February 25, 2007
ONE WAY STREET
Psalm 91: 1-2, 9-16; Luke 4: 1-13
Houston we have a problem. A recent survey by Map Quest, the leading map provider in our country, says that Houston, Texas is the hardest city in the country to find one’s way around. Houston is the country’s number one navigational nightmare. In many parts of Houston the streets are numbered but without reason, numbers turn to letters, street names change without clear beginning and end points. The survey stated that 54 % of Houstonians sometimes or often get lost in their own city.
Number two on the list was Boston. Now I had a daughter graduate from Rice University in Houston and I went to school in the Boston area and let me say that I found Boston a lot more difficult (impossible) than Houston. The bottom line is that travel, like just about everything else in the 21st century has become more complex. You can print all the directions you want, you can have all sorts of maps, you can listen to the soothing voice of your in car navigation device, or punch your On-star buttons, but there’s still no guarantee that you’ll wind up where you need to be. You still need to use common sense and watch where you’re going.
A case in point was found in the city of Luckingham, England, maps showed a road with a small bridge across a small stream, car directional systems showed the road, problem was the bridge was down for repairs. Fifty cars that first month were towed out of the stream. When asked what happened, drivers would point to the map.
Now I grew up in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Woonsocket is the king of one way streets, constant complaints that in Woonsocket you can’t get anywhere because every street is one way. Put all those one way streets and the misdirection’s together and add in the price of gas and we might say there’s no place like home. People who live in places where it is difficult to get around travel less.
To move back to scripture, the real criteria for a good dwelling place can be found in scripture. More important than where we hang our hats and park our cars is the place we call our spiritual home. The place where we feel safe and secure, where we know the landscape and know who cares for us.
On this first Sunday of Lent it behooves us to watch where we’re going and make our way to a safe spiritual home. The question is how do we get there? For the psalmist dwelling with God is the number one place to make our spiritual homes. The image of God as a fortress is one of security, bring to mind a city not characterized by sprawl and congestion, but by strong walls and safety. A place of refuge for those buffered by the storms of life and a reference point for those who have been lost and wandering.
Since God is an entity, a person if you will, God is easier to find than say an address in East Houston. Wherever we are, there God is and that fortress home in which we live through a relationship with God. God has broken into our world and offered himself to those who are lost and searching. And what God offers is an address that is easy to find, if we are looking for a home, a place where we can feel safe, we can find that place in God. Notice all of the different words used to describe this home we find in God, shelter, shadow, refuge, fortress and dwelling bliss.
Clearly we all want to feel safe. We want to feel safe in our homes so we install locks and put in security alarm systems. We want to feel safe on the roads so we take maps with us and buy SUVs and Hummers. We want to be safe in our relationships.
We don’t like being at risk in our country. We don’t like to put our kids at risk, no more dodge ball or teeter-totters or tag in the schoolyard. We don’t like putting our stock portfolios in high-risk investments. We want to play it safe and it is in this cultural milieu of fear, anxiety and caution that God addresses another fear. The fears that our lives may have no meaning and purpose, that after all is said and done our inner lives are at risk along with everything else. So God invites us to find our way home, to find a shelter in the storm, a refuge from what plagues us, a fortress against the onslaught, a shadow in which to hide and a dwelling place in which to find comfort and rest. These are the benefits of living in the city of God.
Reread this Psalm at home and look at the features and benefits that God provides. Deliver, cover us, remove fear, punish evildoers, preserve from evil, guard us, protect us, answer us, be with us, resolve us, satisfy us and show us. That’s a lot. This Psalm needs to be reread and thought about. We need to look for the comfort provided here. It is a welcome mat to God’s home and it is a secure place for us to go. Not just to rest from time to time but to stay and make our home.
This Psalm must have been welcome to the Hebrew audience hearing these words. For the Hebrews the theme of a wanderer in search of his home is a familiar one. Through much of the Old Testament the Israelites were aliens and wanderers looking for a home of their own.
It was God who guided them, but God had not always protected them from themselves and their choices. When they chose their own way rather than following God’s way, they suffered the consequences of their choices. It was a reminder that they were fully dependent on God to provide them with the way home and a way of life.
The real promise of Psalm 91 for the Hebrews of three thousand years ago and for us today is that in the midst of the dangers, insecurities and oppositions of the world, God will not abandon his people.
Faith in God does not guarantee a life of ease but does receive the promise that God will answer his people and be with them in trouble. This may have been what Paul had in mind when in the midst of his own suffering and imprisonment he wrote that nothing, not even death, will be able to separate us from the love of God.
For Paul, for the Hebrews of David’s time and for us today God’s love is the ultimate security. Christian faith is not about taking the path of least resistance or to use the Map Quest metaphor, the shortest distance between two points (with amenities highlighted along the way).
While we are not guaranteed lives free from pain, and indeed, are often guaranteed quite the opposite, we are guaranteed that God dwells in the midst of our crowded, noisy, dangerous and often under construction journey of life. Dwelling with God means that we can live with fear, for God is with us no matter where we find ourselves.
So if you are lost in the midst of some issue or problem, the solution is not to simply expect God to make things all better without doing anything about it yourself. If you are not willing to be part of the process, that’s the same as driving while looking at the screen instead of the road.
We all are journeying together. During Lent we journey toward our eternal home prepared for us by God, but Psalm 91 assures us that there is a home with God in the here and now. It is a home that is always easily accessible and where we are always welcome.
Amen.
Let us pray.