8/26/2019 - My Rock and My Redeemer - Psalm 19

My Rock and My Redeemer

Psalm 19    

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

August 26, 2018

The Bible is old, very old.  Sometimes I am more aware of that.  The family dramas in Genesis remind me.  Psalm 19 reminds me.  It is ancient poetry which classical musicians like Bach, Beethoven, Handel and Haydn set to music.  C.S. Lewis said “I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.”[1]

The first six verses are older than the rest.  They are a song of praise to God the Creator.  This section only uses the word “El” to refer to God.  El is a more generic name for God.  It can be used in reference to the God of Israel, but also more generally about any god.  This hymn, like many of the psalms, praises the God who creates and sustains creation.  This God is known, perhaps obliquely, in the beauty and order and rhythm of the cosmos.

Some of us resonate with that way of knowing God.  We might identify with the Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor.  After she left parish ministry, she and her husband found a place in country with oak trees and trillium and elderberry, persimmon and blackberry and milkweed and water.  She said, “ I found my place on earth.”  And she said, “I know plenty of people who find God most reliably in books, in buildings, and even in other people. I have found God in all of these places too, but the most reliable meeting place for me has always been the creation. I have always known where to go when my own flame was guttering. To lie with my back flat on the fragrant ground is to receive a transfusion of that same power that makes the green blade rise. To remember that I am dirt and to dirt I shall return is to be given my life back again. Where other people see acreage, timber and soil, and river frontage, I see God’s body. . . . The Creator does not live apart from creation . . . When I take a breath, God’s Holy Spirit enters me.” [2]

Some of us feel that way, but not all of us do.  Some of us would say that the creation only reveals a Creator to those who already believe or that seeing God’s glory in the on-going pattern of nature is an interpretation one chooses to make.

With that in mind, we might turn to the next section of the psalm, verses 7-11 which praises the Torah, God’s law.  Living by Torah is living life as God intended it.  Six times, this section uses the personal name for God, the name which was revealed to Moses just before the giving of the law.  What makes life possible is relatedness to God and that personal relationship is mediated by God’s instruction. 

Scholars believe that these two sections were each once independent units, a hymn to creation and a hymn to Torah, but someone put them together on purpose to make a statement.  In its current combined form, this psalm is not concerned merely with the Creator God; rather it expresses the conviction that God has broken through the silences of nature, disclosing God’s own name and speaking and acting in the historical experiences of the people of Israel.[3]  We might also add that God has come even closer in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but of course the psalm was written long before his time. 

And then there are the last few verses where the psalmist is concerned that he or she might unknowingly go against God’s instructions and asks for forgiveness.  The focus draws even closer, down to an individual life.    May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable.  The first section of the psalm speaks to me of wonder, and the second speaks of knowledge.  This last part seems to be about an interplay between the two, about the insights gained from observation and experience, about knowing my dependence on God, my ability to ignore or be unaware of my own faults, and my need for forgiveness. 

 “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”  What a great one-sentence prayer.   Some translations say “be pleasing in your sight.”  How would we evaluate what is acceptable or pleasing to God?  The psalmist would point to the 10 commandments, which remain a strong guide for healthy living.  We might think of the words of the prophet Micah, “God has shown you  O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  Or the words of Jesus, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” 

“My the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing.”  In so many ways, this psalm speaks to me of balance.  There is the balance between wondering and knowing, between the times when God seems utterly silent and the times when guidance is clear, the balance between what I say out loud and what I think internally, the balance of life which might be found in a purity of heart centered on one overriding purpose.  

E.B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little said, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.  This makes it hard to plan the day.” [4]  Yes. We live in God’s good world.   We also live in God’s world which is wounded and broken and desperately in need of healing.   There is a balance in how we live our days. 

