Life's Fleeting Dream

Life's fleeting dream Psalm 90, Mark 10:17-31 There have been such huge steps forward in medical knowledge over the last century. As someone was pointing out to some of us only the other day when the last pandemic, Spanish flu, hit the world a hundred years ago there would have been very little to be done for the sufferers other than to wait and see if they recovered. But then there was I sitting in the chemist's last Tuesday receiving an injection of this years' flu vaccine. And even though a vaccine hasn't yet been developed for Covid 19 there are many knowledgeable people across the world researching into it and there is great confidence that in time one will be found, after all that's what we do these days, isn't it? But having said that I've heard a number of people in recent times expressing their belief that we'll never find a drug which will protect us against the virus. It seems perhaps that as our current situation drags on, and things appear at times to be getting worse rather than better, that some people are losing hope. And perhaps it's the realisation that, actually, we don't have all the answers, that just maybe humanity isn't able to shape its own future, which is beginning to hit home to some people like never before, and their world is beginning to shake as suddenly the certainties on which we like to build our lives, are certainties no more. And as our leaders, as well as the institutions upon which we've always placed our faith thinking that they'll sort things out, that they'll take us out the other side, are revealing their inevitable weaknesses to us, then for some, maybe many, thoughts of despair are beginning to crowd their minds. And so we come to Psalm 90, written by a man who clearly had thought such issues as these through. But who had done so as one who was convinced of the existence of a sovereign, creator, God who had always come to the rescue of his own when they were trouble in the past and who, he was certain, would continue to do so in the present and the future. We're told that our psalm is a prayer written by 'Moses the man of God', the great leader of God's people who brought them out of Egypt and who led them through the 40 years of their wanderings in the wilderness before they eventually entered the land long promised to their ancestor Abraham by God. And even though these days Moses' authorship is denied by many because they think that it would have been written much later during the time when the Jews were in exile, the words do very much fit with either Moses' situation when he contemplated the plight of the Jewish slaves as they languished in Egypt before the exodus or else as he and the people came towards the end of their costly journeys through the wilderness when soon to enter the land promised by God, which Moses knew he would never do because the Lord had told him so. And so we have Moses surrounded by evidence of the great difficulties which people on earth face. Not thinking bitterly about the unfairness of it all but rather taking stock and making himself open to the reasons, which are there to be understood, for the world and its inhabitants to be in the position that they are. And he begins where he should, where he must begin, if he's to begin at all, with the acknowledgement of the reality of God. As Augustine tells us: "Where there is no fear of the Lord there is perverted life; whoever does not fear God in time of prosperity, let him fear him in time of distress, taking refuge in him who scourges and cures". So that Moses begins by declaring to God: "Lord you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God". In the context of all the human suffering and uncertainty that he sees and feels Moses recognises that God is the one constant, that he is ever sure and certain, that his nature never changes towards his people for whom he has always been there, the one to whom they could ever come and find peace, rest, security, and hope. And the reason why this has been the case, and why it will always be the case is because whilst humanity and even the world itself exists in time, that is there was a time when they did not exist, God exists eternally outside time. We're often being told that the world around us is changing, that the mountains are crumbling and that the ice caps are melting. But God, for whom all creation came into being but yesterday, whether that be a matter of thousands of years or millions of years, it makes no matter, will never change. He's not affected at all by the weather or the climate in general, by pollution or by the latest inventions of man, and so if we want to begin to make sense of the world and our life in it we must start with, and seek direction from, him. After all says our psalmist (verse 4): "a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night". I remember at school struggling to get to grips with some of the huge number of life changing events that had taken place in this country and across Europe over the previous 75 or so years and, may I add, failing miserably. But in God's eyes a thousand years, enough events to fill the majority of the millions of history books in existence, is but like a single day in our experience, or even less like a section of our sleeping last night, of which, more than likely, we remember nothing. But then what of humanity? What of those who Moses looks out on who languish under the whips of their Egyptian overlords? Or else perhaps who are dying all around him in their thousands in the desert because they're never going to enter the Promised Land... just as he won't? What of us today in the midst of a worldwide disease where statistics show an ever increasing death toll and where leaders whist working to deal with the problem strive to hang on to power or else to gain more? Well of them, and us, says Moses to God: "You turn men back to dust, saying, 'return to dust, O sons of men.'" "You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning - though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered". In other words we are all at the mercy of the eternal God, and unlike him we are mortal. Death is a certainty for each of us so that we return to the dust from which we came, we're swept away as by a river in flood, and like grass, like the grass that Moses would have experienced we appear for a short time and then are burned away by the hot sun and disappear from sight. What's more our lives are short - Moses says that: "The length of our days is seventy years - or eighty, if we have the strength". And even these years after which we simply "fly away", he goes on to say, are filled with "trouble and sorrow". "Well if that isn't reason to sink into despair, what is?" someone might well ask. Remember though that Moses is a man who knew God like