caught with an awareness of a beautiful friendship: Sing it out!

When you are overwhelmed with the sense that God has done so much for you: Sing it out!

When you are met with Jesus overwhelming love for you: Sing it out! Sing it out! Sing it out!

The answer to the question “How long do I have to sing this song?” is actually not super long.

God is always there, ready to put a new song in our mouths.

Let’s sing it!

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