Trusting the Stillness

Psalm 23

Lent 4A

Fondren Presbyterian Church

March 26, 2017

                                                  The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry    
        
           When I was seminary intern the pastor and associate pastor were out of town at the same time one week and I got the call that a member of our church had died quite suddenly.  She was a young woman and her family was in shock and asked that I come over to be with them and begin preparations for the funeral. 

I changed out of my grad school attire in to my good grey preacher suit and armed with my at that point unused Book of Worship set out to make my first pastoral call on the family of a deceased member.  Now in seminary they prepare you to plan an actual funeral service, but they leave out the part about what you should say when you get to the door.  When I reached the family’s home, I rang the doorbell not knowing what I would say when the door opened.  A few seconds later, the door opened and the husband of this young woman stood there in front of me, his eyes swollen and red, looking to me to be his pastor, and I froze.  I did not know what to say.  Then, without thinking I began to recite the 23^rd Psalm faster than it has ever been said before.

When I finished my breathless recitation of those ancient words, I returned to my frozen and mute posture.  A few seconds that seemed like an eternity transpired until the silence was broken by the laughter of the husband standing in the door.   He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I needed that.  Get in here.”

It is often said that familiarity breeds contempt, but I would wager to say that with a text like this it is more a matter of familiarity breeding numbness.  We hear the words so often and in such a familiar context that we relegate them in our minds.  We allow the circumstances of the world to dictate when we dust them off and bring them out. 

Ash Wednesday- Remember that you are dust

Easter- Early that morning, the women went to the tomb.

Weddings- Love is patient, love is kind

Funerals- The Lord is my Shepherd

In the scriptural Rolodex of our minds, we have particular words pinned to particular occasions and, in point of fact, that is ok.  It is probably a good idea to have some go to places in God’s word.  The trouble comes when we relegate those holy words to only those worldly moments. 

Perhaps that is why the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary chose to put this Psalm on this day.  What invitation might this give us to hearing and knowing these familiar words anew.

John Goldingay suggests that the first line of this psalm, rather than principally being a statement on about YHWH, is instead a claim the writer is making about himself; “My shepherd is YHWH.”[i]  Read not as a description of YHWH but of the confidence and faith the writer has in YHWH, the Psalm becomes about more than the occasion.  Notice the writer does not say, “My shepherd is YHWH when…”  It is instead a bold and unqualified statement of who and what YHWH is in the life of the writer.

The opening verses of the Psalm paint the kind of bucolic picture of the pastoral life of shepherds most in our contemporary culture imagine.  Let’s face it, the closest most of us will ever come to a shepherd is a fourth grader in dad’s bathrobe standing nervously on his mark during the Christmas play!  These opening words of the Psalm give us a picture of shepherding life that is peaceful, verdant, and safe, thanks to YHWH. 

The text moves into more sinister language as the description moves from the idyllic rolling meadows to the valley overshadowed by death.  Here it is the fierce comfort drawn from knowing that the shepherd will use his rod and his staff to keep danger and fear at bay.  It is notable that in this valley, the shadow of the LORD does not merely overshadow the shadow of death.  The shepherd is WITH the writer.  There is a sense of the very real nearness of God.

Finally the Psalm concludes by returning to the image of YHWH’s provision although now the scene includes the writer’s enemies.  Even when they seek to do him harm and surround him like in battle, the writer knows that YHWH is present.  Rather than being pursued by his enemies, it will be YHWH’s goodness and mercy that will follow him and YHWH’s temple and presence where he will make his home.

Rather than words that find purchase only in moments of death or need, this Psalm offers and outline of living a life in the nurturing presence of God.  In these words, the writer claims YHWH and declares that his life will be led as one of the sheepfold of God.

That is the first order power in these words; to enter into our living with words of confident care.  Even when the world is at its most profoundly sinister, my shepherd is the LORD.

