The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 21, 2026
Our readings this morning make an interesting conversation. In the psalm, the singer has a number of ardent requests for God. Then, in Romans and Matthew, we’re told how the requests have been answered. Or at least that’s one way to see it, so bear with me for 15 minutes or so and I’ll try to show you what I mean.
What is the psalmist asking God for?
They ask God to “incline your ear” — to listen to prayers and supplications.
They ask God to “preserve my life”.
They ask God to “be gracious to me.”
They ask God to “gladden my soul.”
They ask God to “answer my call.”
They ask God to “give strength to your servant.”
They ask God to “save the child of your maidservant.”
They ask God to “show me a sign of your favor.”
That’s eight asks! That’s a lot.
Now, jumping ahead about a thousand years, let’s look at what Paul says in Romans 6. He’s talking about the death and resurrection of Jesus. He says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” He also says, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
Let me just get “sin” out of the way before going any further. It was explained to me long ago that the best way to think of sin is as “missing the mark,” falling short, failing to do what is best. That is what the Greek hamartia means. It was not encrusted with the judgmental connotations of the next two millennia. And it was explained to me just two days ago, by Deborah, that the Hebrew word, hhatah, has exactly the same meaning. Paul’s language is more dramatic than that, and he may have had a different, more active conception of sin in mind, where the falling short is to some extent willful. Still, I think we can read him without difficulty as saying “We are no longer stuck in the cycle of ‛I goofed’ and ‛I’m sorry’ and ‛I’ll try harder’ and ‛oops, I goofed again,’ and so on and so on – what he laments, in the next chapter of Romans, as: “what I want to do, I do not do, and I hate what I do.” That is being enslaved to a way of being human that is never good enough, and certainly never enough in God’s eyes.
Now Paul doesn’t make any direct reference to the ardent pleas of the psalmist. He doesn’t explain how God has “inclined his ear” or “preserved my life” or “shown me a sign of [God’s] favor.” But I think he is nonetheless talking about how God responds to the cries of the suffering. From the point of view of Paul and the early Christians, what God has done is much, much bigger than merely answering the requests of the psalmist. Our very lives have been transformed. What matters is not the tribulations we suffer – which Paul surely knew would be many – but the state of our soul. By following Jesus, Paul says we can be “dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Now I can imagine a funny routine in which someone like Mel Brooks, impersonating the psalmist, replies in exasperation, “Gee thanks! All I want is a few signs of your favor, like strength and a glad soul, and you’re giving me this huge sub-continent of spiritual transformation that I didn’t even know I wanted! Could you also just make my life a little easier while you’re at it?”
Well, the answer is no. I believe that is one of the great changes in viewpoint from the Hebrew scriptures to the New Testament. We go from seeing God as intervening in earthly affairs for our betterment, favoring a certain tribe, smiting another, etc., to seeing the grace of God in who we are, not what we receive in the world. The gifts of God will not necessarily make life easier for us. Rather, if we follow Jesus in the path away from sin, this will change us, no matter what happens to us.
I relate very personally to this idea of getting something more than you bargained for from God. It’s a common experience for recovering alcoholics. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, many years ago, because of some desperate earthly problems that all stemmed from my disease of alcoholism. I wasn’t hostile to spiritual matters, but my only interest in “working the program” was to stop drinking and get my life back on track. In AA, you can’t help hearing, at just about every meeting, about “the spiritual aspects” of recovery. And the famous Twelve Steps are unabashedly God-oriented. Fine, whatever. I just wanted to get sober.
But like so many others, I found out that it really was a spiritual program, and that stopping drinking was not the gift itself, but the Step Zero for receiving the lifetime blessings of sobriety. I won’t talk much more about that, in this sermon. Suffice it to say that I was very much like the psalmist, begging God for specific help, only to find that transformation, metanoia, being born again, was the real prize.
Now let’s look at the beginning of the Matthew passage. Here again, Jesus’ message is about what happens to the soul, not what happens to the body: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” He counsels us not to be afraid, but the reason he gives is very different from what the psalmist might have been hoping for. Jesus doesn’t say that God will answer our petitionary prayers and remove our enemies so that we might live without fear. Instead, he says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
What an interesting answer! We should not be afraid because God knows and values us. That is meant to be our consolation. It is, if you will, a spiritual gift, not a material one. The only thing that is really worth fearing, Jesus tells us, is the loss of our souls, of our connection with God. And we’re reassured here that God awaits us at every point; the very hairs on our heads are imbued with God’s love.
Again, this is surely not what the psalmist thought they wanted, in their moment of neediness and supplication! How about putting those who hate me to shame, instead? But this seems to me a much more realistic and important promise. If our faith rests on sifting the evidence of God’s care for us in earthly matters, that is a shaky foundation indeed. Someone, I know longer remember who, wrote, “You became an atheist after 30 minutes in Auschwitz.” That of course is not true, but we can appreciate the feeling. If there was ever a time for God to answer prayers about earthly, material matters, Auschwitz was it. But no, except, according to some testimony, in isolated cases. For six million others, they asked God to spare them and God did not do so.
A cynic would say, “Well, of course Jesus and Paul and the Christians switched from earthly benefits to spiritual benefits. They’d had a thousand years of watching the Jewish people suffer, and not get what they prayed for. Clearly it was time to rewrite the covenant and remove God from responsibility in earthly matters.” Perhaps that’s true in part. But I firmly believe there’s much more to it. What we all need is a way to find God in our actual lives, not in a fantasy of being preferred and helped.
Where do I experience God? In the daily course of being more or less alive to what God calls me to do. That is my affair and mine alone – as Jesus says, no one has dominion over how I walk that walk, and the walk will continue no matter what suffering I may have to endure.
Before I wind up, I want to say a little bit more about the Hebrew scriptures, to avoid a possible misunderstanding. There are a number of passages in which the writers talk about what I’ve been calling spiritual transformation, and there is a direct line from these passages to the New Testament writers. In Ezekiel 36:26-27, God promises, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” This kind of transformation is often associated in the Hebrew scriptures with repentance, a turning away from sin. Again, the connection with Christian thought is clear. Also clear is that the writers of the Hebrew scriptures were not strangers to the idea that God can give us more than material consolations.
And then, disturbingly, there is the story of Job. In response to Job’s request for an explanation of his earthly catastrophes, God doesn’t reply with reassurances of God’s favor, but neither is Job told that all will be well with him spiritually, thanks to his relationship with God. The answer to Job is blunt: You have no standing to ask me such questions. You’ve completely misunderstood our relationship if you believe I owe you anything, not even an answer. It would be interesting to imagine a religion based on that teaching. Perhaps it would be a form of Stoicism. But in any case, it is certainly not New Testament Christianity.
Well, I find I’ve said all I have to say about this, and since I’ve never yet heard anyone complain that a sermon was too short, I will stop. If you take one thought away with you, I hope it’s the thought that our relationship with God is not defined by asking and being answered. It’s defined by seeking, and finding new life.