John 20:19-31 "Peace, Power, and Purpose"

            You would have thought that the disciples would have been celebrating – like we did last Sunday.  Christ is risen.  Christ is risen indeed. 

            You would have thought that they would have been singing rousing hymns with trumpet accompaniment – like we did just seven days ago, Christ the Lord is risen today – alleluia! 

            You would have thought that they would have been feasting with family and friends – like we did after worship on Easter –baked ham or roast lamb (well, maybe not ham), but asparagus and some special springtime dessert. 

            But, no, they were hidden away, fearful and silent in a dark upper room.  If we piece together all four Gospel accounts of the resurrection, we know that by this time the disciples had all the details from the women – Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.  They knew all about the empty tomb. 

            According to one account, Peter and one of the others had seen with their very own eyes that the rock had been rolled away from the cave entrance.  Upon peeking inside, they had spotted the grave clothes stashed in a corner of the tomb. More significantly, they had seen no sign of Jesus, their crucified, dead, and buried rabbi and leader. 

            By another account, Mary Magdalene had recognized the Christ in the very same cemetery garden and had even had the briefest of conversation with him when he had gently spoken her name.  “I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear falling on my ear…”

            Oh, they had heard the news.  The disciples had certainly heard the news, but they were hardly overjoyed and ready to party.  No – they were hidden away, fearful and silent in a dark - and locked - upper room somewhere in the back alleyways of Jerusalem, the Holy City. 

            And they were afraid.  You could smell it in the dusty, closed up, too hot room.  You could smell it in the sweat that trickled down their arms.  You could see it in their eyes, darting to the windows whenever a floorboard creaked or a breeze rattled the old olive tree in the atrium.  You could feel it in their tense muscles, their shallow breathing, in the way their hearts beat too fast for a springtime day.  Their fear was so profound and so intense that you could almost taste it.

            They were all afraid, though perhaps the least fearful among them was Thomas because he had left the upper room, no doubt furtively making his way through the least known streets and byways of the city. 

            We do not know why he left.  Perhaps they all were hungry and Thomas had picked the short straw and so was venturing forth to beg, borrow, or steal some provisions to last them for a few days until they could figure out exactly what to do next, now that all hope for a future together was dead and buried along with Jesus.  Or maybe Thomas just wanted to get a breath of fresh air.  Maybe he could not stand the fear any longer.

            Of course, those disciples – including Thomas – had good reason to be afraid.  First of all, protecting themselves both from the Roman authorities as well as from the Jewish temple bigwigs made a lot of sense. 

            After all, the crowds had turned against Jesus in a heartbeat.  One minute they were cheering him into the Holy City of Jerusalem, the seat of Jewish religious power and prestige. And the next minute they had apprehended and tried him, mocked, scorned and crucified him along with all of their anger, resentment, and petty malice, and left him for dead – which he was, of course - most horribly dead.

            Peter, James, John, and the others surely knew that they could still be caught up in the same torrent of events.  Being from Galilee and followers of the rabbi who had stirred up so much trouble in the past week was not advantageous. 

            Who knew if the dust had really settled – or whether they were simply experiencing the eye of the storm?  Jesus’ appallingly undignified death was still fresh in their minds – as well is should be.  He had only departed this world a couple of days ago. 

            Of course, it was not only the potential for their own demise that might have had the disciples sweating out their fear.  There was also the other possibility – as farfetched as it may have seemed.  What if the women’s rumors were true?  What if Jesus had returned?  What if the love of their God had bullied and finally overcome death itself – as Jesus said that it would?  What if Jesus was alive?  What if – Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed?

            What then?  That remote chance was also troubling the disciples – as well it should have.  After all, the man who had been their teacher, the one whom they had followed for three years, the one for whom they had left their homes and to whom they had pledged their faithful lives had been murdered – and they had not done much to stop it.  What if Jesus was really angry with them? 

            Peter was undeniably (no pun intended) the worse off from that perspective.  Peter who, while warming his hands by the fire burning beneath the hall where Jesus was enduring a trial of sorts - had denied, denied, denied Jesus – three times with growing resentment and ire – declaring that he did not know the man, swearing that he had never met him, lying through his teeth that he was not a follower from Galilee.  What if Jesus had heard Peter’s weak words of denial?

            But the others as well, each in his own way, had also betrayed Jesus.  Looking back on the events of just a couple of days ago, they were deeply, deeply ashamed of their actions.  A couple of them had split the scene there in the garden when Jesus had been arrested. They had seen trouble coming - lit by torches held high in the nighttime gloom, and punctuated with the glint of Roman swords and knives.  They had hightailed it to safety to save their own hides.

            Others of the disciples had stood by silently as Jesus was led away, his arms roped behind him.  They were afraid to say anything in his defense, fearful that they too would end up in chains. 

            Still others had followed the little procession from a distance, curious to see what would happen next.  They were the ones who became part of the gathering crowd and when Jesus was brought out to the balcony and the masses got all riled up yelling “crucify him, crucify him” and Pilate the Roman governor washed his hands of the whole mess and went inside and locked his doors and they realized that nothing good was going to come of the night, they melted into the background and ran away. 

            Each disciple had betrayed and denied Jesus.  In later years, their shortcomings would be called sins of omission because it was not what they had done so much as what they might have done but did not. 

            Jesus would surely be angry with them.  After all, they had all – every single one of them – deserted him.  And of course he would be deeply disappointed in them.  It had all turned into a terrible mess, not what they would have expected, and now here they were in a dark upper room, locked away with the sweat of their own fear and waiting for Thomas to get back with dinner. 

            What if Jesus had returned armed for revenge?  After all, they had left him on a cross to die.  Worse yet, they had watched him die slowly, agonizingly – and had done nothing.  Not even a prayer for his safe passage to whatever it is that comes next had escaped their lips.  No wonder they sweated now in fear and trembling.

            It was then, of course, that Jesus appeared among them.  The locked door and bolted windows were inconsequential.  They could not have kept him out if they had tried.  Jesus just showed up.  They could not believe it at first and surely under the circumstances they probably did not want to believe it.  But Jesus displayed his scarred hands and feet, and so they believed in their hearts what they had seen with their eyes.

           

            Thomas, of course, got home with the take out bucket of chicken a wee bit too late – and down through history has received a bad reputation for his timing.  Ever since, he has been called doubting and one of little faith when all he asked for was the same documentation freely offered to the others. 

            We tend to focus on Thomas’ seeming faux pas when we read this first account in the Gospel of John of an appearance of the Risen Christ.  However, the significance of this tale for us as we try to wrap our minds around the resurrection lies not Thomas’ request for proof.  Rather it lies in the first words to come out of Jesus’ mouth both times he entered that dark upper room.  “Peace be with you,” he said.  “Peace be with you.” 

            Jesus was not angry – though he might have been.  He knew that Peter had denied him.  And certainly he was disappointed (who would not have been?) that none of them had manned up to the situation at hand.  However, he chose not to critique and belittle them. 

            And Jesus was not vengeful – though he might have been.  He knew they had stood by and watched as he rolled his eyes in agony and eventually died. He knew that in the end they did not have a courageous bone in their bodies.  He knew that they had racked up a lot of sins of omission that fateful evening.

            And yet, the first thing he said to them was “Peace be with you.”  They first thing he did was forgive them.  Jesus returned, and his concern was not about himself, but about them.  He offered them peace, and they dissolved into joy – as will Thomas a week later. 

            We often presume that the story ends here – and the party finally begins.  But not so!  You see, Jesus not only forgives the disciples.  He also empowers them with a mission.  The Gospel writer tells us that Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on them (whatever that means) and sends them forth to forgive with authority, to forgive as he has now forgiven all of them. 

            As Episcopal priest Charles Hoffacker writes, “This action is a second creation, an early Pentecost, a commissioning of them for ministry.  Their business is to be about forgiveness, the reconciliation of humanity with God and each other. The prototype for their work is to be the forgiveness (Jesus) has given them.  From this upstairs room, forgiveness is to spread like wildfire.”

            The power of forgiveness is profound – and a deep set need for all of us.  We learned that here in church a couple of weeks ago when I shared a story by Ernest Hemingway.  It was such a wonderful tale – and so applicable here – that I am going to briefly re-tell it.  Remember, it is about the Spanish father who sought reconciliation with his son who had run away to the city of Madrid. The father put an advertisement in the local newspaper, which read:  "Paco, meet me at the Hotel Montana at noon on Tuesday. All is forgiven! Love, Papa."

