Psalm
27:1-6
The message
(no manuscript this week so here’s a short summary)
Over the
past few weeks, we have looked at the psalms. Psalms are songs of experience
meant to be shared, to give voice to the feelings of others in the community. Like
our new program of coffee hour, table top questions to talk about after church,
some psalms center on individual experiences of God’s love or absence, like our patriotic songs for the 4th
of July, some psalms tell the story of a nation, the history of a kingdom,
The psalms have different emotional content and context, some psalms
are for when things are fair and well and God is praised, others psalms are for
times when things are terrible and people say “where is God” and yet still
other psalms when times are bad but God’s presence is still known.
The psalms strive to clearly express the loving, redeeming
power of God and our faith experiences.
We can go through today’s psalm verse by verse:
1 The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The
Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? This is nice, this is Pentecost, the Holy
Spirit is with us, there is nothing to fear. This is the passion drive, love towards
evangelism, I have seen all week from the church groups reaching out to our
neighborhood. This is when we can say
The Lord is my light and my salvation,
my source of joy, hope, life.
2 When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh — my adversaries and foes — they shall stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident. This is real, to say the Lord is my light and my salvation, when things collapse is tough. There are adversaries. Our good news is very bad news for some people. There are people who profit when church is silent, who thrive when the status quo is kept, who remain powerful when the voice of Jesus is drowned, who like it when God’s love is just talked about in sweet little churches whose members never bring it outside the safety of these walls.
4 One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. Today, we hear a lot about churches in decline or whatever (I have some issues with a lot of the research on this one), but even so, people still seek the spiritual, We, this place and its people, are the temple a place to inquire and behold the beauty of the Lord.
5 For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock. Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord. We remember pictures and stories more than reading or facts. We retain things better when we sing them, the first thing the children in our preschool remember is “Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so (even before they know what the bible is). Luther wrote sung versions of the Lord’s prayer and 10 commandments to help teach them. The Psalms were set to music so people would remember them. The psalms that exrpress struggle and doubt always talk about a sense of drowning, of being trapped in the wilderness, experiencing the strong, deadly desert sun with no shade and being in the open sight of your enemies. We end with God’s promises, being on a high rock (where the waters cannot reach) and having cover in the tent of the Lord. Those are the experiences we have (and share)
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