Good morning, everybody. It is good to be with you this morning. As Dan mentioned, my name is Matt Royston. I know many of you. Many of you, I don’t know. In any case, my wife Holly and I have been part of this Bethany community now for about close to 10 years. When we were married in 1999, we lived in the apartment right across the street. And after living there for about half a year a growing interest and wondering about this place brought us in the door one Sunday morning.

At that time, I was working as an operations manager in the business environment – in the business world – and Holly was working downtown in a law firm. A number of years later when we started getting the sense that maybe God was calling us to pursue a different line of vocation – the pastoral ministry – this community here at Bethany walked alongside us in many ways during that discernment process.

Today you currently journey with us as we’re now in a new season of life. I’m currently a 2 nd year seminary student here in Seattle. Holly works with Dianne Ross here in our wonderful children’s department. We have two additions to our family since those times, two wonderful kids. We have been graciously blessed by this congregation. And it’s in that light that it is an honor to be able to talk with you this morning.

Well, if you were to get to know either Holly and I over coffee or lunch or something like that, one thing that you would probably quickly come to realize is that for us the state of Montana has a particularly significant role in the story of who we are. Holly’s family moved there when she was in high school. I went there, I moved out there from Pittsburgh, in order to attend college. We met while attending the University of Montana. We both grew in relationship and in faith in significant ways during our time there.

Today, Holly’s family still lives in Montana, which means that we have the chance to get back there quite regularly – a couple times every year. It is a place for our children where they get to be with their beloved Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Fred, along with cousins, aunts, uncles, friends. When we’re there, we feel at home. With the people we know. The beauty of the mountains. And just a general pace of life lived differently. These are all things we truly cherish. Montana has a significant place in the story of who we are.

Now to get to Missoula, Montana from here, you have to drive east for about 8 hours. Before we had kids, we would often leave right after work on a Friday afternoon, we’d drive hard through the night, and plan on arriving around 2 or 3 in the morning. Setting out on this journey, we were usually quite excited…a lot of anticipation for what we were about to do. This excitement would motivate us and help us on our way – that is, at least for a little while.

Inevitably the sun would set and we would still be in eastern Washington. We still had a long ways to go and weariness would start to set in. If you’ve driven east on I-90 you know that eventually, eventually, the flat of central Washington starts to turn into rolling hills, and ultimately you end in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho. From Spokane east, you go up. You go up through Post Falls, up through Couer d’Alene, up through the mining towns and silver valley of Idaho. And just before you leave that state you go up Lookout Pass. Cresting this significant mountain pass, you see a wonderful sign. It’s a wonderful blue sign that says, “Welcome to Montana. The Blue Sky State.”

Now I’m not exactly sure when it began for us sometime during our first year of making that voyage east, when we saw that big blue sign around midnight on one particularly weary drive, we realized that the simple fact that we were now in Montana gave us a new excitement, a new energy. A new sense of the fact that we were on our way. We were almost there.

In a moment of inspiration, we spiritedly rolled down the windows, let the fresh mountain air fill the car. And loudly and horribly off-key, we sang the official state song of Montana. And I am going to tell you the words. I was going to have my kids come join me and do that, but they decided they’d rather be at Sunday School. And you’re going to want to pay attention, because these are profound words. Here they are:

Montana, Montana, glory of the west
Of all the states from coast to coast
You’re easily the best.

Montana, Montana, where skies are always blue
M.O.N.T.A.N.A.
Montana, we love you.

Now that sounds nice, doesn’t it? Especially after this week of the weather. But since then, we have sung that song every time we hit Lookout Pass. Though hokey and at least slightly pretentious, this song has become a traveling song for us. It reminds us of who we are. It reminds us of a significant aspect of our lives. And on a long journey, it keeps us going.

Do you have a song that is meaningful to you? Perhaps it’s a lullaby that a parent sang to you that you were young? Maybe a wedding song? Maybe a hymn or a praise song, something that we sing here regularly? Something that’s been with you throughout the years.

Well, the Israelites did. Our text for today is actually one of their traveling songs. The psalms from 120 ending with 134 – these are a collection of psalms called the Songs of Ascent. You actually see that tag over each of those 15 psalms.

These 15 psalms were likely sung by Hebrew pilgrims as they traveled to Jerusalem for the 3 great worship festivals held there each year. Three times every year: At Passover in the spring, Pentecost in the early summer, And the Feast of Tabernacles in the Fall. The Israelites would leave their home communities and they would go to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is a significant place for these people. It’s a significant part of their history and it was important for them to return there. It reminded them of who they were and it helped them establish a sense of belonging. And as they traveled, they sang these songs of ascent – probably one after another. And to really understand this picture, you need to understand that Jerusalem is a high place. Topographically it’s the highest city in all of Palestine. So perhaps a little like going to Montana, in order to go to Jerusalem you have to go up. The Israelites were ascending to Jerusalem.

