Ascents

Scripture Readings

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Psalm 130

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.

2 Lord, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive

to the voice of my supplications!

3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,

Lord, who could stand?

4 But there is forgiveness with you,

so that you may be revered.

5 I wait for the LORD; my soul waits,

and in his word I hope;

6 my soul waits for the Lord

more than those who watch for the morning,

more than those who watch for the morning.

7 O Israel, hope in the LORD!

For with the LORD there is steadfast love,

and with him is great power to redeem.

8 It is he who will redeem Israel

from all its iniquities.

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition 2 Corinthians 4

13 But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—“I believed, and so I spoke”—we also believe, and therefore we also speak, 14 because we know that the one who raised Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and will present us with you in his presence. 15 Indeed, everything is for your sake, so that grace, when it has extended to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

Living by Faith

16 So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. 17 For our slight, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, 18 because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen, for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

5 For we know that, if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

WWTW- Kelly?

Introduction- Bike MS

Last weekend I was away on a bike ride to raise money for MS research and treatment.

So…you just kind of knew that this sermon was going to come with a lot of bike metaphors, didn’t you?

I figure, let’s just get them out of the way now, right at the front, and then we can be done with it, right?

The Ride:

Day one we set out from Moraine State Park at 6:30 in the morning.

We started at 6:30 in the morning!

That means I had to be up at 4:30 in the morning.

Which is gross.

We got our bibs and numbers and everything and hit the road.

Day one was 70.74 miles, and 3,369 feet of elevation gained, all the way to Thiel College.

We overnighted at Thiel, where they fed us and let us sleep in our tents outside, because that’s fun!

Day two we hit the road again at 7:00 AM.

This day was crazy rainy the whole way.

And of course I hit a flat tire about halfway through, leading to the unique experience of having to change a flat in the parking lot of what I *thought* was an Amish buggy dealership.

It turned out it was their church service, which I’m sure the appreciated having punctuated by my cursing at my stupid tire that wouldn’t cooperate on my bike.

But that ride was 68.58 Miles, with 2,846 feet of elevation gain.

I keep bringing up the elevation ratio because of a thing that a fellow cyclist taught me called the Golden Ratio.

The Golden Ratio

The Golden Ratio is helpful mentally for me, because I despise climbing.

I really dislike going uphill, because you’re fighting gravity.

And as a bigger guy, gravity tends to win that battle!

But, on the other side, I love coming downhill!

Give me a nice long hill to come bombing down, and I’ll have a smile on my fave the whole way.

To be able to come downhill, you actually have to go up.

So the Golden Ratio is figuring out how much uphill, or ascending you need to do to be able to have the maximum amount of fun coming down.

My friends and I tend to think that it’s about 1000 feet every 10 miles.

More than that, you’ll exhaust yourself on the uphill.

Less than that is ok, but just means you’re not going to have a whole lot of screaming downhill.

But that said, at 70 miles and 3,000 feet and 68 miles and 2,800 feet, we were sub-Golden Ratio, so not so many big hills to come flying down.

But, there are other ways to go fast!

The Pace Line

At one point in day one, my team of three guys joined up with another team of two people, and made a 5 person pace line.

A pace line is one of my favorite things to do in road cycling.

You get in a line like this, and stay about a foot or two away from the tire in front of you.

The person up front takes all the wind, but then everyone in the line behind that person can tuck in and draft, and you would be shocked at how much easier it makes things to just cut out a little bit of wind.

So on our ride, we hoped in to a pace line.

We went from an average speed of about 14 miles an hour to an average speed of about 20 miles an hour.

When we started, I was third in line.

So the guy up front took the wind for about a mile, and then when he was done he peeled off and drifted to the back of the line.

One of the people who joined our line was a short and skinny girl, who was second in line. She was hard to draft behind…

Then it was my turn, and I too did about a mile on the front.

When I pulled aside, I let myself drift back five places and went to fall in to the back of the line, but…

When I got to my spot someone was there.

I turned my head, and it turned out that we had a pace line of about 20-25 people.

I never took a turn on the front again…it was glorious!

A pace line works everywhere.

It’s at it’s best on long flat sections of road to be sure.

Coming downhill you can really get screaming fast!

