Somebody Up There Loves Me!

Text: Psalm 107:1-16
November 14, 2004, Dave Philips

 

 

Did you ever have the experience sitting in a classroom during a boring lecture and deciding that you’d just take a peek to check out that gorgeous member of the opposite gender who had been invading your thoughts of late, only to look up and find that gorgeous person staring right at you? And do you remember your heart stopped when you realized that this gorgeous person staring at you across the classroom was looking at you with definite interest, maybe even love?

I remember the first time I got that look from Cathy, not across a classroom, but from about eighteen inches away! 0 glory! I realized that my long search for the girl of my dreams might just have come to an end!

And do you, by chance, remember the time at a youth retreat or renewal weekend at your church when all of a sudden all the data, all the information, all the Bible verses about God and Jesus Christ suddenly added up, and you realized that this God you’d been hearing about was staring right at you, and that look from God was a look of love? Glory hallelujah! God is alive, God is real, God loves me!

One of Paul Newman’s earliest movies cast him as the middleweight boxer, Rocky Graziano and was based on Graziano’s autobiography. It told the story of the middleweight champion’s life from his underprivileged, extremely difficult childhood through his juvenile delinquency and his ultimate climb to the top of his profession. Graziano, the son of an abusive alcoholic father, seemed headed for a life sentence in the penitentiary. As a teenager he was placed in reform school, he got out of reform school and went into the army, and from the army to prison. But there in prison he met Johnny Hyland, the fitness instructor. Hyland saw Rocky’s potential as an athlete and urged him to channel his violent energy in ways that would benefit him instead of getting him into trouble. Released from prison but still behaving like a thug, Graziano met a girl named Norma, and with Norma’s love and encouragement he turned an emotional corner. He threw himself into his training, began to win fights, and ultimately won the championship. In the last scene of the movie Rocky and Norma are riding through Rocky’s old neighborhood in an open car waving to his friends who have come out to congratulate him for his success. He says to Norma, "You know, Somebody up there likes me!" In his awkward, un-theological way, Rocky Graziano was expressing the wonder of God’s grace.

Of course we know it’s not theologically correct to say that Somebody up there likes you. Somebody up there loves you. But who wants to quibble over semantics at such a time? Who cares about the terminology? It’s the reality that takes your breath away. God loves you! Wow! What else matters in life? If God loves us, we win! God’s love trumps everything else. If God is for us, as Paul puts it, who could possibly be against us?

Our scripture lesson is written by a psalmist who is speaking for a whole nation of people who are coming to this realization. Israel had been scattered to the four winds by the Babylonian conquest. But now their captivity in Babylon is over, and God is calling them from the desert, from the high seas, from captivity in prison, and from the bondage of their own self-defeating attitudes, to return to the Promised Land and live there once again under the benevolent leadership of God.

The psalm records Israel’s response. "O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, those he redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south."¹

There is a rhythm to this psalm that you notice as you read through it. First, realization, and then celebration. We realize the greatness and goodness of God and the constancy of his great love for us. Then we celebrate. We sing and shout and throw confetti around.

Maybe these days you’re living through right now are times of realization and celebration for you. Maybe the reality of God’s love for you is beginning to make sense for the first time in your life. Or maybe you knew and experienced God’s love a long time ago as a teenager, but during your college years and the start of your career, you put that knowledge on the shelf. Nevertheless, in these recent days you’ve been realizing that your youthful experience of God was authentic. And now as an adult you’re realizing it afresh: you are loved. You, yes you, sitting there hoping no one will notice you. You are singled out of the crowd. God is thinking about you. God is looking right at you. Somebody up there loves you. And that immense, all knowing, all wise, all powerful God is talking right now, personally, to you. He knows you by name, he knows all your struggles and sins, he knows everything there is to know about you, and he loves you, yes he loves you, and let me say it again, God loves you.

REALIZATION

One of the startling things about reading the Old Testament is discovering how Israel came to realize the goodness of God not in the easy times but in the tough times. When Israel had it easy, they didn’t "get it"about God’s love. But when things got tough, Israel came to realize how good and how gracious God was. Isn’t it amazing that these people who had seen their city destroyed, who had seen their wives raped and their children murdered, who had been through seventy years of exile, only got the point about God’s love in the midst of that horrific experience!

A good friend of mine named Dwight Kellogg, an ex-convict who had spent half his life up to age forty in prison, who had committed every major crime in the books with the exception of murder and rape, finally "got it" about God. He was so very grateful for coming into this new relationship with God that all the misery he went through in prison just wasn’t worth complaining about. In fact, he celebrated it. And I remember Dwight saying that he thought the best thing for our self-indulgent materialistic nation would be a huge economic recession that would get our attention so that we could quit thinking so much about worthless things and begin to concentrate on really important things.