nobody else before, after walking and talking with him for the last 40 years and so he's able to see the true situation of humanity in the light of God. He's already said that God is the one who turn's men back to dust; and here he's going back to the account of humanity's creation and fall at the beginning of Genesis - firstly Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 where we're told that: "the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground" and then chapter 3 verse 19 where God tells Adam: "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; from dust you are and to dust you will return". And now he tells us the reason why human beings aren't like their creator, why their life is short and pain filled. And that's because of our sin, because of the whole of humanity's rebellion against God dating back to Adam and Eve, because of our refusal to bow the knee before him, because we don't fear him as Augustine urges us to do. Verse 8 of our psalm tells us: "You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence". God then is fully aware of each of our selfish acts of rejection of his holiness and truth and as a result all that we were created to be, an immortal creature who enjoys eternal fellowship with their creator, has been taken away. So that now (verse 9): "All our days pass away under your wrath". A wrath which is commensurate with the fear, the respect honour and obedience, which we fail to give him. Here then is the answer to that oft asked question: "What's it all about" and if Moses had left it there we would have to be satisfied ... not happy but satisfied, able to understand why we are where we are. But he doesn't leave it there. Instead he ends the Psalm in the way in which its title points to ... in prayer as, turning to the God who he's been telling us is the one who's reality makes sense of our reality, he asks him with all humility, fully aware that his situation is deserved and yet wanting to change: "Teach us" (verse 12). If we're going to live our lives as people who acknowledge your involvement and presence in them then teach us Lord to number, to value our days, to see each day as being a gift from you to be given back to you in obedient service. And then Moses prays: "Relent ... have compassion" "Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days". What he's doing is recognising, because of his close knowledge of God, that although the fate of us all demonstrates God's wrath caused by our sin, there is something even greater than his wrath ... God's grace, God's totally undeserved mercy and love which he pours down upon all whom he chooses to be its beneficiaries. And so in faith Moses prays for God's undeserved blessings asking him (verse 15): Lord "make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble". Moses, the great law giver, is actually taking on the role of the prophet, pointing forwards to the one whose coming, whose death and resurrection will at last make this possible. And yet even he doesn't dare to ask what God intends for his people because, as we read from the words of Paul to the Christians in Corinth in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 17, his intention is that: "our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all". In other words God's grace, revealed and made available only through Christ Jesus, for the one who comes to him as did Moses, overturns the whole of God's judgement of wrath and replaces it with a declaration of acceptance, of forgiveness and of reconciliation with our creator and Lord both in the now and for eternity. Finally in our psalm Moses prays to the Lord about our work, about that which we seek to do and to build up as our legacy during the short days that are available to us. We sometimes hear it being said: "He, or she, died before their time". The implication being that that particular person still had much to do and to achieve. However that isn't how it is meant to be because, if as Moses prays, God shows his work to his servants, making them as it were co-workers with him, as was always his intention, then he is in effect behind, and in, all our work. And so it follows that only when we've finished all that he purposes for us, at whatever age that may be, will we finally be swept "away in the sleep of death" (back to verse 5) there to live with him for ever as his good and faithful servant. So then an understanding of God's dealings with the world in general and with his own chosen people in particular is the only way that we're going to be able to deal with and indeed profit from this latest apparent threat to humanity ... profit in terms of, through our experiences of it, growing closer to this same God. Sadly though there will be many who are like our rich young man who we read about in Mark's Gospel. Here he was filled with good intentions, wanting to do what was right, determined that by his sincere efforts he would achieve the reward of a blessed life. And yet he missed the point. Yes everybody who knew him would probably have said that he was a good man, that he deserved any reward that was going to be offered him for his continual good works ... that he was entitled to any amount of rounds of applause. But when he looked at the world and at what he might achieve his thoughts didn't go beyond his own abilities. In other words he didn't, like Moses in his psalm, start with an acknowledgement of God and of his Lordship. He didn't, recognising his own poor frailty and unworthiness of expecting anything from his creator, come with humility prepared to give up anything if he was asked by the one to whom he, like everyone else, owed his all. And so this young man walked away disappointed, not even having learned the truth and thought again because of his meeting with Jesus the only eternal Son of God. And you know the sad truth is that, for the many, Covid 19 and all that has happened and will continue to happen because of it will be in years to come just something to put behind them whilst they get on with the life which the virus so rudely interrupted. By which point no doubt the experts will have dissected all that took place, but only to lay the blame at the "right" doors. Whilst out with the Church, and even perhaps at times within the church, little will be said of our creators role in all of this, little or nothing will have been learned that could be called true wisdom. And yet, we hear that people are asking questions, that people are listening in to God's word being faithfully expounded who never would have done so before, whilst Christians are being asked their opinions about Covid 19 and what it all means. So let's like Moses continue praying for God's world and let's continue praying too that our Father in heaven will establish the work of our hands. Amen 1