All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

There will never be a time when you will find yourself in a place outside the presence of God or in a place so removed from him that your prayers cannot reach him. The story of the Bible, from the first pages of the Old Testament to the last pages of the New Testament, is the story of how God has come to make his home among us and to constantly welcome us as his honored guests at his banquet table. (Have the congregation read the 23rd Psalm out loud).

Again, you will never find yourself outside the presence of God because, as the Psalmist celebrated centuries ago, “If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there" (Psalm 139:8, NASB). Even if you chose hell as your final destination, the first person you are likely to meet is the God from whom you’ve been running and who has relentlessly been seeking to bring you home since you were born. You are, we are, none of us, as far from the home of God as we may sometimes feel.

I nearly went home this summer, about the middle of July. The most amazing thing I discovered was how quick the trip would have been, how close home is every moment, literally, no more than one step away. When people ask me what I remember or what I learned from my near death experience this summer, that is something like what I try to say. My liver doctor told me that this kind of viral infection is so rare that mine was the only case he’s ever personally worked. He’d observed others; but, all of those people had just died. I nearly went home.

In all honesty, I didn’t know enough to be scared. I spent most of the time I was sick in some state of unconsciousness, snatching only brief glimpses of the world from which a nasty virus was trying its best to remove me. All of my life, I have used the text we have read this morning, the 23rd Psalm, to comfort others when their time to leave this earthly home came. Or, I used it to comfort those they left behind. It’s one of the few scriptures I’ve read more over open graves than from behind a pulpit. I have no idea how many times I’ve read about, preached about, the “valley of the shadow of death,” as others went through it. It wasn’t until this past July that I took a trip into the shadows myself. Some have asked what I learned in my brief sojourn into the valley of the shadow. This is what I learned. We are never outside the presence of Christ, no matter where we are. Though some claim to see visions of Christ, or angels, or God himself, in near death experiences, I had none of those. What I did experience, more powerfully than ever in my life, is how we are all the presence of Christ to each other. In good times and bad. In times of joy and health and new birth we become the smiles and hugs and laughter of God as we share life’s new beginnings with each other. In times of loss and sickness and even death, again, our tears become the tears of God, our strong arms holding each other up become the arms of Christ for others who cannot bear up under the load. We are the presence of Christ to each other. In sadness and joy, we are all part of Christ’s body and therefore Christ’s presence to each other. (Read 1 Corinthians 12:7, 25-27).

What this wonderful promise means is that those of us who are followers of Jesus are more than what we physically appear to be. We are just as solidly an expression of the very body of Christ in this world. In sadness and joy, we are all the presence of Christ to each other, reminding each other of our true home, a home from which we are never far, no matter where we may find ourselves.

When you would come to visit me and Nancy in the hospital or when I was lying at home recovering, you, Cliff Temple, became the presence of Christ to us. Every time you walked into our line of sight and we heard your voice or one of your cards came in the mail or your food was delivered or the phone rang, we sensed Christ’s presence beyond just what made itself evident through your physical presence.

I would be remiss this morning if I didn’t take the time to say something about Nancy, my wife. She was truly the presence of Christ to me in all of these days. She was an angel of God. She told me the truth. She held me. She nursed me. She held my hand. She went above and beyond the call of the marital vows, “in sickness and health,” to express a depth of love I had never experienced before.

You have to be at least forty or older to appreciate what I will say next. But, I told Nancy that because of what she had done, especially while I was in the hospital, she had earned all of her G.A. steps in one month, all the way to Queen with Scepter. Nancy, and you, Cliff Temple, were the presence of Christ to me.

Think about how wonderful that truth is. We are the presence of the living Christ in this community and in this world. Everywhere we go, we take his healing, loving, forgiving presence with us, chasing away the loneliness and isolation sin has brought into this world. We should never, ever forget what an awesome gift we’ve been given, as the church, as the body of Christ.

In my sojourn into the valley of the shadow, I also found something else. I found the peace of God waiting on me, a peace that truly passed all understanding and a peace that brought with it a deep and abiding hope. The Psalm we’ve read this morning promises us that when we finally make our turn off of the road we thought we’d finish traveling into the valley of the shadow, we will find God himself, in the valley, waiting on us, to walk with us even there. That’s why, though we may face it, we don’t have to fear any evil. Even in death’s shadow, we will not be without the presence of eternal God.

