Student preacher: Andrew Thompson (March 17, 2019)

 Psalm 143 

¹Hear my prayer, O Lord; give ear to my supplications in your faithfulness; answer me in your righteousness.

²Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.

³For the enemy has pursued me, crushing my life to the ground, making me sit in darkness like those long dead.

⁴Therefore my spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled.

⁵I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands.

⁶I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. 

⁷Answer me quickly, O Lord; my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me, or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.

⁸Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

⁹Save me, O Lord, from my enemies; I have fled to you for refuge.

¹⁰Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Let your good spirit lead me on a level path.

¹¹For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life. In your righteousness bring me out of trouble.

¹²In your steadfast love cut off my enemies, and destroy all my adversaries, for I am your servant.

            Good morning! Peace be with you all! My name if you do not know me is Andrew Thompson, thank you for having me here to speak and preach this fine Sunday morning.

            First, a little background information about myself. I am not originally from the Eau Claire area. As a matter of fact, when I first toured UW-Eau Claire back in my junior in high school that was my first time ever stepping foot in Eau Claire. I grew up in a small town called Rosendale, near the Fond du Lac/Oshkosh area of the state.

            As some of you know, I am in my senior year here at UW Eau Claire. I am a Music Education major, and will be student teaching in the fall. Music is a very important aspect of my  spiritual connection with God, and I feel super honored and privileged that I am allowed to share it with you and worship God  with it every single Sunday from my little corner over there (Andrew is our pianist). 

            Now that I am almost halfway through my second  to last semester of education here in Eau Claire, it has crossed my mind more and more frequently lately how grateful I am to have found a home here both at University Lutheran Church and through the Lutheran Student Association. While the classes, friends, and experiences I have had here have changed and shifted in the past three and a half years, the community here has always been a constant in my life. No matter what kind of week I am having, I always have looked forward to the fellowship and love I feel through the worship, food,  and friendship I have gotten to participate in.

            In the time of transition and change that the crazy college years provide, having ULC as a constant has provided a foundation to keep me spiritually grounded and further deepen my faith. This constant presence is, in my mind, what God is for us in our lives. Through the Holy Spirit, God’s relationship with us is one that is ever present. There may be times where it becomes difficult, as we live in an imperfect world which unfortunately has much injustice and pain. However, we have faith in the knowledge that it is ok to acknowledge this pain. Rather than having to pretend that everything is hunky-dory and put on our “Midwest” nice faces that Pastor Lori mentioned last week, God wants us to discuss our pain.

            A good relationship is one in which all facets, good or bad, are communicated. Communication I believe is something that ultimately in any relationship can lead to either the greatest growing moments, or the most disconnect. Just recently, my roommate Anthony Windau read an entire book on the topic of communication called The Lost Art of Listening. In it, the author Michael P. Nichols discusses a tough issue in communication that much of this disconnect can be traced to, which is unwillingness of or the lack of knowledge of how to be a listener. 

            As a matter of fact, this complex idea of listening is, as Nichols puts it, a source of nourishment. Nichols says, “...like any living thing, human beings require nourishment not only to grow up strong, but also to maintain their strength and vitality. Listening nourishes our sense of worth.”  Isn’t this true? When I heard this for the first time, it really struck me. I think that when we hear the word nourishment, we think of physical nourishment such as water, food, the coffee that we look forward to after worship, and anything that we need to satisfy us physically.

            However, I believe very strongly that this sort of listening is just as equally important as these other needs. When individuals actually truly actively listen to each other and put each other in each other’s shoes, true growth and experiences are shared to lead to deeper understanding.

            This is all well and good when discussing human relationships, but what about in regard to our connection with God?  In the end, how should our relationship with God work?

            Well, despite our flawed and often human understandings of things, I confidently can tell you all this: God is the ultimate listener. No matter what is going on in our lives, how trivial, how seeming insignificant it is, God wants to hear all that is going on in our lives. In order to truly be nourished and to grow stronger, God is always there to listen to and hear what is on our hearts. If this listening can help human relationships grow, just imagine the ramifications of what this deepened connection with the Creator of the entire universe could mean.

