RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - March 15, 2009

“Camera Lenses”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Psalm 19

For the fourth week now in this season of Lent, we turn to the Psalms as our Scripture for the morning, anticipating that, as in prior weeks, we will discover something more – another tool - to take with us as we continue to look deeply into the wilderness of our hearts and the desert of our own life experiences on our journey to Easter.

The Psalms, of course, are Israel’s songbook. They are the 150 ancient Hebrew chants and hymns and prayers and devotions sometimes attributed to the great king David himself. However, regardless of their origins, the Psalms have traveled with the Jewish people for thousands of years, consoling them in long drawn out periods of exile and decades of despair and celebrating with them in fleeting times of freedom and prosperity.

Last Sunday we looked at Psalm 22. That is the one whose first verse Jesus chose to cry out as he hung dying on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For all of us, even today, those words are a haunting cry of abandonment.

Though a number of the other 149 psalms provides an answer to that awful sense of hopelessness and that undeniable feeling of utter aloneness, perhaps none does so as eloquently as Psalm 19, which we just read. This song of praise details not God’s absence from the world. On the contrary, it is a celebration of God’s eternal presence in the world.

For the Psalmist, there is nothing to doubt. All of creation – everything big and everything small, whether one focuses outward or hones inward – everything, the Psalmist sings, declares the glory of God and is evidence of God’s comforting presence.

How can this ancient poet be so sure? To answer this question, the Psalmist divides his song into two parts. He points out first that we can understand God’s abiding nature simply in the magnificent ordering of the universe itself. And, second, we can experience God’s presence in the loving gift to all people of the Law, the sacred and timeless way of living in God’s image.

The first perspective is a general revelation of God. The second is a specific revelation to us as human beings. The Psalmist seems to say that we can know God – that is, God is revealed – in broad cosmic brushstrokes as well as in down-to-earth human details.

“You want to get a grasp on the eternal presence of God?” the Psalmist asks. Then first of all stop long enough to be in awe of the sheer majesty of creation itself. The Psalmist knows us well and so reminds us that even though we may live on lakes and near mountains, even though we see the summer sun sparkle on the water outside our door, and we may ski across or down trails of pristine snow, most of us most of the time in our busy lives barely look around us, so intent are we on, among other things, wishing for spring when the weather will get warmer and then wishing for autumn when the heat wave will break for the season. We just have a really difficult time to consistently take in and experience the awe of the manifestation of God’s creative spirit all around us.

At our summer place in Canada before I go to bed each night, I wander down to the dock just to feel the silence of the lake and to look at the stars overhead. Because there are no street lights or excessive illumination from nearby towns, the sky is very dark.

On a clear night, there are a zillion points of light up there, all manner of constellations, and you can even see the fog-like blanket of the Milky Way floating across the sky. In August, there are shooting stars to behold – flickering arcs of light dancing across the heavens. Once in early September we even saw the Northern Lights. The natural show is a nightly lesson in the creative power present all around us – and it fills me with awesome wonder.

However, for the Psalmist, it is not only the glory of creation itself. It is the underlying order and continuity of it all. For example, reflecting a common ancient belief, the Psalmist remarks on the sun marching across the sky – day by day, eon by eon, never ceasing – morning morphs into evening, daytime into nighttime, darkness into light. Over and over again.

Since the beginning of time, the Psalmist tells us, God’s invisible qualities — the eternal power, the divine nature — can be clearly seen. Just look around you, the poet seems to say. How can you ever feel that God has abandoned you? There is yet hope. In the cosmic grandeur and splendor of creation itself, God is still speaking.

But that is not the half of it, the Psalmist is quick to point out. In what at first glance may seem like an abrupt and unrelated switch in theme, the Psalmist continues praising God for the commandments God has given to us, we who see ourselves as having emerged at the top of the creative chain. However, when we look more closely, this theme and perspective is in fact intimately related to the first part of the Psalm. They are almost like two sides of the same coin.

No longer speaking on a cosmic scale, the Psalmist hones in on us – you and me – a tiny aspect of creation but of the utmost importance to God after all. The Psalmist, in a grand sweep, moves from the farthest reaches of the universe to that which the finger of God writes on every individual human heart.

As a child, I can remember sometimes thinking of being in this galaxy that seems to go forever but really does not and the earth as a round ball sitting in the middle of all this vast nothingness and me just a tiny speck on its surface.

It was all quite overwhelming at the time and still can be breath-catching in the imagining. As Blaise Pascal once wrote, “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me." That pondering your own smallness over and against all of creation’s vastness can certainly be intimidating.

But that is what the Psalmist does here in these verses. He seems to ponder the works and glory of God first through a wide angle camera lens and then through a highly powered telescopic one. And what the songster concludes is this: God is amazingly clever, exceedingly wise, and very, very good. What is more, God is not only out there in creation, in the skies over us and the earth below us, but God is also in here, in our hearts. God is among us. Emmanuel – God with us.

Not only is there an elegance and orderliness about the universe – the creation out there - but there is an elegance and orderliness – a simplicity – in the commandments God has written on our very hearts. For us as followers of Jesus, these commandments lie at the foundation of the message that Jesus preached. Jesus tells us that God has challenged us to live in love, in peace, and reconciled with one another. God has called us to be those beloved sons and daughters we have heard so much about recently as we wander toward Easter.

I do not believe that the Psalmist is switching gears and singing about two unrelated themes. As Scott Hoezee writes, “instead he is following a consistent line of thought: creation teaches us that we serve a great, good, and reliable God. This same God has given us a roadmap for life, and so we follow that map with the joyous assurance that God will not lead us down the wrong paths.

God's ways are said to be perfect and soul-refreshing. They are reliable and can make even the simplest person as wise as a genius…bringing joy to your heart….and helping you pick your way through a dark world.”

And what is more, we will also find in God’s word not only laws and commandments but also promises of love and faithfulness, as James Earl Massey wrote, “heart-inspiring, life-sustaining promises by which we are encouraged and reassured for life in this world.” As one translation reads, God’s word is like “melting ice, scorching deserts, warming hearts to faith.”

7-9 The revelation of GOD is whole (the Psalmist sings) and pulls our lives together. The signposts of GOD are clear and point out the right road. The life-maps of GOD are right, showing the way to joy. The directions of GOD are plain and easy on the eyes.

As we journey through Lent, then, I would say do not just look down at the dark path beneath you because, if you do, you might lose your way – and your God. Look to the sun and moon and stars. Look to the elegant ordering of the universe, and you will find that God is still speaking in that vast and cosmic sense.

However, if you only look to the heavens for God, you will only know a part of the Almighty One. You will only see God through a wide angle lens.

And so as you journey toward Easter, I would also say remember to take along your telephoto lens as well. Look to the Law - to the Beatitudes, the Prodigal Son, the healing of the leper and those consumed by demons. Look to the ministry of Jesus to find our God who is still speaking, still prying open closed, and repairing broken, hearts.

Look to the heavens, and you will find all sorts of evidence of God. However, look also to your heart and to the Gospel message that has been written there – and rejoice in the eternal presence of the Holy One.

Sermon - March 15, 2009

“Camera Lenses”

By Rev. Nancy Foran Psalm 19

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Psalm 19