Thinking of rocks and balance reminded me of the amazing people who spend time actually balancing rocks.  Apparently for some, it is a kind of spiritual practice.   So I invite you to watch this video which showcases the work of Michael Grab.  Enjoy it, wonder at it, and as you watch, allow part of your brain to begin to think about the balance or lack of balance in your own life.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vswc7xB0V6c&t=288s

There is a balance within our days and across our days.  There is a balance in the change of rhythm with the seasons.  This is our last time of worship together this summer.  I know that fall won’t officially begin for a few more weeks, but we live by a different schedule.  On our calendar, September 9 marks the beginning of the church program year.  September through December are always busy months in the life of this congregation and in many of your personal lives.  My normal rhythm, in any season, is to move from Sunday to Sunday. I’m usually planning more than one sermon, more than one worship service at a time.   On Sunday morning I live in this moment, but by Sunday evening, I’m already thinking about what comes next.  Except that today, I want to pause.  I invite you to pause with me.    Instead of looking ahead, I want to take a moment to notice what is behind us. 

I wonder what has happened in your life this summer.  Maybe you took a trip, to see family or a new landscape.  Maybe you read a great book or found a favorite new song or gathered up the courage for a hard conversation. Maybe you were energetic or ill or weary.  Within this faith community and beyond it, there have been funerals and weddings, births and deaths, with all the accompanying loss and gratitude and contentment and joy of those occasions. 

What has happened in your life this summer?  I would note two things relevant to our common life.  After five years of sharing space with the Karen congregation, they moved to their own building.  That move will make a big change in their lives and in ours and I wonder what or who God might send our way next.  I also note that this is the end of my eighth year as your pastor. I am grateful for so much and as I pause to wonder how those years passed so quickly,  I say thank you.

Today is not a momentous day, but it is the end of a season.  It is the end of a worship series built around the Psalms.  One of my favorite psalm verses says,  “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a wise heart.”  And so we pause together to notice the passing of time, to take stock, to remember.  For the second half of the summer, we have reflected on God who is like a rock, providing a foundation for life,  and God who is like the rock that beckons us onward through the deepest, hardest, truest things.  We have sought shelter in God through worship and through the companionship of each other.  Throughout this time, we have used the refrain of the psalms “God is a my rock”.

And so, today I invite you to pause with me, to take time to remember whatever it is that you need to remember.  Perhaps it is something about the psalms – their confidence in God, their expression of the range of human life.  Perhaps it is something about your own life, a celebration, a need for forgiveness, an insight to carry with you. Maybe it is no more than the fact that God is present in all of this.   Sometimes it is good to pause and make a memory.  So, as we sing our final hymn, I invite you to take choose a rock to take home with you. There are rocks scattered around the sanctuary.  If you prefer to stay in your seat, I’ll pass a basket of rocks around.   Find a rock that speaks to you, that will remind you of what you want to remember.  Take it home, put it by your backdoor or on a shelf or in your special drawer, so that when you see it, it will remind you of God’s abiding love and powerful presence always.

[1] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1986), 63.

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church:  A Memoir of Faith, (New York:  HarperOne, 2012), pp. 79-80

[3] Bernhard W. Anderson, Out of the Depths:  The Psalms Speak for Us Today (Philadlphia:  Westminster Press, 1983), p. 147

[4] Quoted in profile by Israel Shenker, "E. B. White: Notes and Comment by Author", The New York Times (11 July 1969)

8/19/2018 - Shelter of the Rock - Psalm 27:1-9

Shelter of the Rock

Psalm 27:1-9       

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

August 19, 2018

The foundation of Wartburg Castle was laid in 1067.  It is still structurally intact and explored by numerous tourists today, living up to its name as a fortress.  In 1521, the reformer Martin Luther went into hiding at Wartburg, after he was excommunicated by Pope Leo X.  The castle provided a safe haven where he lived while he translated the New Testament into German.  But even in this fortress, he did not feel completely protected. According to legend, he continued to feel attacks by spiritual forces; one time so acutely that he hurled an inkpot at the devil to drive it away.

That story about Luther is one of safety and security on one side countered by feelings of danger and vulnerability on the other.  It seems to captures some of the range of faith that is expressed within Psalm 27.