And going up hill, it actually helps a tremendous amount. It can take the sting right out of the climb.

And yet, for as much as those are my nerdy cycling stories, they actually have something to say about our scriptures today!

Psalm 130

A Psalm of Ascents

Road Trip Music

Most families, at least those who could afford it, would make at least one pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem every year.

Psalms 120-134 are the Psalms of ascents.

These were the psalms that pilgrims would sing to each other as they were making their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was on top of the mountain.

This is why they’re called the Psalms of Ascents.

These are climbing songs.

Something to take your attention off of how difficult the journey is, and put your attention on who God is.

Life is hard!

We all spend time “down.”

Psalm 130 starts “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”

To be alive is to spend some time down in the depths.

Sometimes we’re in the depths because of our own decisions.

We make poor financial decisions.

We don’t take care of our bodies well.

We sign up for big cycling races without doing the proper training…I’m told…

Sometimes we’re in the depths for reasons that are beyond our control.

We get sick.

We get let go at work.

A loved one passes away.

Knowing the difference between when it’s our own doing or whether it’s not is surely helpful, but everyone spends time in the depths.

It’s no good beating ourselves up for it.

It’s no good beating others up for it.

It’s no good berating those who are in the depths while they’re there.

It just…happens.

Our souls wait for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning.

There are times where the only thing that’s going to help us climb out of those depths is God alone.

There are times where the best thing our souls can do is sit back and wait.

Even when we’re in the depths as a result of our own doing, sometimes the best thing we can do is still ourselves a bit, and let the Spirit of God tell us what to do next.

It’s like waiting for the sunrise after a terrible night.

We know it’s coming, we just need to still ourselves and watch.

We need to ascend.

Rising Up

Jesus rose.

Jesus Raises Up too.

Obviously the big, kingdom come raises us up.

We’ve had a whole bunch of funerals around here lately.

And so I’ve spent a lot of time pondering and reflecting on the sure and certain hope that we have in the resurrection of Christ.

I’ve spent a lot of time pondering and reflecting on the promise that we will be reunited with our loved ones again some day.

And because of Jesus’ resurrection, we too will enjoy being raised to new life.

But also the little ascents we come across on a daily basis, Jesus raises us up there too.

I’ve seen addicts get clean, and they tend to give credit to their higher power Jesus.

I’ve seen folks find their way to forgiveness, pointing to the forgiveness that Jesus offered them as the inspiration.

I’ve seen folks grow in kindness, generosity, love, and graciousness because they’ve grown tired of living lives of anger, and greed, and hatred, and malice.

Jesus has risen and ascended, and so can we.

So maybe those cycling analogies have a place here after all.

Especially if we want to ascend together.

The Church as Pace Line

Christ is our goal.

A pace line doesn’t work if everyone has a different goal destination in mind.

If our 25 person pace line had 15 people who wanted to go to Thiel college, but 10 people who thought maybe Miami Florida would be nice this time of year, it wouldn’t be as helpful would it?

Or worse still, imagine if all 25 of us had a different destination in mind.

We’d fall apart real fast!

Yet so often in communities of faith, there can be folks who are pointed in different directions, can’t there?

Lots of very good things get picked up along the way, and serve more as distractions than as help.

So from time to time, it’s important to remember where our destination is:

Our goal is the redemption, grace, transformation, and growth that can come to us from being raised up in Christ.

All other goals can flow out of that one for sure, but…

In the same way that the Pilgrims sang their Psalm of Ascents “Our souls wait for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning…”

Our eyes are on Jesus.

It’s Jesus.

It’s Jesus.

It’s Jesus.

We all need to ride together, and so we need to have our eyes on the goal: Jesus Christ.

We can draft each other.

This life is hard!

2 Corinthians 4:16 “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”

Again, life comes with plenty of ups and downs, depths and ascents.

And we know as we work together as a community, that we have to support each other in the hardness of life.

We already have this around here!

If you look around Beulah church even just a bit, our inner nature is being renewed too, isn’t it?

Our inner nature is being renewed when we see a whole crowd of folks show up for the funeral of someone they barely knew just to be a support to a friend.

Our inner nature is being renewed when we see folks offer rides and meals and hospitality to those who have recently undergone surgery.