            The author of the Psalm that we heard today certainly seemed to understand this. Instead of holding in the pain and obvious suffering that the author was going through, instead the author directly takes this and redirects it into a conversation with God. It is quite beautiful, the amount that the author of this passage longs to have this communication as in verse 6 the author states:

            “I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land”

            Clearly whatever pain the writer must have been going through had eaten down at them to the inner core. It takes a lot of courage to not hide what is truly going on inside and be vulnerable in a manner like this.

            This certainly is not an easy task though, is it? I know that especially in my own life, I certainly have a hard time following these words. I often, to say it again, get caught up on being “Midwest” nice and do not want to trouble other people or God with my troubles. However, if I hadn’t opened up, I do not believe I would have such bonds with others and ultimately God that I have now.

            One example of this for me that will always stick with me will be a particular evening I had in my  sophomore year of college. Throughout the entirety of the first semester that year, I had a growing sense of unease and discontent with the coursework that I was doing. Despite getting the homework done, going to class, getting the practice time in, I still felt as if I was struggling. Whenever I would get done with my classes, instead of sticking around and socializing with the other people in my major,  I would catch myself wistfully looking forward to the moment I could leave the building. I may have been doing ok academically, but more and more I was having the sense of feeling like, to use the old adage, a square being pounded into a round whole. The route of my major and what I was studying did not feel like me.

            All of these feelings and uncertainties continued to build and build. I would try to connect and talk with my classmates, but the conversations and interests that I tried to share with them did not seem to carry much weight or share any sort of focus with them. I could not share with them the thing that was central and the most important in my life. What was this, you may ask? My faith.

            Finally, by the evening of a fateful Saturday evening in February  of 2017, I had reached my breaking point. I can still remember quite clearly the feelings I was having. I was sitting on this beat up, cheap futon that we had in our dorm room. I had just gotten back from a retreat that weekend, so I was attempting to work on homework. Suddenly, in the middle of the small talk I was having with my roommate, it began to spill out. This time though, instead of bottling it up like I always had done, I did it. I let it all out, every little detail. With emotions running high, I informed my roommate that I was not happy with what I was doing. What followed was one of the best examples of this “listening” I have been talking about I have seen in my entire life. He didn’t ask too many questions, didn’t interrupt. Instead, he kindly and encouragingly allowed me to tell all of my fears and struggles, and through his amazingly strong faith helped me in a way share it with God as well.

            The words at the end of this Psalm in verses 11 and 12 I believe really carry my sentiment I had in and since this moment:

“For your name’s sake, O LORD, preserve my life. In your righteousness bring me out of trouble. In your steadfast love cut off my enemies and destroy all my adversaries, for I am your servant.”

            By getting it out and expressing my feelings, my life since that evening has grown and developed in ways that I would have had no idea would at the time. Just as the writer in the Psalm says, I feel as if I in a way was calling out to God. The enemies, which were in my case my own self-doubt and fear, were what I was finally getting out to God.

            As you can hear in the story I have just shared, this pure, unfiltered dialogue with God is something that is not easy. It is something that as humans we struggle with even between each other, let alone when we try to discuss with God. But, there’s a detail with this I have not shared with you yet, and this is it: God comes to us!

            Yes! Despite our flaws, our lack of listening, our barriers and awful communication that we have, God over and over comes to us in ways that we see and sometimes not see. Despite our best attempts, we know as imperfect people that in the end, we do fail. It is literally impossible for us to constantly on our own be in this direct communication that we crave. But, thanks to this little thing called, you know, the Holy Spirit, God comes and meets us where we are at and is ready to listen to us every single tiny millisecond of every day.

            Soon, as we continue to progress through this season of Lent, we will get to again hear the ultimate way that God came to us first, through the death and resurrection of His son Jesus Christ. This promise of constant commitment and reaching out to us is something that we can cling to and take comfort in every moment of our every day lives.

             While we may not be perfect in our communication, God is, and loves every single imperfect one of us. God is always listening. Let’s talk with God right now! Please bow your heads in prayer  Amen.

Andrew Thompson serves as Vice President of LSA, on the Worship team, and as Sunday morning accompanist for ULC. He continues to discern a growing call to ordained ministry in the ELCA.