            Now Paco was such a common name in Spain that when the father went to the Hotel Montana the next day at noon there were 800 young men named Paco waiting for their fathers!  You see, forgiveness is about the most wonderful gift we could ever give to one another.

            But Jesus gives the disciples even more than peace and the power of forgiveness. He also gives them a purpose for their lives. They are to be the mouthpiece for Jesus, forgiving and offering peace to all they meet.  They are also to be the hands and feet of the Risen Christ, ensuring that peace and forgiveness are more than empty words. 

            And so it is for us, we who call ourselves followers of the Risen Christ, we who in so many ways have shut the doors of our minds, imprisoned our hearts, and locked our lives away.  It is not enough for us to celebrate the resurrection with rousing hymns, festive meals, and acclamations that Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed. 

            There comes a time when we must live the resurrection. Jesus has come through the locked doors and barriers we have set up and blown as much of the Holy Spirit on us as he did on the first disciples in the dark and locked upper room in the Holy City. 

            Jesus has offered us peace - forgiveness.  But Jesus has also given us the power to forgive those around us, the power to forgive all the Pacos of our lives who gather in the village square, desperate for a clean slate and a new start. And Jesus has challenged us with a purpose – not only to be his mouthpiece in the world proclaiming his gospel message of the power of love and reconciliation, but also his hands and feet – healing, blessing, feeding, and eventually transforming the world.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, ME

www.rvccme.org

Mark 16:1-8 "When is an Ending Not an Ending?"

            What were they thinking?  Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, I mean.  Whatever were they thinking? 

            If the three women had been at all rational and logical, they would have brought fulcrums and levers to move that stone that blocked the entrance of the tomb.  But no - all they carried with them into the cemetery that early morning as the sun first began to peep over the horizon, scattering forth its pink and yellow and orange hues, were sweet spices. 

            Surely the women knew that tubes of aloe and jars of myrrh were not going to make a whit of difference when it came to shifting the rock that sealed the tomb where Jesus’ body had been hastily laid just before the Sabbath sundown.  The stone was an issue – no doubt about it - and the Gospel writer of Mark takes great pains to tell us that it was a very large stone – like a boulder, we can presume.

            Surely the female mourners realized that they would have been better served by insisting on a couple of strong backs – Peter maybe or even Andrew – but, no, the disciples who had emerged from hiding after melting into the Good Friday crowds that had screamed their insults and epithets at Jesus – Crucify him! Crucify him! – those rather cowardly and faithless followers were sleeping it off this Easter morning. 

            And so it was just the three women and their embalming ointments making their way through the dawn dew to the tomb.  And why did they bother?  Oh, perhaps it was so they could say that at least they had tried – tried to pay their respects, tried to acknowledge that they realized that Jesus had loved right to the very end –even when the whole world had turned against him.  Perhaps the women wanted to give Jesus posthumously the dignity that had escaped him when he died in the appalling way he did.  Maybe this was just their way to say they had loved him.

            Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome came prepared to wash the dried blood from his face and hands and feet.  They came to comb his hair that had gotten all tangled in the thorny crown he had been forced to wear.   They came to anoint his body with sweet spices – aloe and myrrh – ancient embalming fluids.  In the end, they had come to offer him a final bit of kindness, something they had been unable to do on Friday with the Sabbath coming on.

            They knew that the rock would be problematic, but they came anyway.  We have no idea what they were expecting to find.  However, the Gospel writer does tell us what they did find and that was the rock rolled aside, revealing a cavernous and dark entrance to the tomb. 

            Evidently not creeped out by this macabre turn of events, the women ventured inside the cave, only to find in the shadowy dank a young man.  The Gospel writer tells us that he was dressed in white and was sitting to the right (Such marvelous little details, undoubtedly to remind us that he (the writer) was not making all this stuff up).

            It was only at this point that the three women became alarmed, as our translation says.  But “alarmed” hardly does justice to their emotions.  The Greek translation is more like “unspeakable fear,” that “bottom falling out of everything,” “end of the world,” “being out of your wits” kind of feeling.  It is the same word actually that the Gospel writer uses to describe Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane,  looking up to the skies for the face of his father only to find the empty blackness of a empty universe.  (John Meunier) Kneeling in the garden (Jesus) feels that unspeakable” what we so glibly translate as alarm.

