Scriptures Psalm 4 (canted) … Psalm 91
I. A man from ISIS
who has contracted Ebola tries to immigrate across the Rio Grande in order to
plea for free health insurance …
A ridiculous scenario? Not if we are to take seriously many election ads we have been hearing or have heard about recently.
A
recent New York Times article about these ads opens with this line: “Darkness
is enveloping American politics.”1 For we are not safe – or so we
are told. Again, and again, and ad
nauseam again. And then we are tempted to fear fear itself. One Times op-ed
contributor recently wrote a brilliant analytical piece on this phenomenon,
titled, “A Climate of Fear.” And yet, in analyzing the climate, the author’s article
projects – you guessed it – a climate of fear!2
Perhaps there is some truth to our felt lack of security: be it economic, homeland, or national. And so we are tempted to plead to a power greater than ourselves to protect us – to make us feel secure. Is it our government? Forget that! Our Lord and Savior?
Much scripture would lead to believe that God will keep us secure -- will protect us from all sorts of external threats that pass our way. And much scripture … indicates otherwise. (As an Old Testament professor of mine in seminary once sagely noted, “Consistency is not the hallmark of scripture!”)
Which scriptures do we listen to, when we lose a friend on 911 – or from a car accident – or to addiction, or to cancer, or – God forbid – we lose the ability to carry forward in life the way that we planned and dreamed we could carry forward?
Which scriptures do we affirm? Which message? The ones that suggest that our God is a God of security: external protection from harm? Or the ones that say, not so much – that our God instead may be short on security and protection, yet is certainly long on support? Long on … providence?
II. Reformation Day –
All Hallows’ Eve – has just passed. Perhaps it is fitting – on the eve of
Tuesday’s elections, and the fears that are driving it – to pause and celebrate
Reformation Day.
To embrace anew what is most hallowed about our faith that our Protestant
forebears sought to reclaim many centuries past. In particular, to embrace anew
what one of them, our Presbyterian forebear John Calvin, sought to convey about
God. And that is this: Our God is a God of
sovereignty … and of grace … and of providence.
Not a defensive God of security and protection. Not, at least, if we don’t wish to trivialize God, as well as our own responsibilities.
Our God of sovereignty and of grace and of providence is so much more than that. So much more than the shallow – the specious – the superficial – the patronizing and head-patting: “Be secure.” Our God will not be mocked in that way! Our God of sovereignty and of grace and of providence whispers to us something greater, something deeper, something richer: “Fear not!”
Not that we won’t have fears. We will; we are human.
But that when we have fears, we can hear a still, small voice, if you’d like, say to us, “Everything may not be okay. But you can become okay – with my help – in dealing with it.”
So: “Fear not!”
III. Each
of my six summers here in Bethesda, I have had the privilege of a weekend or
week-long silent retreat to a Trappist monastery 90 minutes to the west.
Along the Shenandoah River, Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, VA provides me – it doesn’t protect me, it provides me – a shelter from the storm, a refuge from the mania that metro DC becomes for me. And I have been delighted, with adult chaperones from the church, to take two of our confirmation classes there for a few hours.
Every day of their lives, the dozen Trappist monks at Holy Cross Abbey gather for five services of chanted prayer focused almost exclusively on the Psalms. And over the course of every two weeks, they somehow cover each and every one of the 150 psalms in our Psalter.
The fifth and final service every day – seven days a week, 365 days a year – is a 20-minute service known as Compline. As opposed to the other four daily services, the substance of Compline never, ever changes. Its focus: The same two Psalms before us today.
Psalms of comfort. Psalms of care. Psalms of refuge. Psalms of safety – not in terms of protection ex cathedra, but in terms of the protection of care. Of having a God who provides an escort along life’s treacherous journey.3
Psalms 4 and 91. The last words these monks sing, or say, every day of their lives before they retire for the evening. Words undoubtedly stamped on the backs of their eyeballs and ingrained in their hearing.
Here are selected verses from these two psalms:
“I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me life down in safety.”
“My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” A mighty fortress is our God …
“You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday.”
“When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble.”
Parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, all guardians and caregivers of young children: Listen up! Perhaps it is best to put away shallow bedtime rhymes such as: “Now I lay me down to sleep …” Read instead to the children Psalms 4 and 91!
IV. And so we draw
the curtain close on these eight Sundays with the Psalms. The Washington Redskins
have their playbook; this is our “praybook”. This is our liturgy. This is our
story. This is our story that gives us our identity, our grounding, our true
sense of home: Coming home (Promised Land) … Leaving home (Exile) … and Going
home (Exodus). Our story … Our home.
The great Reformers – Luther, Calvin, et. al. – got it ... they really did. Many of them concluded that our 150 psalms articulate the whole gospel in a nutshell. They were driven in their spiritual passion precisely by their use and study of the psalms.
Maybe – just maybe – we could learn today from such a focus. Maybe – just maybe – we can learn to stay open, stay surprised, and “fear not.”
In his wonderful book The Message of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann writes, “(Our) dominant culture is … resistant to genuine awareness and real surprise. It is curious but true, that surprise is as unwelcome as is loss. And our culture is organized to prevent the experience of both.”
Surprise and loss. Can’t avoid them, when a member of our congregation offers in her public prayer last week these words for our newest member: “Interesting things will happen to you here.”
Surprise and loss. Can’t avoid them, when I pray each and every Sunday before Worship these words: “Lord, let something happen today that’s not in our bulletin!”
Surprise and loss. Can’t avoid them, when a choir member gets lost in the notes and suddenly springs alive with the sheer emotion of what is being sung.
Surprise and loss. Can’t avoid them, when we read – when we study – when we meditate over the psalms.
And so our job is to let go – to simply let go. Let go of the controls. Let go, and let God speak. Speak to your story, through these wonderful sung prayers known as the Psalms.
Fear not. That is the psalmist’s election plea to us all. For faith begins not by knowing what the future holds. Faith begins by knowing who holds the future.
1Jeremy W.
Peters, “Cry of GOP in Campaign: All Is Dismal,” New York Times, October 9, 2014.
2Roger Cohen, “A
Climate of Fear,” New York Times,
October 27, 2014.
3Walter
Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A
Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 157.
