2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 34:1-8; John 6:35, 41-51; Ephesians 4:25-5:2
I shall bless the Lord at all times, our psalm this morning boldly starts. All times? Well... When I'm stuck in traffic and already too late to meet someone? When I've just said something really stupid, and can't take it back? The time the phone rang, and it was my father telling me my mother had just had a major stroke? What on earth was the psalmist on? we might well wonder. Yes, there are wonderful times in life, times when beauty or love or happiness overwhelm us and all we can do is to say thank you to God. But there are also the other times - whether they're our own fault, or whether we or those we love are innocent victims - times which make our hearts sink or ache. How can we even think of blessing God under those circumstances?
Well, to start with, I don't think our psalmist - whether it was David or someone else - had the power of positive thinking in mind: you know, just go on telling yourself life's wonderful, and sooner or later the universe will give in and turn things your way. Because thinking like that loses touch with the reality of being human, which does include devastating loss. Our reading from the Hebrew Bible knows better. Old King David is grieved beyond measure for the loss of his son, first through rebellion, then through death, to the point of wishing that he, rather than Absalom, could have taken the consequences. He knows the reality of human suffering; and David was close to God.
If we look a little further into the psalm, it doesn't look as though its author's life was perpetually rosy. God saved him from all his fears. But that isn't the same thing as never encountering anything to fear. Though fear helps us decide whether to fight or to flee what threatens us, fear of future events can paralyse us, hindering us from being able to deal with present danger. If, on the other hand, we can trust God to support us through future trials, we can use the energy we might otherwise have wasted on fear a lot more productively. Again, if we look a little further in the psalm, there is another apparently unlikely claim: that the writer was saved by God from every trouble. But of course that doesn't mean to say no trouble ever arose in his life. On the contrary, the wording with which our portion of the psalm this morning ends: happy are those who take refuge in God is very clear that life can be hard, and that sometimes we do need a refuge from all that would damage or destroy us.
Yet our original problem remains. If our worst nightmares were to come true, how should we, as Christians, respond? Should we be resigned to disaster? Should we be telling ourselves, Well, compared with heaven, anything that happens in this world doesn't matter? Should we be thanking God for allowing our faith to be tested in this way? I don't think so.
There's an interesting phrase in our reading from Ephesians this morning, which is talking in general about how Christians should behave. Be angry, it says, but do not sin. The letter goes on to give an example: do not let the sun go down on your anger. In other words, if harsh words have passed between us, we need God's grace to turn to each other and say sorry, not ignore the problem and store up resentment, for that turns to bitterness, which can hurt the person who is angry as much as their target.
The letter to the Ephesians advises us to get rid of bitterness, along with wrangling, slander, malice, in our dealings with each other, and includes anger in that list. That may be more what we're used to hearing about anger in church. From Sunday school we are used to hearing Jesus described as gentle, meek and mild. But if we look at the names he calls people who are sure they are right and who look down on those who have made mistakes in life, we get a different picture. Snakes! hypocrites! tombs with nicely painted walls and rotting bodies inside! Can you see a Jesus who never got angry calling people those names? Because I can't. Back in the psalms, too, we find people getting angry with God. Don't you care about us? they ask. Do something to help us! When we are mourning or in pain, that sort of response can be a part of our honest reaction to what has happened; and anger in the face of unfairness, as opposed to anger when we don't get our own way, can be part of our truthful worship of God. We may fear to express such anger to God, in case either things get worse, or - in the worst-case scenario - we have fooled ourselves by believing, and in reality there is no one to hear our cry. Yet Jesus is our model for expressing anger and pain honestly to God when, dying on the cross, he cries out, in the words of Psalm 22: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
If we were to stay there, in such a place of bitterness and loss, not only would it damage us, there could be no good news in Christianity to share. Yet the good news is that though our world is shot through with suffering and loss, God's dynamic of love turns it, and turns us, from death to life. King David's lament echoes down the years: Would I had died instead of you, my son! David could not do it: we human beings cannot carry suffering for one another, though our love would have us try. But God in Jesus can do it, and has done it, so that no one else need do so. Jesus has plumbed the depths of despair to bring us out on the other side of death, into life with no loss and no ending.
What I've said today may sound rather sombre in light of the wonderful weather we have been enjoying, out of tune with your mood. Yet, week by week, some here will be finding life hard to bear. Others, giving thanks for the good things in their lives, may feel they know little of such pain, though no life is completely trouble-free. And the advice we hear in Ephesians is meant for just such a mixed community as ours. When in it we are advised, ‘Be imitators of God, as beloved children', it's a good comparison. By the way we bring up children, and even more by the example we give them of the way we live, we provide them with resources to deal not only with their little worries and griefs - which to them are enormous - but with more major troubles later in life. And the letter to Ephesus addresses us as Christians growing up in our faith. Share with those in need, encourage others rather than pulling them down; share forgiveness, not malice, we are advised: in short, imitate Jesus. Such simple advice may seem almost trivial, but practising it together is how God helps us grow into people who can face loss, express anger, forgive each other. And, though loss remains, in God's good time we will come out the other side of grief, able to bless God for the life of the world. For unlike scarecrows, we have been given life by God: not just breathing, with a pulse, but life based on Jesus' empty cross, life for ever.