When our family goes to our summer camp
(we call them “cottages” in Canada) in Algonquin Park in Ontario, we have an
evening tradition. Because we are often
finishing up dinner when the sun is setting, we frequently leave our dirty
dishes on the table, grab our wine glasses that hold those final few sips, and
mosey on down to our dock, which faces directly to the west. There we sit – often in silence, sometimes
with cameras – and watch the sunset, an event we fondly refer to as the nightly
“show.”
It is different every evening, and yet,
in its own way, it is always beautiful.
Sometimes the yellows seem to dominate, and the sky takes on an
unearthly hue, punctuated by the gray black of twilight clouds in the
background. Other times it is soft shades
of pink that reflect off not only the clouds on the horizon but also off those directly
overhead, making you feel that you are in the middle of the sunset, not just
watching from afar. And once in a while,
on the evenings we are truly blessed, it looks like the sky is on fire with
deep reds and brilliant oranges that seem to cut blackened silhouettes of the towering
pine, spruce, and hemlock trees on the far shore.
And flitting in and out of my mind as I
think now about the nightly awesome show are verses from Psalm 19:
The heavens
declare the glory of the Creator;
The firmament
proclaims the handiwork of Love.
During my sabbatical nearly 5 years ago
now, I hiked with my family and our Peruvian guides high into the Andes
Mountains. At 12,000 feet, the air is
thin and clear. Any pollution is many
miles away.
I remember one night leaving our dining
tent. It was pitch black outside, of
course – unless you looked up – and then you saw that the sky was aglow with about
a zillion stars. Million, billion,
zillion – whatever! It was more stars than I had ever seen – shaped into
constellations I had only read about in books - like the Southern Cross. And the Milky Way? Never had it been brighter, so bright, in
fact, that the native Quechua called it “the River.” Imagine – a river of
stars! We could even see the huge patches of interstellar dust – like giant
black clouds blacker than the night itself - forming what the Quechua call the
Black Llama. The sky felt so close that a part of me was sure that I could
reach out and touch the stars and the run my fingers through the dust.
There were no words that could
adequately describe the sense of vastness yet closeness and sheer beauty I
experienced. And, again, as I remember
that night, verses from Psalm 19 flit through my mind:
….night to night
knowledge is revealed.
There is no
speech, nor are there words;
There is something about nature in
general and certain natural spaces in particular that are inherently
sacred. There is something holy in a
sunset watched in the silence of the Canadian wilderness and a starry night
witnessed high in the thin air enveloping the mountains of Peru. Celtic
Christians call them “thin places” because the veil between the human and the
divine seems to almost disappear.
Of course, no one announces God’s
presence to you. No one tells you that
God has been revealed to you on that lake at twilight and in those mountains in
the pitch black of night as their peaks reach up to an endless starry, starry
night. But in the very depths of your
soul, you just know that there is something – someone - so much bigger than
you.
Their voice is
not heard; yet does their music resound
Through all the
earth, and their words echo to the ends of the world.
The Psalmist got it right, you
know. Surely God is revealed to us in
the natural world. How can we not
intuitively know that God is, in some mysterious way, behind creation? How can
we not sense the vast power – the big bang - behind the very act of creating?
How can we not realize that the Love that is integral to creating such beauty
is without measure? How can we not know that the natural order of things could
only have been set – in some ultimately unknowable way - set into motion by the
Holy One?
(The sun’s
rising) is in eternity, and its circuit to infinity.
Nothing is
hidden…..
However, the Psalmist also recognizes
that there is more to life than sunsets.
There is more to life than starry, starry nights. There is more to life than the natural world. Why? Because
God has set us – you and me – right into the middle of it, and it is, at best,
an awkward fit. Whatever was God
thinking?
And so in the space of a single verse
of this Psalm, we find ourselves hurtling at breath-taking speed from the
silence and vastness and sheer glory of creation to an exposition – albeit
poetic - of the Law, the Mosaic Law, the Law of God – the Law that creates
those boundaries we need to maintain order – not order for creation, but order
for ourselves in the midst of the beauty of creation.
“Rules?” We say. “Laws?
What gives here? First we were entrenched in spiritual experiences out
in the wilderness, and now we are talking the dry dust of rules and laws? Why did
we not just stop with verse 6 and chalk this Psalm up to a glorious song of
creation? What do rules and laws have to
do with all this?”