            In our vocabulary, the three women were not simply alarmed.  They were freaked out, especially after the man in the tomb preached the first Easter sermon in history. 

            “Don’t be alarmed,” he cautioned.  “Don’t be filled with that unspeakable fear, for Jesus has been raised.  Now go – go and tell the disciples (including Peter, the Gospel writer makes a point of telling us, including Peter who had so blatantly failed Jesus and had so fallen short of all expectations when he did his three part denial – maybe there really is hope for all of us).  Go and tell them the news, every last one of them – and tell them to hightail to Galilee where it all began three years ago.

            But the women had harbored that unspeakable fear thing, and so they do not tell a single….And that is the end of the story in this particular Gospel. Though the English translation ends with a complete sentence and a period, some Biblical scholars believe that the original Greek ended in the middle of a sentence. 

            What was the Gospel writer thinking?  Did he forget to save the account to his hard drive?  Did someone rip out the last page?  Did the dog eat it?  Is this any way to end the greatest story ever told?  The Good News dies with the women at the tomb?  How good is that?

            Later writers apparently thought it was an awful way to end the story because a couple of them went so far as to write their own endings and tack them on.  You can read them there in the Bible.  However, the original Gospel ends in fear, trembling, silence, and maybe, just maybe, in the middle of a sentence. 

            But you know, I like the idea of an unfinished ending.  I agree with those Biblical scholars who maintain that the Gospel writer concluded the story this way – with a non-ending – quite intentionally.  He knew what he was doing.  After all, a story without an ending can be quite tantalizing.

            And maybe that is why so many people come to church on Easter Sunday – even people who do not ordinarily come to church.  Maybe deep down inside people gather in sacred places like this one hoping against hope that this year – maybe, just maybe – they will hear the end of the story – and it will be to their liking.

            Well, if that is a reason you came here this morning, then, sorry – you will be deeply disappointed because I do not have the end of the story tucked neatly up my sleeve. 

            In short, resurrection is not that simple.  For one thing, the meaning of resurrection is not irrevocably bound to a past event, as some folks believe.  That is, resurrection is not something that occurred at a single point in time 2000 years ago and therefore cries out for a logical explanation today.  And what is more, resurrection is in no way tied to our own future deaths either (as some people also think) because resurrection was never intended as some sort of heavenly guarantee of life forever – at least not life as we know it.

            The meaning of resurrection lies in the present – and that is why I believe that the Gospel writer ended his story mid-sentence. You see, the story has not ended yet.  Really!  It is as Presbyterian theologian Frederick Buechner said, “What really matters is not so much what happened there (at the tomb). It's what happens now. What happens in your life and my life.”  To understand the meaning of resurrection, we need to revisit the sermon of the young man in white in the tomb.  “He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him”.

            Presbyterian pastor Laura Collins puts it this way:  “This is the key to our Easter morning promise. The women did not hear that Jesus was raised to sit at the right hand of God on some throne in some far away heaven. What they heard was much more radical. He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.

            Where is Galilee? Galilee is where these disciples came from. It was their home. It was the place where they had families and jobs and ordinary routines. It was not Jerusalem — the Holy City, the center of power — but Galilee, the place of everyday life.”

            And so for us gathered here today trying to come to grips with this resurrection business, that means – go back.  Leave this sacred space and go back – back to your homes and jobs and families.  That is where you will find the Risen Christ.  That is where you will discover the potential – if you so choose – to be empowered by him.  In short, you and I are the ones the Gospel writer is calling upon to finish the story. 

         As Laura Collins continues, “This is not the end; God's business is not finished. This is the beginning. This is where your work begins. This is where your life begins…Don't stand at a tomb, paying homage to a dead teacher. Don't set your sights on simply putting ointment on wounds already dealt. Go back to the place where you live your life.”

            There you will meet the God who walks among us with love so powerful that it was strong enough even to overcome death.  There you will run smack into the Christ who rose above the intolerance, the fear, the violence, and the greed that tried to destroy him.  There you will find the Spirit of the One who lives and who will not be stopped by hatred or war or injustice.

            Resurrection is the clearest and best sign we have that God is not finished yet.  God’s business did not end in a tomb 2000 years ago with a handful of women overcome by unspeakable fear. 

