Jeff Garrison
Psalm 48
This has been the longest that I’ve gone without preaching since I first entered the pulpit twenty-five years ago, so I hope preaching is like riding a bicycle and I haven’t forgotten how… Making me more nervous coming back into the pulpit is knowing you have heard some wonderful sermons this summer—some of them from our members and others from the international pastors who preached over the past two months. I thank everyone who has involved with making this time of sabbatical a success, for me and for the congregation.
Often, when I travel, I get preaching ideas from the sermons I hear when visiting other churches. That didn’t happen much this summer, as many of the sermons I heard were in different languages. In Mongolia, I thought I might be in luck as they had a translator! The preacher was even a Presbyterian (a Korean Presbyterian), but as fate would have it the translator took the message from the Korean into Mongolian… I was still out of luck!
Last Sunday, as I was back in the States, I heard a good sermon in English (even with a Southern dialect) at the Presbyterian Church in Newton, NC, near where my grandmother now lives in an assisted-living facility. The pastor told a story I thought I’d share with you. A woman was at a party and noticed on another woman’s finger the most beautiful diamond she’d ever seen. She was envious of this rock and asked about the diamond. “This is the Chapman diamond,” she was informed by the wearer. “Yes, it’s beautiful and valuable, but with it came a curse.” Shocked, the admirer asked what kind of curse could be associated with such a lovely diamond. “Mr. Chapman,” the other woman replied. (Sorry, that doesn’t have anything to do with my sermon today, but even my grandmother chuckled when she heard it.)
During my travels this summer and since coming back, the question I have been asked most often is “what was your most favorite place.” Early on it was Mt. Bromo in Indonesia, where I got to stand on the lip of a volcano and look down into the hole from which heavy smoke spewed. Later, it was Penang, Malaysia, where the food is great and where I got to hike into the jungle. Then it was Vietnam, with its mystical bays… Later, it was Mongolia, with incredible mountains, followed by Lake Baikal, Russia, which is also beautiful… Culturally, St. Petersburg, Russia, with the vast art collection at the Hermitage is hard to beat. And as I neared the end of my journey, Prince Christian Sound in Greenland rose to the top, a place of gorgeous fjords filled with icebergs and surrounded by rugged mountains.
But the truth is this: there wasn’t a place I disliked. I could find something good about every place I visited and there were always good people around. And such an insight shouldn’t be surprising for I believe God created the world good and that all humanity is created in God’s image. We can mess things up (and we certainly do), but we can’t destroy the divine imprint. In every place I traveled, there was evidence of God’s handiwork. Where ever we’re at on this planet, we should stand in awe of God’s work and offer our praise and prayers of thanksgiving. Furthermore, anyone we meet, anywhere around the world, can open us up to the possibility of seeing God fresh and new. We just have to be open to such encounters.
Today’s sermon will be from Psalm 48, a “Song of Zion.”
###
One of the theories Biblical scholars propose concerning this hymn, Psalm 48, was that it was sung by pilgrims coming to Jerusalem to worship. As they made their way to the holy city, they sang about it, lifting up a vision of God as protector of the city and as sovereign of the entire world.[1] I began to ponder this Psalm during the last month of my journey. Certainly, there were many times during the trip when I felt God’s protection and in this way the Psalm seemed an appropriate response to God’s great providence. For me, these verses call us to seriously consider God’s role in our lives, to continually praise the Lord for his blessings, and for us to instill our faith in the Almighty to each new generation.
When I was around eight years old, my dad took my brother and me to a movie. We were still living in Petersburg, Virginia at that time, a city that a hundred years earlier (almost to the date that we saw the movie) had been the site of the longest battle in of the Civil War, a nine month siege. The movie was Shenandoah. It starred Jimmy Stewart as Charlie Anderson, a farmer in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War. Charlie tries unsuccessfully to keep his family out of the war. Thinking back on it, it’s a movie with a strong religious message. In fact, the film ends—after all the tragedy they’ve endured—with an experience of grace as the family gathers in church. At the beginning of the movie, Charlie Anderson is a bit of a cynic. When his family is gathered around the table, he says grace:
Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be eatin’ it if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog-bone hard for every crumb and morsel. But we thank you just the same for this food we’re about to eat. Amen.[2]
Too often, we’re like Charlie Anderson. Although we’re called to participate with God in his creation, we give ourselves more credit than we give God for our blessings. Interestingly, at the end of the movie, after having lost members of his family to both sides in the war, Charlie is no longer able to pray that way. When things are going well, it’s hard for us to see the hand of providence in our lives. Yet, we must remember, as we Christians have sung for centuries in the Doxology, from where Our blessings flow. “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow…” we sing. Those singing this Psalm recalled God’s protection in the past and knew that their hope for the future was in God’s hands.
