Transcript
It was a Sunday morning, April 12th, 2026, about this time, I was sitting right there. You might remember where you were too. Richmond’s First Baptist Church had just finished its worship service.
Our senior pastor, Jim Somerville, had turned to addressing some church announcements, and then he said he had some personal news. I braced myself. It was as feared.
Jim shared that he was retiring. After nearly 20 years leading Richmond’s First Baptist Church, he had decided that it was his time to go. I sat in the pew and let the news hit me.
Jim continued saying something about 40 years and a sense of completion, but I was distracted by the conflicting emotions beginning to bubble up. Glimmers of pride, celebration for Jim, sadness, loss for us, a tinge of worry, but then I had to go pick up my three children from worship care, all ages five and under, and I knew I had to put this on the shelf. It would take some time to process later.
That afternoon, I texted with some church friends. Are you okay? How did it hit you? Were you surprised? There was a consensus of sadness, some shared hopes, some fears. That morning, I had bypassed the receiving line on my way to the nursery.
I tried to give Jim a big smile, or was it a sad face? Some kind of bittersweet, happy-eyed, dramatic frown. I’m sure it translated as a perfect, mixed-up grimace. Caught somewhere in between those conflicting emotions, I went on, looking forward to the chance to say a word to Jim another time.
That night, I tried to unpack my experience with my wife, Kristen, and I cried. It surprised me a little. Why was I having such a strong reaction to Jim’s news? We had only joined the church in the last three years.
I think there was something about the way the church had become home in that time that made it feel especially painful. For it to enter upheaval so soon. You see, Kristen and I, and then two kids, first experienced First Baptist as neighbors.
Jim was a big part of that. We first observed and then were drawn in by the way the church was embodying Christ’s love right here in the neighborhood. At one of our earliest touch points, it was Jim volunteering in the nursery on a Sunday night.
He was there to hold our baby and play with her so that some tired new parents could receive the simple gift of a dinner and conversation with other adults. There’s something special about the character of this church community that welcomed us as we were. And when you experience something special like that, it’s unnerving when it’s faced with change.
I share my reaction, not because I think there’s anything unique about my experience, but because I strongly suspect that I’m not alone. Change is hard. The unknown is scary.
Losing a trusted and beloved leader is sad to say the least. And when we engage with all of that at once, we can find ourselves emotionally and spiritually raw, vulnerable even, and I won’t be the only one to shed a tear. I got my chance to speak to Jim just three days later at a Wednesday night supper.
As I walked into Flaming Hall, there he was right in front of me eating dinner. And about the same time that I saw him, he looked up and he saw me and called me over. Before I could even acknowledge his retirement, Jim surprised me.
He asked me to preach. Some of you might be as surprised about that as I was. When Jim told me it would be a series on our favorite psalms, I thought that may be just what we need in this season of transition.
He later titled the series Good Psalms for Hard Times, and it turns out that is quite fitting for this season and our psalm today. Psalm 126 is the prayer of the people of God for a time when things are hard, for times when you’re starting over, the future is anything but assured, for times of weeping. And yet despite the hardship, there remains work to be done.
You know the feeling. Perhaps you’ve lost a loved one and barely had time for that to sink in before you had to start coordinating with funeral homes, banks, pastors, lawyers, siblings. Perhaps you’ve been crushed by losing a great job and yet had to log on to work on your resume.
Perhaps the election didn’t go the way you wanted, but you still long to make a difference in your community. Perhaps your pastor has announced his retirement, but your ministries must continue as scheduled. This psalm resonates with me because of its poetry and imagery.
It talks about going to work, planting seeds through tears, and one day, when those tears have dried and the hurt has become a distant ache, finding that those seeds have turned into an abundant harvest, that what began with a bag of seeds and tears can turn into a bounty, carried in joy. Psalms isn’t just poetry though, it is that, but it is so much more. It presents a model of how we should worship and pray.
One of my seminary professors, John Golden Gay, sometimes refers to the psalms as 150 examples of how to talk to God. Even the psalm’s internal structure of five books mirrors the Torah, signaling it is to be a foundational text for the people of God. And the psalms were used corporately in Israel’s worship.
That is perfect for a church going through hard times. We can pray the psalms together. Looking at Psalm 126, there’s a lot we can learn and practice together in this season.
It’s a psalm of collective protest, a cry of the Israelites for God to save them from their troubles. Like other psalms of protest, there are clear movements within it. Psalm 126 moves through remembrance of what God has done in the past, petition for what the people need, and confidence in God’s answer.
Beginning with remembrance, these first three verses drip with imagery. The psalmist recalls how God has intervened on Israel’s behalf before. When the Lord restored our fortunes, it was incredible.
We were like those who dreamed. Not only did we laugh, but our mouths were filled with laughter. Not only did we sing, our tongues were filled with songs of joy.
And when a people experience God’s goodness like that so tangibly, how could others not notice? Then it was said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. And so Israel’s thanksgiving and celebration of God’s deliverance became a testament, a witness to God’s goodness, that God does great things for his people. Now, here is something I love about this psalm.
I do not know what it is about. I have no idea. Biblical scholars don’t either.
That’s part of what makes it beautiful. The psalm could refer to a return from exile in Babylon, God’s deliverance from Assyria during King Hezekiah’s reign, or be a prophetic dream of future restoration from exile. Like all great art, all art that endures and speaks through the generations, it’s ripe for reinterpretation, reimagination, it can speak to anyone in any hard season.
In our own context, facing the uncertainty of pastoral transition and hoping for God’s provision, remembering our past will do us a lot of good. When I moved to the area 10 years ago, it was to work at a local church. I was an eager seminary student, wrapping up my studies through Fuller, fresh off a time on the foreign mission field, New England.
And I was ready to put to work my learning. Sometimes it went well, and sometimes it was a learning opportunity. It was in one of those times that I heard whisperings of an old Virginia saying, come here.
Have y’all heard that label before? That’s come here, as in the opposite of someone who’s a from here. As I experienced it, there was a bite to that label, a subtle exclusion, but I wanna put a positive twist on it. Being a come here has its advantages, fresh perspective, beginner’s mindset, freedom to ask why, and being a from here has great advantages too.
There’s long memory, there’s tight-knit community, there’s experience. So here’s my reframe. We need each other.
We do, deeply. Three years into belonging at Richmond’s First Baptist, I’m still finding out all the time that someone grew up in this church, that someone is related to someone else, and piecing together the rich network and history of this congregation. It’s a treasure that not every church has.
Now is the time for the from heres to step up and pull their weight, share the stories of God’s provision, build the lore of God’s work in this place. Psalm 126 starts out with remembering, and that’s where we should start too. Richmond’s First Baptist has done pastoral transition before.
In fact, judging by the fact that it has only had 16 pastors in nearly 250 years, the church is really good at it. So, show of hands, and I wanna see them high. Who was here the last time when Jim Somerville was called in 2008? What about the transition before that, when Jim Flamming was called in 1983? Quite a few.
Now, of course, I did not have the privilege of being here then, so I spent some time talking to someone who was on the last search committee. He recalled that after months and months of ups and downs searching for a new pastor, God brought them Jim in a very unexpected way. While Jim ticked a lot of the boxes the church was looking for, great experience, solid education, an exceptional preacher, Jim was the right person for the job in ways they could never have foreseen.
As I was told, who could have foreseen the racial reckoning that our nation and city would go through following the murder of George Floyd? And yet, God brought us Jim, whose childhood was marred by the KKK targeting his family in response to his father’s ministry. Who could have foreseen that the generations-old monuments in front of our church would come down? And yet, God brought us Jim, who had a deep heart for equity and a gift for challenging people to think critically about what God is doing in the world around us. There are so many other stories of God’s provision for Richmond’s first Baptist through the years.
If you remember them, if your hand was up, start sharing them. If you don’t, start asking. Like the ancient Israelites behind Psalm 126, we can take heart in God’s past provision.
The second movement in Psalm 126 is that of petition. This is the big ask, the reason the Israelites would have all raised their prayer in the first place. It says, restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev.
That’s it. Don’t blink, you might miss it. After spending three verses going on about what God has done, what it meant to them, how it stirred the nations, we get a single verse asking God to act.
It might as well simply say, do it again, God, and leave it there. Isn’t this different from how we pray today? It’s easy for us to fall into the trap of treating prayer as nothing more than a list of requests for God to intervene. God, give me strength.
Jesus, heal my back. Lord, show me your will for my life. And that’s just getting my kids down the stairs for breakfast.
But the Psalms teach us a different way. In this Psalm, the whole point of which is to ask for God’s intervention, the Psalmist does not go on and on about what God should do or how God should do it. Why? The Psalms presuppose that God already knows.
In that committed relationship of covenant between God and his people, God knows intimately what we need far better than we do. To take just one example, excuse me, and it’s not unique to Psalm 126. A one-verse petition is a feature you will see over and over again in these Psalms of protest.
Now, that’s not very far off from the prayer of indifference Jim has been asking us to pray in the midst of our transition. You know the one. Lord, make me indifferent to anything other than your will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.
In other words, Lord, we trust you to know what we need and who we need better than we do. The Psalmist does not shy away from making a request. Lord, restore our fortunes.
But she leaves it to God to work out what to do. Instead, the Psalm prioritizes celebrating God’s past provision. And as we see next, expressing trust and confidence that God will do it again.
The final movement begins with what scholars identify as a proverb, an expression of wisdom about how God works in the world. Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.
How awesome that the people of God can claim that as a promise of wisdom. And it’s well-founded. Throughout scripture, we see that our tears move God to act, that they are precious to God.
To take just one example, in the fullness of God revealed in Jesus, we see divine empathy moved to action. When Mary and Martha wept for Lazarus’s death, Jesus joined them in tears and then raised Lazarus back to life. When I got the chance to speak to Jim at that Wednesday night supper, after he announced his retirement, and after he asked me to preach, I told him, congratulations on his decision.
What an exciting new chapter for him to look forward to. I thanked him for his leadership. And then I said, Jim, I’ve gotta tell you though, I’m sad.
And he looked at me thoughtfully and he said, that’s okay. And he’s right. It’s okay to cry.
Psalm 126 reminds us, still there is work to be done. Though it is a time for tears, it is also a time for sowing seeds. So it goes here.
We bear seeds of the kingdom of heaven to scatter. Ministry continues at Richmond’s First Baptist. We continue to support partners in ministry like Reestablish Richmond, packing welcome and resource bags for refugee families.
Volunteers in our Compassion Ministry continue to roll up their sleeves to provide food, clean clothes, and make showers available to our neighbors in need. Next week, we’ll open our doors to hundreds of kids in Vacation Bible School. And even now, our youth are on their way to their first mission trip.
Every day, members of our congregation and staff will continue to look for ways to make our city just a little bit more like the kingdom of God. And all the while, Jim’s retirement date gets a little closer and our loss a little more real. We must sow seeds of the kingdom of heaven through tears.
But the wisdom of Psalm 126 assures us that come harvest time, God will provide again. And we will return with songs of joy. Would you pray this Psalm with me? Although we are weeping, Lord, help us keep sowing the seeds of your kingdom for the day you will reap them.
Amen.
