Your Waves and Your Billows

 “Your Waves and Your Billows”

Second Sunday After Pentecost

Psalms 42 and 43

June 22, 2025

Burnt Hills United Methodist Church

Video From Livestream

Robert Alter's Translation of Psalms 42 and 43

As a deer yearns for streams of water,

so I yearn for You, O God.

My whole being thirsts for God,

for the living God.

When shall I come and see

the presence of God?

My tears became my bread day and night

as they said to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

These do I recall and pour out my heart:

when I would step in the procession,

when I would march to the house of God

with the sound of glad song of the celebrant throng.

How bent, my being, how you moan for me!

Hope in God, for yet will I acclaim Him

for His rescuing presence.

My God, my being is bent for my plight.

Therefore do I recall you from Jordan land,

from the Hermons and Mount Mizar.

Deep unto deep calls out

at the sound of Your channels.

All Your breakers and waves have surged over me.

By day the LORD ordains His kindness

and by night His song is with me—

prayer to the God of my Life.

I would say to the God my Rock,

“Why have You forgotten me?

Why in gloom do I go, hard-pressed by the foe?

With murder in my bones, my enemies revile me

when they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

How bent, my being, how you moan for me!

Hope in God, for yet will I acclaim Him,

His rescuing presence and my God.

Grant me justice, O God,

take up my case against a faithless nation,

from a man of deceit and wrong free me.

For You, O God, my stronghold,

why should You neglect me?

Why should I go in gloom, pressed by the foe?

Send forth Your light and Your truth.

It is they that will guide me.

They will bring me to Your holy mountain

and to Your dwelling place.

And let me come to God’s altar,

to God, my keenest joy.

And let me acclaim You with the lyre,

O God, my God.

How bent, my being, how you moan for me!

Hope in God, for yet I will acclaim Him,

His rescuing presence and my God.

Deep unto deep calls out at the sound of your channels. All your waves and your billows have surged over me.

There’s a weird quirk in our United Methodist way of doing church that drives many a church treasurer and finance committee member absolutely mad: ministry shares.

No one likes to think about ministry shares. No one likes to talk about ministry shares. No one likes to pay ministry shares.

Ministry shares, to be entirely too cynical, are kind of like a tax (but don’t tell anyone at Annual Conference I said that). Every local church is apportioned a dollar amount to send to the Annual Conference to fund connectional ministry. It has to do with statistical tables and Ezra reports and—basically, it’s why we should all be extra nice to Pastor Amy around February and March each year.

I won’t get too deep into the weeds—though, if this sort of thing really gets your juices going, you should absolutely talk to Amy or me about joining the Finance Committee. But suffice it to say: the general perception of ministry shares in our denomination is that they are, at best, a mild annoyance—and, at worst, an overbearing burden on the ministry of local churches.

In fact, as the Global Methodist Church was launching—that expression of Methodism that just couldn’t tolerate being in fellowship with people who don’t act, look, think, or love like they do—one of their big selling points was this: if you leave the UMC and join the GMC, your ministry share expenses will go way down.

Ministry shares are easy to dunk on.

I have a colleague—a seminary classmate—serving in the Michigan Annual Conference. Earlier this year, he made this graphic and posted it to Facebook. 

Absurd? Yes. But also weirdly resonant. Because whether the world feels like it’s on fire or underwater—take your pick—the temptation to despair or detach is real.

After all, what’s going on in the “world out there” isn’t just distant news. It’s deeply personal.

Yet another regime change war in the Middle East.

Ethnic cleansing in Congo and Gaza.

An ongoing war in Ukraine.

Economic and political instability at home.

A tax bill that will take food off plates and healthcare from our poorest neighbors to fund tax cuts for the richest.

But beyond all that—beyond the headlines and whatever is trending on Twitter any given day—are the quieter devastations:

Loss of employment.

Loss of health.

Loss of relationships.

Loss of life.

The sad reality of life is that we can never know what a day will bring.

And yet, the hope and the promise of our faith is that no matter how fierce the flames or how deep the floodwaters, we are not alone.

Through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, you have been given to me, and I have been given to you, and we have been given to each other.

We are not alone.

And that’s a promise our psalmist knows all too well.

One of the things I absolutely love about the Psalms is that this ancient prayerbook has managed to preserve poetry and song that still speak deep truths across time. It covers the full breadth of human emotion—from our highest highs to our lowest lows and everything in between.

No matter what you're feeling—or not feeling—there’s a Psalm for that.

Dog died, wife left you, and your truck broke down? You better believe there’s a Psalm for that.

That’s where our psalmist is this morning: caught in the ache between what was, what is, and what could be.

They remember what it was like to rejoice—to be in the crowd, singing and dancing, celebrating with the community of faith. They remember the sound of the procession, the song of the celebrant throng, the joy of the festivals and feasts.

But now?

My tears became my bread day and night.

My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God.

Maybe some of us are there this morning.

Over the past seven months, we’ve moved through the whole sweep of the liturgical year—an annual rhythm that bids us prepare for Christ’s birth, celebrate his coming, see God’s glory shine in his life, walk with him to the cross, rejoice in his resurrection, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And now? Now the calendar tells us we’ve entered Ordinary Time.

Ordinary Time reminds us that, even after all we’ve just remembered and celebrated, the world hasn’t changed overnight. The problems we carried into Advent are still here on the other side of Pentecost.

The processions have ended.

But the ache remains.

And in this moment, the psalmist’s words meet us. They give voice to the dissonance we feel:

Why are you bent, my being? Why do you moan within me?

Deep unto deep calls out at the sound of your channels. All your waves and your billows have surged over me.

I’m coming up on the end of not just my first year of ministry here at Burnt Hills UMC, but my first year of appointed ministry as a pastor at all. And in the past year, you all have taught me more than a few important lessons about what it means to serve in pastoral ministry. Lessons like:

You can’t lead your people if you don’t love your people.

Never underestimate what a small but committed group of people can accomplish through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Always, always, always remember to take two days off each week.

Okay—I’m still working on that one. But one image in particular has stuck with me—one that came during one of those many after the meeting meetings. You know the ones.

Picture this:

It’s the middle of the night. Outside, a storm is raging. You head down to the basement and find water everywhere. Ankle-deep.

The sump pump you’d been meaning to fix? Still broken.

One of the windows? Open.

Cracks in the foundation? Leaking.

The storm outside is still going strong.

What do you fix first?

Do you start bailing water?

Do you close the window?

Do you patch the wall?

Do you fix the sump pump?

Where do you even begin?

It would be easy to stand here and say that this is what pastoring a local church can feel like. 

But honestly, I think I've come to realize that’s just what discipleship feels like. Discipleship requires us to be aware of all of the urgent needs and overlapping crises plaguing our social order.

Some are like the storm outside: totally beyond our control, yet actively flooding in. Others are the result of deferred maintenance. Things we meant to get to but didn’t. 

If it feels overwhelming, that’s ok—it is overwhelming.

It’s easy to give in to despair.

It’s easy to retreat.

It’s easy to wonder if hope is just…naive.

But we can’t afford that. Not now.

Hope may not always be rewarded—but, as author and YouTuber John Green reminds us, hope is always justified.

Hope may not always be rewarded, but hope is always justified.

Even amid the ache, the psalmist speaks of God’s steadfastness:

By day, You ordain Your kindness.

By night, Your song is with me.

That steadfast love shows up when we step outside ourselves and toward one another. When we choose community. When we choose to share ministry.

Listen, I’ll be the first to admit: our global connectional system isn’t perfect. And yes, ministry shares are easy to dunk on. Even still, I believe that they are one of the most tangible ways we live out our refusal to face the flood alone.

I’m a United Methodist because I believe our connectional polity proclaims this truth: that while none of us is perfect, we are more perfect together than we could ever be apart.

That no individual—pastor or layperson, congregation or Conference—can do even a fraction of what we can do together when united in mission and ministry.

That’s why, when you give one dollar to the Burnt Hills UMC Ministry Plan, thirteen cents go to ministry shared with United Methodists across town and around the world.

It’s deeper than institutional support.

It’s missional solidarity.

It’s why, when a storm or war devastates a community, United Methodists are often the first on the ground and the last to leave, offering relief and waging peace.

It’s why people around the world are able to afford transformative education.

It’s why multinational corporations—concerned only with their bottom line—are forced to engage in ethical governance because United Methodist shareholders insist on it.

Being part of a connectional church means choosing to roll up our sleeves and fight the flood together.

It means choosing to be living water for the many—too many—outside these walls who yearn for it.

It means choosing to be bread for the many—too many—whose only food is their tears.

It means choosing to be refuge and relief for one another, for our neighbors, and for the world.

It won’t magically fix the sump pump.

But it means we’re not bailing out the water alone.

That’s what ordinary time reminds us of. For the past seven months, our rhythms of worship have reminded us that we are the enfleshed and incarnate and crucified and risen and poured out body of Christ.

Ordinary time says, “hey, now go live like it”.

There will still be tension.

There will still be heartache.

There will still be strife.

The waves and billows will still surge.

But in spite of that, the psalmist still chooses hope over fear and praise over despair, and we can do the same.

Because it’s easy to dunk on hope. It’s easy to turn inward and retreat into ourselves. Despair is easy. 

Stubborn, ordinary faithfulness? Braving the storm to reach out and embrace our neighbors? Choosing missional solidarity? That’s what we’re called to do as Christians.

There will be waves and there will be billows. But they are God’s waves, and God is not done with us, friends.

Not done with this church. And not done with this world.

May the one who began a good work be faithful to complete it in us.

The work continues. Amen.