Psalm 27 begins with a bold declaration “The Lord is my light and my salvation; The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” Then in verses 5-6, it speaks of being in hiding, of seeking shelter from God.  At verse 9, the tone changes again, and sounds a bit anxious with “Do not hide your face from me.  Do not forsake me.”  And finally, it returns to strong affirmation in the last two verses, “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”

We have discussed many times the interplay of fear and courage as aspects of faith.  This is yet one more time that the Bible says “do not be afraid”.   But here, the image is not an angel,; there is not a focus on a message about a surprise or a mission to be undertaken.  Here, in the middle of the psalm is the image of finding refuge, finding safety, finding shelter in God.  It is that image I would like to explore this morning.

Shelter is a basic human need.  Shelter, in a building or a tent or a cave, offers protection from sun or cold, rain or snow and predators.   Most of us find shelter most often in the place we call home, which ideally is also a place where we feel emotionally safe and loved and cared for.  We need shelter every day.  We need shelter to return to when we have gone out to do something difficult or brave or important or ordinary.  We need shelter most especially when we are ill or afraid or grieving or worried or lonely.

In Psalm 61, which we read last Sunday, the psalmist  asks God “let me find refuge under the shelter of your wings.”  And in Psalm 27, we hear, “For God will hide me in God’s shelter in the day of trouble;”  There are some among us who find shelter directly in God.  Well, I mean, they get as close to God as anyone can. 

We remember that Moses did so. After he had followed God’s directions for quite some time, after he had talked to Pharoah on God’s behalf and led the people out of bondage in Egypt and saw them fed in the wilderness, after he had become so very angry at them for giving into  their fears and building a golden calf to worship, after that when God had forgiven them and told him to lead them away from the place of their idolatry and on to the promised land, after all that, Moses had just one request.  He wanted to see God’s face.  And God reminded him that no human can look on God’s face and live.  But even then, God sheltered Moses, placing him in  a protected space in the rocks where God’s hand could cover him and keep him from seeing God’s face.  Whatever the ancient Hebrews might have understood about seeing God’s face as a possible cause of death, we can resonate with the truth that humans cannot know God directly.

There are some who do get close though.  Sometimes people experience God’s presence as overwhelming joy or a pervasive peace, a sense of being held or knowing that we are deeply loved. 

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician and physicist who lived in the 1600’s.  He was also a devout Catholic.  When he died, a servant found a piece of paper sewn into the lining of his coat. On it, he had written these words, “In the year of grace, 1654, Monday 23 November—from about half-past ten in the evening till about half an hour after midnight: FIRE God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the learned . . . Certitude, certitude; feeling, joy, peace.  . . .God—let me not be separated from thee forever.”[1]

John Wesley, the founder of what become the Methodist movement had a well-known moment which is often referred to his “Aldersgate experience.”  His journal entry from May 24, 1738 reads:

“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where someone was reading [Martin] Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”[2]

I am amused that Wesley admits he did not want to go to that church meeting where he had such a profound encounter.    Sometimes we have to talk ourselves into going to church.  And sometimes, there is no place we would rather be.

You might remember the images from Syria on Christmas Eve 2016.[3]  There was a cease fire which allowed these Christians to celebrate Christmas together for the first time in five years.  They gathered in a ruined cathedral, with the roof gone from bombings and open to the sky and the snow.   They could have stayed at home or gotten together with friends someplace warm and dry.   Instead, in the place that could no longer provide physical shelter, they sought spiritual refuge in the place where generations have known the presence of God.

Many people since Wesley have used his language about his heart being strangely warmed to describe their own encounters with the Divine.  However, not all of us experience God in those mystical moments. 

Some of us take shelter in the wisdom of those who practice the presence of God and share those experiences with us.  The Apostle’s Creed speaks of the communion of saints.  We share fellowship with other Christians across time and space by their writings.  And so we learn from Pascal and Wesley, but also from Juliana of Norwich and Francis of Assisi, and Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen and Joan Chittister and a host of others.

