June 28 2009

Opening the word with All Ages June 28 2009
Over years of church attendance and participation—or through painful experiences in other groups—many of us have come to believe that only a certain narrow range of emotions are acceptable to God. We have gotten the idea, somehow, that God loves us or approves of us more when our feelings are mild—when we are happy, not overjoyed; when we are disapproving, not angry; when we are temporarily sad, not chronically depressed or mourning. And we somehow have been convinced that church is not a place where we can express our deepest emotions—because they make other people uncomfortable.

While I would agree that we still aren’t in a place where we are completely comfortable sharing all of our feelings in church gatherings—as far as I am aware. Church is often like any other public place, we filter our expression of feeling and we may even try and filter what we express to God, or we’d like to.

One of the tools professionals use to help children talk about their feelings is called a feeling faces chart. I’m passing a few around. They help children see expressions on faces and identify which ones show how they feel inside—it helps doctors, therapists and others to understand what is going on with those who don’t have the vocabulary to describe it.

I wonder sometimes if we need to be reminded that God has goaded us, at times this way. The Psalms themselves often function as a way of urges us to be honest about who we are and how we feel with God.

In today’s psalm, we hear the psalmist confidence that God is listening—while pleading with God to listen. There is trust and uncertainty, almost in the same breath
1Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!
7O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
The psalmist is almost frantic—I am drowning here, God, help me now . . . get me out of this situation. I know you listen because otherwise none would survive. Yet the writer also assures that no matter how we might interpret the situation otherwise: God loves and God redeems from oppression: to pain, to other people, to anything other than dedication to God.

5I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
In these words there is urgency for answers and there is awareness that God’s time comes when it is supposed to, not before: I am drowning—get me out of this pit of death, hear me, hear me! And then . . . Yet I await you and cannot hurry your action any more than I can hurry the sunrise . . .

In those feelings are the awareness that God will do what needs to be done and the knowledge that what God does may not be exactly what the psalmist would do or may even want. But those mixed feelings are expected and are often expressed by those who wrote the psalms. The emotional lives of human beings have always been complicated when facing the diverse situations that living brings. People are born and we are happy, as they grow and change inevitably, they will hurt others. Sometimes they hurt purposefully and sometimes involuntarily and they will be hurt. Parents are hurt by their children and they hurt their children. When parents and their offspring are adults those things get more complicated as roles change—even to the point where sons and daughters must begin taking care of their parents’ health care decisions, finances or even where they live.

But all of those feelings are welcome in God’s house, wherever we are worshiping—and in the words that we speak to God. God, after all, is aware of our internal workings and of the situations in which we find ourselves. God knows when the circumstances we live in are of our own making—when we have made bad choices that threaten to destroy us. God knows when others have built a world of pain around us—when we have been abused or coerced. God knows when we have done our very best—when forces beyond the locale we find ourselves in surround us.

God also knows when our happiness seems to simply roll upon us without an effort of our own. The feelings of gratitude, sorrow, joy, anger, boredom, fear, respect, or anything else are welcome to God’s ears, God’s heart and God’s loving arms.

Nothing that we feel needs to be hidden from God—and I hope, as a church, we are moving to a place where all of those feelings can be shared with one another. We don’t need to hide what we are angry about—we don’t need to share petty annoyances when we have genuine concerns. We can say no when we feel it and mean it so that we can say yes when we truly feel God’s call—not simply say yes because someone asks.

We all need to have a place and time when we can connect most intimately with another—where we can trust that we will continue to be valued—where we can reach out with our need and know that we will be accepted and that our need will be addressed. The people who surround Jesus—who saw his community of disciples—were able to see this.

Let us be assured that God welcomes our feelings, our thoughts and the words we speak –and share that welcome with those who are also in need. Let us be genuine and sincere disciples of Jesus, the one who felt the need of others and embraced them with an open heart and mind.

To the glory of our creator and redeemer. Amen.