Sermon: "Swimming, or Lacrosse?"

Today’s sermon title is the fourth in my summer series suggested by this year’s Confirmands.  Geoffrey Bradley’s friends encouraged him to pick this one, I assume because he so loves sports – in fact, he couldn’t be here today because he’s playing lacrosse.  And it was another challenge, because there was no tradition of either sport (swimming or lacrosse) in ancient Israel.  In the Bible, sports were all about preparing for war, and any body of water deep enough for swimming is nearly always mentioned as a hazard, because the Jewish people were not particularly known as great swimmers – at least not before Mark Spitz.  Even the waters of baptism were to symbolize death, and rising again out of them into new life.

 In today’s Psalm, most Biblical references to water pertain to its tremendous power. The people of Israel found water an awe-inspiring.  For protection against the waters, they relied upon God – whose breath, you remember, moved across the face of the waters and brought all creation into being.  The Lord was master of the seas, as you recall from the story of when the disciples cried out for Jesus to still the storm.  Even today, the power of water can be dangerously underestimated – as we hear about the ferry accident in the Philippines, the Myanmar cyclone, and the Iowa floods.  You might have been surprised, as I was, by the farmers in the Mississippi flood plain who said they never dreamed THEIR levees could break – even after levees broke in New Orleans.  It’s wise to remember that there are forces too great for even us clever 21^st century human beings to harness and control.  Every summer we read of skilled swimmers who get swept away by riptides because they can’t believe they are not strong enough to handle the ocean. This Psalm reminds us that it is foolish to trust our own strength.  It reminds us of why we call Christ “Lord and Savior” and not just “coach.”  There are times when we need full-on rescue and not just a little help. 

I remember one time when, as a kid, I was walking our friends’ dog Rocky down by the marshy waterfront where they lived in Virginia Beach.  I was warned to be careful, but I didn’t really take the warnings seriously – because I was a great swimmer.  I wasn’t worried, because I figured “So what?” if I fell in – I’d get a little wet.  The dog had the same idea!  Rocky had a serious obsession with ducks.  So when a nice fat one paddled a little too close to shore, Rocky took off down the boat ramp with me – until we BOTH landed in the water up to our necks.  The duck, of course, got away – quacking, or maybe laughing, hysterically – and we started scrambling back out of the water.  Turns out the boat ramp was slick with mud, but the dog’s claws gave him enough traction to climb back up.  I was stuck.

First, of course, I tried to climb out – and I got thoroughly coated with mud and scuffed up from the debris, but no closer to civilization.  It was scary, because I didn’t dare try wading into the thick weeds where there were likely to be snakes – or worse.  My dad and his friend Chuck loved to tell stories of close calls with alligators on shoreline golf courses.  My panic was rising with the incoming tide as it became apparent there was NO WAY I could climb out on my own.  I was screaming for help but getting no answer. It would have been a good time for Psalm 69: “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched.”  It seemed to me I called for hours, because no one could hear me so far up the hill and inside – but the dog must’ve watched Lassie! God bless him – Rocky barked and scratched at the back door until my parents came running out to save me.   If you’ve ever been saved like that, you develop what you might call a “healthy respect” for the waters.  If you’ve ever looked into your parents face on a day like that, you know what it means to have a “fear of the Lord.”  It’s not a bad thing – as if God is mean and punitive.  God just loves us with that FIERCE love only a parent can have for us.  It just means we remember that God is much bigger than our own human strength.  And that’s very Good News when you really need help.

Now the Bible is full of stories of people who cried out to the Lord for help, and got it.  Most scholars seem to believe this Psalm 69 was written some 400 years after King David, even though it says right there in verse 1 that it’s written by him.  They think Psalm 69 came later, possibly by the famously persecuted prophet Jeremiah, or by a priest during the Babylonian captivity.  Of the author’s exact circumstances, we can only speculate – but for centuries of Jewish and Christian history, people were inspired by this Psalm as they were reminded of David’s trials and faith.  And its complaint is enough like the persecution centuries later of Jesus and the early Christians that Psalm 69 is the 2^nd most quoted Psalm in the New Testament – after Psalm 22, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”  Why those who compiled the Psalms would have attributed it to King David makes no more sense than how I mistakenly attributed that poem I read recently in a sermon to Maya Angelou – in my case, someone got it wrong in an e-mail and the error spread all over the internet.  The point is it usually doesn’t matter to the HEARER of a poem who wrote it – what matters in poetry is the imagery and allusions the words evoke.  Here we can’t help but remember when David was being pursued and wrongly attacked by King Saul.  Remember that?

King Saul turned against the great war hero David when the people began to say of them, “Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his hundreds of thousands!” Saul became jealous and vengeful, so David needed to remember (as we all do from time to time) how God had saved him in the past and would save him again.  Remember faith David showed in the fight against Goliath?  He refused to wear a soldier’s heavy armor – instead trusting God to aim and power his stone. He somehow managed to hit that one little cut-out opening in the helmet where it fits over the nose.  That was a great shot – if his aim was that good, could’ve played varsity lacrosse!  But there’s more to life than working hard and taking our best shot. Sometimes there’s nothing left to do but surrender to the power of God, trusting in our Savior the way a drowning swimmer must trust.  Sometimes only the grace of God can rescue us from the mess we have made of things.

You know, when we are really doing fine, asking God for help in prayer is more perfunctory – like, “Please pass the butter.”  When we get into something WAY over our heads, that’s when we might want to pray Psalm 69:  “Rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.  Do not let the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up!”  Have you had times like that in your life?  When you got into something over your head? Where are you sunk down in the mire with the waters rising around you?  You might have noticed that the headlong confidence and physical strength of your youth has begun to fail you.  You might sometimes feel in bondage to your problems, or feel trapped in your own life.  The Good News the Psalmist promises is that God “does not despise his own who are in bonds,” even if they are chains of your own making.  Remember what Jesus said in Luke 4 at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth?  He says, “The Spirit of the Lord …has anointed me … to proclaim release to the captives, and … to let the oppressed go free.”

Christ is Risen!  And Christ’s church is a place where these miracles of release are really happening. In our study and service, we learn more about how to follow Jesus on his way of discipleship – both in how to straighten our aim and improve our trust in God, and how to help others to do that too.  And through prayer and worship, we lay our burdens on the Lord, and we are buoyed up by the Good News of God’s love.  We sometimes forget what Good News this is, this “Jesus loves me.”  This is an amazing thing – the Good News the world needs to hear, that WE need to hear.  Parent get that Jesus loves their children – we sing it to them, the Bible tells us so. But it’s much harder, in my experience, to remember that Jesus loves US when we make our big-time adult mistakes. But this Psalm reminds us that God loves us either way – whether we’re really “on our game” and playing our lives like an all-star lacrosse champion, or whether we’re up to our neck in muddy floodwaters and drowning in troubles. 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.