Somehow those words mean more to me today than they did a week ago. They get right to … well, right to the heart of the matter, don’t you know?!

Some of you know that last Monday morning I visited a cardiologist after suffering chest pains while out running this summer. I had tried to run through them. Bad idea. I was prepared for a stress test. Had my gym bag and sneakers. Doctor said that wouldn’t be necessary. No time to waste. By 3:00 that afternoon I was on a table in the cath lab at Baylor having an arteriogram. 90 percent blockage in my left anterior descending artery—the one they call “the widowmaker.” An hour later, it was all clear, with a coated stent to keep it open for good. And here I am preaching today. Medicine is a miracle we call science!

My mother-in-law observed that I have had electrical problems with my heart and now plumbing problems. She warned me that sewage is next! Some of you have seized on the point that my last heart trouble was just after coming back from sabbatical five years ago. Now this, right after another one. No more sabbaticals, you say. I understand the concern, but I do wish to point out that the trouble only started when I came back! Lawanna [McIver Fields] e-mailed her sympathy and recalled how she had “been there” with Bruce when he was pastor of Wilshire. I told her that he was my hero, but this was taking the mentor thing a little far. By the way, I am just fine. I need to do a little more of this and that, and a little less of one thing or another. Your love and care have put the heart back in me. I am truly grateful. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Now, let’s make a deal. There are probably 300 other people in this church that have the same condition, and others struggle with worse health or financial or relational problems. Let’s pass some of that concern around. Okay?

I was talking about this ordeal to my friend, Bill Carl, pastor of First Presbyterian downtown. Told him I was mystified a bit by this because I didn’t think I was a candidate. He said it reminds him of how differently Baptists and Presbyterians see things—the latter being keen on the doctrine of predestination, which means that whatever happens is already divinely planned to happen, and we have no control over it. The Baptist says, What did I do to deserve that? The Presbyterian shakes it off and says, Whew, I’m glad that’s over!

I suppose my attitude is somewhere in between. I don’t think I deserved it, but then I don’t deserve the love of my family and friends, either. And I don’t think God was waiting for the foreordained plan to kick in and kick me in the keister. But it does raise some good questions that our psalm providentially raises as well. What are we supposed to say when things go badly for us? What are we supposed to say when things go well? How much do we attribute fortune to chance, fate, or providence? It’s not easy to say. When you get up off the table with a new lease on life like I did this week, is it wrong to exclaim with the psalmist, If it had not been the Lord who was on my side … I wouldn’t have made it?

No, it’s not wrong … in one way. It is a rightful and faithful thing to shout at the top of your lungs. If the only speech we are permitted about God comes out sounding like a performance review where we make sure we include with the good things all those things that need improvement, then we may be completely accurate and totally ungrateful. Our prayers and praises would die the death of a thousand qualifications. When you love someone and gush all over yourself to tell her how wonderful she is, are you saying too much? Is it just a line? Not at all. When your child draws a picture and you say it is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, are you denying Rembrandt his due? No, you are using poetic language that is by its very nature one-sided. Which is exactly what the psalmist is doing. This is poetry, not prose. This comes from love, not logic.

If I were only to thank our parish nurse and my doctors, or even my lucky stars, and not thank God for coming through the this little heart episode, since other people have not been so lucky and I don’t want it to seem like God has chosen sides with me and against them, well, what am I left with? I am left with nothing but human explanations or steely fate for everything that happens. It is good and right to thank God for whatever ways God has been for us in our lives that have led to health and welfare. The problem comes when we declare ahead of time God’s favor upon ourselves and don’t care that doing so might seem to deny it to others. We will have never lived long enough to prove that so. Providence is always best proclaimed in hindsight, not presumed upon in foresight. That’s why when people ask me if I believe in predestination, I tell them I am more comfortable claiming post-destination! Let’s wait until we arrive at the destination.

Israel chanted this psalm as pilgrims made their way up to Jerusalem for festivals. As they were marching to Zion along dusty and rocky roads, they would remember how God had been faithful to them. They recalled things of yore, like how when they were in Egypt and their enemy Pharaoh was against them, oppressing them with hard labor, God delivered them through the waters of the Red Sea. What possible rational explanation would work to suffice for that miracle except that God was on their side against powers of cruelty and injustice? They sang of the providence of God in retrospect—post-destinationally, so to speak.

