God with us

 (Psalm 25 1-8; 1 Philippians 2: 1-13)

I had a colleague once who likes to start his services with a cheery call to worship: he would say 

“God is with us” and the congregation would respond 

“all the time!”.

Then he woud say “All the time” and their response was

“God is with us”.

 

It seemed a good way to involve the congregation: until I happened to be there one week when life was feeling difficult for me and the people around me I loved.

'God is with us – all the time' didn’t feel true, I certainly didn’t want to shout it out when I felt like I was sitting in the shade.

 

This week I have had my moments of shade, too: perhaps you have as well.

My grand-daughter, Rose is 15: full of life and hope and plans for the future. This week two 15 year-old girls have died: one, Elianne Andam, was stabbed at the bus stop on her way to school in London; a second, Jessica Barker, died in a bus crash on the M53 in Merseyside.

I couldn’t help thinking about these two girls’ families and friends, struggling to make sense of what has happened: I couldn’t imagine how I would feel if it was Rose. Sometimes life can seem unfair, and insecure and we can wonder where God is in all this.

So I think ‘God is with us’ needs a bit of exploration if it is to seem true ‘all the time’.

What does it mean to say  God is with us?

The American Writer Annie Lamott once said that the lion’s share of her prayer life can be summed up with two primary prayers she utters all the time:

Help me, Help me, Help me! And 

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

And I suspect most of us would say much the same– that we come to church to pray ‘help me’ and ‘thank you’.

We come to put life in perspective, a perspective which has God’s love in Jesus Christ in it.

So when we pray for help – there is someone here to ask

When help comes – there is someone to thank.

When we feel insignificant – we can remember that we are loved

When we feel alone – we meet with other believers who know God is with us.

When we start to think we can’t make a difference  - we find a community who together can act as the body of Christ, showing love to the world.

When we need guidance – we can turn to God’s word.

 

How do we know God is with us?

Psalm 25 (1-8) is honest about the peaks and troughs of human life and our need to seek God’s help.

 

The Psalm oscillates between a personal plea ‘I…lift up my soul, I put my trust in you’  -  a declaration that what is true for the person who wrote the psalm : and phrases that talk about what is true for all of us. Everyone - 

‘the sinners’ and ‘the lowly’ are taught by God.

It is a Psalm to help us in our difficult days: asking for God’s guidance, teaching, and love.

 

God is always ready for us: all we need to do is to be ready to accept the help of God – to be lowly.

The Psalm teaches us that it right to trust that God is there to help us: even when life seems to make little sense.

 

Why do we say God is with us?

Our reading from the New Testament was from the letter from Paul to the church at Philippi. It is a positive letter, even though Paul is writing from prison.. it’s a letter which contains constant references to joy – 5 times Paul uses the word ‘joy’ and 9 times he tells the people receiving the letter to ‘rejoice’. 

It’s almost as if as he endures imprisonment and faces death, Paul finds his trust in God thrown into sharper focus. Even in the depths of imprisonment and the threat of death Paul knows God is with him.

 

This is not as unlikely an idea as it might sound at first.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor imprisoned during the second world war for speaking out against the Nazi regime and its persecution of Jewish people. After 2 years in prison, he was executed at the age of just 39. 

 

From his prison he wrote the words we have in hymn 486 in Rejoice and Sing. ‘By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered’. (you might want to look at it)

 

It is amazing to think that he wrote these words from Flossenbürg concentration camp.

Verse 3 is:

And when the cup you give is filled to brimming
with bitter suffering, hard to understand,
we take it faithfully and without trembling,
out of so good and so beloved a hand

 

With those words ‘Cup of suffering’ we can’t help thinking of Jesus in garden of Gethsemane.

Bonhoeffer knew, and we can know, that this God we worship became flesh in Jesus and knows what it is to suffer, as we do, to weep as we do, even to die as every human being does.

 

St Paul encourages Philippians to live in unity, love and humility – and then he wants them to know that all of this is possible because the love of God in Jesus Christ is with us – not in a vaguely reassuring way, but truly with love as strong as death. 

 

Paul quotes this amazing statement – which is thought to have existed as hymn just a decade or so after Jesus’ death

“who though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself..”

 

Paul focusses on the God who comes to us and is with us in Jesus Christ – from the glory of heaven to the poverty of earth. He willingly empties himself to be here among us, with us,  as one of us – even to the point of the worst possible death, on the cross.

This Jesus is raised from death by the power of the Father, and then praised above every name as Lord and Saviour of all.

 

Therefore, Paul says, work out your salvation – realise that the God who has come to us is the one who gives us the grace to be raised like Jesus.

“God who is at work in you enables you to will and work for his good pleasure”.

in other words – God is with us.

 

Paul doesn’t appeal to the healings or the teachings of Jesus – powerful though they are – but to the reality that this Jesus, who is one with God the Father , and the Lord of all, comes to earth to be among us, with us and beside us. He promises he will never leave us and gives us the gift of grace, which bring eternal life.

 

When we pray ‘help me help me help me’ we remember that God is with us – holding, guiding, loving and enabling.

And when we pray ‘thank you , thank you, thank you’ we remember that God’s strength is available to us whenever we ask.

God is with us.. all the time. All the time.. God is with us

 

(As a sign of that presence we take bread and wine today and remember the God who is here with us)

So may the risen Christ be with us – here in worship today and in every moment of our lives.

Amen.