You might be wondering about the references to God’s city and his holy mountain in this passage. Certainly, as Christians, we don’t have a site like Jerusalem upon which we focus when we worship God. Jerusalem, after the time of David, became such a place for the Hebrew people. Interestingly, the Psalmist does some exaggeration here. Although Jerusalem had walls, it wasn’t the most heavily defended of the ancient cities. Furthermore, the mountain upon which it sits, “beautiful in elevation,” the Psalmist proclaims, isn’t all that tall. But the hope of the Psalmist isn’t in the size of the hill or the strength of the walls; it’s in the arms of an everlasting God that reaches out onto the seas and, as he proclaims, to the ends of the earth.
In the Book of Acts, we see the church, God’s vehicle for sharing the gospel, spread throughout the world. The world, having been creating by God, is also being redeemed by God’s Son. God’s presence and power, as even the Psalmist knew, isn’t limited to a temple or a particular city, for God can be found throughout his creation. Where ever God’s people set out to do God’s work, God is present. We should praise God in all that we do, wherever we find ourselves for we know we are not alone. At times it may feel like we’re alone, but our experiences and the Biblical record tell us otherwise.
The Psalmist ends by calling those headed to Zion to consider what God has done and then tell this to the next generation, reminding them that God is not just a God for us, for our parents, or for our grandparents. Our God is for every generation. God is eternal and, as we’re constantly reminded in the Psalms, God’s love endures forever.[3] As believers, as followers of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, we have a responsibility to share what we believe with others. Now, this doesn’t mean we’re to brow-beat people into believing. That doesn’t work and mostly makes people mad and make us look inconsiderate. Instead, in the manner we live, people should experience us praising and honoring God in our words and deeds, in how we relate to others and to God’s creation.
This past week, as I was in North Carolina to check on my parents and grandmother, I read a book by Sue Monk Kidd, a South Carolinian (but I won’t hold that against her). You may know her from her novels, some of which have been made into movies, but she’s also written a spiritual book titled When the Heart Waits. I started to take this book with me on my journey, but at the last minute decided to leave it behind and to read it when I returned home. It’s was a perfect book to help me process some of what has been happening to me and, as some of you know, I’ve shared a number of her quotes on my Facebook page. At one point she asks “whether we’ve been so busy saving souls that we’ve neglected the unfolding of the God-image within them.”[4]
As followers of Jesus, we’re not in the soul-saving business. That’s his work. Instead, we’re to help people experience the love of God and remind them that they too have benefitted (and will benefit) from God’s grace.
Like the original singers of this hymn who journeyed to Jerusalem, we’re also on a journey through life. There are three things I’ve tried to impress upon you in this sermon, three things I hope you take with you and ponder in the week to come. At this point I’m going to mix up the order in order to allude to a product for which most of us are familiar. This may be corny, but perhaps it’ll help you remember. Do you all of you recall Richard Petty (another North Carolina boy who made good)? He was a stock car driver and won a couple hundred races. His car is easy to spot, even for a non-race enthusiastic like me. It was always a Dodge. And there was that was a big number 43 on the side. And you can’t forget, if you know the car, what was on the top of the hood: the logo for his main sponsor, STP, an oil additive that is supposed to help our car’s engines on their journeys. But STP can do more than increase engine performance; it can also remind us what Psalm 48 calls us to do. We’re to share what God’s done (Share, that’s “S”); to trust God to protect us (Trust, that’s “T”); and finally to praise God’s name (Praise, that’s “P”). STP! Amen.
Prayer of Confession based on Psalm 48
Almighty God, your glory surrounds us, but we fail to see. Your mercy is ever present, but we fail to acknowledge. Your grace is freely offered but we fail to understand how needy we truly are. Forgive us for not falling down before your works in awe and help us, O Lord, to share your story with each new generation. Hear our confessions as we silently lift up to you those sins that burden our hearts…
©2011 Jeff Garrison and First Presbyterian Church, Hastings, MI
[1] James L. May, Psalms: Interpretations, A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994), 188.
[2] I was recently reminded of this scene in a newsletter article by John Guthrie, pastor of Community Presbyterian Church, Cedar City, UT
[3] See Psalm 100, 106, 107, 111, 118, 136 (every verse) and 138.
[4] Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), 49.
