Category Archives: Psalms

A Sermon for Christmas Day

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Catskills“The hills are alive with the sound of music!”

Perhaps that’s not the song you came to church to hear today, but that’s what we just sang in the psalm together.  “Let the hills ring out with joy before the Lord.”

What is joy?  When do we experience joy in our daily lives?  Novelist Zadie Smith argues in a recent essay in the New York Review of Books that though we humans often experience pleasure—perhaps over a great tumbler of whiskey or a dog’s sweet companionship, joy is a much more rare and complicated emotion that is necessarily overwhelming and entangled with fear.  It is the sort of thing that we could not bear to experience often, but when we do, we laugh and cry and can’t catch our breath and whether or not the event or its results are sustained, our lives are forever different for having experienced it.

What a miracle happened on Christmas!  As we glimpse the enormity of this moment—just as when the shepherds saw the whole sky filled with bright angels—we burst forth with shouts of joy.  In this moment, a joyful song we’ve sung before doesn’t fit—we need a whole new way of communicating to try to express this new age of God’s rule.  This marvelous thing so unlike anything that’s happened before, we need a new song, a fresh account of God’s deliverance.  Even the past looks different now that we know that God is here, in this place.  Now.

There’s little else we can do with our joy but to sing, even the hills and seas are alive with the Promise that God fulfilled in becoming human on Christmas Day.  After centuries of oppression, exile, and dispersion, The Promise has come to fruition.  God has come to earth, he’s come into the middle of the mass of humanity and become human himself.  God has made himself as close to us as he possibly can.  It’s like how doctors treat pre-mature babies in the hospital—they’re administered skin-to-skin contact from their parents as if it was medicine.  Resting on their father’s chest, or feeling their mother’s hands on their back, is as powerful as any manufactured pharmaceutical we have devised.  God’s touch, his own hand and arm, as the psalm tells us, brought forth this miracle for our sake.  God came in Jesus to heal us.

God has made good on his Promise now—today—Christmas.  We are so precious to God that, given the choice to exist in peace and quiet and perfection for eternity, which, after Christmas morning with little kids, might sound pretty good, or to exist with and among humanity, he chose us.  God has chosen never to be except to be in relationship with us.

Joy isn’t the only thing we feel today, nor is it the only thing that Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and others at Jesus’ birth felt.  Just as they had questions about what life would mean and look like in light of this new reality, we do too.  God’s companionship is the only answer to all the questions.  Why can’t a brother and sister acknowledge the brokenness between them and reconcile on Christmas?  Why can’t parents and grandparents set aside their pride and stubbornness and entrust their son and grandson to God’s capable hands?  Why are children shot and spouses beaten and people starving?  Our only answer to evil is that despite its presence in the world, God’s presence is with us too, and God’s love is more powerful than brokenness and death and destruction.  The Promise God made to Abraham and to his descendants, the Israelites, is the same promise we can now claim as humans, because Jesus came as a human to save all people.  God gave us Jesus out of his love, and Jesus is the touch that allows us to survive.  He is the image of the invisible God.  Jesus is God-with-us.

This truth, this joy that is revealed to us in Christ’s birth, this is the steadfast love that God is showing us.  God has remembered his mercy and truth toward the house of Israel, he’s fulfilled his promise this morning.  We sing a new song because a new thing has happened—something incomparable to all other experiences we’ve ever had.  God reaches out and touches us.

To offer back to God our joy and thanksgiving at this marvelous gift, we gather together our harps, our trumpets, our organs, and pianos, and violins, and flutes.  But even with these and with our own voices, the effort is paltry in comparison to the new thing God has done.  Let us gather up the noise of the whole world—the roaring sea with its clapping waves and the ringing music of the mountains—all oriented to shout praise to God for this great gift he has given to humanity and to all creation.

Joy to the world!

The Blood of the Innocent

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“34 Your clothing is stained with the blood of the innocent and the poor,
though you didn’t catch them breaking into your houses!
35 And yet you say,
‘I have done nothing wrong.
Surely God isn’t angry with me!’
But now I will punish you severely
because you claim you have not sinned.”

(Jeremiah 2:34-35)

Where were your clothes made?  Who died to provide you with fashions to cover your body?  Whose blood is on the everyday comforts with which you surround yourself?

In the Psalms class this semester, we’ve been struggling with the sometimes-judgmental and sometimes-angry God we seem to be facing in those poem-prayers.  It’s been hard to face up to the fact that the living God is more than a comforting Teddy Bear.  Let us not try to castrate our God, the Almighty Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The first chapters of Jeremiah make clear that God’s wrath is on those who are unrepentant and who lie to themselves, saying they are righteous and faithful when they are full of rotting sin.  2:22, “Though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, says the Lord God.”  (RSV)  We live without intent and without reflection, we trample those who cannot pick themselves up, and we are culpable for our transgression.  It’s not pretty, but is it true.  Would we really even want to worship a God who wasn’t livid at this sort of treatment of the poor and downtrodden?

Despair & Dashing Babies Against the Rocks

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Two of the most infamous psalms in Scripture are 88 and 137, so it seemed like an especially brilliant idea to tackle them both in one go during the 35 minutes alloted for Sunday School (usually it’s more like 45 minutes, but the preacher went long…).  Here are a few notes from our class’ wonderings and wanderings:

Though these two prayers have no particular relation to each other, put together, they have something specific to teach; Psalms 88 & 137 take God seriously in a way that we are often unwilling to consider.  When a child is clearly upset but says, “No, nothing’s wrong!!” she’s distancing herself from you.  She won’t allow herself to be made well or to be changed.  Prayer, real talking to God in despair and in anger requires that you be ready for God to act, to transform you and the situation.  To share your sadness and anger with God, you must admit that you are sad and angry, and to admit that you aren’t in control and aren’t able to help yourself means you are humbling yourself.  It’s significant that in this depression and anger, these composers turn to God; they’re hurt and broken by the world, but they cling to God by continuing to offer prayers.

One woman said, “Whenever I want to pray about something that makes me angry or hurt or sad, I say to myself, ‘well, I should trust more.  I should not let this get me down–then I can pray about it.’  But the truth is that these psalms show us that we should approach God just where we are.”

Psalm 137

1 By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
3 For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

4 How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
6 Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.

7 Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down!
Down to its foundations!’
8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back
what you have done to us!
9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!

 This shocking ending is both negative (rare in the psalms) and gruesome.  It’s been composed after the fall of Jerusalem, during the Babylonian exile (v.1); the composer is ridiculed by his captors for his hope of restoration.  The first section (vs.1-3) narrates the scene, the second bit (vs. 4-6) pledges loyalty to Jerusalem, and in the last section (vs. 7-9) the psalmist details to God exactly what he thinks is an appropriate payback.  In the ancient world, it was a practical military policy (albeit an especially cruel and not-always-enforced one) to kill the babies and children of a people group in order to wipe out that nation’s existence and legacy.  Pharoah did it to the Hebrew people in Egypt, which is why Moses was hidden as a baby and sent to sail down the Nile.  The writer desires for all of the Babylonian culture, all its legacy and mark on the earth, to be wiped out.

Well, there’s no country called Babylon anymore, so maybe the psalmist got his wish.  I think there’s more to be mined here than that: looking at the psalm again and thinking about it from a perspective of “good guys” and “bad guys” or perhaps even “God’s people” and “the Evil one,” what is the Scripture saying to us?  We live now in the midst of evil, strangers in a strange land; this place is not our home.  We endure violence and struggle against our sin.  But someday, we will struggle no more, and we will endure no more evil; happy shall be the one who roots out the progeny of evil, killing off all hints of evil, burning away all darkness–rooting out its very babies, that it has no future.

Psalm 88

 A Song. A Psalm of the Korahites. To the leader: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.

1 O Lord, God of my salvation,
when, at night, I cry out in your presence,
2 let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry.

3 For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
I am like those who have no help,
5 like those forsaken among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
6 You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves.
Selah

8 You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a thing of horror to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9   my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call on you, O Lord;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the shades rise up to praise you?
Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?

13 But I, O Lord, cry out to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O Lord, why do you cast me off?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Wretched and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your dread assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
from all sides they close in on me.
18 You have caused friend and neighbour to shun me;
my companions are in darkness.

A pscyhologist was in the class and she observed, “This sounds like clinical depression.  The words that are used, the way it’s described–it’s practically textbook.”  She is exactly right; the psalmist wants to have hope, but can’t muster it.  There is nothing but darkness.  We have friends and loved ones who suffer depression, some of us have lost people to the illness.  Here in Scripture is preserved one experience of depression, perhaps to let us know that this may be a part of life on earth.  This sort of brokenness may not be solved on this side of Heaven.  We must admit that not all will be made well in advance of the end.  The psalmist reminds us of something very important in verses 10-12: “Do you work wonders for the dead?” he asks; “Is your steadfast love declared in the grave?” he challenges.  In Jesus Christ, and in the salvation God offers us through him, yes–God does work wonders for the dead; indeed, his steadfast love is declared exactly in the grave.  This does not provide a cure for depression, but we are given hope of healing, whether in this life, or the life to come.

Psalm 131 Mash Up

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20130925-095507.jpgHebrews 12:1-2 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” (NRSV)

Psalm 131 is a prayer, describing the thing we’re urged to do in this passage from Hebrews, “lay aside every weight.”  This psalm ought to be read, I think, as a plea to God for the truth of the words being uttered–it’s more prophecy than observation of present circumstances.

(1) O Lord, I am not proud, I have no haughty looks.

(2) I do not occupy myself with great matters, or with things that are too hard for me.

(3) But I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast; my soul is quieted within me.

(4) O Israel, wait upon the Lord, from this time forth for evermore.

(via the Book of Common Prayer)

Jesus came because our sin is too heavy for us, because He can and does carry it himself.  Our propensity to turn away from God is too great to overcome ourselves, we must, in humility, lay aside the weight of making our own salvation happen again and again.  All to Jesus I surrender.

Through that laying down, through truly letting go of trying to control or to work ourselves into righteousness, our souls become quiet, our souls and our selves thereby inhabit the place we’re made for–we’re rightly out of the driver’s seat, listening, and being quiet.  We’re being, or practicing being, the humans that we are.

We Gentile Christians are grafted into Israel because of Jesus’ sacrifice, and just as people have waited on God for centuries–thousands of years, even–our occupation is to wait upon the Lord.

A Psalm 131 Rewrite:

Lord, keep us from being proud, and from looking down our noses.

Help us to remember that You are God, You are almighty, and we only need to be servants.

Quiet our hearts before You, drown out voices of worry and despair; relax our frazzled minds into trust in You, let us feel your hands holding us up.

Throughout all time, O Master, your servants have listened to your directions.  We now join with your witnesses from all time, waiting for Your coming again.

In the name of Your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.

Quotation of the Day

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Psalm 37 knocked me off my feet this morning.

“do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.” – today’s memory verse (v.9b, BCP)

I’ve been reflecting on my worry-wort habits recently, and keep resolving to find some verse to refocus my mind when it wanders toward the worry-wasteland. the resolutions have fallen flat till now–I have a verse!  Therefore, today will be completely different (no, not really. today may be a little better, and tomorrow may be a little worse. we just keep trying, bringing our minds and spirits and intentions back again, and again, and again).