GeeDubya's Sermon Site: Psalm 8

I’m going to start today’s message with a task that I think you’re going to enjoy. I want you to bring to mind some of your very favourite things in life, such as…

· A song that lifts your spirits every time you hear it;

· A special place on this planet, breathtaking, lovely, memorable;

· A favourite flavour – something sweet or savoury, delicate or robust, that overwhelms your senses with joy.

As you sit with those life-lifting thoughts, consider that each of us has our own unique answers to the questions, and the variety of answers would only grow if we asked the same questions of even more people. Each of us have our own distinct, treasured points of joy that shape our relationship with God, the creative and loving source of all that is. And on this World Communion Sunday, we celebrate a whole world filled with sounds and tastes and vistas, each of us experiencing the glory of God in our own life’s context, each nation and each faith community and each worshiper lifting praise to God in a unique way.

If we could somehow bundle all of those life-lifting experiences together, in this room, in this town, around the world, we would start to approach the emotional landscape of today’s scripture reading, the 8^th Psalm. If reading the Book of Psalms from front to back, this is the first Psalm whose main task is to sing Praise to God, and it has inspired thousands of years of worship.

This Psalm begins by praising God and it ends with praising God, so pretty much every Bible commentator I’ve seen make the same point: if this is your Sunday scripture make sure, preacher, that you praise God too! In addition to starting and ending with praise, note that the entire Psalm is spoken TO God, no part of it is just speaking ABOUT God. That’s quite unusual in the Psalms; most often, part of the Psalm addresses God, with wonder or gratitude or anger or regret, and then in other spots the Psalmist is clearly addressing the people, either recalling an experience with God, or calling on them to respond in some way. Not in Psalm 8, though; here, every piece of it is spoken in a Godward direction.

And that’s important to consider, when we dive into the Psalm’s content. Shauna Hannan, a professor who teaches preaching at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California, proposes that the author of the Psalm used this structure:

A – Doxology (a hymn of praise to God)

B – God’s work

C – Who am I?

B¹ – God’s work

A¹– Doxology

The Psalm begins and ends with the same exact statement of praise, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Just after the beginning and just before the end, God’s work is made evident in the babbling of babies, the stars in the heavens, the lives of birds and fish and livestock. All these make up that “chorus of all creation, the song of all living things” we sang about two Sundays ago.

In the middle of the Psalm, between those words of praise, are words to be considered with care and caution. Here, the Psalmist asks God a big, somewhat rhetorical question:

⁴what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortalsthat you care for them?

(repeat) ⁴what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Indeed, amidst the vastness of galaxies, how could we humans even expect to be on God’s radar? The Psalmist, anxious to fill the uncomfortable silence, answers his own question, like so:

⁵Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. ⁶You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet.

On their own, these words come off as deeply arrogant, as if the sun and the moon and the stars bow down before us godlike humans. Admittedly, there is a degree of human-centeredness here that makes God’s love for ALL creation a bit hazy. And more dangerously, taken out of context, they seem to suggest that God has given humankind carte blanche in doing whatever we want with this planet, using the soil and the trees and every creature for whatever personal benefit we choose. But that ignores the whole point of this Psalm: it’s a love song to God.

The key word, “dominion”, found in the verse 6 of this Psalm and in the legend of creation in the first chapter of Genesis (vv. 26-31), must not be misunderstood, accidentally or intentionally. This is not permission to do whatever we want, relative to the plants and animals entrusted to our care, but is rather the trust that a loving parent has entrusted in their children to be kind, respectful and responsible. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this in her wonderful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, as she articulates the unwritten but broadly understood First Nations rules of the “honourable harvest”: (p.183) “Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life…. Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need…. Never take more than half. Leave some for others…. Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share…. Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.” Indeed, we humans as a species have a choice to make. We can live in harmony with our surroundings, and steward it in healthy, sustainable ways – and as Robin Wall Kimmerer details in her book, this kind of stewardship can and does happen - or we can let carelessness and greed take over, and watch the majesty and intricacy of the earth and all that dwell therein be crushed to powder. In stating we are just “a little lower than God” this Psalm insists that we pay attention to the love that God has for the world, an attentive love of constant renewal, and calls us emulate that. We are called to be wise stewards, care-takers, those who with sacred intent restore and reclaim that which has been entrusted to our care, so that God’s holy harmonies can be heard once more.

In this season of creation, on this World Communion Sunday which shines a light on our interconnections with believers everywhere, we pause once more to think of all the things we brought to mind at the start of this message, things that make life so extraordinary – the tastes, the sights, the melodies, all that makes our hearts sing. We bring sober thought to the fragility of this planet, and our responsibility to care for it, not diminish it. And we open ourselves to the God who is not only at the beginning and end of this Psalm, but at the beginning and end of our lives. To that God, we give our trust, our love, our thanks and our praise. Amen.

References cited or consulted:

Forsey, Eugene et al. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/dominion

Hannan, Shauna. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/the-holy-trinity/commentary-on-psalm-8-18

LeMon, Joel. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-psalm-8-19

Mast, Stan. https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2016-05-16/psalm-8-3/

Purdie, Silvia. https://www.conversations.net.nz/psalm-8-out-of-the-mouths-of-babes.html

Quanstrom, Danny. https://www.aplainaccount.org/post/psalm-8-1

Stott, Joan. http://www.thetimelesspsalms.net/w_resources/pentecost1a_2014.htm

Wall Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013.