Christ Episcopal Church, Valdosta
The Last Word Is a Word of Hope” (Psalm 43)
November 5, 2017
Dave Johnson

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In 2005 Carrie Underwood won the singing competition television show American Idol.  She has gone on to sell nearly 70 million records.  She won two Grammy’s for her first hit, a song about turning to God when you are at the end of your rope:

She was driving last Friday on her way to Cincinnati
On a snow white Christmas Eve
Going home to see her mama and her daddy with the baby in the backseat
Fifty miles to go and she was running low on faith and gasoline
It’d been a long hard year

She had a lot on her mind and she didn’t pay attention
She was going way too fast
Before she knew it she was spinning on a thin black sheet of glass
She saw both their lives flash before her eyes
She didn’t even have time to cry
She was so scared
She threw her hands up in the air

Jesus, take the wheel
Take it from my hands ‘cause I can’t do this on my own
I’m letting go
So give me one more chance
And save me from this road I’m on
Jesus, take the wheel
(From “Jesus, Take the Wheel” on her 2005 album Some Hearts)

“Jesus, take the wheel”…that is an honest prayer.  There are times in your life when you have your hands on the steering wheel and you may or may not be asking God to bless you, and then there are times in your life when you need God to take the wheel, when you need God to save you from the road you’re on.

Have you ever seen the bumper sticker that reads “God Is My Copilot”?  That is a fine sentiment, but it falls short when you need God to be your pilot, period, when as Elton John sang many years ago, you need someone to “Take me to the pilot” (from his eponymous 1970 album).

Today’s appointed psalm, Psalm 43, is for those who like the character in Carrie Underwood’s song cannot make it on their own, for those “running low on faith and gasoline” who have had “a long hard year.”  The psalmist begins:

Give judgment for me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; deliver me from the deceitful and the wicked.  For you are the God of my strength; why have you put me from you?  And why do I go so heavily while the enemy oppresses me? (Psalm 43:1-2, The Book of Common Prayer 644).

Can you relate?  Have you ever suffered trouble caused by others, trouble from what the psalmist calls “the deceitful and the wicked” and felt like God was nowhere to be found?  What do you pray at that point?  “Jesus, take the wheel”—or as the psalmist put it:

Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling; that I may go to the altar of God, to the God of my joy and gladness; and on the harp I will give thanks to you, O God my God (43:3-4, BCP 644).

The psalmist, like the character in Carrie Underwood’s song needs to be saved from the road he is on and asks God to send his light and truth to lead him and bring him to God’s “holy hill,” to God’s dwelling.

Last summer while driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles my daughter Emily and I visited the Steinbeck Center in Salinas, a research center and museum devoted to the great writer John Steinbeck.  One of Steinbeck’s later writings is Travels with Charley in Search of America, which chronicles his three month road trip in the fall of 1960 from New England across the northern states to the West Coast, down through California and back across the southern United States all the way back to his home in New York City.

Steinbeck drove a green pickup truck he named Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse, and on the bed of his truck was a fully outfitted camper complete with a bed, writing table, refrigerator and stove.  For me, seeing Rocinante at the Steinbeck museum was the highlight of the visit.  For companionship on his journey Steinbeck brought along his French poodle named Charley.  He opens this book by describing the restlessness that lurks within many of us:

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.  When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.  In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job.  Nothing has worked (Penguin Classics edition 3).

Throughout Travels with Charley in Search of America Steinbeck recounts many adventures he and Charley experienced—the beautiful scenery, the interesting and unique people they encountered, the reflections about life that can only happen when you are on the road.  But at the end of his epic three month road trip with Charley, having literally driven across America, Steinbeck returns to New York City and the last thing you would ever expect happened to him, as he relates at the end of his book:

Suddenly I pulled to the curb in a no-parking area, cut my motor, and leaned back in the seat and laughed, and I couldn’t stop.  My hands and arms and shoulders were shaking with road jitters.

An old-fashioned cop with a fine red face and frosty blue eye leaned in toward me.  “What’s the matter with you, Mac, drunk?” he asked.

I said, “Officer, I’ve driven this thing all over the country—mountains, plains, deserts.  And now I’m back in my own town, where I live—and I’m lost.”

He grinned happily.  “Think nothing of it, Mac,” he said.  “I got lost in Brooklyn only Saturday.  Now where is it you were wanting to go?”

(Steinbeck concludes) And that’s how the traveler came home again (Penguin Classics edition 210).

In your life, like John Steinbeck, in spite of all the places you have been, even when you think you have arrived home, you can still get lost, and you can still find yourself in need of someone to save you from the road you’re on.  This tends to repeat itself from time to time over the course of your life.  But as you read through the Book of Psalms you will see that you are not alone in this, that there is a recurring pattern in the psalms of stress followed by hope—stress caused by the circumstances or people in the psalmist’s life followed by hope that comes from surrender to God, hope from asking Jesus to take the wheel.

This pattern occurs throughout Psalm 43, as we have already seen—stress (“deliver me from the deceitful and the wicked”) followed by hope (“For you are the God of my strength”)—stress (“why do I go so heavily while the enemy oppresses me?”) followed by hope (“Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling”).  This pattern occurs again the final two verses of this psalm:

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?  And why are you so disquieted within me?  Put your trust in God; for I will yet give thanks to him, who is the help of my countenance, and my God (Psalm 43:5-6, BCP 645).

Once again, stress (“Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?  And why are you so disquieted within me?”) is followed by hope (“Put your trust in God; for I will yet give thanks to him, who is the help of my countenance, and my God”).  No matter how great the stress, the last word is always a word of hope.

Back to the Carrie Underwood hit for a moment…what the character in the song thinks is the end of her life as her car is spinning out of control on the “thin black sheet of glass” turns out instead to be a moment of grace, a fresh start for her life:

It was still getting colder when she made it to the shoulder
And the car came to a stop
She cried when she saw that baby in the backseat sleeping like a rock
And for the first time in a long time she bowed her head to pray
She said, I’m sorry for the way I’ve been living my life
I know I’ve got to change
So from now on tonight

Jesus, take the wheel
Take it from my hands ‘cause I can’t do this on my own
I’m letting go
So give me one more chance
And save me from this road I’m on
Jesus, take the wheel

Think about your life for a moment.  Perhaps like the character in the song you have had “a long hard year” or you have realized in some area of your life that you can’t do this on your own, or you are “running low on faith and gasoline.”  Or perhaps like John Steinbeck when it comes to the restlessness in your heart, “nothing has worked”—and when you think you have arrived home you actually find yourself lost and “shaking with road jitters.”  Or perhaps like the psalmist you are stressed out because of circumstances or people in your life and you need God to send you light and truth, to lead you to God’s “holy hill.”  That is exactly where the gospel enters the picture, and the gospel is always a word of hope, always.

In his Son Jesus Christ, God sent light and truth—as Jesus himself said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

On Good Friday Jesus carried a cross up a different holy hill, Calvary, and as he suffered stress on the cross, stress beyond our imagination, Jesus quoted the Book of Psalms as he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1).  But stress was followed by hope as he also uttered from the Book of Psalms near his final breath, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Psalm 31:5).  Even for Jesus on the cross the last word was a word of hope.

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has already gone before you on the road you’re on in order to save you from the road you’re on.  Jesus has taken you to the Pilot.  This means that in the midst of your stress, you can echo the hope of the psalmist, “Put your trust in God; for I will yet give thanks to him, who is the help of my countenance, and my God.”

In other words, because the last word is a word of hope, you can ask Jesus to take the wheel…and rest assured that he will.

Amen.