All the malice and pettiness and spite we could muster could not hold God back.  Even that large stone in front of the tomb could not limit the power of God.  Not even death could keep God’s love from making a comeback in the world. 

            So, on this Easter morning, regardless of why you came to church today, I challenge you to finish the story the Gospel writer began and purposely left unfinished.  As United Church of Canada pastor, Richard Fairchild wrote, “We are a people who are called to believe in the power and the love that it shows -- to believe in the power and love of God to bring goodness out of evil; life out of death; and hope out of despair.”

            I challenge you to continue this tale of resurrection when you leave this place today and go back to your ordinary lives.  I challenge you to fulfill this stirring account of the power of love.  After all, the Gospel writer is depending on us – you and me.

by Rev. Nancy Foran

Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine

www.rvccme.org

Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 - "Repeat These Words"

            If Lent is supposed to be those weeks in the church year that we set aside to do some self-reflection and to delve a bit more deeply into who we are and who God is and exactly what our relationship with this Supreme Being ought to be, then the Psalms are a good Biblical companion to carry along on this introspective journey.

            The Psalms, as we know them, are Jewish writings that often reflected events in the lives of the ancient Israelites - and always mirrored their emotions, passions, and feelings.  Contrary to more conservative opinion, the 150 psalms in our Bible were not penned by King David or King Solomon, nor did God compose them. 

            In fact, we do not know for sure how the psalms came to be – at the least whether women or men authored them and certainly not who those individuals might actually have been.  You see, before the psalms were written down and became part of our Biblical canon, they were songs – folk melodies.   Authorship was never an important consideration.

           

            So, you see, there is a lot we do not know about the psalms.  However, what we do know is that, in an uncanny way, they touch on our most profound human emotions.  In many ways, the psalms are like prayers, off-the-record conversations you and I might have had with God, moments of spiritual eavesdropping.  If we take the time to look, it is easy to find ourselves buried – and sometimes not very deeply – in the psalms.

            Were we to thumb through the psalms, we would find songs of immeasurable happiness (“Clap your hands with joy, all peoples”) as well as abject despair (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”).  We would find pleas for forgiveness (“Because of your great mercy, God, wipe away my sins.”).  We would discover cries for vengeance.  (“Babylon, you will be destroyed.  Happy is the man who pays you back for what you have done to us – who takes your babies and smashes them against a rock.”).  Yup – that is in one of the psalms – and maybe at one time or another, you have felt that way too.

            In most psalms, we find the singer eventually coming round to praising God for God’s unending compassion toward humanity. (“Even in my suffering, I was comforted because your promise brought me life.”).  But not always:  Sometimes the praise just cannot be found (“You, God, have made even my closest friends abandon me, and darkness is my only companion.”). In the psalms, we find ancient people doing and being and saying a lot of things that remind us of ourselves – if we dare to look into our hearts.

            The psalms were sung in a variety of settings and were passed on orally – by voice rather than by the written word – from generation to generation.  Psalm 107, part of which we just read this morning, was likely used in worship.  If we were to read the entire psalm, we would notice a repetition of phrases that is reminiscent of a responsive reading.  Its distinctive symmetry and order is like a litany.  

            Psalm 107 begins with a call to praise God, for God is the one who had rescued the Jewish people and brought them home, “back from foreign countries,” the psalmist proclaims, “from east and west, from north and south.” How meaningful those words must have been to the Israelites after they had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, where they had been exiled for decades as war bounty.

            Again, if we were to read this psalm in its entirety, we would notice that it continues after the opening verses with the narration of four vignettes, little stories of people in trouble.  There are the fools that we read about, the ones starving to death, the suffering sick who needed to be healed.  The Psalmist also describes sailors in trouble on the high seas, prisoners suffering in their chains, and people wandering lost and aimless in the desert. 

            The form of the psalm repeats itself precisely each time.  First, there is a description of the event and the distress it has caused – hunger and thirst in the desert, gloom and darkness among those imprisoned, the suffering of the fools, the danger sailors faced at sea. 

            Then there is, in each instance, a recitation about prayer and its results - “Then in their trouble they called to the Lord, and God saved them from their distress.” 

           

            Following are details of what God did:  God led the wanderers out of the desert; God broke the prisoners’ chains; God healed the sick and starving; God calmed the raging seas and brought the sailors safely to port.

            Finally, there is a demand to thank God.  Again, the wording is always identical:  “They must thank the Lord for his constant love, for the wonderful things God did for them.”

            Old Testament scholar Nancy Claisse-Walford sums up the psalm and its structure well.  She writes, “Are the four vignettes actual accounts of deliverance by the Lord sung in celebration at a festival? Or is the psalm purely a literary composition, with the four groups representing "all those who have experienced the redemption of the Lord"? (James L. Mays) Whether the vignettes narrate real events or are metaphoric examples, the words of Psalm 107 are heartfelt words of celebration of divine deliverance.” 

            This psalm raises two important points that I will focus on briefly this morning.  The first is a question.  Just whom might this psalm touch deeply?  In other words, who is this psalm for anyway?  Does it have any relevance to me and to my circumstances?  The answer, I believe, is quite simple. 

            If you have ever felt that you were at the end of your rope, at your wits’ end, then this psalm is for you – and I would suggest that includes each one of us.  As Presbyterian pastor Philip McLarty writes, “This speaks to us all, at some time or another.  You’re going about your business, not causing trouble, doing your part, when all of a sudden, disaster strikes and the rug is pulled out from under you.

• The stock market falls and wipes out a lifetime of savings.

• The pathology report comes back with evidence of cancer.

• A competing firm buys out your company and your job is outsourced overseas.

• You get a call in the middle of night saying there’s been an accident, and your son or daughter is in the hospital and you need to come quickly.

            These things happen, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it.  How do you to explain to a young couple why their baby was born with birth defects?

      

            The Good News of this psalm is that, in all four examples of helplessness and despair, God proves (God’s) faithfulness.  God hears the cry of the needy and responds with compassion and love.  Listen!  Four times the psalmist writes,

            “Then in their trouble they called to the Lord, and God saved them from their distress.” 

            It’s a matter of faithfulness … God’s faithfulness.  God is faithful, even when we are not.  God is faithful, even when we bring misery on ourselves.  God is faithful, even when it’s due to circumstances beyond our control.  God is faithful.  Herein lies our hope.”

            Your life may seem perfect, but it will not always be that way because no matter who we are, life is not fair.  It may not have happened to you yet, but the pathology report (or its equivalent) will arrive, the midnight phone call (or its equivalent) will come.  The bottom will, at one time or another, fall out of your life – and when it does, remember this psalm – and remember our faithful God.

“Then in their trouble they called to the Lord, and God saved them from their distress.” 

            The second point I want us to consider is the opening verse of the psalm. “Give thanks to the Lord, because God is good; God’s love is eternal.”  So important is this call for thanksgiving that the psalmist tells us to “repeat these words in praise of the Lord.”

            Over my 35+ years in ministry, I have frequently heard people say they come to worship in order to be comforted.  The way they see it, worship is their personal time to lay down their troubles before God, to cry out in their distress, to get it (whatever “it” may be) off their chest.  

            Worship is their personal time to be comforted – and to forget.  It is their time to step out of our complex world and back into a simpler, seemingly easier time – before the pathology report, before the accident.  Now I do not have anything against finding comfort in church.  However, I do find that particular attitude toward worship to be very self-centered.

            Worship is not about us.  It is not about you, and it is not about me.  Worship is about God.  Worship is about giving our best to God.  Worship is about praising God.  It is about thanking God. 

It is about how we continue to thank God when Sunday morning is over.  And that is why I find this particular psalm so relevant this morning. 

            Remember the repetitive form of this psalm.  As worshippers, we are involved twice in this symmetry.  First, we seek comfort.  That is true.  We cry out to God in our distress.  But second, we thank God for God’s constant love. For the wonderful things God does.

             In the end, we do not come to worship only to be comforted.  Above all, we come to worship to thank God.  That is why the psalmist tells us right from the start – repeat these words – give thanks to God.  Repeat these words – give thanks to God. 

            When we get all tangled up in the form of worship, we need to step back and remember why we are here.  It is not about us.  It is about God. 

            The question is not: Does this sermon bring me comfort?  Does this hymn make me feel comfortable?  The question is:  Am I thanking God by giving my best to God when I worship?  Has this worship experience caused me to reflect more deeply on God’s message of justice, reconciliation and peace, so that I can continue to thank God in the actions I take in my life beyond these four walls? 

            In the end, worship is more about theology and how we understand our relationship to God than anything else – and the foundation of that relationship is not comfort, it is in living lives of thanksgiving.

            When I come to worship, am I preparing myself to thank God – not just for an hour on Sunday morning, but I would suggest, more importantly, for the other 167 hours in the week?  Am I giving thanks to the Lord in all that I do because God is good, and God’s love is eternal?  Repeat these words - “giving thanks to the Lord because God is good, and God’s love is eternal.”

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine

www.rvccme.org

 

Psalm 19 - The Voices of God

            When Donna and I attended the Calvin Institute of Worship Annual Symposium in Grand Rapids in January, I participated in a workshop entitled “Preaching from the Other Book.”  Going into it, I was intrigued. 

            I felt that I was fairly well acquainted with the primary book from which a preacher would preach, that is, the Bible.  However, I was curious about this “other” book.  What was it?  Was it something I had missed along the way in seminary?  Was it some new-fangled, politically correct notion of where to go to read what God is all about? 

            It turned out, of course, that it was neither of those things.  The “other “ book was not preaching primer that was collecting dust on a shelf in the Yale Divinity School Library.  And it certainly was not some post-modern approach to getting to know what God is all about.  The “other” book, it turned out, was creation.  That’s right – God’s creation – the natural world all around us.

            Creation and the Word – two ways of learning about who God is.  And in spite of the decades old environmental movement and the more recent concern about global climate change and its effect on us as a species and on our world, learning about God through creation is not one of these fashionably contemporary ideas that some of us turn up our noses at as being too liberal, too modern, too tree hugging. 

            Learning about God through creation goes back to at least the mid-fifth century CE, to the time of St. Patrick.  The idea that God chooses to reveal God’s sacredness to us human beings in not just one but two ways (scripture and creation) is foundational to Christianity as it first developed in Ireland, Scotland, and England. 

            A character in Kathleen Norris’ novel, Dakota, puts it well.  This young schoolgirl who had recently moved from Louisiana to North Dakota observed in wonder, “The sky is full of blue and full of the mind of God.”

            Embracing this duality in experiencing God does not come naturally to us in our New England protestant churches.  Enclosed within our four walls here, we focus on the mind piece rather well, much less so the blue sky.  And yet, Lutheran Old Testament Scholar Fred Gaiser writes about “the rich way in which creation and law, nature and word, complement each other, together bearing fuller witness to God than either alone.”

           

            It is Psalm 19, which we just read, that conjoins and affirms these two ways of seeing and understanding God, these two different ways through which God is revealed.  As Baptist theologian Greg Earwood cautions, “We must become bilingual, fluent in the two languages of creation and torah (or scripture). The speech of creation is visual, a kind of “sign language.”

            In a very different language torah (or scripture) instructs us in the wisdom of the Lord. From the psalmist we learn that creation and torah (or scripture) join together in testimony to the Lord God. They speak different languages, but have the same intent. One interprets the other, yet both point to the same God.”

            At first glance, Psalm 19 is like two separate meditations abruptly consolidated in the middle.  One might even wonder whether they were originally two distinct pieces of poetry.

You see, if you read only the first half of the psalm, you find a praise song of creation.  Similarly, if you reflect only on the second half, you discover a Torah psalm, that is, a psalm in praise of God’s law. 

           

            One part without the other is certainly not bad.  However, what makes Psalm 19 unique is the marvelous way in which the songwriter interweaves these two parts, so that we praise not only creation, but also torah – or the law – or scripture in the same breath.  The result is that the two seemingly divergent segments fit together incredibly well.

            The first six verses of the psalm are a marvelous testimony to the glory and splendor of God found most vividly and vibrantly in creation.  The images fling us to the farthest reaches of the universe, and there we find the heavens themselves declaring God’s glory and the skies proclaiming the work of God’s hands. 

            We envision the sun – day in and day out - emerging from the tent that God has pitched, as loving as a bridegroom, warming all the earth without fail.  What a marvelous word picture, one which we will reference again in the hymn we will sing together shortly.

            However, God’s glory is not only revealed in the outer reaches of the cosmos.  As the Psalmist tells us, “their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world,’ even reaching our ears.  If we are open to the beauty and mystery of creation, we learn something about who God is.  All of creation – all of it – reflects the magnificence of God Almighty. 

Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds thy hands have made

I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder

Thy power throughout the universe displayed

O God, how great thou art!

            Now, if all the psalmist wanted to express was a deep gratitude for God the Creator, then Psalm 19 would end with these glorious images of sun and stars.  However, Psalm 19 continues and suddenly changes its focus.  

            The natural world is no longer at the heart of the poem. The psalmist shifts from describing the God who is revealed to us through creation to characterizing the God who is revealed to us by another means.  Our focus deviates from the limitlessness of all creation to something that is far more concrete.

The Psalmist labels this second way that God is revealed as the law. 

            Now it is important to remember from last week’s sermon that we do not mean law in a legalistic sense.  The word is better translated as instruction, God’s instruction to humanity, God’s way and truth.

                    

            The law that the psalmist refers to is not a bunch of rules restricting us.  The essence of the law is living as God intends for us to live, existing and prospering “in harmony with God’s will—with God’s justice and mercy and love,” as Presbyterian pastor Alan Brehm puts it.  He goes on to say that “the bottom line is that torah (or scripture) like creation, is a means for helping us to “mind” God—i.e., keep in mind the things of God, the ways of God, God’s truth and God’s justice, God’s love and God’s mercy."

            Psalm 19 proclaims to us that within the law or within God’s sacred instructions, we have everything we need to return to the life God intended for us.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, 
refreshing the soul. 
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, 
making wise the simple.  The precepts of the Lord are right, 
giving joy to the heart. 
The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.”

            The law, scripture, this set of instructions (call it what you will) is not a burden, but rather a gift that has the potential to bring transformation, restoration, and renewal to us and to our world.

            What we have so far then is a psalm declaring that God reveals God’s glory through creation, and God reveals God’s character through Scripture.  Use your five senses and look to the natural world for God’s power and genius.  Then use your mind and look to the law, to Scripture, to tell you in another way what God is like and how God wants us to live. 

            Some people – quite a few these days actually – say that they do not need to read the Bible because they can worship God just fine in nature, with their golf clubs, in their boats with a beer.   However, Psalm 19 points out a certain lack of depth to that brand of spirituality.

            The Psalmist communicates clearly that the power and splendor of God in creation, whether that is experienced as the summer morning tee time on the golf course, the ripple of waves beneath the boat, or the way the beer heats up in the sun, is only part of the story.  To begin to understand God in all of God’s sacredness, one must search for God also in scripture, in Torah, in the Word, in the sacred instructions.  The God who is revealed in creation challenges us to learn the other part of that God’s story in scripture.  It is in scripture that we will discover the Way, God’s way.

           

             However, setting up this two-pronged revelation of God is not the end of this psalm.  The last verses offer one final thought about these voices of God.  Not only is God revealed in creation and in scripture, but God is also revealed in the response to all this of God’s servants – and that would be us.

            As Fred Gaiser, writes, “hearing the voice of God in creation, hearing the voice of God's law that gives us life, we can join the voice of the psalmist in the psalm's final section, appreciating the law's warning and its intention of keeping us from falling into transgression, praying at last that our words, our voice, (translated into our actions) be acceptable to God.”

            And what would those acceptable actions be?  Put bluntly, they are the ways we choose to take care of God’s stuff – from the world around us right down to our next door neighbor. More precisely, those actions would include, for example, considering your environmental footprint – and not immediately shutting down because you think that terminology is all liberal claptrap.  It could include something as small as bringing your own mug to Starbucks or Tim Horton.  It could include caring enough about senior citizens and others with inadequate health care in our communities to take action to influence our own state legislature.

            The words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts, which are translated into our intentional actions, means taking care of God’s stuff – the whole of God’s creation – as God teaches us to do in Scripture, as Jesus demonstrated in his own ministry.     Listen to the voices of God – and, as Christian Reformed pastor, Ken Gehrels’ writes, “remember how it felt the last time your neighbor let his dog do its business on your lawn and just walked away without cleaning it up? Remember how mad you were, how insulted you felt? How we treat another person’s stuff tells us a lot about what we think of the other person. Including God. And God’s stuff. “  All of God’s stuff. 

O God, may these words of my mouth, this meditation of my heart, and the actions they cause me to take, be pleasing in your sight, God,  my Rock and my Redeemer.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine

www.rvccme.org