I
am grateful that many of you are finding this Summer Sermon Series
on the Psalms to be helpful to you and to your life of faith. Although
over the years I have studied the Psalms and taught the Psalms and
prayed the Psalms and sung the Psalms, I had never really preached
the Psalms beyond the familiar Psalms 23, 100 and so forth. So, it’s
been a challenge--in a good way--that has caused me to dive back in
to this most beautiful and compelling portion of our Scriptures.
The
Psalms offer us what has been called “a school of prayer.”
That is, not just a prayer book or a collection of prayers, but a
primer in how to pray. It is all too easy for our prayers to devolve
into a “me, me, me, me, me” cry for God’s attention
and favor. Christians of all ages are at risk of not growing up into
a mature faith, of getting stuck as emotional toddlers, frozen in
an early phase of childhood development. Too often, our prayers are
all about our hurts, our needs, our wants, our demands of God.
Luckily
God has the patience of the best parent in the world. Knowing that
we, just like toddlers… can't express ourselves very well, are
easily overwhelmed, want to do more than we can handle, don’t
understand delayed gratification and think we’re the center
of the universe…the Good Parent knows to distract us, try and
make us laugh, to offer options and, most importantly, as a loving
role model, to show us how to act.
And
that’s just where our Psalm today, Psalm 85, will take us. Like
the best parent, God is our role model. And the power of this Psalm
can help us grow up in faith to be persons in whom righteousness and
peace kiss, in whom steadfast love and faithfulness meet. We can grow
up into the image of God, thanks to the “school of prayer”
that is this Psalm.
Let
me offer a word of caution here. There are many things out there in
this world that offer spiritual maturity. Some come with a big price-tag
and in our world we might be tempted to think that if something costs
a lot it must be really good. Not necessarily. There have been spiritual
charlatans around since the snake coaxed Eve to eat the apple. The
recent death of poor Tammy Faye Bakker Messner reminded us of an era
in American Christianity which was not one of our high points. Millions
of people were persuaded to give their hard-earned money to buy faith
and assurance and healing, so that Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker could
live high on the hog. They flourished for awhile, but their greed
eventually caught up with them.
These
days, there’s another form of a spiritual charlatan out there
for sale called “The Secret.” You can spend big bucks
to get the book, the DVD, the tapes and so forth. And in it you can
ostensibly learn the truth about the secret that has been kept from
you, the secret to happiness and health and wealth. A couple people
recommended it to me and I listened to some of it last week to see
for myself.
It’s
really just a jazzed up version of Norman Vincent Peale’s “Power
of Positive Thinking.” OK. So here’s “the secret”.
I’ll tell you for free. It’s just that your thoughts control
everything that happens to you. So, if you just change your thoughts,
your whole life will change. The Secret reports miracles of healing,
checks coming in the mail and all sorts of wondrous things. And I
really hope it’s true that some positive person came into $10
million as they claim.
It’s
true as far as it goes. I know, for example, that athletes train mentally
to envision the results they want to achieve in their performance.
And, on the other hand, I know that if I get up and burn the toast
and then tell myself that I’m going to have a really bad day,
I probably will bang my shin on the coffee table, get to work without
my glasses, forget to call my mother and run out of gas on the freeway.
BUT, The Secret goes on to make outrageous, insidious claims—for
example, that the poor of the world are poor because they don’t
think right, that if you get sick, your thoughts must have been all
messed up, and so forth. Don’t buy it. Don’t believe it.
Instead,
let me recommend that you turn to the Psalms, our school of prayer,
and look again at the ways of God. In fact, if you don’t have
a Bible and would like to spend more time in the Word of God, take
one home with you today as our gift to you. It doesn’t cost
an arm and a leg. And it’s no secret that you have to buy. It
is the Word of God for you, as it has been for all God’s people
from generation to generation.
In
powerful and beautiful poetic language, Psalm 85 shows us who God
is and who we are to be. First, understand that it is what is called
a Psalm of communal lament. In the first verses, as read by all you
on the lectern side, the people remind God of all God’s gracious
action: God had been favorable to them, had forgiven them and withdrawn
his anger towards them.
Then,
in the verses we read here on the pulpit side, the people lament:
“Will you be angry with us forever? Will you not revive us again?
Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.”
These
are the two sides of our experience of God. Presence and absence.
Faith and doubt. Certainty and despair. The people first remember
and name all that they trust about God. But then they experience a
time of doubt and they honestly cry out to God about what they are
experiencing. For reasons that we don’t know, they are in a
time of feeling like God has abandoned them, that God has turned away
from them, that God is no longer being God for them.
As
our ‘school of prayer’, the Psalms help us pray all that
is on our hearts. When it is “well with our soul”, we
can praise God for God’s acts of mercy and salvation on our
behalf. But also, when our soul is troubled and distressed, when all
seems lost, when we cannot hear God or see God or sense God’s
presence, we can cry out to God in painful, honest pleading: “Will
you not revive us again? Show us your steadfast love and grant us
your salvation.” One commentator calls this “complaining
to God in faith.” When we are in that place, when our soul is
sore distressed and troubled, Psalm 85 gives us permission to complain
to God in faith and to plead to God for deliverance and mercy.
The
only way to have a vital and mature relationship with God is by being
honest, by being truthful about all that is in our soul and on our
heart and on our mind. Pour it out in prayer. And know that you are
held in God’s everlasting love.
Because
then, knowing we are heard, knowing we are loved, we can start to
listen again. We can be silent and wait for a word from the Lord.
The
tone of Psalm 85 shifts dramatically at verse 8. A lone voice speaks.
It is the psalmist or perhaps a priest or other worship leader. You
heard Mary speak it this morning. It is the voice of one who listens
and then speaks to the people God’s abiding word of righteousness
and peace. Hear again some of the most beautiful, poetic words in
all of Scripture:
“Let
me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his
people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory
may dwell in our land.
Steadfast
love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss
each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness
will look down from the sky. The Lord will give what is good, and
our land will yield its increase. Righteousness will go before him,
and will make a path for his steps.”
As
Christians, we believe that steadfast love and faithfulness meet and
righteousness and peace kiss in the incarnation Jesus Christ. In the
Word made flesh, we see this wedding of heaven and earth, of love
and faithfulness, of righteousness and peace. In Christ, we see the
fulfillment of God’s promise; the Word God continues to speak
to us, the gift God continues to send to us, of life made whole. Of
the earth restored. Of salvation for God’s faithful people.
Just
a bit later in this service, we will commission our Summer 2007 Youth
Work Team to New Orleans. They are a wonderful group of youth and
adults who leave next Saturday to return to Bethany United Methodist,
our partner congregation, to rebuild homes. And in so doing, they
will live out the vision the Psalmist has heard and shared. In them,
love and faithfulness will meet as they live out their love of God
through the faithful work of their hands. In them, righteousness and
peace will kiss, as they work to restore safety and peace in a land
once devastated. And by their work and their witness, they will proclaim
peace and they will be the hope.
They
have learned the skills they will need. They have had a class on the
safe use of power tools. They have raised money and collected all
their equipment and supplies. They have prepared. And now let me add
one more thing this morning. Team: turn your hearts to God. Take the
promise of Psalm 85 with you by putting on the whole armor of God,
as Paul reworded it in his letter to some of the first Christians.
When
you put on your work clothes and fasten your tool belt around your
waist, remember what Paul added. Pause just for a moment, turn your
heart to God and listen. Paul said: “Fasten the belt of truth
around your waist. Put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes,
put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.
Take the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. And take the
sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
Put
on the whole armor of God. Then, in all that you do and all that you
say and all that you share with those you will meet in New Orleans,
God’s love will be proclaimed and the peace of Christ made manifest.
For people whose lives have been shaken to the core, for the many
who lost everything, you will be Christ for them. You will bring to
them God’s peace and love.
May
you be those in whom love and faithfulness, righteousness and peace
come together so that you will be Christ’s ambassadors from
this congregation to the people of New Orleans.
And
in all things, may we all, like the Psalmist, pour out our hearts
before God and listen for God’s word to us. In all our living
and all our praying and all our serving, let us live into the promised
land of righteousness and peace that is the Kingdom of God on earth.
Amen.
©Patricia Farris, 2007. Permission is given for
brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.
Psalm
85: Hear What God Will Speak