Meditation for September 17, 2008
From The Rev. Peter A. Munson
Psalm 71:1-6, 17-19
1 In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.
2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me.
3 Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.
4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.
5 For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.
6 Upon you have I leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of you.
17 O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
18 So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to all the generations to come.
19 Your power and your righteousness, O God, reach the high heavens. You have done great things; O God, who is like you?
Security Beyond the Stock Market
Karl Barth, a famous Christian theologian of the 20th century, said one time that sermons should be written with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. I woke up Tuesday and participated in one of my early morning rituals - I went outside and picked up the newspaper from the driveway. (We never trained our dog, Sophie, to do that little trick.) This large headline greeted me on the front page of The Denver Post: "Shock-market angst". Above the headline was a red line, looking a lot like an EKG printout, with "11,421.99" printed in a black box on the top left, and "10,917.51" printed in a black box on the bottom right. All this was above large pictures of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, who both happened to be campaigning in Colorado on Monday.
Julia and I have invested in some mutual funds, as I'm sure many of you have. (As I recall, we got started in 2000, and there hasn't exactly been a great payoff for us, but that's a matter for another day.) We have put some of our money in one of those college savings plans. The timing is all very interesting. At a time when the cost of college keeps going up and up (over $18,000 for tuition, room and board, and fees to go to the University of Colorado this year, and that is for in-state students), our savings for college are going down. And Zach starts college - probably at CU - next August. So what should I do? Try to find a second job? Jump off a bridge?
The easiest thing to do and perhaps the most common thing to do is to get anxious. Sometimes anxiety can be a good thing, especially when it motivates you to get up off your butt and do something that you really need to do. On the other hand, a lot of our anxiety and worry is wasted energy, and not productive. Remember Jesus saying, "And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ... I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear... indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God..." (Matthew 6:27, 25, 32-33)
I think it all comes down to where you place your trust.
I was delighted last night at our Vestry (church board of directors) meeting. We always start our meetings with prayer and communion around the altar. As we prayed for the world, one of our members prayed for all those who are anxious about the economy. He prayed that people would put their trust and hope in God, and not in money. Exactly! He gets it! Hallelujah!
To be a person of faith - whether as a Jew or as a Muslim or as a Christian or as something else - means to be a person who puts your trust ultimately in the only one who is Ultimate - and that is God. To be a person of faith is to keep reminding yourself of all the ways that God has been faithful to you over the years, and to keep trusting in that same God to be faithful - today and tomorrow - as God promises to be.
What if the stock market continues to crash (which it will if everyone starts to panic) and we are left with no money - nada, zip, zilch, zero - in our college savings plan? That would be terrible. It would be a mess. We would be scrambling to figure something else out for Zach and Hannah. They might have to face coming out of college with some significant loans, or they might have to do their first two years of college at some commuter school. I don't know what we'd do exactly. As a friend of mine used to say, "We'll jump off that bridge when we come to it." But this much I know to be true. Even if that happened, God is still the only one who is God. It wouldn't change the fact that God continues to reveal God's self to me through the Bible, through the people I meet and know, through nature, through my times of quiet. It wouldn't change the fact that, as the Psalmist says, God is the one who "from my youth has taught me" (verse 17). It would not change the fact that all the best things that have happened to me in my life - coming to faith in Christ, working and living in another country, meeting Julia, having children, being able to celebrate communion with other people of faith every Sunday, climbing mountains - have happened because God has blessed me, been with me, and made all of these things possible.
If the stock market totally crashed, it wouldn't change the fact that God made the heavens and the earth, or that God provides everything on this earth that we need to live. It would not change the fact that Jesus came and lived and served and taught and died so that I could be reconciled to God, and live a life of spiritual abundance and ongoing growth. If the stock market crashed, it wouldn't change the fact that I hear God saying throughout the entire Bible, "Be not afraid; I will be with you.", and would not change the fact that when I trust in those words, I have always found them to be true. Whenver I get into tough situations, and I call on God, I discover - AGAIN! - that God is with me (or us), that God is good and faithful, and that God helps me (us) through whatever it is that I need to get through. And we come through it - when we trust God - having an even deeper trust in God, and being a little bit more mature than we were the day before.
For your own personal journey of faith, it's not bad advice to read the newspaper with one hand and the Bible in the other. In fact, I'm not sure how good a thing it is to read the newspaper or follow the news on television without having the Bible close at hand. Without the Bible nearby, you might be tempted to think that you should put all your trust in how much money you have in the bank (or invested in the stock market or in real estate). Without reading the Bible, you might be tempted to think that money is the ultimate god, and that the most important people in this country are our elected leaders or the CEO's of the largest banks in the country or the top brass in the U.S. military or ______________ (fill in the blank). Without a Bible nearby, you might be tempted to think that Wall Street is our rock, our fortress, our hope, our rescuer. But none of these things is true.
Personally, I want to throw in my lot with people of faith - with people who put their ulimate faith and trust in God - and in no one or nothing else. Come hell or high water or stock market crash, may I always throw myself on the mercy of God. May I give my utmost devotion and praise to the only One who is truly all-powerful and all-loving. To do anything less is to worship an idol.
I love the question the Psalmist asks in verse 19. "O God, who is like you?" That's the right question. And when we really think about it, we don't need to take any time to answer it. No one else is like God. God alone is our rock, our fortress, our hope, our strength, our future, our salvation, our refuge, our Lord, our Good.
Remember the truth - remember all the good things that God has done for you - and don't allow the scary headlines of the day, or the fear-based words of politicians throw you off balance. Our security and hope and trust is based in God, and in God alone. Once we think we will find it somewhere else - that's when we're really in trouble!