July 6, 2020
Finding Our Safe Place
Psalm 90 & Romans 8:31-39
This morning, we’re in a worship series called, “How Can I Keep from Singing?” This is based on our congregation’s favorite hymns. In the sermon today, I want to think with you about the theme of the hymn “Our God, our Help in Ages Past” by Isaac Watts.
Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.
Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.
When Isaac Watts wrote that hymn in 1714, he was responding to political and religious chaos in England. Christians who dissented from the established Church of England had worshipped with an uneasy peace, and that peace was threatened with the illness of Queen Anne. While she was ill, Parliament hastily passed the Schism Act to suppress dissent, and dissenting Protestants like Watts were afraid for their freedom and their lives. So, Watts turned to what he did best and wrote a hymn to give hope. It’s a paraphrase of Psalm 90.1
“Lord, you have been our dwelling place through all generations.”
As human beings, we crave a place where we can feel protected from life’s uncertainties. Alongside food, water, and shelter, a safe place is one of our basic human needs. It’s a crucial part of our well-being, to have a place free from fear and conflict. A where we can relax, breathe deeply, where we are safe.
The message today is that when our earthly safe places fail us, God’s steadfast love is our unshakeable dwelling place.
I want you to take a minute and think of your safe shelter.
A reading nook in a bedroom. A chair in the sun on a deck. The coffee shop downtown where they know your order and your name. A walking path in the park where your thoughts can wander. The pew in a sanctuary where you’ve sat for years, surrounded by family and friends. The embrace of a spouse who knows your fears and loves you anyway.
These become our havens, the places where we can breathe and let our guard down.
But here’s the hard truth we discover: even our most safest places can become vulnerable.
Almost a year ago, in Western North Carolina we learned that our safe place can become vulnerable. We thought we lived in one of the safest places in America. We called ourselves a “climate change refuge,” and believed that the mountains protected us. The elevation kept us cool, and away from rising seas and rising temperatures. Or so we thought until last September.
We remember the sound of the wind. Venturing out into the streets after the storm. Slowly learning what had happened to our neighbors and our community. Spending weeks disconnected, waiting for cell service, for power, for water.
It’s hard to remember those experiences, but the news this weekend brought them back.
Reading the stories and seeing the images of the devastating flood in the Texas Hill Country has been heart-wrenching. As a parent, I cannot imagine what the families of those who are missing or gone are feeling.
Though no tragedy is the same, seeing the images of sudden and massive flooding, devastated landscape, hearing stories of heroic efforts to rescue children and families from rising waters, the loss of places loved by generations, brings to mind what we experienced. As I have grieved for those in Texas, I have grieved again for our neighbors.
We too know how a safe place can become suddenly vulnerable.
All of us learn in different ways that the places we think will keep us safe can’t always deliver on their promise. The places, the people we count on for protection can become vulnerable.
Our faith teaches us that God’s steadfast love is our unshakable dwelling place. We see that first in today’s Psalm. Let’s look at Psalm 90.
This is perhaps the oldest psalm in our collection, attributed to Moses himself. It’s set in the wilderness, when Israel was transitioning from slavery in Egypt to a settled life in God’s Promised Land.
Think about that for a minute. Assuming Moses wrote this. This man led Israel out of Egypt and through the wilderness, who lived in tents and temporary shelters for forty years, who knew something about displacement and having no permanent address – writes these words:
“Lord, you have been our dwelling place from generation to generation.”
What kind of dwelling place does he mean? He isn’t talking about real estate.
Think about Moses’ perspective. He had spent decades leading a nomadic people through harsh wilderness after they fled from slavery. They had no permanent structures, no fixed address. Their physical shelters were temporary tents. Everything they built was eventually left behind.
Yet Moses speaks with absolute confidence about a dwelling place that transcends geography, that remains constant through every displacement and disruption. You can’t buy it, you can’t insure it, you don’t live in it, but you can live from it.
This dwelling place is the steadfast love of God.
The heart of this Psalm in verse 14: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”
That Hebrew word for “steadfast love” is hesed – one of the most powerful words in Scripture. It’s the kind of love that does not depend on our performance or circumstances. It’s not fair-weather love that disappears when times get tough. It’s rock-solid, dependable, loyal, faithful love.
And “satisfy” means more than “just enough.” It means, fill us to overflowing, give us all we need and more.
So this is the prayer the Psalm teaches us to pray: every morning, O God, regardless of our circumstances, regardless of what storms may be brewing on the horizon, regardless of how scattered or disoriented our lives may be, regardless of how chaotic our world may be, fill us up with your steadfast love.
Let your love be our dwelling place.
The Psalm recognizes that our ultimate safe place isn’t circumstantial, or geographical, or contingent on any other variable. Our ultimate safety is the loyal love of God.
That’s Psalm 90. Now, Saint Paul in the book of Romans takes this even a step further and deeper. Let’s look there.
Paul was a good Jew, a Pharisee trained in the best traditions. By that training, he believed that righteousness through the law would keep him secure before God. In other words, the law was his safe place. The idea was, keep the commandments perfectly, and you’ll be safe in God’s eyes.
But Paul discovered, when he looked deep within himself, that even his most rigorous efforts could not create the safety he sought. In Romans 7, we find him narrating his spiritual crisis, wrestling with the reality that his own soul betrays him: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” This is the teenager within all of us: I did not mean to do it, want to do it, but I did it.
Picture Paul’s frustration. Here’s a man who had achieved the highest levels of scholarship and spiritual practice. Yet he finds himself trapped in a cycle where even his best intentions lead to failure.
“Wretched man that I am!” he cries out. “Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
This is the cry of someone who has discovered that all his carefully constructed spiritual safety measures have failed.
But then comes chapter 8 like a thunderbolt breaking through dark clouds: “There is therefore now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!”
I wish we could hear the excitement in Paul’s voice.
The man who had been drowning in self-condemnation suddenly discovers the gospel: that condemnation itself has been abolished. Not reduced, not managed, not minimized – but eliminated for those who are in Christ.
Paul discovered in a fresh and deep way what Moses knew: God’s steadfast love is our dwelling place.
And Paul takes it even further with the gospel.
In Jesus Christ, we have rock-solid assurance that this dwelling place is ours. Not because we’ve earned it, but because Christ has made it ours.
Listen to how Paul puts this assurance to the test. It’s as if he’s conducting a stress test on the promise, throwing every possible threat at it to see if it will hold:
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” No!
Let’s make this personal.
Some of you are facing hard economic circumstances. Will it separate you from the love of Christ?
No.
Some of you are facing a diagnosis that has changed everything. Will it separate you from the love of Christ?
Some of you wrestling with the consequences of a mistake you cannot reverse. Will it separate you from the love of Christ?
Some of you are struggling with broken family relationships and hopes for your life that are not materializing. Will it separate you from the love of Christ? No.
All of us are living in a world that feels so tenuous – global conflict, climate disasters we did not imagine twenty years ago, public policies that are reversing decades of gains in helping the poor and the least among us. Will it separate us from the love of Christ?
No. No. No.
Paul keeps building his case: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
Then there is Paul’s magnificent conclusion, one of the most triumphant passages in the whole Bible:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This is the greatest affirmation of the Christian faith. Paul has thrown everything conceivable at the promise, and it holds. God’s love is an unshakeable shelter.
And what does this look like in practice?
A couple of weeks ago, our family had a chance to spend a week of vacation in the Linville area, near Grandfather Mountain. We went over to Crossnore, to the school for children, to see the fresco by Ben Long in the Chapel, of Jesus welcoming the little children. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth the trip.
The story behind that fresco is that the director of the school was holding a child in the chapel who was weeping bitterly because she had lost everyone she loved – her mom, her grandmother, her caregiver.
Finally, in the safe place of the Crossnore School, she was able to let all of that grief come out. As she wept, the person holding her assured her that she was loved, that Jesus loved her, and she was safe.
The mission of the Crossnore school is to provide a safe place for children who need one in the name of Jesus.
But that is more than the mission of the Crossnore School. It is also the mission of the church: to bear witness to the sturdy shelter of God’s love.
This happens in tangible ways we have seen and participated in. Truckloads of water and supplies show up in the wake of a disaster. And volunteer crews who help rebuild homes and communities. They bear witness to God’s sturdy love.
Shelters, like the ones provided by our mission partner ABCCM for the homeless, or our partner Helpmate for the victims of domestic violence, shelters that provide a warm bed and healthy food and hope for the future. These bear witness to God’s sturdy love.
Advocating for better public policies that care for the poor, emailing and calling representatives. These bear witness to God’s sturdy love.
Going with a friend to a hard doctor’s appointment. Walking with that person through a loss. Rallying around a family in crisis, not for a day or week, but for a month or a year. These bear witness to God’s sturdy love.
The unshakeable love of God, secured for us in Jesus Christ, is made visible in the hands and feet and voice of the church, and is our enduring shelter.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not wind or rain. Not economic uncertainty. Not political turmoil or war. Not health crises. Not family conflicts. Not our failures. Not even death. Not our worst fears.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As Isaac Watts put it, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina