Today I’m going to turn to a book of the Bible that I’ve found very helpful for funeral messages but hasn’t drawn me to preach many Sunday sermons: the book of Psalms. The Psalms are the ancient hymn book, prayer book, and emotional journal of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, written by many authors over many centuries. They give voice to joys and sorrows, anger and anguish and disappointment; they provide the words for formal celebrations and reflections on the glory of God’s amazing creation. Most of all, their variety and creativity give us the opportunity to find ourselves between their lines.
Although they are terribly ancient, the Psalms
may also offer one of the best bridges to really connect the old, old story
with the lives of youth and young adults. Ray McGinnis, who will be here at
Ralph Connor just a couple of weeks from now, has written a book entitled
“Writing the Sacred” and he has this to say (pp.16-17) about the young people
he encountered through conferences and weekend retreats: “[they] trusted that
beyond shopping, beyond the pub, beyond the busyness of overtime and split
shifts, there exists a deeper meaning to life’s mysteries. There was a thread they were following toward
greater awareness of their own feelings and thoughts and actions and they
wanted to anchor that awareness in a relationship with the One who had created
them. At these gatherings, it was the word heard through storytelling, music,
singing, poetry, and prayer that most powerfully communicated and enabled them
to give voice to this thread. Readings
from the Psalms [communicated] from a place in the heart able to reach a wide
spectrum of participants.”
Although in the United Church of Canada we
don’t typically bring study Bibles along to worship, today it would have been
handy, because the 84th Psalm just begs to be dealt with verse by
verse. But have no fear! Although you don’t have to follow along verse-by-verse, if you’d like to do so, just turn to the
responsive Psalm we shared earlier, on page 800 of Voices United. While it doesn’t indicate the verses, you’ll
find the full text of Psalm 84 there, without additions or deletions.
1. How
lovely is your dwelling place, God of hosts!
2. My
soul longs, even faints for the courts of God, my heart and my flesh cry for
joy to the living God.
I can’t hear these words without hearing music,
ranging from the lovely solo “How Lovely are thy dwellings, O Lord of Hosts” (Samuel
Liddle) to the contemporary Christian praise song, “Better is One Day.” (Matt
Redman) But the visual that goes with
the song as I enter into this Psalm, is not from Church but from Sports.
Let me explain a bit. Most of us have places that we would
desperately love to visit sometime.
There’s some common venues on this “bucket list” of destinations: the
Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, Mount Everest or Mount
Kilimanjaro, the Eiffel Tower, Buckingham Palace, the Parthenon, the Coliseum…
the list goes on and on. For many, our
own Rocky Mountains are most definitely on the list.
For me, the list goes more like this: afternoon
baseball games at Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium. Toss in some football at Arrowhead or Mile
High or any number of College Stadiums. NHL games at Maple Leaf Gardens, the
Montreal Forum, the Boston Gardens used to be on the list, but those days have,
alas, come and gone. When I think about actually
visiting these places, my heart skips a beat, just like the first time I
actually saw the Stanley Cup and the Grey Cup in person. I become a little boy with wide-eyed,
life-long excitement who is finally arriving at a place larger than life, a
place so very familiar yet until now, not actually experienced.
Transfer that excitement to the Psalmist. We don’t know whether this Psalm was written
in anticipation of finally visiting the Temple in Jerusalem, or from long-ago
memories sparked by an inability to get to the Temple again, but there is a
little-kid excitement about it that I find absolutely endearing. It’s a recipe consisting of about one
tablespoon of “God’s glorious temple is so beautiful” plus ten cups of “this is
God’s house, and I get to be this close to God’s life-giving presence.” How
amazing is that?!? To yearn that deeply
for God, and then to bridge the gap by coming to a place where God’s presence
is totally real. That must have been
extraordinary.
