Sermon for July 2

 The reading

Psalm 30

1 I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.

2 O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.

3 O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.

4 Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.

5 For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

6 As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.”

7 By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed.

8 To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication:

9 “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?

10 Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my helper!”

11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

  

 The message

Today, we are in week four of five weeks with the psalms.  It has been an exciting and challenging few weeks for me. I have never spent this much time with the psalms or looked at them with this much depth before. Over these weeks I have been introduced their faith, honesty, connection and expressive power.
 

I forgot to change the bulletin cover picture this week, so we have the same image of the shepherd rescuing the trapped sheep that we had for psalm 23.   Once I noticed, everything was printed. I did not want to waste paper on redoing it so I decided to leave it.  As I thought about it, I realized this image is actually good for this week too.  Psalm 30 is in many ways intimately connected to psalms for help or psalms of trust like Psalm 23.  Psalm 30 is a follow up, what you sing when God has answered your cries for help.  It is written as a celebration, a public declaration that God is great and a call for others to trust in the Lord.   It was written and sung by people who have been through the valley of the shadow of death and came out the other side unharmed, for sheep which were stuck, unable to escape and were brought to safety

There are three parts to Psalm 30 (and other psalms that celebrate God’s saving response to crisis).  Verses 1-5 are a call for praise, a witness of why God is to be praised and an invitation for others to join in worship. For this the psalmist writes: O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.  Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.  Verses 6-10  describes the time of crisis and the request for God’s help.  The crisis was God hid God’s face and prosperity fell apart. The call for help was an intense sort of bargaining . For this, the psalmist writes: What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness. The last part, verses 11 and 12 describes the help that God gave. To express this, the psalmist writes: You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.  

Walter Bruggleman, an author and biblical scholar refers to songs like psalm 30 as songs of reorientation.  You give thanks to God, you have witnessed God’s power but you can no longer pretend things are fair in the world. You are reassured that God’s promises are good but you are not in control of the world.  You give thanks for being led out of the valley of the shadow of death but you know you did not deserve that time in the valley. You praise God and give thanks that you endured the awful time when God hid God’s face from you but do not know why it happened. You invite others to come and see what God has done but you really have no idea why it needed doing in the first place.   

On Tuesday, I filled in for another pastor and led a church service at a local nursing home.  The congregation and pastor have been faithfully leading this service for more than 20 years.  I have covered there a few times before so I knew it was a very organized service, with specific parts for each assistant and an order set basically in stone, which is always a little difficult for me to jump into. What I forgot is that the Sunday Gospel reading would not be psalm 23, which I was ready to talk about, it would be something else.  The reading for the day was a very challenging section of Matthew 10, including Jesus telling his followers:  Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;

I didn’t want to just talk about something else so I pieced together the little joy and encouragement I could find in the text.  I also always try to find a way to talk about the reading that’s relevant in a nursing home context, a place where things are never easy.  Matthew 10 is about putting God first.  However this is not presented as a nice thing to do that will pay off with great rewards. It is not made out to be simple, easy or a way to make friends.  It is tough. It will be scary. The world will be bothered, upset, and enraged.  People will call you stupid, misguided and unrealistic. To take Jesus words seriously about putting God first, caring for the poor, welcoming all people, sharing the good news of God’s saving love, giving to Ceasar the things that are Ceasar’s and giving to God the things that are God’s, will piss people off.  There are competing ideas out there, there are people who are doing great and just fine with the way things are.  Sin does not go gently when confronted with grace and forgiveness. Jesus wants his followers to know what they are getting into and wants them to know he will be with them in this work.    

We see this same idea, that following God is not easy and not an escape from things we do not like, in Psalm 30. We go from praise and thanksgiving to an honest description of undeserved struggle and then witnessing to God’s power and love. In many ways, this is our psalm. As individuals, we all go through time in this valley of the shadow of death or endure the time when God hides God’s face.  We get tired, frustrated, fed up and finally done. This is also the psalm for St Jacobus.  8 or 10 years ago, this community was in the valley of the shadow of death, things looked bad here.  Experts wrote this church off (for a lot of reasons), there was a school with accountability issues, people left, there were dwindling financial resources (while church is not about budgets, wow it’s hard to not have much), low attendance, needed repairs and worn out leaders who were expected to do too much for too long. We are now on the express track to living in one of the most divisive and fractured times in US History where different views spring up everywhere, but we are still standing, this is our psalm.

As we celebrate 150 years, we give thanks to God, we discuss what to do with our resources, we welcome new members, connect with our community and we invite others to come and see. (struggling churches do look at us and say, if it can happen at St Jacobus, it can happen here too)   

Finally, Psalm 30 speaks to different people in different ways. For those stuck in the valley of the shadow of death, it is an invitation to be honest and trust in the Lord.   For those on the other side, who have gone through the valley, It is an invitation to tell and show the others, to help and care.