We find spiritual refuge in mystical experience, prayer, music and worship and indirectly, through the spiritual experiences of others.  God shelters us through other people.  As the Irish proverb says, “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”

Psalm 27 also speaks about physical shelter.  The writer wants to live within the temple for the protection it offers.  I wonder how we might understand that?  Some of us come to this building every week in order to receive the love and support of friends, as we share news of our lives, especially during the prayer time but also more generally.  This is one kind of shelter a church offers.

But going back to the psalmist’s idea of dwelling in the temple – did you know that 44 people are living in 38 churches across the United States right now?  They are at risk for deportation and so they live within the protection of the church walls, being supported and provided for by church members. Those 44 represent those who have made their sanctuary public.  The authorities know where they are and could come for them at any time.  There are an unknown number of  people in secret sanctuary.

In the Central Africa Republic, a Catholic church is sheltering about 2,000 Muslim people.   A 5-year-old conflict there has led to a Christian militia seeking vengeance on Muslim people.  Armed men wait for people to leave the grounds of St. Peter Claver Cathedral and they incite others to violence.  Church leaders accused of sheltering Muslim families are also being threatened, but the cathedral is committed to protecting the vulnerable.[4]

There are many other stories of sanctuary and radical hospitality offered in the name of Jesus that we might tell if time allowed.  We also know too many stories where those in need of shelter have been turned away or taken advantage of or abused.  We need to attend to those stories, but I chose not to tell them today.

Instead I’m remembering that back when Moses wanted to be closer to God, he said, “Let me see your glory.”  In response, God said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”  God’s answer is probably a clue about the nature of glory, that it resides with grace and mercy.  And so I wonder if these stories of shelter and refuge are, in fact, some of the best ways we can see God’s glory.  Maybe the signs of God’s presence are all around us, if we remember to look.

“The great lesson from the true mystics is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends and family, in one’s back yard.”  God’s glory passes before us every day.”[5] 

Maybe that is the source of the psalmist’s confidence, when he says “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  That is his declaration of faith, in spite of the lies, in spite of the violence surrounding him.  And friends, we can also make that same affirmation  -- we shall see the goodness of the Lord.  Be strong and let your heart take courage.  Amen.

[1] Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew:  Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Contemporary Authentic Faith, (New York:  HarperOne, 2006), p.46

[2] http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/holy-spirit-moments-learning-from-wesley-at-aldersgate

[3] http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/222629

[4] https://religionnews.com/2018/08/14/in-central-africa-a-cathedral-shelters-muslims-amid-sectarian-violence/

[5] These words are attributed to Abraham Maslow.  I have not found where and when he said them.

8/12/2018 - Lead Me to the Rock - Psalm 61:1-4

Lead Me to the Rock

Rev. Kathy Donley

8/12/2018

Scripture Lesson:  Psalm 61:1-4

Two Sundays ago, I suggested the discipline of reading five psalms per day for the month of August.  If you have been doing that, you might have discovered that the psalmist seems to cycle through anger, despair, praise, joy, contentment, wonder, trust  – up and down, back and forth, sometimes fast enough to make your head spin.  If we think of the psalms as poetry or song lyrics, we realize that poetry that lasts tends to reflect what is universal in human experience. 

And so, as I sat with Psalm 61 this week, I wondered about the person who might say these words “from the end of the earth I call to You, O God, when my heart is faint, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

Who is speaking?  Is it someone in particular crisis or is this a normal prayer in a normal week?  What clues might help us answer that?

From the end of the earth I call –suggests that the person feels far from God, perhaps isolated.

When my heart is faint – some translations say when my heart is overwhelmed.  It sounds like the speaker is in distress, that something has upset their equilibrium.  This is not a routine prayer, not a grace offered before meals or a bedtime prayer.  This is a prayer for serious help.

The plea is somewhat simple:  "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I."  The first two words could be a mantra offered to God in a lot of situations.  "Lead me."  "When I have to make a hard decision, lead me, God."  "When my loved ones are depending on me, lead me."  "When I am overwhelmed by my circumstances and don't know what to do next, lead me."

“Lead me”  is a basic request, but it is also specific. It implies that I cannot do this alone.  “Lead me” is different from “carry me”.  Different from “fix this problem”  or “change this situation.”  This request suggests that if God will lead, the speaker will follow.  “Lead me” is a personal request.  If this is my prayer, then I am part of the equation.  If it is your prayer, then you are part of it.   We ask for guidance, but it is still our responsibility to move ourselves along, to follow, even perhaps to climb. This psalm seems to be speaking of a journey, a process, a development of faith, which might be something like spiritual rock climbing.

This film clip, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjAUiUyLfrk&t=42s tells us part of the story of a person climbing up a rock at Joshua Tree National Park.  It’s only part of the story because what we cannot see are the people on the ground below.  One person below is keeping tension on the belaying rope so that if the climber slips, he will be caught.  At some angles, the rope connected to him is not visible, but it is there.  And I wonder if God is like an invisible belayer?  I actually tend to think not.  I think that God does not suspend the laws of gravity or physics or biology, but I could be wrong.  The kind of knowledge, that depth of understanding might just be part of the rock that is higher than I which I have not yet attained.

Also in this film, out of our sight, is a rock climbing guide.  What we cannot hear are his instructions to the climber.  He offers suggestions for how to place his feet and distribute his weight.  When the climber is successful, the guide cheers him on.  At one point, the climber says, “I’m just going to take a rest here” to which the guide responds, “That’s a very good idea.”  It is in the this role, the role of the guide, that I understand God, especially in this psalm.

God is that unseen one who might stand below and call up encouragement and suggestions as we climb, or God might lead the way ahead of us and be there to receive us when we finally reach the top.   

But what is it with needing to be higher?  Why can’t we stay on level ground?  What is the psalmist saying?

One idea that occurs to me is that when you get up high, you see the big picture.  You take the long view.  You see things from an different perspective.  Perhaps the psalmist recognizes that being led to a higher place will create a new vantage point.  And the resulting new perspective will lead to a clearer head, a better sense of what really matters, and what to do next.  Sometimes we seek that higher place when we have an important choice to make.  Sometimes we seek it because disorder or chaos or crisis has erupted and we realize that without knowing it, we have become complacent, accepting things that we should not have.  And then, shaken from our passivity, we call on God from the end of the earth to lead us to new understanding and transformation. 

Sometimes we step out of our normal routine and go looking for the new vantage point.  Sometimes it comes to us as a moment of surprise.

One day a church staff person involved with people experiencing homelessness was sitting in the congregation at a service in a downtown church.  As he sat listening to the Scripture reading, a homeless man came and sat beside him.  He knew what would happen next – the man, finding a captive audience, would ask for money. He waited, expecting the whispered request to come soon.

Sure enough, after a few minutes, the  man leaned across,  “Here” he said, “I can’t stay.  Will you put this in the offering plate for me?”  They often give me sandwiches at this church and I just want to say thank you”  He pressed two dollars into the church worker’s hand and slipped away.

Sometimes in a moment when the tables turn, when our expectations are upended and we realize it, transformation becomes possible. 

We have had several funerals recently.  On those occasions, we often tell stories and share memories of a loved one’s life, and in that telling, it becomes apparent what was most important to them.  From the vantage point of examining many years of living, we can see the wisdom that comes with experience. 

Transformation might occur when we step out of the routine and intentionally seek guidance.  It might come as a surprise in the midst of daily life.  It comes to most of us, suddenly and gradually, across months and years of life and change and growth, like taking a long path up the mountain.

But sometimes, transformation comes as a steep, fast climb, when we are in crisis, in the midst of loss or anticipated loss.

That is the experience of Kate Bowler.  Kate is a professor at Duke Divinity School.  When she was 35, she was married to the man she had loved since she was 15 and after not being able to have a baby for many years, they had a son named Zach.  And she had landed a tenure-track position at Duke, one of her alma maters.  She was set to take the long gradual way up the mountain.  Until she was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.  I am reading her book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved.  It is a very honest and brave and sometimes funny account of the her life with cancer for the last few years. 

