Lent 2

Psalm 121/Matthew 15:21-28 - Reminiscere, Lent II - March 4, 2012 

Our help comes from the Lord

Last Sunday, I preached on the Psalm that was appointed for the first Sunday in Lent, Psalm 32.  Psalm 32 is what we call a penitential Psalm, because it teaches us to repent of our sins, to confess them to God, and to place our faith in Him who forgives us our sins for Jesus’ sake.  This Psalm even gives us the very words to use.  And in fact we do use them—regularly, just as we did this morning: “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord.’ And You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” 

The Psalm appointed for today is different.  It’s not a penitential Psalm.  But in our same liturgy, right before we speak these words from Psalm 32, we pray the words that today’s Psalm teaches us to pray.  See if you can pick these words out as we read Psalm 121 in Jesus’ name: 

1I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help. 
2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.
8 The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore. 

These are Your words holy Father; sanctify us by Your truth; Your word is truth.  Amen. 

Imagine in your mind a lady in distress, within a village overrun by bandits, looking with the glimmer of hope in her longing eyes to the distant horizon, where from behind a hill appears the heartening silhouette of what looks like it might be a brave hero coming to offer his help and save the day.  “I will lift up my eyes to the hills,” she says, “from whence—maybe, I hope, boy wouldn’t it be nice if my help were to come.”  Ah, but there’s no confidence here.  There’s no guarantee of rescue.  Her desire for help cannot assure her of anything. 

Our Psalm this morning is not just some romantic expression of aimless hope that God just might come and save us from our enemies.  No, this Psalm teaches us to be confident of where our Help most certainly does come.   

His name is the Lord.  He is the only God who is.  He is the one who made heaven and earth.  And although He fills heaven and earth and all things, there is only one specific place where He is to be found by sinners who seek Him.  And we know where that is.  That’s why we look to the hills—to the mountains.  This is just a poetic way of saying that we look to Mt. Zion in Jerusalem where there is the Tabernacle, the Temple, the Holy of holies, the Ark of the Covenant, the presence of God where He has promised to be.  There is confidence in this statement: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help.”  I know who helps me.  I know His name.  I know He is the Lord who has made me and all creatures.  And I know where to find Him in every time of need, because I know where He comes to me in order to help—I look to the hills. 

Psalm 121 is what is called a Song of Ascent, because the children of Israel would sing this Psalm and others like it as they ascended up to Jerusalem to give their sacrifices.  By singing such confident words, they proclaimed that the sacrifices that they were about to offer were acceptable to God even before they offered them.  They had His command and promise already.  He was their God, after all, who guarded them from all danger, protected them from all harm, who kept their souls from evil.  He was their God in whom they could trust even before they approached Him. 

In order to confess our sins to the Lord, we also need this same confidence.  We need to know who the Lord is.  We need to know where He is found.  We need to know where to go in order to receive His absolution.  And we do know.  When we say, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth,” we are proclaiming the same thing that the children of Israel proclaimed—that the one whom we approach to confess our transgressions is the very Lord God who, even before we ask Him, forgives us the iniquity of our sins.  And He does that here.  And so we come here.  We lift our eyes to where the pure word of God is preached, to where our sins are forgiven by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to where the sacraments are administered according to His command and promise. 

Lent is a time of repentance.  It’s a penitential season.  We learn about repentance by learning about Jesus.  By meditating on His suffering for us we learn to consider the weight of our sin that He bore.  We learn to consider our lovelessness, our impatience toward others, the grudges we harbor, and the gossip that we repeat.  We learn to stop hiding the lusts of our heart, and the ones we have shamefully acted on, but confess them instead to our God.  True repentance requires that we be truly sorry for our sins.  A truly penitent heart acknowledges the depth of its own corruption, and utterly despairs of its own ability to help itself.  But it does not despair of God’s ability and God’s willingness to forgive.  St. Paul tells us that “godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation” (2 Cor. 7:10).  This means that the true repentance that the Holy Spirit works in our hearts is inseparable from the divinely wrought certainty of God’s mercy even before we utter our plea for help. 

It is good to be a Christian.  Psalm 121 is a Psalm for the Church.  We are the new Israel to whom all the promises of the Psalms and prophets apply.  Through our holy calling to be His own special people, we have inherited the status as children of God.   That is who we are by faith.  We have the right to pray for help in any and every need.  Our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. 