It’s always interesting what comes your way just when you need it most. While I was recovering, the story Mother Teresa’s private letters was broken. In these letters, letters she had asked be destroyed after her death that were published instead, she recalled very clearly the call of God on her life to minister to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. However, she also confessed that, for the last half century of her life, her faithfulness to that call was lived out without so much as one reassurance of the presence of God with her. Faith, even faith in the presence of God, was trusting beyond what she could know and see. It always is.

For Mother Teresa it would seem that faith came IN the questions, not in the answers to them. We stop growing in our faith when we stop grappling with the questions. On the cross, Jesus asked God why he’d been forsaken and that question is still hanging unanswered twenty centuries later. We have not been called to follow, in Jesus, an answer man. We have been called to follow a journeyman. Whatever questions you may have about God are the gateway to God for you on that journey. That’s why the 23rd Psalm is such a cornerstone of hope. It gives us reassurance that, even when life’s ultimate question about how to die is posed to us, we will not have to answer it alone. Indeed, there is a sense in which, sometimes, others have to do our believing for us.

The first solid memory I have after nearly three weeks of unconsciousness is that of Nancy standing over me, just inches from my face, smiling. Through what hazy vision I had, I saw her bright eyes and I heard her say these words, “You’re going to be OK.” They had just learned the good news I could not yet grasp.

As time went by, I thought about those words on more than one occasion. “You’re going to be OK,” she said. You know what? She was right. That’s because hope is not knowing that everything is going to be OK. Hope is knowing that you are going to be OK even if everything isn’t OK. Do you believe that? I do. I believe it now more than ever. But, sometimes, we need others to believe that for us until we can come back to believing it ourselves.

Which brings me to the third thing I learned, perhaps more powerfully than any, during this sojourn. The power of prayer is beyond our capacity to understand. We are promised this in James 5:16 (Read James 5:16).

Sometimes, it is so easy to get lax about our prayer lives. Or, to even become cynical about prayer. We too easily say to others, “I will pray for you,” and then fail to do so. Please let me share what I experienced on the receiving end of prayer. When I was the sickest I could be. When no one knew whether I would live or die, on Wednesday, July 11, you gathered, some 200 of you, in the Fellowship Hall. You prayed for Jerry and for me. The next morning the doctors were going to have to make a decision about whether I needed a liver transplant or not. Up until then, all the medical tests kept giving darker and darker reports. Until you prayed. On Thursday morning, July 12, the morning after you prayed, for the first time the tests showed marked improvement. No matter how cynical one might be about the power of prayer, at least to me, it is impossible not to connect those two dots. You prayed. God healed. Your prayers saved my life.

Is there something troubling you, frightening you this morning? Are you worried about something? Maybe it has to do with your finances or your health or a member of your family. Maybe you’re worried about a child or a grandchild. Whatever it is, have you just stopped to pray about it? Would you take a moment to do that right now?

Every moment we spend worrying about something, carrying the past with us into tomorrow, fretting over this or that is one more moment we rob ourselves of the only life we have left. When we rob ourselves of life’s precious moments, no one, not even God, can restore those days to us. They are simply gone.

You see, dying is easy. I was just going along one day, making plans for tomorrows of which I had no assurance. It was as if I stepped off of a curb and was hit by a bus and it was over. I couldn’t believe how fragile life truly is. Dying is easy. It’s anticipating death that destroys most living we were meant to do. Will Rogers offers a little help. He said that both death and taxes are certain, but the difference is that death does not get worse every time Congress meets. Will helps a little. God’s will gives us hope. The will of God is the promise of his presence, his peace in our hearts and the power of prayer to sustain us.

It is the will of God to make his home among us, through his presence, his peace and prayer. The Psalmist knew it. God came in Christ to live among us. When Christ ascended to heaven he promised the Holy Spirit would come, the paraclete, the one “called to walk alongside us.” Even in the last pages of the New Testament we have this promise. (Read Revelation 21:1-3).

Because God, in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, has come to make his home with us it is not like God far and away removed. He is with us now, in this very room, in this very moment. The home of God is never, ever as far away as we think.

Do you remember the words of the old gospel hymn? “Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling. Calling for you and for me. See on the portals he’s waiting and watching. Watching for you and for me. Come home. Come home. Ye who are weary come home. Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling. Calling, o sinner, come home,” (Softly and Tenderly, Will L. Thompson, 1880).

You remember the words, don’t you? They are the invitation that has held for centuries. You and I are invited into the home of God. What will we do with that?