Sermon for June 16

The reading

Psalm 113:1-9

1 Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord; praise the name of the Lord.
2 Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time on and forevermore.
3 From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised.
4 The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens.
5 Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high,
6 who looks far down on the heavens and the earth?
7 He raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
8 to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people.
9 He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord

The message 

As Summer begins, we are starting a 4 week series on the Psalms.   These writings are literally songs, written to be accompanied by stringed instruments and to be used during worship in the temple in Jerusalem.  Last week, we took a few minutes during coffee hour to talk about faith, to sit with each other and talk about “if and where we see God acting in our lives”, about our own Pentecost or Holy Spirit encounters.  People had a chance to share faith experiences, from short and simple meetings with others to complex, years long challenges.  The Psalms were an ancient way of doing that same work, they were deeply personal and started in people’s experiences of God.    

King David writes Psalm 51 as an act of contrition and seeking mercy for his sins (in particular sending Uriah off to die so David could marry Uriah’s wife). During his life, Martin Luther often turned to the Psalms. In his 1528 preface to a commentary on the Psalms Luther wrote “It could well be called a “little Bible” since it contains, set out in the briefest and most beautiful form, all that’s to be found in the whole Bible.  Luther’s most famous hymn, A Might Fortress is Our God is based on rewriting the words of Psalm 46. Many people, famous and not, have turned to the words of the Psalms to express their feelings of frustration, joy and hope in the Lord.   

The Psalms cover a great range of human experiences and history with honesty and faith.   Around one third of the Psalms are laments.  Those typically follow a pattern: calling on or invoking the name of God, a complaint that describes a particular distress or suffering, an appeal to God for help and a declaration of trust.  Another significant portion of the Book of Psalms are hymns. They offer praise to God and celebrate God’s presence in the world, with a focus on creation and redeeming (today’s Psalm fits into that group).  The pslams can be individual, the protests and begging for help of one individual struggling to see God in the world and remain faithful in suffering, or they can be communal, an invitation for all to worship, one person’s celebration of joy at God’s grace or giving voice to an entire community’s mourning a loss in battle.  

The Psalms we will go through over the next few weeks are based on a very specific outline. This worship and preaching series on the Psalms is written to show experience the life of faith. The series is based on Pastor and well known Old Testament professor Walter Brueggemann's overview of the Psalms.  In life we move through a pattern of ups and downs:

Orientation: When life is stable and the world seems trustworthy (Psalms 113), to Disorientation: When the bottom drops out and the traditions feels like a lie (Psalm 69), to Reorientation: When faith in a trustworthy God and creation are found again, but the experience of disorientation is not forgotten (Psalms 27 and 40).  

Today is orientation, a song of praise and thanksgiving, a time to celebrate and share God’s love.  The joy flows out, how can I keep from telling you, you are loved.  That push, that joy and peace, that’s what inspires the writer of Psalm 113 to share these words, to put that feeling and experience in the center of the community, for all to share in.  If we are not doing that, we have to ask and wonder why.   

This week, I had an experience that lead me to say praise the name of the Lord.  I have seen a transition and change in our food ministry program.  A new church joining our work, who are bringing prayer, who are helping us to care for spiritual needs, we are giving out this food because we care, we fight food insecurity, we envision a world where no one is hungry and we wont have to do this on Saturday morning anymore but we are also giving out this food because we know God loves you and we want to share that news.

Psalm 113 focuses on the name of the Lord

1 Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord; praise the name of the Lord.
2 Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time on and forevermore.
3 From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised

I am bad at remembering names and that is bad.  “Oh yeah I know what’s her name” “ yeah, me and that person with the job, who does that thing someplace, we are really close”.  We are reminded that Jesus invites us to call God father, Abba.  Our relationship with the unknowable, unseen, all powerful, incomprehensible, is one of caring parent and child and that is good news we need to tell.