But sometimes it seems like it doesn’t come.  Sometimes, no matter how much we adore our God as the one who promises to be there for us, our pleas for help seem to be unanswered.  Sometimes, rather than like a confident Church, we feel more like the maiden in distress devising false hopes with every movement we see beyond the hills.  Because our problems remain, we feel and appear un-helped. 

But do not believe it.  Often God takes His good time in answering our most earnest requests.  He does this to test our faith and to focus it more clearly on His promise to us. 

Consider the woman from Canaan in our Gospel lesson this morning.  Consider her need, her request.  And consider your own.  Her daughter was possessed and tortured by a demon.  What more pressing need for help could there be?  But what does Jesus do?  He ignores her.  Or so it seems.  But she doesn’t stop asking.  Jesus tells her that He was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.  She was not an Israelite.  And yet undaunted, she kneels before Him.  And while her eyes see nothing but dust, the eyes of her heart are lifted to the hills as she prays the words that were given to the children of Israel to pray: “Lord, help me.” 

But even then: “it is not right,” says Jesus, “to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”   She does not give up.  But like her spiritual father Jacob, she wrestles with this Man who is her God and demands the blessing that belongs to Israel alone: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table—bless me!”  This woman prevailed.  She won.  Like Jacob before her, she would not believe that God could say ‘no’ when He had already promised to say ‘yes.’  And she was right.  She received more than crumbs.  She had wrestled with the Bread of Life who feeds the multitudes, and received everything that faith demands. 

Today is Reminiscere Sunday—a fancy word, I know.  It comes from the Latin for “remember,” or “reminisce” — as in the first words of our Introit for today: “Remember, O LORD, Your tender mercies and Your loving-kindnesses, for they are from of old.  Let not my enemies triumph over me.  Redeem Israel, O God, out of all their troubles!” 

The woman from Canaan remembered.  She recalled that promise made to father Abraham many years ago from Genesis 22:18, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”  She claimed her status as a child of Adam, a sinner, and before her God who had made heaven and earth, she held Him to His promise.  And she received it.  Jacob remembered.  His father Isaac had given him the blessing of first born.  This blessing was contested by his brother Esau who had become his enemy.  But God had made a promise, and Jacob held Him to it.  And he received His blessing. 

We remember. We are surrounded by enemies – both spiritual and worldly.   Temptations assault us; failures hold us down; our sin enslaves us; regret and shame keep our eyes bowed down; our helplessness leads us to despair.  But we do not despair of God.  We remember.  We remember that we were bought with a price, not with gold or silver but with the holy precious blood of God’s dear Son Jesus Christ who suffered bitterly to make us His own.  We remember that we were washed in the cleansing waters of holy Baptism that made us His children even before we knew how to ask for any blessing.  The righteous life of Jesus was made ours, and our lives of sin and trouble were made His.  We hold God to the promise of forgiveness and every eternal blessing in Christ.  And we receive it. 

Because God remembers.  He remembers His tender mercies, His loving-kindnesses of old.  He remembers the suffering and death that made satisfaction for all our sins of commission and omission.  And as our risen Advocate stands ever before Him at His throne, He remembers not our sin.  This God who sees and has felt our every temptation and trouble and pain will not allow our foot to be moved from this Rock of our Salvation; for He neither slumbers nor sleeps.  His word of pardon and constant blessing is yours to ponder day and night. 

This Lent, and even every day, when we repent and ask for forgiveness we remember too that we are praying to our God who promises to help us in our every need.  What do you need?  Do you request health?  Or is it rest from financial stress that you need?  Do you pray without reprieve for a loved-one to find his way back to church?  Is there strife between children that you cannot mediate?  Is there doubt at home that won’t leave your stormy breast?  But consider who it is to whom you cry for help.  He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, will surely give us every good thing when we cry to Him for help – in His own way, in his own time, according to His wisdom. 

And we know where He is found.  And so we lift our eyes to the hill of Calvary where our Savior shed His blood—from there comes our help.  Under His cross we are shaded from the scorching demands of the law by day, and from the dim reflections of a troubled conscience by night.  We lift up our eyes to receive the body and blood of the Lamb of God placed into our mouths—from there this help is confirmed.  And through these, He shall preserve us from all evil; He shall preserve our soul.  And the blessing first spoken to us when we were baptized shall abide:  The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.