Some of you may know Raymond Begay, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Leupp, AZ, now retired. He is a genuinely saintly pastor, loved by his congregation and community. I’m proud to call him my brother. You’d never guess that Raymond met God first as a result of his going to prison. Few would guess that this gentle, kind man was an ex-convict. Raymond, at age 21, was sent to prison for life because of a murder he committed in a drunken brawl. While Raymond was in prison, Natalie, his wife, and his children, almost starved. But during this time of great privation and difficulty, first Natalie, and then Raymond became Christians. And the transformation that took place in the lives of Natalie and Raymond was so astonishing to their family members that the whole family came to faith in Christ. The leaders of that Leupp Presbyterian congregation met Christ because of the suffering that came from a drunken brawl, a murder, and a life prison sentence.

"Some sat in darkness and the deepest gloom," writes the psalmist, "prisoners suffering in iron chains, for they had rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High. . . . Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom and broke away their chains."

Can you identify with that? There are so many people I know who have met God in the midst of hard times that I can fully understand my friend Dwight who prayed for a huge economic recession that would turn our attention from stupid, harmful things to the God who loves us and longs to bless us.

Whether in good times or in bad, the realization that God knows us and loves us is one that transforms lives.

CELEBRATION.

When we realize what God has done for us, we celebrate. "O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever." There’s the realization. Then, "Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, those he redeemed from trouble." There’s the celebration.

The celebration is with our lips and with our lives. We celebrate with our lips when we come to worship. We celebrate with our lives when we leave worship and go out into the world to act out what we have experienced in church.

What do you have to celebrate in this church of yours? Let me tell you, there’s plenty to celebrate! What would your life be like without First Presbyterian Church? What would this town be like if there were no more church on this location? Bud Gunderson has been working on our archaic furnace, working his magic on the boiler. One of my friends in the ministry said that if he had to go through seminary again, he’d want to take a course on boilers, because he has had to work with so many over the years.

Well, what if the boiler blew and the whole church went up in steam and all of us were killed? Who would miss us? Or, suppose you missed church on the day the boiler blew and killed the congregation. Would you miss your friends? Would you miss the neat things that go on in this congregation for your benefit?

 

Hey, folks! I’ve got great news for you! The boiler didn’t blow and destroy us all. We’re still here. This fantastic congregation is continuing to bless us all. God has called us from wandering in the desert, from languishing in prison, from peril on the high seas, from our own destructive attitudes to this place of blessing. God loves us all. God loves and values our congregation and its ministry, and his intention is to bless us even more.

Would you agree that this is God’s attitude toward this congregation? And do you share that same attitude with God?

We realize that God loves us, and that realization knocks us for a loop. Then we celebrate God’s love: "O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, those he redeemed from trouble."

Back in the Jurassic period when I was doing youth ministry, we used to sing Psalm 107:2 at the end of youth retreats. Here’s how it goes: everybody sings, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, say so, let the redeemed of the Lord say so." Then the girls sang, "Let the redeemed," and the guys shouted back, "SAY SO!" (The guys really loved that because they didn’t have to stay on pitch, all they had to do was make noise!)

Celebrate it! God loves you, he’s given you a fantastic church, don’t be afraid to SAY SO! Say it with your lips as you worship enthusiastically. Say it with your lives as you act out what you celebrate.

And say it with your pledges to the work of this congregation. I don’t believe God is going to destroy this congregation by bringing these rocks down on us. But you could destroy the work of this congregation! Just withdraw your support and I’ll get the message. But I don’t think you’re going to do that. Not in my worst nightmares can I dream that you wonderful people don’t think the ministry of this congregation is worth supporting.

When David Livingstone, that great missionary to Africa, died, his body was embalmed and prepared to be brought back to England. But the night before the ship sailed to carry Livingstone’s body to England where it was to be laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, a group of Africans sneaked aboard the ship, cut out Livingstone’s heart, and buried it under a huge tree there on the African coast. A horrible mutilation? Not at all. These Africans were Christians who had come to faith under Livingstone’s ministry. They knew that though his body would go to England, his heart was in Africa and should be buried there.²

If friends of yours did the same thing for you, where would they bury your heart? Would they bury part of it in this church? Or would they bury your heart in First State Bank? Or in your stock certificates? Or in your safe deposit box?

Where your treasure is, said Jesus, there is your heart. I can’t believe that your heart is not in the worship and fellowship and work of this congregation. And I can’t believe that you won’t say so in the way you pledge your support for First Presbyterian in this coming year.