In the German town of Dachau during WW2 there was a Nazi death camp.  It is a museum to the Holocaust now and in that museum is a picture.   It is a photograph of a mother and her daughter being marched to the gas chamber at Auschwitz.  There is nothing the mother can do to stop it, nothing she can do to prevent what will come when they come to the end of their short walk to the building ahead, so she does the only thing she can, the only act of love available to her; she puts her hand over her daughter’s eyes so she cannot see what is coming.[ii]

There is no way to know what that mother said to her daughter in that moment, but I chose to believe that she echoed the beautiful words of comfort we hear today, “my shepherd is the LORD.”  That though they walked through the deepest valley death has ever known, and stood face to face with an enemy so great as to stupefy the imagination, these powerful words of comfort and proclamation spoke through time and, in a mother’s had shielding the eyes of her child, declared to the world, this is not the end. 

I wonder if I would have the courage of that mother.  I wonder if, faced with the kind of darkness that loomed that day, I would have the presence of mind to make even the smallest gesture of faith to cover the eyes of a child.  I say I wonder if I would because like so many in our culture, I find myself being pulled in different directions by different shepherds.

We live in a time when there is a pervading sense that meaning has lost its meaning, that truth has become more difficult to hold on to than a soapy three year old who refuses to stay in the tub. 

We live lives suspended between the restlessness of our hearts that long for the God of our ancestors and the anxieties of a world that declares such things to be foolish remnants of a time gone by. 

We have become seduced by the complexity of our contemporary world and the layers of geo-political, military, economic, and religious tensions of our age.

We have become, in short, what Walker Percy called being “lost in the cosmos.”  

We need the courage of that mother facing unspeakable horror and we need the courage of the psalmist who, unwilling to stand by and passively be claimed by YHWH, speaks out and claims YHWH’s claiming.  In an uncertain world, we need something to hold on to, an anchor in the tumult, a port in the storm.

We need our Good Shepherd.

The psalmist knew that need.  He knew it and he knew that in YHWH he had it so he boldly claimed his claiming.

My shepherd is the LORD. 

In green pastures, my shepherd is the LORD.

Beside still waters, my shepherd is the LORD.

In the valley of the shadow of death, my shepherd is the LORD.

In the presence of my enemies, my shepherd is the LORD.

When the world is too much to bear, my shepherd is the LORD.

When the storm is raging all around me, my shepherd is the LORD.

Whether my cup is empty or full, my shepherd is the LORD.

Whatever else may seek to claim my life, or tempt me to change allegiance in this life, or seduce me to a more glamorous life, or promise me an easier life, my shepherd is now and always be the LORD.

He is my courage.

He is my strength.

He is my hope and my salvation.

My shepherd is the LORD.

In death AND in life- all of life – every day of life, my shepherd is the LORD.

Let us pray.

Gracious Christ, we are in your care.  Watch over us with the fierce loyalty and devotion of our Good Shepherd.  May we know in this and in every day the hope, love, and promise that comes to us from you, our shepherd.  Amen.

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[i] This insight is owed to Alastair Roberts’ April 20, 2015 essay on Psalm 23 titled “The Politics of the King’s Shepherd” published on www.politicaltheology.com

[ii] This observation, in slightly different form, was made by Tom Long in a sermon preached at the Festival of Homiletics in Washington D.C. May 2004.

Depths

Psalm 130

Lent 3A

Fondren Presbyterian Church

March 19, 2017

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            One of the great traditions in the church is setting the Psalms to music.  In fact, in Calvin’s church in Geneva the only music sung were the Psalms, though he did take some liberties! 

            Bach wrote one of the most beautiful settings of our reading today.  Known by its German title, “Aus Der Tiefen,” it is a cantata in five movements that seeks to capture something of the disturbing truth of this Psalm. 

            The music begins with just the oboe and bassoon accompanying the strings.  The music swells and recedes in a repetitive cycle that takes the listener to the brink yet never quite resolves.  Compounding this unresolved beginning, the meter of the piece alternates from ¾ to Common or 4/4 time leaving the listener in the midst of a swirling cloud of sound never offering balance, continuing to turn back on itself and refusing to move forward.  Listening to Bach’s composition, it is not difficult to imagine oneself rocking in the open waters of the ocean, bobbing in the waves, one after the other, with nothing in sight but more waves.  There is a sense of both loneliness and inescapability.