Although we believe that God is always
accessible to us – whether by saying a quiet prayer, or sensing God’s presence
in creation, by experiencing kindness given or received, or perceiving Christ
walking with us through good times and bad – there is something particularly attractive about this idea of
coming even more intimately
into God’s presence. Maybe it’s because of
the confidence in what the Psalmist says:
for him, God is present, here, now, in absolute fullness. And at some level, that same note may sound
in our hearts as we decide to include Worship time in our week. Whether it’s on Sunday mornings, on Wednesday
nights, or in study and prayer with trusted friends, every time we make the
conscious choice to Worship our Lord we are affirming that God’s presence is
real, that God’s presence is everywhere yet does have a sense of place, that
God’s presence is most joyously experienced with other pilgrims who also desire
to spend special time with God.
3. Even
the sparrow finds a house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young,
at your altars, God of hosts, my sovereign, my God.
4. Happy
are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise.
At first glance, these appear to be sentimental
little lines thrown in for a bit of colour, but there are two things of note
here. First, between the lines of the
Hebrew there’s a bit of a joke: this
pilgrim, who knows he’ll never be able to get into the most private parts of
the Temple, is a wee bit envious of the birds who can come and go from all
parts of the Temple without restriction.
And second, it’s a great reminder of the familial interconnectedness of
the whole created order: we may think
that God has made this whole wide world for our use only, but that simply isn’t
so. Our self-determination may be more
complex than that expressed by other creatures, but we all have a common kinship
through God, the origin of us all, and even the sparrows and swallows are
attracted to show praise. No matter what
other agendas our lives may have, life is enhanced when we include time to sing
praise to the living God.
5. Happy
are those whose strength is in you, who have set their heart on pilgrimage.
6. Going
through the valley of Baca they find a spring from which also to drink, the
early rain also covers it with pools of water.
7. They
go from strength to strength, to appear before God in Zion.
These verses remind us of something that occasionally
gets missed in main-line Christian thought; namely, the source of our ability to be the kind of people God would have us
be.
All too often, even when I have really felt
like the words I have shared on Sunday have been inspired by God, I find there
is an equation that inadvertently shows up in my preaching: that is, God calls
us to do thus and such > we try really, really hard to fulfill those
God-given tasks > and God loves us no matter how it all turns out. The problem with this is the step in the
middle: that our life’s goal is to try our very hardest to be good. Actively stepping in to challenging
situations is a necessary part of our life in Christ, but the desire and the
motivation and the ability to do that is God’s work in us, not something that
we self-generate. The pilgrims going
through the dull lands of Baca, land that would have been called “dusty gulch”
in the old west, found that their energy began with God, was renewed with God,
and from start to finish was oriented toward God. The goal was to come closer to God, and that
was achieved not by maximum effort, but by maximum trust that God would bring
them there. Admittedly, I continue to
find it hard to wrap my mind around the idea that it is God’s willpower, not
mine, that moves my life from one scene to another; apparently, the Psalmist
had no such difficulties of understanding, some 3000 years ago.
8. O
God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob.
9. Behold,
O God, our shield, look on the face of your anointed.
10. Truly
a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house
of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
What a memorable line of scripture: “truly a
day in your courts – one solitary day – is better than a thousand elsewhere.” Memorable, and strangely prophetic in some of
our lives. Listen to the contrast: one
day in God’s courts, one marvelous, ecstatic day where your life walks step by
step with the Lord’s. 24 hours, or even
8 hours, or even 2 hours, where there is a sense of inseparable closeness
between you and God. Balance this
against 1000 days: basically, three years. Although the Psalmist doesn’t intend
to be a bookkeeper in this matter, with 1000 just meaning a LOT of time, there
have been stretches in my life that pretty much match this ratio. Three years of day to day routines, doing
stuff ‘cuz it needs to be done, busy for busy’s sake but doing nothing
particularly meaningful or mission-driven – with at best a couple of shining
moments in the whole stretch that feels like time fully attuned to God’s call
for my life. One day with God, 1000
doing other stuff, and indeed, the single God day is better.
