a sermon preached by
the Rev. Sue Judson Hamly
on March 4, 2012
at Faith United Church, UCC,
International Falls, MN
Last week I had one of those “aha!” inspirational moments. I remembered how much I enjoyed doing the sermon series on the UCC booklet 16 Ways to Say ‘I Love My Church,’ and it occurred to me that here is the perfect opportunity to do something different for Lent and Easter by doing a sermon series based on the Lent Devotionals 2012 booklet, Give It Up! written by the Stillspeaking Writers’ Group--those folks who bring us the Stillspeaking Daily Devotional each morning in our email inbox or on our church’s and the UCC’s facebook pages.
It’s a whole new way of looking at Lent. In the booklet’s foreword, the writers tell us, “Lent has an image problem. We see it as a time when we should be giving something up--or feeling guilty if we don’t. It’s the serious season of the church year: Christmas is over, Easter is still far away. Lent, we think, is something to be gotten through.”
The Give It Up! Devotional booklet is asking us “to take [our] old idea of Lent and give it up! It will not ask [us] to give up chocolate, or pepperoni on [our] pizza. It will invite [us] instead to re-think the Lenten themes of sacrifice, repentance and renewal in some new and unexpected ways.” It also asks us to “listen to Jesus, whose 40 days and nights in the wilderness Lent recalls.” 1
Some of you have picked up the Give It Up! Lenten calendar which makes suggestions of things we might do each day during Lent and right up through Easter. Yesterday’s suggestion might be a new kind of sacrifice. Instead of personally giving up something, it suggested going to the grocery store and picking up 10 food items and delivering them to a local food bank or shelter. In addition, the calendar suggested that if we have children, we should take them along to help choose the food and deliver it.
It IS a whole new approach to Lent, including inviting a friend to church and telling them why it’s important to us.
And so we arrive at today’s theme: Give Up Despair.
Have you ever been in despair? I imagine most of us have experienced some degree of despair at some point in our lives. And when we’re in the middle of it, it’s not going to be easy to give it up. The psalmist describes despair quite vividly in verses 9-16 of Psalm 31. Can you feel it?
“...my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors, an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I have passed out of mind like one who is dead…” 2
The psalms are wonderful because they are full of raw emotion. They are full of emotions that we can all identify with. They are comforting because they show us that the bible was written by and for real people--real people with real problems, real disappointments, and real joys. They also remind us that even in our despair we can count on God. We can trust God. Verse 16 demonstrates that as it calls upon God, saying: “Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.”
The person who wrote about giving up despair in the devotional booklet is the Rev. Donna Schaper, Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City. She tells a story about visiting an 85-year-old friend in the nursing home. Now this nursing home is one I’d like to visit, for sure! When Donna arrives, her friend is playing chess with another patient and they are both so excited that she’s come to visit that they invite her to join them in the facility’s new cafe for a vodka and tonic! That’s the nursing home for me! I remember quite a few years ago when Harry Anderson had a countertop fridge full of beer in his room at the LIttlefork Nursing Home, but I’ve never visited anyone in a care center and had the opportunity to share a glass of wine or beer with them.
Anyway… in the story, there was, at another table in this cafe, an elderly woman suffering from osteoporosis. With her was her considerably younger, very well-dressed daughter. The mother wanted pancakes and was not handling it well when the waitress told her she couldn’t get pancakes after 4 pm. There was much eye-rolling and misery going on between the mother and daughter who couldn’t get her mom to understand she just couldn’t have pancakes that day. But then Donna Schaper’s friend went over and whispered in the elderly mother’s ear, “Have a vodka and tonic.” So she did, and she “required the waitress to bring syrup with it.” 3
Donna writes, “Old age is not for sissies. It’s not that good for caretakers either. Our strength does fail. Our bones do waste away. What besides chess and vodka and humor can sustain us?” 4
She continues by saying that she thinks the psalms can and that she often memorizes them in preparation for the time that may come when she can no longer get something she wants at the time she wants it.
But how does one go about giving up despair? The kind of despair I’m talking about is different from clinical depression. Someone who’s suffering from clinical depression will need professional help to get through it and there’s no shame whatsoever in that, and there are good people available to provide assistance.
But despair of the kind where you feel like nothing you do is right, everything you say comes out wrong, things just aren’t going well for you these days…. I think it’s about equivalent to being severely “down in the dumps.” It can be fairly easy to just allow ourselves to wallow in it; to be filled with self-pity. But after throwing ourselves a little “pity party,” it’s time to give up despair and move on.
How?
Read a few psalms. They’ll help you realize you’re not alone.
Make yourself get out and do something with others instead of staying home being miserable.
Do something nice for someone--whether you know them or not.
Read a good book, preferably one that makes you laugh out loud.
Go outside--take your camera if you have one--and focus on finding--and taking pictures of--10 beautiful things. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to find them no matter what season it is.
Volunteer your time for a few hours each week--there are plenty of opportunities to do that in this town, whether you know it or not!
And call upon God as the psalmist suggests. Say: “I trust in you, O Lord; You are my God. … Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.”
It’s Lent, so give up something worthwhile! Give up despair. AMEN.
Endnotes
1 From the foreword of Give It Up! Lent Devotionals 2012, the Stillspeaking Writers’ Group, Christina Villa, Editorial Director, 700 Prospect Ave., Cleveland Ohio.
2 Psalm 31:10-12, NRSV.
3 from “Give Up Despair” by Donna Schaper, Give it Up Lent Devotionals 2012, p. 16.
4 Ibid.
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