Early in the book she identifies three questions which she says are both too shallow and too deep.  The questions are:

Why?

God, are you here?

What does this suffering mean? 

Some of you recommended this book to me.  I have not finished it yet, but I would recommend it to you.   It is impossible to do justice to it in the time we have, but let me offer a few of her observations.

One year before she got sick, she was at home in Canada for Christmas and she greeted an old friend, remembering at the last second that this friend had recently been diagnosed with cancer.  The friend said “I have known Christ in so many good times and now I will know him better in his sufferings.”[1]

When she was asked about that later, Kate said, “I didn't write the book because I thought, I have a lot of really important things to share with other people. I initially wrote it because I was trying to get down to the deepest, hardest, truest things that I believed - like, get down to those lies that I had perpetuated all along, that I needed to be shiny to be worthy of God's love and the attention of others and that I needed to achieve and be master and commander of my, you know, everything.”

She wrote because she was trying to get down to the deepest, hardest, truest things, which is its own kind of higher place, isn’t it?  I read her book in the hopes of discerning those deepest, hardest, truest things myself, without having to make her hard steep climb.

Someone asked if her prayer life has changed.  She said, “I think maybe it has because I think I don't have the luxury of being too sophisticated anymore. I mean, you just get infected with this urgency that comes with facing your death. And so I pray for very basic things.”[2]

One time she prayed, “God, I don’t want to just know you better.  I want to save my family.  God, let me stay the mom of a boy who loves tractors.”

After major surgery in which the tumor was removed from her colon, she felt God’s presence in a new way.  She writes, “In those first few days after my diagnosis, when I was in the hospital, I couldn’t see my son, I couldn’t get out of bed, and I couldn’t say for certain that I would survive the year.  But I felt as though I’d uncovered something like a secret about faith.  Even in lucid moments, I found my feelings so difficult to explain.  I kept saying the same thing:  “I don’t want to go back.  I don’t want go back.”

“At a time when I should have felt abandoned by God, I was not reduced to ashes.  I felt like I was floating, floating on the love and prayers of all those who hummed around me like worker bees, brining notes and flowers and warm socks and quilts embroidered with words of encouragement.  They came in like priests and mirrored back to me the face of Jesus. When they sat beside me, my hand in their hands, my own suffering began to feel like it had revealed to me the suffering of others, a world of those who, like me, are stumbling in the debris of dreams they thought they were entitled to and plans they didn’t realize they had made.”

She said, “Maybe I was just a narcissist before. But like all of a sudden, I realized how incredibly fragile life is for almost everyone. And then I noticed things like . . . It's like you notice the tired mom in the grocery store who's just  struggling to get the thing off the top shelf while her kid screams, and you notice how very tired that person looks at the bus stop. And then, of course, all the people in the cancer clinic around me. That felt like I was cracked open, and I could see everything really clearly for the first time. And the other bit was not feeling nearly as angry as I thought I would. And, I mean, granted - like I have been pretty angry at times. But it was mostly that I felt God's presence. And it was less like, here are some important spiritual truths I know intellectually about God. . . .  It was instead more like the way you'd feel a friend or like someone holding you. I just didn't feel quite as scared. I just felt loved.”[3]

Sisters and brothers, I hope that our transformation may be full, that we may come to know what really matters -- the deepest, hardest truest things.  Would you join me in reading these verses together?

Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer.

From the end of the earth I call to you,

when my heart is faint.

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I; 

Amen.

---

[1] Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason and Others Lies I’ve Loved, (New York, Random House, 2018), p. 95

[2] https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/585066841/a-stage-4-cancer-patient-shares-the-pain-and-clarity-of-living-scan-to-scan

[3] Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason, p. 121

7/29/2018 - Solid Rock - Psalm 62:5-8

Solid Rock

Rev. Kathy Donley

7/29/18

Scripture Lesson:  Psalm 62:5-8

I have been a lot of beautiful places in the last few months.  In May, we spent just a few days, not long enough, at the Grand Canyon.  I learned that my body no longer copes well with being at elevation. No matter how much water I drank, my head hurt pretty much the entire time and yet, I did not want to leave.  Many of you have been there before and you know that words and even pictures are inadequate to convey the magnitude of its beauty and grandeur. 

