Hilton Head Island, SC – August 24, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
Psalm 136:1-26
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. – Psalm 136:1 (RSV)
Psalm 136 is like no other Psalm in the entire book of 150 Psalms. It has 26 verses, and every one of those verses contains this proclamation about God: “For his steadfast love endures forever.” Twenty-six verses, and twenty-six times the phrase is repeated about God, “For his steadfast love endures forever.”
Is there anyone here who has attended church frequently through the years who has never heard those words said of God, “For His steadfast love endures forever”? I doubt it, if for no other reason than that nearly all of us have either read or heard Psalm 136 many times. Not only that, the phrase is repeated in other Psalms, and in other parts of the Bible as well.
“God’s steadfast love endures forever.” That is a wonderfully affirming and edifying declaration. If it is believed, it brings great hope and consolation. But is it true? Is it?
Parade is a supplement which is included in many newspapers throughout the country on Sundays. A couple of weeks ago there was story in it written by a doctor named Vinh Chung. He was born in the Mekong Delta of Viet Nam eight months after the country fell to the communists. Eventually his parents, his seven siblings, and he became boat people. They were rescued in the South China Sea by a World Vision aid ship. Eventually they came to the USA under the sponsorship of a Lutheran congregation in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Vinh Chung said that among the eight children in his family, six earned doctorates in various fields, and there were also five master’s degrees. They graduated from schools like Harvard, Yale, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and Georgetown. When he was a student in medical school, he returned to Viet Nam. He was struck by the extreme poverty of many people there. Seeing that, he wondered what would have happened if his parents hadn’t decided to flee the country, or if they had not been found by the World Vision ship. Then he remembered the words of Jesus in Luke 12:48: “Everyone to whom much is given, of him will much be required, and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more.” Vinh Chung wrote that only when he saw conditions in the land of his birth did it register with him that he had been given much, and therefore much would be expected of him.
When a nation collapses at the end of a war, or 85 people are lost at sea with no food or water for many days in an overcrowded boat, is the steadfast love of God evident? but that was not the end of the story. The Chung family ended up in the United States, and by grit and determination, they all succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. At any particular moment, God’s unfailing love may not seem apparent, but to people of faith, if one looks beneath the surface, it is always there. In 1979 God’s unending love may not have seemed evident at all to the Chung family, but in 2014, they are convinced it was permanently present.
Currently I am reading a biography of Maria Teresa by the British historian Edward Crankshaw. This amazing woman became the Empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at a very delicate and dangerous time when her father, the Emperor, died suddenly.He had done nothing to prepare her for her high office other than to guarantee her succession to the crown if there was no male heir, which there wasn’t. She became the Empress in 1740 at age 23, and continued in power for the next 40 years. Unlike another amazing woman with a long reign, Queen Elizabeth II, Maria Teresa both reigned and ruled. She was the most powerful woman in the world during her lifetime, and she ruled with astonishing political and military wisdom and decisiveness. Her primary adversary, especially early on, was Frederick II of Prussia, who tried to wrest much of her empire from her by force. In the midst of all this pivotal Sturm und Drang, she gave birth to sixteen children, the fifteenth of whom was Maria Antonia, later known by the French as their last queen, Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI. That story most of us know. But of her mother most of us have known little.
Crankshaw recalled what Maria Teresa wrote years after her accession to the crown, “I do not think anyone would deny that history hardly knows of a crowned head who started his rule under circumstances more grievous than those attending my accession.” The author noted that “She understood neither finance nor politics nor war; but she had seen what had happened to her father, who understood far more than she, as he moved through his last years with his head in the clouds, surrounded by a rabble of flatterers and deceivers. She was determined to understand all these things.” And she did, quickly and thoroughly. If Crankshaw’s biography is historically accurate, which I assume it is, she was a remarkably gifted ruler.
God’s steadfast love is not always apparent, even though it endures forever, as Psalm 136 proclaims 26 times. When Maria Teresa ascended the throne, no doubt everyone was fearful, both her subjects and the subjects of all the other European monarchies. Throughout her reign, the Germans, French, Spanish, Slavs and others were not thrilled with her, but to the Austrians and Hungarians, she was the answer to prayer. We need to understand, however, that in international relations, God’s steadfast love is not equally evident to everyone.
If our Psalm is correct in its oft-stated summary, God’s steadfast love endures even in the midst of catastrophes and great hardship. That may seem to be a contradiction in terms. How can God steadfastly love us, and yet allow calamities to occur?
That is a question which has been asked literally millions of times by millions of individuals or nationalities through all the centuries of human existence. Perhaps some of you will want to discuss this issue in the forum, but the short answer to this matter is this: God’s love is incapable of preventing every adversity which might assault us. Steadfast love and care-free lives are not related at all. They are two totally distinct and separate realities.
Think about this in human terms. The unconditional love of parents does not prevent catastrophes from afflicting their children. The love of a spouse cannot and does not prevent calamities from doing great damage to a wife or husband. Illness comes, accidents happen, and great injustices occur despite the love of human beings for other humans. Sometimes it may happen precisely because of that kind of deep and abiding love.
It is the same with God. For reasons best and perhaps known only to God, He cannot intervene every time adversities affect us. In very sober and not at all edifying terms, we would have an enormous overpopulation if God stepped in to stop every tragic death which sweeps over certain people. I mentioned that Maria Teresa gave birth to sixteen children. Six of them died in infancy or very early childhood. In a very different and yet related example, if someone drives at 90 MPH on a narrow country road with many small hills and gullies, it is likely the car may leave the road surface and fly through the air. When I was a boy living in Kansas, that happened to the sister of one of my brother’s best friends. The car in which she was a passenger left the road, clipped of several tree branches twenty feet in the air, and came to rest a twisted hulk of misshapen, smoldering metal. Martha was killed, and some other girls were badly injured. Were God to prevent such occurrences, this would be a very different world, and free will of necessity would be forever negated.
When I was a pastor in New Jersey, we had a couple in the church’s membership who were then in their early fifties, although they were inactive in the church. They had been married for well over twenty years, and they had hoped that they would have a child, but none came. Then, when she was almost fifty, she became pregnant. She went full term, and their daughter was born with no problems which might be associated with a birth at her advanced age. They had the baby baptized, but they still didn’t come to church much. However, I am certain they thought that the steadfast love of God, about which they probably had had many previous reservations, does endure forever, because at last they had their baby. They loved that little sweetheart as much as any parents could love any child.
Then, when she was about four years old, Melissa died of a very rare childhood disease. Needless to say, her parents were completely devastated. They knew it would be impossible for Sandra to conceive again at her age, and they also knew no adoption agency would accept them as parents because by then they were in their mid-fifties. We all wondered how they would deal with this terribly sad situation. Amazingly, within two or three weeks after the funeral for their daughter, they started coming to church, and they rarely missed any Sunday after that.
When Melissa died, I went to see Sandra and Joe, and I followed up with another visit the next week. But when they became regulars almost every Sunday morning, I was frankly befuddled. I couldn’t figure it out. So I went to see them again. What they told me was at once profoundly beautiful and utterly heart-wrenching. They said that in Melissa they had perceived the love of God to a degree never seen in anyone or anything else in their lives. She had brought them so much joy, even in her very short life, that they wanted to express their gratitude to God every week in worship. That wonderful child transformed them, as brief as was her existence upon this earth, and they perceived God’s steadfast love in her in a uniquely powerful and unforgettable way. They wanted to thank God for that. And they did, regularly.
“O give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever. O give thanks to him who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever. O give thanks to him who by understanding made the heavens, for his steadfast loves endures forever. O give thanks to him who spread out the earth upon the waters, for his steadfast love endures forever….It is he who rescued us in our low estate, for his steadfast love endures forever, and rescued us from our foes, for his steadfast love endures forever….O give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever” (Psalm 136:1-6,23-24,26).
I know this will come as a total surprise to you, but I feel it necessary to explain that I am captivated by the stories behind the writing of many of the great hymns of the Church. Having divulged that truth which I have kept secret from you for so long, it will not surprise you when I tell you the story behind the writing of “O Love that wilt not let me go.” The truth be told, I have recounted this several times over the years. But it is such a wonderful story that I want you never to forget it, and I promise that as long as I have two or cerebral marbles left to rub together, I won’t forget it, either.
The text for our final hymn today was written by the Rev. Mr. George Matheson, a minister of the Scottish Free Church. As a teenager, George Matheson’s eyesight began to fail, even though doctors told him his vision was technically perfect. The reason for his eventual total blindness, which happened by the time he was eighteen, may have been primarily psychological. It is known that he had fallen in love in his mid-teens with a “bonnie wee lassie” in his hometown. When she realized he was going blind, she jilted him. Despite this great blow to himself and his ego, he went on with his life in his now-darkened world. He attended the University of Glasgow, and graduated at age nineteen, which was no mean feat, especially for a student who was completely blind. Eventually he became pastor of a small parish in the village of Inellan on the Firth of Clyde, which later was named Helensburgh. During that pastorate he was asked by Queen Victoria to preach at the Crathie Kirk, the church she attended when she spent her summers in Balmoral Castle. After serving in Inellan, he was called to St. Bernard’s Church in Edinburgh, which had two thousand members. There he became known as one of Scotland’s greatest late-19th century preachers.
Because there was much speculation about the circumstances under which George Matheson wrote the poem which became the text for “O Love that wilt not let me go,” he decided to say something to quell the speculation. This is what he wrote. “My hymn was composed in the manse of Inellan on the evening of June 6, 1882. I was at that time alone. It was on the day of my sister’s marriage, and the rest of my family was staying overnight in Glasgow. Something had happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life….I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction” (The Gospel in Hymns, Albert Edward Bailey, p. 459).
What was the origin of “the most severe mental suffering”? Could it be that he was thinking back to that excruciating experience of losing the only woman he ever truly loved? Did his sister being married twenty years later remind him of that painful loss? He does not say.
The last stanza of Mr. Matheson’s hymn says this: “O Cross that liftest up my head/ I dare not ask to fly from Thee/ I lay in dust life’s glory dead/ And from the ground there blossoms red/Life that shall endless be.” Furthermore, this much I can tell you for certain: When George Matheson died in 1906, hundreds of people from all over Edinburgh and beyond came to his funeral. Afterward, when his body was lowered into the ground in the cemetery during the committal service, his grave was filled with countless blossoms of red roses, which had been dropped there by the grieving if also very grateful crowds who slowly filed by with their crimson mementos.
Steadfast love comes in many forms. Perhaps the most powerful are those experiences which result in the deepest pain, but which also lead to the greatest awareness of the steadfast love of God. And remember: It endures forever.