This picture of the Israelites traveling reminds us of our life of faith as a journey. It’s a theme throughout the psalms. You’ll remember 2 weeks ago when Dan preached on Psalm 84, the psalmist was on a journey. He was riding from the Valley of Baca, literally the valley of tears, but he was moving through it. He was on his way somewhere - perhaps literally, but certainly spiritually.

Dan also reminded us, and Tara sang, of Psalm 23. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” The Hebrews were people on a faith journey, and so are we.

So as we read Psalm 130 today, I want to remind you that in this series on the psalms, we are learning to pray by praying. And since these psalms of ascent were songs that people sang together on their way to Jerusalem. I’m actually going to invite you to read the passage out loud with me. It’s a short 8 verses. (It’s on page 536.) If it’s helpful to you, perhaps you can imagine that we are literally walking together down a dusty road as a community on our way to a great feast.

Reading: Psalm 130

Well, Psalm 130 is a psalm that in itself has movement. The writer is on a journey, coming from a place of despair to a place of hope. The writer starts out with the phrase, “out of the depths I’ve cried to you.” This term depths seems to be playing on a metaphorical theme that runs throughout the Bible regarding the ocean, regarding the sea. We’ve talked about it here before. And essentially in Hebrew literature, often confusion, chaos, brokenness - the things that people see in their lives that they know aren’t whole / aren’t together – this is often described as a vast ocean.

Back in Genesis 1, scripture will tell us that when God created the heavens and the earth darkness covered the face of the deep and the wind of God swept over the face of the waters. In Exodus, the Israelites were delivered out of Egypt through the waters of the sea. We see the picture again when Jesus calms the seas that threaten both him and his disciples.

And in the book of Revelation it tells us that in the new heaven and the new earth, the sea is no more. The sense that in the end the chaos that encompasses and pervades our lives will finally be overcome. But until this finality, we have depths in our lives, and it is out of a place like this that the psalmist prays his words to God.

Now we don’t know exactly who wrote the psalm, so we’re not able to identify exactly what the depths are that were being referred to. But surely we can relate. To be human is to suffer, often, and we know that.

Since this psalm is to be prayed by God’s community, though, I think we can safely imagine the depths of our own lives when we pray this psalm. We can imagine the situations that are going on around us. For instance, the petitions that we all prayed earlier this morning. We can imagine these when we pray this psalm.

And since it’s a community prayer, we can imagine the situations of our community … the situations of our world … as we pray this psalm. Out of the depths of my own life, my job, my family, my illness, and out of the depths in which our community lives, our schools, our neighborhoods, our political, our economic situations.

I think we do well to see what the psalmist does with these depths. And we do well to see what they’re not doing with them.

In presenting to God the depths of our lives, they’re being confessed. They’re being admitted. We’re owning up to them and we’re not hiding them, we’re not concealing them. And maybe, as many of us are prone to be doing, we’re not ignoring them either.

So these situations are presented to God and a cry for help comes as well. And the next thing that happens are two verses of the psalmist reminding God of who God is. “You are the one, O God, who could mark iniquities. But you don’t. You are the one in whom there is forgiveness.” And we remember that in reminding God of who God is, we also remember for ourselves. God has been present. God has delivered. God has chosen us, and drawn us near to Him.

So we confess, we have confessed, we live among chaos. We’ve lifted that up to God. We remember who God is and what He has done in our lives. And so now what do we do? Well, what does the psalmist do? The psalmist waits. And we ask the question, “Will God answer?” Will God respond? And if He does, how would we even know?

Verse 5 – “I wait for the Lord. My soul waits. And in His word do I hope.”

It was interesting to me as I lived in this psalm over the last week that the movement of this passage is from despair to hope. And I wondered, why hope? Yes, it does seem like the logical opposite of the term despair. But aren’t we people who like to see completion? Don’t we need closure? I’m personally not too sure I’m comfortable leaving things at the term hope. It still leaves the door open for disappointment, doesn’t it?

I hope I do well on my test tomorrow.

I hope that the marketing proposal goes well on Wednesday.

I had hoped that the Huskies would have shot the basketball a little bit better yesterday.

But as we found out, that doesn’t mean that it will happen.

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to see a little more solid closing than this. I want to see the final score – the team winning after the clock hits zero. I want to see the happily ever after that only comes with finality.

Well, that may be what I’d like. But hope is where this author arrives. So perhaps that means, then, that we need to think about what he is hoping in. And in doing that, we remember and we realize that this hope is not like wishing on a star or keeping our fingers crossed. It’s not like hoping that our team makes it to the next round of the tournament.