Sometimes there’s not much to be done about it
– the routines and demands of life do take over, and even the God-time starts
feeling humdrum. But listen to what the Psalmist says in the second half of the
verse: “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God, than dwell in the
tents of wickedness”. In some
translations it says doorkeeper, in others it says “I would rather stand just
outside the threshold” but no matter how the Hebrew gets read, it’s a fantastic
declaration that even the most humble position near God is countless times
better than all the fame and fortune in the world. And
wow, in a world of reality TV shows, and a bombardment of brand-name logos, and
the predominance “go big or go home,” we are constantly being sold the idea
that those tents of wickedness are a lot more fulfilling places than they
really are. A work friend of mine got
married last year, and one of the prayers in the Catholic service was that they
be protected from “the glamour of sin” and that more or less says it all. Better to be the invisible girl holding the
temple door for others, better to be the creepy guy hanging around near the
temple gates, than to make any choice that would lure you away from the love of
God. Even when our spiritual lives feel
empty or chaotic, even when the temptation of “fitting in” is powerfully
strong, orienting ourselves toward God and God’s call on our lives is the way
to go. Because if we believe the
Psalmist’s claim that one day in the courts of God is worth a thousand
elsewhere, what would be the value of two days near God? Or four days? Or a
month? That God-time grows our lives
exponentially – what Jesus called “life in abundance” – and that other junk
just pales by comparison.
I would be remiss if I moved on without
commenting on a hopeful connection that many Christians have made with this
Psalm. In its assurance that the quality
of life with God is 1000x better than anything else we could choose, is also an
assurance that life lived eternally with God is incomparable. While the initial author of this Psalm was
most likely focused on the quality of life here and now, it is also true on
that higher plane. Those God-moments
that bring joy to our lives, are just the beginning of what is to come.
11. For
you, God, are a sun and shield, you will give grace and honour. No good thing will you withhold from those
who live the upright life.
12. O
God of hosts, happy are those who put their trust in you.
These final verses repeat what was just said:
God’s blessings of grace and honour and goodness are right there for those who
choose God’s life-giving ways over the not-quite-true, Photo-Shopped ways of
the world. It’s the one and only place
in the Old Testament where God is referred to as a Sun, and it’s a beautifully
chosen image because the Sun keeps shining and shining and shining, not because
I have earned those sunbeams but because that’s just what the Sun does. It shines, it brings warmth, it lightens and
brightens our days… and so does God, just because God is God. We can
choose to live in that light or hide in the shade, and the Psalmist makes his
choice clear.
This week, I have found it to be a true gift to
spend time with this Psalm, with its unbridled expressions of joy that come
from simply coming close to God. For
those of us who feel like God has been part of the picture for as long as we
can remember, it’s really important to hear this kind of excitement – a
reminder of the extraordinary quality of life we live with God, versus the
quality of life we would find anywhere else.
And for those of us who may have dealt head-on with depression, this Psalm
gives a unique sense of lightness with each reading.
So I leave you with a bit of homework: I invite
you to spend some time with the 84th Psalm in the coming week. Read it over a few times, slowly, maybe even
read it from a couple of different versions.
If a verse or phrase or word seems to be saying something specific and
personal to you, write it down, and spend some time with that in prayerful
meditation. And most of all, let the joy
of each section wash over you, see the big smile of a pilgrim whose arrival at
the Temple has brought total fulfillment. And know that in each word, each line of this
Psalm, God’s intent is to draw you
nearer, to bring abundant joy to your
days and to bring you to greater
and deeper joy with your loving Lord.
In the name of God, source of all that is good,
Amen.
Work cited:
McGinnis,
Ray. Writing the Sacred: A Psalm-inspired
path to appreciating and writing sacred poetry. Kelowna, BC: Northstone,
2005.
© 2012 Rev. Greg
Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial United Church, Canmore AB
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