He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it." "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

LORD, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence, let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry.
For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.
I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; I am like those who have no help, like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand.
You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah
You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a thing of horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call on you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you.
Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise you? Selah
Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?
But I, O LORD, cry out to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.
O LORD, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?
Wretched and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.
Your wrath has swept over me; your dread assaults destroy me.
They surround me like a flood all day long; from all sides they close in on me.
You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in darkness.

As a child, I spent summer nights sleeping on our screened in back porch. It was the coolest place back in those days before central air conditioning. By day I could look out the back yard and identify our neighbor's maple tree, the fence separating us from the farm behind, the cherry tree in the horse pasture, the barns, the farmhouse … but at night all that was familiar took on an entirely different look. Everything I knew well by day was gone and in their place were menacing shapes of unknown entities. During a late-night thunderstorm the objects became even more frightening, especially what was a maple tree by day becoming a many-armed objected by night, waving its arms and threatening to snatch us away.

Darkness can distort all that we know well, remove familiar landmarks and have everything take on the sinister. Psalm 88, which we heard this morning, was written by a person in what is often termed "the dark night of the soul." It is the place in life where nothing is recognizable … even the presence of God cannot be felt. It is easy to see why this Psalm didn't make the cut for the lectionary cycles. There are other Psalms that speak of abandonment, Psalms that cry out to God … even Psalms that cry out for human justice and revenge. Psalm 137, with its difficult ending is a part of the three year lectionary cycle. But this Psalm is different. It never ties anything together like the other lament Psalms. It never gets to the place of saying something to the effect of: "yeah, it's really bad out there right now, but somehow I know you are still out there God, and still doing your God-thing, even if I can't understand it." Not this Psalm – this is the Psalm that describes those long nights that seem as if they will never end, the times when the landscape of our lives has become so distorted we can't recognize anything, and what was once benign is now sinister. This Psalm is for those places in life when nothing can be resolved … it reminds us that just because we are faithful people, there isn't always a way out.

Walter Brueggemann reminds us that William Styron, in "Sophie's Choice" uses this Psalm. As Stingo is on his way to bury his close friends who have committed suicide, a woman on the bus with him sees his despair and offers him the words of Psalm 88. "The words comfort. They may be the only words that could comfort. Easy words could not have comforted. But this Psalm could, because the words assert, against all the facts, a tenuous link between the darkness and the Lord of life. ("The Message of the Psalms", Walter Brueggemann, page 81)

This is Israel's Psalm of exile … it is the Psalm of tsunamis and earthquakes, of genocide and 9/11's … it is our personal Psalm when we are in the pit of addiction, or when our best friend dies of the most wretched disease, or we walk in a time of deep, deep grief. We don't want to be in the place where this Psalm is necessary, but thank God these words speak for us in such times. Thank God these words are here because they stand as a reminder that a life of faith isn't simply having a magic talisman to ward off all the things that go bump in the night. A faith like that falls apart at the first rumble of trouble. Thank God they are here – they stand to remind us that church isn't only for when we are happy or successful. TV preachers often say if your faith is strong enough wealth and happiness will be yours, implying that calamity is somehow a sign of weak faith. No wonder people in the pit do not feel they have a place in Sunday worship! Only the strongest in faith can dare to utter the words of this Psalm … because simply the act of uttering them is a faith-filled act … God is still listening, even in the silence.

I believe also these words have a lot to say about how God relates to us. They tell me that even when we can't recognize the landscape of our lives, let alone feel God's presence with us … God is there. In a book of women's sermons, Joan Hemenway writes about the reflections of one of her students: "I recently heard a story about a woman who had a major stroke requiring brain surgery. After the surgery, the doctor told her she was going to survive and be just fine, expect that her face would always be distorted, and especially her mouth, which was twisted and pushed over to one side. At the news, the woman began to cry and begged the doctor to do something because she felt so ugly and deformed. Just then, her husband, who had been standing there listening, bent over and kissed her lips. As he did this, he positioned his own lips to the same twisted shaped as hers so that their lips matched. A student of mine commented: The point of the story was that's what God does for us. When we're twisted and deformed by life's horrors, God takes on our twistedness to meet us where we are." (The Book of Women's Sermons, edited by The Rev. E. Lee Hannock, page 147)

And isn't that just what God did? One of our prayers of thanksgiving says, "Above all else we thank you for Jesus, who knew our griefs, who died our death and rose for our sake." (A Service of Death and Resurrection; UM Hymnal page 875) In Jesus Christ God takes shape as a human being … knowing the best of life and the worst of it, shaping God's self to meet us where we are, no matter what shape we twist ourselves into. And then, meeting us where we are, in the midst of all our brokenness, God lovingly reshapes us into the person we were created to be. Having known God's love in this way, we are then sent to a hungry and twisted world in the example of Jesus Christ … to meet people where they are and to help shape the very kingdom of God.

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