Have you ever been in a cave? I remember a time many years ago when I took my children on a cave tour in Arkansas. To be honest, I don’t remember exactly where it was. Before we embarked on the tour, we were warned by the guides to take our jackets with us. Indeed, it was quite chilly most of the time we were underground, which was over an hour. At one point, they told us to hold on to each other and the rail, as we entered a large, darkened room. But it was only when the guide turned on the lights that we saw, to our astonishment, that we were in a room of incredible beauty and massive size. In a word, it was breathtaking. And I never expected to encounter such wonder in the mysterious place where we found ourselves.
Have you ever felt you were in a cave, in a spiritual sense? Joseph Campbell once said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” The quote can sound charming when you are speaking in the language of myth and metaphor. But when you are “living in the cave”, the spiritual place where you cannot see your hand in front of your face and you are not sure if you are going to make it, it’s a different matter. The urgent needs to breathe and survive can overwhelm the longing for beauty and the desire for inner peace. For us, the cave might be charged by grief, or guilt, or oppression or depression, but spiritual cave travelers can all dread the loss of light and the fear that the walls will start closing in.
The singer in Psalm 130 begins the song with the passionate prayer, “Out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord.” The psalm has become the source of many songs of mourning, and has come to be called “De Profundis”, meaning, “out of the depths”. In the psalm, however, the singer moves from this broken place to a quest for forgiveness, and then to a place of waiting and trusting. By praying the prayer from the deep place, a sense of profound trust emerges. “With the Lord, there is steadfast love, and great power to redeem.”
The sermon on Sunday is titled, “The Grace of Bottoming Out”, and arises from Psalm 130. In the service, our Sanctuary Singers will be back live in the worship service. We’ll have a children’s moment, prayers and hymns. We hope you join us, either in person or on the live stream.
If you have been part of the St. Mark’s community for decades, or will be joining us for the first time, we look forward to connecting with you in person, if you have registered on Eventbrite, or on the live stream at 10:30am this Sunday.