The people who live and work in the area are eager to share all they can about the Canyon.  One afternoon, as we rode the shuttle, our helpful bus driver told us that at the next stop, the Colorado River would be one mile below us. He told us where to stand to glimpse it and he said that if we were lucky, we might even hear it.  We might hear the sound of the water.  Wow.  We unloaded from the bus and wandered towards the rim, looking for the particular place he had suggested.  Standing there, we could just make out the path of river far below.  We waited for the shuttle to re-load its passengers and for the sound of its motor to die and then, in the silence we strained to hear the river.  . . . Only as we stood there, another tourist came along. He was carrying a device that played music.  No joke.  He might have been using earbuds.  I can’t remember, but the volume was such that we could hear nothing else.  So Erin and I began a LOUD conversation about how this was the place to hear the river, and I asked her if she could hear it and she said no, could I?  And in that passive-aggressive way, we outlasted the man with the music who took himself and his noise somewhere else . . . and then in the blessed quiet, when we listened carefully, we could indeed hear the river churning its way to the sea, more than a mile below us.

“For God alone my soul waits in silence,” says the psalmist.  Ours is a noisy culture.  Silence is hard to find. And sometimes, when it does get quiet, our own thoughts seem so loud that we might as well turn up the radio. 

I like silence, but you might not know that, because I also like words.  It can take a long time for my words to run out, for me to turn off the flow of sound and sentences and just be quiet.  Except that lately, I am finding words, my own and other people’s more excellent words, to be inadequate.  All the eloquent language, all the compelling arguments, all the chants and slogans and speeches, they just don’t seem to be enough.  I find myself falling silent because I have said all I know to say.  I have used up my own resources.   Perhaps I am learning what the psalmist means, “For God alone, my soul waits in silence.” 

There is a small Hebrew word which is repeated several times in this short psalm.  The word is  ’ak.  It occurs 24 times in the entire book of psalms, but 6 times in this one psalm.   This word can mean two things.  It means only or alone.  It also means truly or indeed. 

It occurs in these verses (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9)  and the New Revised Standard Version always translates it with the first meaning of alone or only.  We could translate it with the second meaning, “For God truly, my soul waits.”  The beauty in the Hebrew is that the term most likely has a double-entendre.  It carries both meanings simultaneously.  To wait for God alone means to wait on God indeed.  To truly hope in God means that we hope only in God.[1]

“God alone is my rock.  God is truly my rock.”   This psalm picks up that image of God as a rock which is repeated in several other psalms.  This is an image that I plan to explore with you across the next month.  It is an image of security, of strength.  Rocks stay in place.  They remain part of the fixed landscape.  The opposite image might be of the sea. 

For ancient Hebrew people, the sea was a symbol of chaos and fear.  The sea was constantly moving.  It was the place of monsters and storms and roiling waters.  The sea was death and insecurity and danger. They did not know that atoms were moving all the time in rocks and so when they said, “God is my rock” it mean that God was faithful and solid and steadfast.  You could depend on God like you could depend on nothing else.   

Scholars have different schemes for categorizing psalms.  None of the systems capture all the psalms, but Walter Brueggemann’s categories are very helpful to me.  Brueggemann is one of the leading contemporary Old Testament scholars. He says that some psalms are written for good times, when everything seems normal and right with the world.  These are the psalms of gratitude for God’s ordering of life.  They reflect life as God intends it.  In these psalms, God is praised and the creation is celebrated.  Brueggemann calls them psalms of orientation. 

But life is not always like that, and so there are songs, poetry, and psalms written for the times when things seem to fall apart, when things look bleak and life is inexplicably difficult, times of radical change when old certainties no longer hold.  Some psalms reflect faithful people’s response to God during those broken times.  Brueggemann calls them  psalms of disorientation. 