            Then, just as your ears are about to give up, the lone bass soloist intones those haunting words, “aus der tiefen” “out of the depths” followed by the lone tenor singing the same words.  And as you hear the two voices singing out of step each seeming to be oblivious to the other, you feel the depths- the loneliness- of the singers- of the writer- and get a glimpse of what kind of place this really is.

            It is a place of profound solitude.

            Psalm 130 is not about sadness. 

            It is not even about misery.

            It is about the crushing loneliness that comes when, even for an instant, we feel the profound absence of God.

            Aus der Tiefen,, out of the depths, I cry.

            It is a place familiar only to those of us who have ever drawn breath;  one of the few truly universal human experiences.

            This is a Psalm about those moments when the world’s trials and tribulations suck all the oxygen from the room and seek to bar hope from entering in.

            When I was about a year and a half out of seminary, I was called by the local funeral home and asked if I could help with a funeral for a family that had no church connection. The couple were from Romania, had grown up under Nicolai Ceausescu’s regime when religion was all but eradicated from daily life.  Consequently, when they arrived in Ann Arbor as graduate students with their two children and her mother, they had no church home.

            One January night, a faulty home heater started a fire and in an instant their excitement about starting a new adventure as a family became a depth greater than any parent or person should ever know.

            I met the family at the funeral home and as I waited on them to come in and as I stood by the two tiny coffins holding their 2 and 5 year old children, I remember thinking to myself, “They shouldn't have to make these so small.” 

            In that moment, those parents knew the kind of grief King David knew when he cried out to the heavens, “Absalom!  My son, Absalom!” pleading for some substitutionary intervention that would return his beloved son to him.

            As a pastor, I have the deeply mysterious honor to attend death.  Over my almost two decades in ministry, I have been at bedsides just before, just after and even at the moment of death for countless members of my various communities of faith.  I have seen death come as a thief in the night as it did for those parents in Ann Arbor and as a welcomed friend at the end of prolonged illness. 

            In those moments, platitudes die, textbooks wither, and the canned rhetoric of church work is useless.  In those moments when life and death intersect and our mortality is most vivid, all that is left is honest address to the maker and keeper of us all.

            When the illogic of our mortality and the frailty of the gift of life is most evident, the only place we can turn is to the wisdom of the ancient elders of the faith; to the ineffable words of those charged with voicing our common human cry from the depths and across time.

            There tossed about in the waters with loneliness and lament from every direction and no sign of help or rescue, the psalmist cries out his eternal words to God. 

            As so often happens in scripture and in our broader experience with God, there is embedded in this moment of personal and emotional desperation a kernel of great faithfulness.

            In these words of lament and pleading, there is a quiet beauty in this Psalm.  Not in the sadness or the desperate cry, but in the fact that even in his distress, the psalmist remains convinced of God’s goodness.  He is still convinced that God forgives rather than condemns.  That God is indeed the good God of the psalmist’s memory.

            In the moment when it is so tempting to lash out against God and cast blame on the LORD for failing to stop the calamity that left us in such a state or even worse blaming God for CAUSING the pain in life, the psalmist turns to God not in blame but in faith. 

            One of the most famous books on the subject of the human reality of the depths was written by Rabbi Harold Kushner.  Commonly misremembered as Why Bad Things Happen to Good People the actual title is When Bad Things Happen to Good People.  Kushner does not set out to explain the cause of bad things but to explore the character of God in those times when they happen. 

            In the end, Kushner comes to a similar conclusion as that of the psalmist.  Bad things happen because life and we are imperfect and in imperfection bad things happen and not because God somehow decided that we deserve calamity. 

            The psalmist knows the Lord well and knows that God does not keep score.

            Did you hear that, God does not keep score!

            Somehow the psalmist writing three millennia ago better understood the character of God better than many Christians today.

