Trust, No Matter What

“Trust, No Matter What”

Psalm 31:1-5, 13-17a
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Passion/Palm Sunday

Today is more than Palm Sunday…

The Lectionary calls it Passion/Palm Sunday…

We begin with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem…a real celebration…

But, as we get closer to the end of this service, we begin to realize that this is just the beginning of the most solemn week of the Christian Year…

Today we begin Holy Week – That annual journey that inevitably leads to the passion and death of our Lord…

This is a time that many would rather skip over, but we cannot jump to the glory of Easter morning without first passing through the horror of Calvary…

You cannot have The Resurrection unless you also have The Crucifixion.

Psalm 31 brings us face-to-face with the reality of human suffering…

But it also proclaims God’s faithfulness in the midst of everything…

This psalm calls us to trust God, no matter what.

Let us pray…

Lord, guide us into your scriptures this morning.

Help us to hear your love within the lament of this psalm.

May our meditations on your word be truly pleasing to you.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Each gospel writer offers us a glimpse of Jesus’ execution…

Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus cries out to God: “Why have you forsaken me?”

This is a quote from Psalm 22.

Luke adds the story of the repentant thief on the cross next to Jesus.

Luke also has Jesus quote Psalm 31 as he takes his last breath:
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

John gives us an image of the completion of Jesus’ purpose on earth as his last words are:
“It is finished.”

These “Passion Narratives” are so familiar to us that we can recall them with little effort…

What we see here is that Jesus – at the lowest, most painful time in his life – recalls the Scriptures of his childhood and finds comfort in them.

We might imagine that Luke’s tale is incomplete…

It is possible that Jesus prayed all of Psalm 31 from the cross that day…

There’s no way to know for sure.

Listen again to the passage Luke quoted: “Father, into your hand I commit my spirit…”

Then continue the verse: “you have redeemed me, Oh Lord, faithful God.”

I think we can imagine that even Jesus trusted God with his whole being, no matter what…

Jesus never stopped trusting God even as he felt utterly abandoned
hanging alone on that cross.

We began this morning by remembering Jesus riding into Jerusalem…

The crowds threw down their coats and waved palm branches as they shouted: “Hosanna!” to the king…

But Jesus rode through the crowd with a much different understanding
of what was to come…

He wasn’t interested in the crowd’s praise – his only concern
was to be faithful to God’s will.

Later in the week we will hear Jesus pray that God might remove the cup of suffering from him…

Sounds a lot like Vs 4of our psalm: “take me out of the net that is hidden for me.”

Jesus says: “not my will, but yours be done…”

The psalmist says: “into your hands I commit my spirit…”

These two prayers are the same: whatever God wants is what I want,
as hard as that may be.

This image of being in God’s hands literally means being held up by God; being in God’s power and control.

The psalmist places himself in God’s hands and thanks God for keeping him out of the hands of the enemy.

The beautiful line in verse 15: “my times are in your hand,” affirms that our very life is upheld by God when we faithfully commit our spirit into God’s hand.

To feel that one’s life and times are in God’s hands is to capture the essence of perfect serenity.

For Jesus, this prayer proclaims that, even though his enemies may seize him, they do not have power over him…

They may take him away to death, but they cannot hold him because their power is no match for God’s.

Psalm 31 is about struggle…

It helps us to imagine what Jesus was going through…

First he struggles to continue living…

Then, as he is dying, he struggles to keep trusting God.

Is this not a struggle we all face at one time or another?

We all struggle to keep going in the face of hardship, disease, broken relationships,
and grief…

We struggle to understand why life happens to us in such a painful way sometimes.

It seems that no one is on our side…

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Then we struggle to relax into trust that God’s plan is not our plan and God’s ways are not our ways.

We struggle to grasp the words of hope and encouragement we hear in this psalm:

“I trust in you, O Lord…”

“I say, you are my God…”

“My times (my life) are in your hand.”

“Take courage and wait for the Lord.”

It’s really no surprise that so many people want to skip over this week and run joyously to the Empty Tomb…

The Passion of our Lord is not for the faint of heart…

It takes courage to walk with Jesus through Holy Week…

To contemplate Jesus’ suffering is to admit our own…

To watch Jesus die is to face our own death as well.

But this is the journey we must take to find the very roots of our faith…

For it is only by faith that we can say: “I trust in you, O Lord, no matter what…You are my God; my times are in your hand.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…Amen