His third category are psalms of new orientation, which are deeper versions of the orientation psalms.  Having lived through the times of crisis, people come out on the other side with a deeper, stronger faith and their praise takes on a new dimension.[2]

Many of us feel we are living through disorientation.  Things about our communal and civic life which we have assumed were established and solid are being called into question.  From the ways in which government works to the rules of polite conversation to some of the inalienable rights our ancestors claimed were self-evident, everything we thought was nailed down is coming loose. 

In times like these, the psalms remind us, “God alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.”

Jesus told a parable about a wise person who built a house on a rock and a foolish one who built on sand.  These images of rocks and sand, of wisdom and foolishness – they just lead me to more questions.  In what do we trust?  In our own resources, the strength of our logical arguments, our votes, our buying power?  What would it mean if  God alone, God indeed was our rock, our unshakeable fortress? 

Another way to ask this question might be to ask about authority.  What has authority in our lives?  Roger Shinn was a Christian ethicist and theologian who taught at Union Seminary in New York for many years.  He describes three basic kinds of authority.  The first kind is external, based on power.  This is the authority of the state, the police, a parent.  When a child asks, “Why do I have to brush my teeth and pick up my toys?”  and their parent says, “Because I said so,” that is external authority.

The opposite of external authority is internal.  This is when a person says, “I’m in charge of my own life and I’ll do what I want.  I’ll do what I determine to be right.”  Some of us here might remember Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way” which encapsulates this concept.  A more contemporary expression “You’re not the boss of me” also sums up internal authority.

Sometimes we think that those are the only two choices.  Either we submit to someone else’s authority and we take charge of our lives and come up with our own answers.  But Roger Shinn taught about a third authority.  He said that this the authority of truth.  Truth exists outside of us and within us.  Looking for truth as the authority, the guiding principle requires reason and logic and intellectual struggle.  It requires us to examine what we are hearing and seeing, not to accept things at face value but to go deeper.   It happens in study and in conversation with people who have different life experiences and in examining our own life experiences.  It happens when our own resources fail and we are reduced to silence.  Shinn says that this authority becomes transformative when we recognize that God calls us to be true to ourselves as created by God, and not to be a twisted self, torn by conflicting loyalties and warped understanding.[3]

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  He also said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”  God is my rock.  God is my truth.  In silence, I wait for God alone.

I invite you  to nurture truth and silence in your own life.  Here’s one suggestion – use the psalms as a tool for spiritual discipline.  You probably know that there are 150 psalms.  If you read 5 psalms a day, you could read the whole psalter every month.  That works pretty well until you to Psalm 119 which has 176 verses.  But you can work around that.  Try starting with psalm 119 today or tomorrow.  And then on Wednesday, which is the first day of August, read the first five psalms and on Thursday, read the next five and so on.  Or sit down with the Bible, but don’t read it. Instead quiet yourself and just be silent.  Try doing that every day for a month and see what happens.

Let me close by reading from Psalm 62 again.  This translation was done by my professor, Marvin Tate.  Dr. Tate taught a class on psalms which I took in seminary.  We also build on truth under the encouragement of beloved teachers.  Here is my teacher’s translation:

Vs 1:  Yes, my soul waits calmly for God, from him is my salvation.

Then picking up verses 5-9:

Yes, calmly wait for God, O my soul,

for my hope is from him. 

Yes, he is my rock where I am secure,

my stronghold where I am unshaken.

My welfare and my power depend on God;

I am rock-strong and secure in God.

 Trust in him at all times, O people,

pour out your hearts before him. 

God is our refuge!  Selah. [4]

[1] Rolf Jacobsen at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1215

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms:  Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit, (Eugene, Oregon:  Cascade Books, 2007).

[3] http://media.sabda.org/alkitab-2/Religion-Online.org%20Books/Shinn%2C%20Roger%20-%20The%20Sermon%20on%20the%20Mount.pdf

[4] Marvin Tate, Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 20:  Psalms 51-100, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990), p. 117.