            After Katrina hit the coast, one of the most ludicrous assessments of the storm came from mega-church pastor John Hagee in San Antonio.  By his estimation the storm’s destructive power was caused because, “I believe New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.”  

            One commentator pointed out that most of the destruction happened in the 9^th ward and other parts of the city where the most vulnerable lived while Bourbon Street, home to all night parties and the wilder side of Mardi Gras, was mostly spared.  “If the point was to punish sinners,” the commentator said, “God needs to work on his aim.”

If you kept track of sins, Lord—
            my Lord, who would stand a chance?
But forgiveness is with you—
    that’s why you are honored.

The witness of this Psalm reveals the lie of Hagee’s theology; T

the lie of the theology of the God of the balance sheet;  

the lie of the theology of the God who executes punishment in this life for infractions to the rule book. 

the lie of the theology of a God who is anything but always and everywhere generous, loving, merciful, and good. 

Those false theologies are the story of a god other than the LORD of life consistently witnessed to throughout scripture; the forgiving and loving God eager to show mercy and slow to anger. 

It always strikes me as odd how often modern fundamentalist Christians, like Hagee, fundamentally misunderstand God.

Whatever befalls us in this life- threat to life and limb or capsized and tossed about spirits- God, the psalmist reminds us, is not behind it.[i] 

Here in these ancient words, we see the psalmist clinging to this truth of his forgiving God.

And it is here that the Psalm takes an amazing turn. 

That memory that describes the character of God in the midst of the psalmist’s reality begins to change his very understanding of his reality.  Up to this point, the psalmist has given no indication of expectation for God to act on his behalf.   To be sure, the psalmist is clear that God is not behind this calamity, but there is nothing to say that God is somehow on the way to rescue him.

Until verse 5.

At verse 5 the psalmist says simply, “I hope, Lord.”

“I hope, Lord.”

There tossed about in the sea of his own loneliness, the dangers and toils and snares all around and no indication in the text that help is at hand, the psalmist says matter-of-factly, “I hope, Lord.”

This hope is far from fingers crossed hoping for a good outcome. The psalmist likens it to the hope the night watch feels when the first rays of the sun are anticipated in the horizon.  Finishing the night watch meant one more night of peace in the city so the night watch waited with more than eager anticipation for the morning light.  In the rays of the sun resided their hope for the coming day.

That is the hope that fills the psalmist even in the midst of the depths.

It is a profound hope that defies the darkest deepest places to which our souls may sink. 

So how did we get from the “I cry” in verse 1 to the “I hope” of verse 5?

What could possibly have worked in the psalmist’s heart to usher in such a change even in the midst of his crying?

Nothing short of the steadfast love of God.

Israel, wait for the Lord!
    Because faithful love is with the Lord;
            because great redemption is with our God!
He is the one who will redeem Israel
            from all its sin.

            The basis of the psalmist’s hope is the steadfast love of God.  In Hebrew it is hesed, in Greek it is agape, in every tongue it is the transformative love of God that finds its way into every heart, every depth, every dark and lonely place to bring the light of Jesus Christ.

            By the end of the Psalm, the writer has gone from a lone voice crying out to God from the depths to a brother reminding Israel to hold onto hope in God.  He has gone from a lone voice in the wilderness to a voice for the nation’s hope.  And the thing that intervened; the thing that drew him from despair to hope was the steadfast love of God.  It alone is able to lift him up and out of the depths.

            By the fifth movement of Bach’s cantata as the text makes its way to the end of the Psalm, the deep tones of the winds give way to the liveliness of the harpsichord and the full chorus joins the lone bass voice from the start and as the same minor key from the first movement is transformed and redeemed to something new, what began as ominous and unresolved takes on a melodic beauty that draws hope even from the depths of despair.

            So it was for the psalmist.  In his darkest hour, the hope of God would not let him go.

            So may it be for we who encounter darkness and echoing loneliness.  My we each know that the hope of God will never let us go.  It does and it will sustain us in this and in every day.

            Let us pray.

            Ever-present ever-loving God, we cry out to you from the depths.  In each of our lives, there are deep places; places of profound sadness and loneliness.  And from those places we cry out to you.  We cry out knowing that our pleas fall not on deaf but on loving ears.  So indwell our hearts that we forever know the presence of your love and the eternity of your care.  Give us each the courage to reach out from our deep places and, in your name, reach out to one another.  For when we are together in your name, we are never alone.  You in the person of Christ and the power of the Spirit are with us now and always.  Amen.

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[i] In fact the whole book of Job is a demonstration of what the character of God is NOT, but that is another sermon for another day.

Cautious Confidence?

Psalm 121

Lent 2A

Fondren Presbyterian Church

March 12, 2017

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

Psalm 121 is one of a series known as the Psalms of Ascent.  Interpreting what that means exactly is tricky.  The Psalms present a unique challenge in the canon when it comes to dating or placing them in their historical context.  There are few if any internal cues that allow us to say, “this Psalm came from this time and place.”  There are also these enigmatic headings that categorize them without fully explaining what the categories really mean.
Does Psalm of Ascent mean it is a Psalm that references a high place or climbing to a high place as a means of communing with God?  There is ample biblical witness to the importance of high places and their role in both divine presence and human devotion.
Perhaps it means ascent to heaven.  Here too we have ample witness to the idea that heaven is somehow located in the heavens where God looks down with interest and devotion to creation.
There is no way to know exactly what these designations mean.
One persuasive case is made for an interpretation that captures several meanings for these Psalms.  This school of thought views the Psalms of Ascent as Psalms sung during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
What little internal evidence there is would seem to support this idea.  Psalm 120, the first Psalm of Ascent, is clearly written from a perspective outside Jerusalem and Psalm 122 is clearly written from an insider’s context of Jerusalem.  If we take those two at face value, Psalm 121 is likely a Psalm of the journey to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem itself was a high place.  Whether its relative elevation was greater than your home didn’t really matter.  The journey to Jerusalem was always up.  Like the old hymn says, “We’re marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful, Zion.  We’re marching upward to Zion, the beautiful city of God.”
And the pilgrimage to get to Jerusalem would lead the pilgrim past many high places.  The roads of the Ancient Near East most often followed valleys both for ease of travel and the probability of finding water.  So there were literal high places to encounter on the pilgrim journey to the metaphorical high place in God’s holy city.
Most of us are familiar with this particular Psalm of Ascent by its first lines and more particularly from the traditional King James translation of those lines.  “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.”  Rendering the psalmist’s words as a declaration, the King James translation begins the Psalm with a bold statement of personal faith.  I lift up my eyes to the hills because I know that my help comes from there.
Perhaps a more faithful rendering of the psalmist’s words would phrase that first verse like a question; “I lift my eyes to the hills.  From where will my help come?”
It is a question we have all asked in times of fear or uneasiness; in times when we feel threatened or lonely or adrift in our souls.
The psalmist poses this familiar question and then, in the next verse in fact, answers it.
“I lift my eyes to the hills.  From where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.”
Whatever the danger- physical, emotional, spiritual- our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.  There is no question to the psalmist that God is keeping a watchful eye over him and over us in body, mind, and spirit.
That is perhaps the most important thing we can take away from this Psalm.  God is watching over us even when we do not know it or see it or feel it, God is always fully even painfully aware of our lives and is always keeping a watchful eye over us.
“I lift my eyes to the hills.  From where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.”
“The hills” or the high places were not always encountered as the dwelling place of God.  Often the hills would hide dangers on the road.  Think about the story of the Good Samaritan who comes along to find a man beaten and robbed lying in a ditch.  Bandits and robbers lurked among the craggy rocks of “the hills.”
So when the Psalmist says, “I lift my eyes to the hills.” It is just as likely that the looking was done out of an abundance of caution as unquestioned devotion.
I doubt the man who was robbed and left for dead thought that the help that would come from the maker of heaven and earth would arrive in the person of the Samaritan.  As we know from countless sermons and storytellers, Samaritans were not known as good or very respected people.  Part of the miracle of that story is that the lowly Samaritan was the one to stop and help.
That is often how God works in our lives.  God looks out for us in unexpected ways and, in the case of the Good Samaritan, God’s watchfulness over the physical wellbeing of the traveller was found in the generous hands of a stranger.
“I lift my eyes to the hills.  From where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.”
Sometimes God’s watchfulness comes closer to home.
        In Jonathan Safron Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar Schell is a nine year old boy whose father has been killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack in the Twin Towers. Understandably, Oskar is deeply disturbed by that terrible loss.  So when he finds a key in his father’s closet, hidden in an envelope marked “Black,” he is more than interested.  He sets out to find the lock that the key will open, convinced that it will tell him something important about his dead father.
       So, all by himself, at nine years of age, he sets out to visit every “Black” in New York City. Consulting his telephone book and a map of the city, he goes out to meet total strangers in search of that lock.  As we read the book, we are worried for him, wondering how he can do such a thing all alone.  And we wonder with more than a little disgust where on earth his mother is in the whole thing.
       Finally, by a convoluted set of circumstances Oskar learns that it wasn’t his father’s key after all. It was simply a key hidden in a vase that Oskar’s father had bought at a rummage sale.  Angry that his search was in vain, Oskar destroys everything associated with his search.  But that’s when he discovered that his mother knew about his activities all the time.  In fact, she had contacted everyone in New York with the name Black, telling them what Oskar was doing.  All of them knew ahead of time that he was coming and, thus, gave him generally friendly receptions.
      She gave him the freedom to conduct his search alone, but she was watching over him all along by going ahead of him and setting up his appointments.  Oskar had to go alone to accomplish his mission, but she prepared the way so he was safe. (1)
“I lift my eyes to the hills.  From where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.”
      These stories of a man helped by a stranger in first century Palestine or a fictional tale of a young boy coming to terms with the loss of his father illustrate the careful watchfulness of God, but God’s work is not kept in the distant past or the pages of a novel.  We too lift our eyes to the hills and ask, “From where will my help come?”
      The psalmist answers that question in great detail.  After proclaiming that our help comes from the Lord, the psalmist elaborates and says:
“He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.
 The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
    nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time on and forevermore.”
      These words of multiple assurances remind us that as we set our feet on the pilgrim journey, whether the physical walk to Jerusalem or the spiritual walk to Golgotha, God will guide our feet and watch our every step.
      In a repeated cadence that drives home the point, the psalmist reminds us over and over again that we do not journey alone.  And who is with us?  None other than YHWH.  In fact the name YHWH is mentioned six times and the phrase “watch over” is mentioned five.  This is a song about God’s watchfulness.
      Years ago Bette Middler sang a song entitled, “From a Distance.”  The refrain of the song said, “God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us…from a distance.”
When we seek to bring this Psalm home and draw it’s bold assertions of God’s presence and care into our own lives, it is easy to fall into the trap of our modern skeptical age and say, “well if God is watching, she is watching from a distance.”
     There is something that feels a little intellectually dishonest or, heaven forbid, overly churchy to talk about God right here right now with me, but that is in fact what the psalmist claims for us.  Not that God watches from a distance but that God is right with us, close enough to guide our very feet.
Right here and right now that help comes and though we may be tempted to claim just the cautious confidence of our age, we are called today and every day to the bold confidence of the Psalmist.
      And when we do, when we do claim that bold understanding of the God who is watching over us right here and right now, we will know the hope and confidence in that old hymn “Why should I be discouraged, why should the shadows come, why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home; when Jesus is my portion? My constant Friend is he; his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.”
      Let us pray.
      God of watchfulness, make yourself known to us in this place.  Fill us with bold confidence in your promises so we too may know what it is to look to the hills and find our hope.  Amen.

1.This sermon illustration is taken from Stan Mast’s notes on this text included in the weekly lectionary notes from the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary for the week of March 12, 2017.