Our inner nature is being renewed when we see church family provide child care so that tired moms and dads can have a date night.

In these and so many other ways, we support each other.

We’ve got a pretty good pace line going through life, don’t we?

I want to invite more people in to the pace line.

First of all, if you’re here and you need support to get through the depths of life, reach out and let us know!

There is hardly a need out there that I can think of that we don’t have the people power, the skills, and the ability to meet.

But even more than that, my heart breaks for anyone out there in the world who thinks they have to do it alone.

My heart breaks for anyone who lives in the depths without ever seeing the sunrise of life.

My heart breaks for anyone who has come to know Christianity more for who we judge and who we’re against than for how we can help.

My heart breaks for anyone who thinks that religion is irrelevant, and that they’re on their own.

And by the way, this is an argument that will be won with words.

It’s an argument that will be won with actions.

We have to go out in to our community in the coming weeks and months, and show them that we are here for them.

I have some creative ideas about that…but more on that later.

We have to challenge ourselves to enjoy the rewards.

2 Corinthians 4:17–18 “For our slight, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen, for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

Like the golden ratio in cycling, if we spend too much time without challenge, without pushing ourselves, then we don’t really get to enjoy the downhill of progress.

We need to occasionally seek out the momentary affliction that comes when we live for others in our lives.

What’s the golden ratio of church life?

If we’re pushing too hard, if we’re too aggressive, well that probably isn’t going to help very much is it?

There are other churches who do that, and they have a bit of a reputation.

If we’re not pushing hard enough, we run the risk of being complacent.

We can get far too comfortable with seeking our own comfort, rather than seeking the comfort of others in our church and in our community.

We have to find that just right golden ratio.

We have to push ourselves out beyond our comfort zone, so that we can see Christ raise others up in our midst.

We have to push ourselves to have difficult conversations, because the world doesn’t seem to know how to do that without devolving into a shouting match.

We have to push ourselves to climb out of the depths of life, and then teach others how to ascend as well.

What can we do?

Reach out when life gets hard.

One of the deals I have with some of my cycling buddies is that we will be honest about when we’re dragging.

For me this last trip, it was with about 20 miles to go.

I looked at my buddy Travis and said “I’m cracked man.”

And so I spent a couple of extra turns at the back of the pace line, until my legs have recovered enough that I could hop up to the front.

Somehow, in this American culture of ours, we have convinced ourselves that we should never say anything about our suffering.

We don’t want to be whiners I guess, which is probably a good instinct.

But it turns out we can do actual damage if we try to tough through life, and don’t reach out and ask for help.

How can we help you today?

Where are you inviting your soul to wait for the Lord like those who watch for the morning?

Where have you come across the depths, either of your own making, or just by the circumstances of life?

Where could you benefit from the pace line as we ascend out of the depths?

Speaking of which…

Invite some others in to the pace line.

I say again, it breaks my heart that there are folks out there who don’t know what we have in here.

I hope that breaks your heart too.

And I hope it breaks your heart to action.

Yes, we Presbyterians have a complicated relationship with the idea of evangelism.

But this isn’t cold, religion sharing among strangers.

This is about finding people we can help and inviting them in.

This is about lifting other people out of the depths.

This is about acknowledging that Jesus rose, and raises us with him.

This is about inviting folks to draft a little bit through life.

Even in this moment, can you think of someone who needs what we have?

Can you think of someone who should have a lunch with someone else in this congregation?

Can you think of someone who is tired of doing this life thing on their own?

Can you think of someone who’s life would be markedly better if they were in here?

Let’s invite them in.

Accept the challenge of the ascents.

Listen, we all spend time in the depths every now and again.

The trick is, I hope we’re never content to stay there.

I hope that you and I will get comfortable with the challenge of ascents.

Let’s challenge ourselves to be raised with Christ.

Let’s challenge ourselves to grow in love, more tomorrow than we have today.

Let’s challenge ourselves to some big climbs, so that we can enjoy some big downhills too.

And let’s do it all with our eyes looking to Jesus.

More than those who watch for the morning.

More than those who watch for the morning.

And maybe while we’re doing it all, we can go for a ride or two together!