And yet the Psalmist ‘s song continues:
The law of the
Lord is perfect….steadfast….the judgments of the Lord are true.
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This
makes no sense! Oh, how we rankle at
the thought of rules and laws. It is
as Lutheran pastor Elizabeth Pederson ponders, “What is it about
rules that puts us on the defensive? Is it because they make us feel like
we're not trusted? Or maybe because they make us feel like we're not in
control? Rules, of course, dictate how we are supposed to live and act.
Though they are meant for good,
they can be seen as a billboard for our shortcomings. They reveal to us that
no, we are not perfect, we do not have it all together and we most certainly
are not in control. And that makes us squirm a little bit….” Think on that
for a moment: We do not have it all together, and we most certainly are not
in control.
However, as Pederson continues, “….But,
thankfully, that's not where it ends. We….are not left to figure it out on
our own. For just as the (Law shows) us that we are not in control, they
reveal to us who is.”
In
a sense, I guess, we live in two “universes.”
There is the one with constellations and infinite spaces, the one that
is rich in fodder for spiritual or mystical experiences, the one that has possessed
an order from the very beginning of time.
And then there is the other universe – the one down here on earth that
surely needs it own kind of order lest it be mired in, what Thomas Edward
McGrath calls "the otherwise chaotic moral universe of human
existence."
And
so the Psalmist tells us that, most happily for us, God is revealed not only in
nature but also in the Torah, the Law, the words of right living, the testimony
of love. And at its very best, this Law is
perfect, restoring life.
steadfast,
making foolish people wise.
upright,
making the heart rejoice.
pure,
giving
light to the eyes.
clean,
standing forever.
more desirable than gold, even much fine gold.
sweeter than honey, even the drippings from a
honeycomb.
We
need both perspectives, you know. We
need God to be revealed to us both in the glory of creation as well as in the
down-to-earth words of the law. To even
begin to understand the mystery of the Love of God, we need the pastel tints
and hues of a sunset, but we also need to embrace the Gospel message of Jesus,
he who embodies the Law for us who say we are Christian, the ancient law that
say to love your neighbor, love your earth, be a peacemaker, and always, always
care for the poor among you.
One
without the other is to get only half the story. We are fooling ourselves if we think we can
find all of who God is in a kayak on a lake or on skis at the top of run. And
we are equally foolish to think that church – and only church – holds all the
answers. As Lutheran pastor Fred Glaiser
writes, “A key thing that we want to hear in this psalm…is the rich way in
which creation and law, nature and word, complement each other, together
bearing fuller witness to God than either alone.
It
has been easy for people to drive a wedge between the two forms of divine
revelation that this psalm brings together. On the one hand, some who claim to
find God in creation have been quite suspicious of words and precepts; on the
other, some wed to verbal truth have rejected the possibility of knowing God in
nature.”
Of
course, no matter which way we look at it, we all fall short – some of us
spending far too much time in the kayak or on skis and others of us never venturing
out to marvel at a tree, much less to look up on a cloudless night. Sometimes
we get so wrapped up in our own lives that we cannot recognize our own
deficits. And the Psalmist knew that too
and so includes this heartfelt confession as she ends her song.
But who can discern their own weaknesses? (she writes)
Cleanse me, O Love, from all my hidden faults.
Keep me from boldly acting in error;
let my fears and illusions not have dominion over me!
Confession: maybe that is where this psalm comes round to
our Lenten themes of forgiveness and repentance, of starting over and new
beginnings, this recognition that the two holy books (Creation and Scripture)
are most likely out-of-balance in our lives.
We are smack in the middle of Lent
today and so ought to ask ourselves how the journey is going and what we need
to continue. Maybe we can go no further
without experiencing (perhaps this evening?) the wonder of a starry, starry
night. Maybe we cannot take another step
forward without opening a Bible (maybe tonight?) and reading the ancient
stories of God’s amorous affair with all of creation and the order God declared
through the Law of Love. Maybe we need
to better affirm one or the other of the Holy Books, so we can keep our lives
in balance. A thought to ponder
perhaps…..
But
all this is just a preacher’s ramblings, and so I pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my
heart be acceptable in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
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