Psalm 29
January 8, 2012
Yesterday, at dawn, I walked into town for breakfast. There were a couple wisps of clouds to the east. The sun was still tucked in behind the horizon when, all of a sudden as if someone had turned on the lights, those small wisps of clouds turned brilliantly pink. It was the beginning of a glorious morning. The day later turned cloudy but it was a nice start and I was given a glimpse of something beautiful. If we are open to it, we’ll catch glimpses of God’s glory all around. God created this world and proclaimed it good. God’s majesty shines throughout creation. Of course, we can’t fully experience God in nature for we have been corrupted. That’s why we have scripture, to reveal the nature of God. That’s why God had to come to us in Jesus Christ, to lead us back home. And that’s why we need the church, the faithful, to help us on our journeys. Yet, that said, if we’re open to God, we can observe his glory throughout his creation. We won’t fully experience God’s grace, but we’ll see his beautiful handiwork.
Today, we’re exploring Psalm 29, one of the Hebrew people’s ancient hymns, attributed to King David. This Psalm speaks of God’s glory in creation. Read Psalm 29.
###
This Psalm is wonderful! I love the images it brings to mind. This past September, when we sailed back from the Europe, the ship took a northerly course. In the passage between Greenland and Newfoundland, at a place where the cold waters of the Labrador Current clash with the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream, we experienced what was essentially an Arctic hurricane. The winds were over 70 knots and the seas were at 8 meters (that’s about 25 feet). Now, we were on a big ship and in no danger, but to experience the power of the sea like that was exciting. Normally, in calm seas, our window was a probably thirty or forty feet from the water line. But during that night, I woke up to the sound of the surf knocking on the glass. The ship would lean to starboard side (the side of the ship where our room was located) just as a wave would break. The rising surf and the leaning ship would collide in an explosion. I wonder what it felt like in the crew’s quarters down below, where their portholes at times would be submerged. I assure you it was exciting to watch (as long as there were no leaks, I’m not sure what I would have done if the seal around that window started to give away). We were told not to venture outside. In fact, it was still rough enough the next morning the crews weren’t even allowed out on deck to do their morning choirs as they might have been washed off.
For a person, like the Israelites, who lived in the desert, the sea is even more a mysterious thing. That’s probably why David chose this image to describe the power of God, whose voice is heard in the wind and the chaos of the waters. God is powerful and mighty, yet does not only hover over the deep. God is seen in storms on land. The winds, zephyrs that whip down from the mountains with enough strength to break the giant cedars of Lebanon, show God’s power. He has control over the land as seen in earthquakes. In the sixth verse, which one commentator suggest has a hint of humor, David refers to how Lebanon and Sirion (the Phoenician name for Hermon) skip like young animals. Perhaps the reference to the instability of these ancient sites that were thought to be the abodes of gods is to remind us of the power of the Almighty One who stands above all creation.[1] The Creator has the power to knock the idols off their pedestals.
In verses seven through nine, we again have visions of chaos. The fire, perhaps a volcano, erupts. Violent nature wrecks human plans! I know those of us who went to New Orleans a couple months after Katrina certainly got to witness the power of nature when, on the last day we were there, we toured the 9th Ward and the destruction was incredible. John Calvin, commenting on this passage, notes how God rebukes “the madness of the proud.”[2] We think we can protect ourselves, but nature shows us over and over again that we are mere mortals. Our levees can break. The earth can open up and spew out lava and consume towns and we can do little to stop it.Following the fire, we have another vision of an earthquake and then back to the winds that destroy forest. The meaning is clear: God cannot be controlled! Above all this God sits on his throne. God is the King. We cannot challenge the Lord’s position over the universe. Now, the visions of God’s power being experienced in nature may suggest to us that we are capable of worshipping God in nature.