The difference is that this is a hope we place not in ourselves or the people around us. It is a hope in the Lord. A hope in the God who has shown Himself to us before. A hope that all of the chaos and confusion that pervades our lives, our current situations. All of these things will one day be resolved, put right, redeemed and made whole, as God has said it will happen. It is a hope that comes from putting our faith and our trust in God, who out of His love has created us and is redeeming us.

Well, verse 5 seems to be the turning point of our psalm. If the movement is from despair to hope, and here is the hope, then it appears that the catalyst of this movement is waiting. And this is tough. Because we’re not good “waiters”, are we? We’re “do-ers”. We accomplish tasks. We put check marks next to our “to do” list. This call to wait feels too passive. It’s too inactive. There’s not enough doing here.

To that, the psalm presents a very interesting picture of waiting. It’s the picture of the watchman. The writer waits more than the watchman, the one who watches for the morning, waiting and watching.

Well, at least watching is kind of active. It kind of implies a sense of doing. A watchman isn’t actually affecting anything; they don’t have the ability to actually make anything happen. But it is active. It is something. The watchman is looking for something. Something meaningful. Something important.

For one night, I was a watchman. It was back during my senior year in college at the University of Montana. The college was putting on a concert. The music band Pearl Jam was coming to Missoula. They were going to be playing in the football stadium. And this show is a much bigger show than Missoula is used to having. So one of the things that they needed to do was that they needed to hire a bunch of extra people to come help them with security. And so I had the ability to do that. A friend of mine was the person hiring, so I jumped on board.

Well the day before the show, actually, the concert was being set up in the stadium. And the trucks rolled in and they brought the scaffolding and the stages, and the lights, and all of the things that turn an ordinary football stadium into a concert venue. The stage itself was put together. But since the stadium itself was not entirely secure – it was surrounded by a fence, but in theory you could climb over it – a bunch of us were hired for that night to stand around the fence and just stand there. Just be there and watch. And make sure nobody snuck in. And if they did, we really weren’t supposed to do anything other than maybe call the police. But we were only there to watch for them.

And this was overnight, too. I think my shift was from 11:00 pm until 7:00 am in the morning. I’m not a person who normally was used to that type of a shift. I know many of you are, but for me that was a challenging thing. It was very simple to explain. It was very simple understand for me. But it was one of the most difficult jobs I’ve actually ever had. I was tired. I was cold. It was dark. It was very quiet. It was very lonely. There was almost no movement of anything. And for 8 hours, I was there to watch.

It took significant effort to do that. And that’s the challenge of watching for a sustained period of time. And we need these reminders, like this psalm, in our lives to help us keep on task with that watching. These psalms are reminders to us on a long journey, during a long period of time; it’s a reminder of what our task is – to watch and to wait.

The psalmist in this psalm, what he’s talking about Henry Nouwen calls this the practice of active waiting. We’re waiting, but not in an idle sense. We’re waiting and looking for God at work. We’re looking for the Lord’s movement, with the knowledge that it will come. And the promise of this psalm is that waiting and watching will lead to hope.

So, what does waiting and watching look like for us? A few thoughts here.

As part of every service at Bethany (we did it this morning), we set a few moments aside right at the beginning, usually, to silently listen for God. That’s waiting and watching.

There are groups of you – groups of people – who gather together for the sake of praying over this church’s involvement in a variety of arenas: community issues, world issues, how we love our neighbor, how do we respond to the financial situation our world is in. That’s waiting and watching.

Friends gather together in their small groups and ask God for guidance in their lives. And together as a community, they discern how the Lord may be answering. Again, waiting and watching.

For my family, these years of seminary are a season of discernment. Of gaining skills and knowledge and experiences, yes. But also one of intentionally asking, “God, what is next for us?” And we wait and we watch for His response.

Friends, as Christians we are people of hope. We are people who live in the present while being assured of the future. We move through this season of Lent this way, before we get to the great celebration of Easter that ultimately awaits us. We remember Jesus’ own journey; his own journey to Jerusalem – one that will actually take him through this city and up another hill. And at the top he won’t see a blue “Welcome to Montana” sign, but instead a Roman cross.

Lent reminds us of our humanity and our brokenness. We have depths in our lives. But Psalm 130 reminds us that God is moving, God is at work, and in knowing this we wait. We wait more than those who watch for the morning. We wait more than those who watch for the morning.

Let’s pray.

Lord, in so many ways, you have shown yourself to us in our lives. We confess to you that the waiting and the watching for us can be hard. It can be difficult. So remind us, God, in new ways to be alert, to be looking for you, so we might see what you’re doing in our lives and in this world. Amen.