Today's Sermon

 

"These Lives are Precious"

 

Psalm 72
¹Give the king your justice, O God,
   and your righteousness to a king’s son.
²May he judge your people with righteousness,
   and your poor with justice.
³May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
   and the hills, in righteousness.
⁴May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
   give deliverance to the needy,
   and crush the oppressor.

⁵May he live while the sun endures,
   and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.
⁶May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass,
   like showers that water the earth.
⁷In his days may righteousness flourish
   and peace abound, until the moon is no more.

⁸May he have dominion from sea to sea,
   and from the River to the ends of the earth.
⁹May his foes bow down before him,
   and his enemies lick the dust.
¹⁰May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles
   render him tribute,
may the kings of Sheba and Seba
   bring gifts.
¹¹May all kings fall down before him,
   all nations give him service.

¹²For he delivers the needy when they call,
   the poor and those who have no helper.
¹³He has pity on the weak and the needy,
   and saves the lives of the needy.
¹⁴From oppression and violence he redeems their life;
   and precious is their blood in his sight.

¹⁵Long may he live!
   May gold of Sheba be given to him.
May prayer be made for him continually,
   and blessings invoked for him all day long.
¹⁶May there be abundance of grain in the land;
   may it wave on the tops of the mountains;
   may its fruit be like Lebanon;
and may people blossom in the cities
   like the grass of the field.
¹⁷May his name endure for ever,
   his fame continue as long as the sun.
May all nations be blessed in him;
   may they pronounce him happy.

¹⁸Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
   who alone does wondrous things.
¹⁹Blessed be his glorious name for ever;
   may his glory fill the whole earth. Amen and Amen.

“These Lives Are Precious – God is Holding Our Life Series”

            That text extolling a king, a strong man, is not chosen with a wink to the upcoming inauguration.  We are beginning a new sermon series building off a framework put together by the liturgical artist Marcia McFee, with whom Bethany was able to spend some time with on her sabbatical last summer.  The framework, which offers music suggestions and selections from the Psalms for the scripture readings was put together a couple of years ago for the time of year between Christmas and Lent, the season that culminates in Easter. It’s called “God is Holding Our Life.” She writes, “After the rush and activity of the holiday season (even in pandemic) the new year can offer us a time of slowing down, simplifying, and leaning on reflection and prayer to help us sustain the journey toward a time when we can move to the rhythms of life for which we yearn.  It is difficult to be patient in the midst of difficult times.  The Psalms can help us with that.”[1]

            I far prefer that approach to a new year—slowing down, simplifying, and really stepping into reflection—to one of resolutions which always seems to come down to doing more and eating less.  It is a time to find our center.  God is holding our life sounds like an innocuous theme, even banal, but it is a rather daring profession to make.  We sophisticated Christians don’t talk so much about Godholding our life.  What could it mean?  Holding your life is not quite the same as being a puppeteer.  Holding your life is not quite the same thing as protecting you from every external threat.  What it does imply is a certain presence, a certain intimacy, a certain commitment. 

            To affirm that God is holding your life is to acknowledge that there’s something more than you, the small you at least. It’s to admit, and even embrace, your dependence, not the independence which we so covet in our society.  It’s to trust in what we cannot see and surely cannot understand.  It is to dare to say there is something or someone that longs for our wellbeing and somehow gives us what we need to show up in love and courage.  To say that God holds our life is to presume that the way begins and must continue in a state of openness to a higher wisdom, deeper love, and greater compassion.  It’s paradoxical, as many things of this life and the spirit are, because it’s agreeing to be stretched while trusting we can never go beyond the reach of the one who holds us.  To say that God is holding your life is to take the ultimate leap of faith.  Are you ready?

            Let’s at least start together and see where it goes. As I quoted moments ago, McFee concludes her introduction with, “the Psalms can help you with that.”  She might say that with a wink because the “that” could be anything. The Psalms cover everything, the fullness of human experience.  If you read through the psalms, these songs, these poems, you will find just about every human experience:  joy, sorrow, triumph, defeat, union with and trust in God, the feeling of betrayal and abandonment by God, anger, rage, fear, hope, love, deliverance.  They say, and I’ve done this with teenagers, you can take a group of people, pass out some Bibles and say, “Go and flip through the Psalms and come back when you’ve found something you can relate too.”  It doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not, you will find something.  Try it.