Providence comes from the same word, of course, as provide. The idea is that there is a kind and generous power in the invisible world that sees our needs and provides for them even when we cannot. But does that mean that God takes sides? Does it mean that when some people are well fed and others are not, that that is a sign God favors one people over another by siding with them instead of others? Some people think that if they are prosperous and others not, it must be God’s will that it be that way. They thank the Lord for being on their side and assume it is the way the universe is put together, whether they deserve it or not. If they think they deserve it, it must be because the world works on karma—the law of reward and punishment. They are the good ones. So if others are hungry or have misfortune, then it must be because they have done something to deserve their fate. They are the bad ones. And some of you in this room today think that very thing, one way or the other.

The Jewish and Christian vision of God that we get from the Bible will not permit that. The whole point of the gospel is that we all live on a daily diet of grace. You didn’t deserve to be born, and you don’t deserve to be born again. You didn’t earn life, and you don’t earn eternal life. We cannot blame all the bad things or good things of life on fate or human behavior, and we cannot claim they are all God’s special favor or disfavor. The rain falls on the just and unjust alike, Jesus said. To choose sides for God is the sin of presumption—claiming to know too much about the ways of God.

We are chronically guilty of this, though. During the 11th century crusading knights went to the Holy Land to fight the infidels. That was when Muslims were the infidels. Now some fanatical Muslims call Christians infidels. Now as then, each uses God to support their bloody efforts. The crusaders even took the fabric of priestly robes and sewed crosses on their own cloaks to show they were killing in the name of Christ. The word crusader comes from the Latin for cross. So, under the banner of the Christ who willingly died for others and refused to take up the sword against his enemies, the church did just the opposite—claiming to know that we were acting in a godly and righteous cause. And we are still paying for that wrongheaded idea that God was on our side against Muslims.

Jewish settlers in Gaza this week have been resisting the pullout from their homes that was ordered by the Israeli government. Most all of them are fundamentalist Jews who believe they are God’s chosen and special people. God gave them that land, and God will defend them against the Palestinians. Many believe they have divine sanction to kill the enemies of the people of God, because God takes the side of Israel no matter what. And the same nonsense drives extremist Palestinians to blow themselves up in order to kill more Jews. They would rather drive the Jews into the sea than see them live at peace in their land.

Last week some Christians in America staged what they called Justice Sunday II in many churches. They demonize judges as enemies of God if they interpret the Constitution in ways these Christians do not agree with. They call them liberal activist judges, but they readily admit that they do not want judges who will interpret the Constitution strictly if they think the law is not conservative enough. Well, you can’t have it both ways without saying that God is really on your side no matter what.

And how is that different from the way Christians in Germany during World War II thought of Hitler? They believed he was God’s chosen one to make Germany a truly Christian nation. They gave him the powers to rid the country of all evildoers, believing that all God was waiting for before blessing them was a sign of their true loyalty to the moral code of Christianity. Don’t forget the slogan German soldiers had embossed on the belt buckles of their uniforms: Gott mit Uns—God with us. Well, if God was with them, then how could God have been with the Allies, too”

Abraham Lincoln epitomized the wisest approach possible during the Civil War. He refused to claim that God was on the side of the North alone, even if he believed it held the moral high ground in the struggle. In his second inaugural address, he said of the two sides: Both read the same Bible, and both pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. … The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.

Lincoln trusted in the goodness and fairness of God. He knew that God is no respecter of persons and shows no partiality. The judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether, he would say, quoting Scripture. But he refused to claim too much knowledge of God.

This humility would serve us well today. Both the secular left and the religious right in this country act as if they know that God is taking their side in the struggle against evil. They are certain that their cause is God’s cause and God’s cause their cause. We could do with a bit less certainty about the will of God, save for God’s desire to save. Those of us who live under the banner of Christ must trust in God’s wise and hidden ways without claiming to know those ways at every turn. After all, the Christ we worship died on a cross trusting that providence. He believed that God could be for him AND his enemies at the same time.

Does God take sides? Yes. God sides with God’s people, in order to side with the whole world and not against it. Does God take sides in human struggles? Yes, God sides with those who seek to do right rightly, not for themselves alone but for their neighbor, too. Can we ever claim that God takes our side completely? Remember the old gospel song …  [sing] Farther along we’ll know all about it, farther along we’ll understand why. In the meantime, Cheer up my brother, live in the sunlight; we’ll understand it all by and by.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, the God of us ALL.