Free from Struggle
I preached at my church for the first time this past Sunday. It was a really great experience, I got some very kind comments, and I’m excited to do it again sometime. For those interested, a link will follow once Third Mill gets it up there (and no, CKC is not on the podcast bandwagon yet). No cracks on Third Mill, since they just started offering their curriculum videos for ABSOLUTELY FREE download! So feel free to take your time, guys!
One of my main thoughts in preparing the sermon was to make sure I preached just one sermon. The classic thing that happens to seminarians when they preach is to take a 3-point sermon and make each point a 20 minute sermon unto itself. Which is bad all the way around, because not only is the congregation exhausted from too much preaching, they’ve also had far more information thrown at them than they could possibly assimilate. So I centered in on the way that participation in Sunday worship is a necessary requisite to live out what it means to be created in the Image of God.
As a result, I’ve also been thinking the past few days about some of the other sermons that would have been possible from my text (Psalm 73). I went jogging the other day and gave a listen to my counseling classmate Dave Abney’s sermon on Jacob from a couple of weeks ago. One of the profound things that Dave said in the sermon was that Israel - one who wrestles with God - was a name that all of Jacob’s descendants carried with them. Yet one of the key parts of Asaph’s envy in Psalm 73 was the desire for a life “free from struggles.” This was the appeal behind all the stuff and abundance that typified the “arrogant.” I was watching a show on cable the other day, talking about the luxurious travel homes of the rich and famous - and the main tag lines they used to describe the appeal of these places was “a simple, quiet life.”
There’s no real way to glamorize this agony. No matter how good things get, we’re still left with the knowledge that this world is not the way that it’s supposed to be. The rich chase their “quiet life,” because even the image of the dream is better than giving up on it. Addicts choose escape because the reality can feel so bleak.
Yet it is in the midst of the struggle that Jesus says “My grace is sufficient for you, and my power is made perfect in weakness.” It got me thinking about the old Negro Spiritual songs. These songs captured something of this longing, a certainty of promise, and the reality of struggle that we seldom hear in our world. Most of the time, we just hear one side - either the hardships of the present, or some great victory that has yet to be actualized.
I’ll soon be free from every trial
My body sleep in the churchyard
I’ll drop the cross of self denial
And enter on my great reward
I’m going there to see my Savior
To sing His praise forevermore