For those of you who think you can worship God on a golf course or at a fishing hole, you’re thinking there’s hope! Right? But hold on a minute. At the end of the ninth verse, we’re told that in God’s temple, all people will be proclaiming “Glory.” John Calvin interpreted his use of “temple” as the church. God’s voice is heard throughout is creation, but God’s “glory is celebrated only in his church,” Calvin writes, “because God not only speaks intelligibly and distinctly there, but also there gently allures the faithful to himself”[3] In other words, it’s in the church where we get a clear picture of God’s revelation and it’s the fellowship of God’s people that brings others into the faith.
David concludes his Psalm, in verses 10 and 11, acknowledging yet again that God is King. He reigns over all. As his people, like David does when he comes to the conclusion of this psalm, we can only ask that God give us the strength to endure, the peace into which we can prosper. As I stressed over and over in this sermon, this Psalm reminds us God can’t be control. It’s a message that needs to be repeated in our narcissistic world where the cries of “me, me, me” and “I, I, I” threaten to drown out the faint praise of God from the faithful. When we think too highly of ourselves or see ourselves as more important than we are, we then risk putting ourselves in the place of God. We can never be a substitute for God, such thinking is vainglory idolatry.
I was reading a sermon by Paul Tillich this week. For years, Tillich was a professor of Philosophical Theology at Union Seminary in New York City and later at Harvard University. In his sermon on Psalm 139, Tillich addressed how we attempt to escape from God and goes on to speak as to how the church and the faithful often enables and strengthen the beliefs of atheists. I quote:
"The first step to atheism is always a theology which drags God down to the level of doubtful things. The game of the atheist is then very easy. For he is perfectly justified in destroying such a phantom and all its ghostly qualities. And because the theoretical atheist is just in his destruction, the practical atheists (all of us) are willing to use his argument to support our own attempt to flee God."[4]
When we think we have control of God, we have done what Tillich warns us against. We bring God down to our level where we can control and manipulate him for our own purposes. Such a god (spelled with a little g) is easily dismissed. But the God (the big G God) we find the Psalm refuses to be reduced to our level. He is God and Almighty. Of course, he comes to us in Jesus, in a way that we might know and understand, but he refuses to be controlled.
On the train heading west last week, I finished listening to an audio book by Shusaku Endo, the late Japan novelist who was also a Christian. The book, Deep River, is about a group of Japanese tourists who travel to India to see the places where the Buddha was born and lived. There, in what to them is a strange land, they encounter Otsu, a Japanese Catholic priest living with the untouchables, in a manner that none of them can comprehend. Otsu had studied in both Japan and Europe but found himself being chastised by the leadership of the church in both places. He held to this vision of Christ being amongst the people, a vision that eventually led him to India. His God is too real, he had insisted, to be locked within the dogma of the church. Instead, it is a God who refuses to be controlled and who, for Otsu, can only be experienced in the sufferings of others. Endo creates the character of Otsu to challenge what he saw as the hollow theology of the West and the empty spirituality of the Japanese. God, for Endo as well as for the Psalmist, is beyond us.[5]
But what does it mean for us to have a God outside our grasp? It’s scary, and it should be. But it’s also comforting for only such a God can offer us the strength and the peace David sought for his people. Only a God that can control the seas and the violence of nature can protect us. Only a God that resists our attempts to be recreated in what we think we need can meet our true needs. It is before such a God that we’re called to bow in awe and to gather with others as we sing out in praise.
As we begin this New Year, open yourselves up to this awesome God who is beyond our control, yet who wants to hear from us. In God’s hands, we can do mighty things. Without God, we’re lost. Praise the Almighty and seek out God’s strength, that we may be his people. Amen.
©2012 Jeff Garrison and First Presbyterian Church, Hastings, MI
[1] Artur Weiser, The Old Testament Library: The Psalms Herbert Hartwell, translator (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 263-4/
[2] John Calvin, Commentary on Psalm 29:5-8. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom08.txt
[3] John Calvin, Commentary on Psalm 29:9-11. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom08.txt
[4] Paul Tillich, “The Escape from God,” a sermon on Psalm 139. As found in: www.religion-online.org
[5] Shusaku Endo, Deep River 1993. (Audio Books)