            The message is clear, all of it is part of the journey with God.  It’s not like you walk with God only when you’ve got it right, whatever that means. Churches in their puritanical forms have gotten that one wrong, sending the message that if you do this or think that you are outside the bounds.  You may be off the path, but it’s all part of the journey of faith.  Remember, we’re saying our lives are held by God. Nothing is beyond the reach. Whatever your life holds, whatever your carrying, whatever you’ve done or thought or felt, it all belongs.  God holds all of it, no matter how untouchable you think it is.

            Why begin the year, however, with a psalm about kings?  What could hopefully be less relevant to us?  Hopefully.  I went down a rabbit hole this week on Plato’s praise for the benevolent philosopher king who despises the meanness of this world and esteem justice as the greatest of all things[2], of his and Aristotle’s thoughts on democracy. While it’s interesting to explore what the wise have said about governance, and important to consider our own participation in the fragile luxury of democracy, McFee is not offering a tome on the value of having a king—the Old Testament is a testament to folly of that human tendency—McFee is pointing us to what a king, or anyone, should value, namely the people.  Look at what the psalm lifts up as virtues:  righteous judgment, justice for the poor, prosperity shared not hoarded, the hills’ wellbeing is even considered, deliverance for the needy not their disdain, defense of the vulnerable and opposition to the oppressor, safety from violence.   All of it flows from this one conviction found in verse 14.  It all flows from the commitment to recognize that the people are precious.  These lives are precious.

            To be a godly leader, or a godly person, is to see the people as God sees them, the people and the creatures, as precious. To declare God is holding your life is to affirm that the same holds true for all others, unless you want to play the game where you are the only chosen one or ones and that is a lonely and destructive island.  No, these lives are precious.  At the core of what is rotten in and rotting our society is the denial of the preciousness of the other, and the disregard for the truth which degrades the other.  Whether it’s demeaning rhetoric by elected leaders, vicious and harmful banter on social media, or the simple yet gross commodification of everything, we are off in our assessment of what is of true value. Though everything feels expensive, everything and everyone is cheapened.  Nothing is precious.  But, we are told to remember, these lives are precious. 

            I’ll tell you a couple of stories that may seem strange illustrations of the preciousness of life coming from a self-avowed pacifist, but for some reason these are what came up for me.  As I said earlier, life is paradoxical.  

            I once sat with a former soldier who talked of being in Iraq. He told me of turning his hat around when rounding a corner so that snipers wouldn’t see him.  It must be something to face those who want to take your life when you’ve come to their county to take theirs.  The man told me of a moment when he rounded that proverbial corner and, well in his own words, doing “what he had to do.”  I didn’t have to guess what he meant.  Now these men—I assume they were all men—were, of course, players in a much larger drama, controlled by those way above them, but when the man told me this story through a breaking voice, I was quite convinced he was well aware of the preciousness of these lives.    His enemy likely too.  Who would know it better?

            A second story, strangely also from the military, how the paradox continues.  A commanding officer walks into the hospital room.  I know this because the chaplain was in the room.  He has come to see one of his soldiers who has had a breakdown resulting from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  The soldier is curled up on the hospital bed in the fetal position weeping. The officer walks in and without a word crawls in bed behind him and holds him.  These lives are precious.

            Maybe these stories came to me because the notion that God is holding our lives is inherently a challenging concept.  God is always stretching us in who and how we can love, while never losing hold of us.  To affirm that God is holding your life is to say, therefore, we can hold each other, and because of that, in the midst of whatever chaos or tragedy we face, we can hold it together, which sometimes means falling apart. 

            In the end, we do not want a king, for even if we could find a benevolent philosopher king as ancient Western philosophers would want us to have, it would rob us of the experience of holding the preciousness of these lives in common trust.  That’s what makes us human, to be trusted to hold the humanity of the other with the same fidelity as the one who holds us all. 

            Amen. 

[1]https://14ukczwd.pages.infusionsoft.net/

[2]From Plato’s Republic,https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm