Location. Location? Location!

 Rev. Debra McKnight's Sermon - February 16, 2020

Psalm 30

I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up,

   and did not let my foes rejoice over me. 

O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,

   and you have healed me. 

O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol,

   restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit. 

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones,

   and give thanks to his holy name. 

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. 

Location. Location? Location!

The spirituality of the Psalms invites us to explore place, offering us concrete metaphors for the hard to names places in our lives like in the Pit and under the wing of God…imagine her as a big mama eagle or a mother Hen, your choice. The Psalms invite a journey, even if it's through metaphor. This should not surprise, as the Biblical narrative is full of journey and made up of pilgrims. Abraham and Sarah journey with God from the very start, leaving the folks they know the land they understand, the place of their identity to journey. The Hebrew people journey from bondage in Egypt through 40 years of wandering to a land of promise. Even prophets who don’t want to go on the journey, like Jonah, end up in the belly of a great fish headed to a new place. Our tradition speaks of Jesus inviting folks who fish to imagine their vocation in new ways, fishing for people to make a movement that changes the world. Jesus does not look at Peter and Andrew, James and John and say, we are going to cook out on this beach every single day…he takes them places they never imagined. Journey from known to unknown to possibility and gift. 

The Psalms start the journey in a hard space.  The pit.  A place where we feel lost and desolate, disconnected and voiceless. We know Joseph and his technicolor dream coat were tossed into the Pit. His coat of many colors…which could also be translated as “Princess Dress” were torn and his life, his agency, his voice and his future were stolen from him in that moment when his own brothers threw him in the Pit (Gen 37:22) Jeremiah, too, experiences the pit when his own people cannot hear his calls for justice and toss him in the Pit (Jeremiah 38:6-9). The Psalms sing of this pain, they name it and claim it.  It is not to be glossed over or cleaned up, it is a place where one feels diminished, brought low, oppressed on every side, the clarity of light is hard to find and the darkness surrounds. The brilliance is that the metaphor is concrete without limiting the prayer, you can feel the pit, personally or professionally, you can name your own pit as a diagnosis or a broken relationship, it can be grief at the loss of a child or the loss of a parent, it can be the physical or emotional. You name the pit and it only matters if you bring your own feelings to the poetry, if you can acknowledge your own pain. 

The gift of the pit in the Psalms is that we don’t have to stay there. Walter Brueggemann names a transition, this call of anguish from the Pit becomes a cry of vengeance and eventually a cry of thanksgiving. Of course, we modern folks would prefer a process without this middle part. The poetry of vengeance is striking and unnerving, isn’t it enough to just name our pain in a world where we should be fine; now we have to examine our rage and anger too! Why would the Psalms ask so much of us?!?! Anger and rage makes us nervous, our own and others, but avoiding it means we probably don’t have the chance to wholeheartedly transition to the cry of thanksgiving. Vengeance in the Psalms is honest, hurt spoken in truth, wanting the folks who put us in the pit to experience the pit themselves. There is a sense of naming this hurt and saying God does not sit on the sidelines, but exploring God to drive a path towards justice. These cries for vengeance are for God to act, God to right the injustice and they are not about direct retaliation by the one praying. They are raw and it is hard to read Psalm 137. It is set by the rivers, when the Babylonians have paused and make their captives sing their songs but all of the captives are filled with hurt the future that was taken. Their homeland destroyed, their families murdered. The Psalmist does not give up on God’s presence even if their pain is so palpable they wish the babies of their captors beaten against the rocks. They want them to know the hurt they have inflicted, their future stolen away too. This is real, this is human and this is hard for us to read. Perhaps it is made more challenging by the fact that the vast majority of us have more in common with the Babylonians than with the Jewish Psalmist. These places in scripture ask us to read from the other side of the redlines, concentration camps and border walls. To read from a place of having your child taken by border agents or your child washed up on the shore when all you were seeking refuge from violence. The Psalms are honest, that is why they are powerful, no emotion is too ugly or raw for God. The truth is not hidden just because it is unpleasant. If we cannot be honest, we cannot be liberated on the journey. 

If we take the hard and honest journey we find a new location, under the wing, in a place of refuge, on solid ground, lifted up. 

Psalm 17:8

Guard me as the apple of the eye;

   hide me in the shadow of your wings,

Deuteronomy 32: 11

As an eagle stirs up its nest,

   and hovers over its young;

as it spreads its wings, takes them up,

   and bears them aloft on its pinions, 

Psalm 57:1

Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me, For my soul takes refuge in You; And in the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge Until destruction passes by.

Psalm 61:4

Let me dwell in Your tent forever; Let me take refuge in the shelter of Your wings.

Psalm 63:7

For You have been my help, And in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy.

Imagine God, holding you under the wing. A space of love and connection, a place of warmth and care. You are tucked in, you are safe, your can be heard, you are loved. This is the journey and a place of thanksgiving. Who are the people that make that wing space for you? What are the spaces of refuge that you seek? How do we make them for others? That is the work of the wing.

The Psalm gives us places to explore, metaphors that are concrete but open for us to claim and name. But they require you to do the work. The Psalms will not matter if you decide to stay in the pit…just because you are familiar with the walls and contours you have come to know. It will not matter if we stay right where we are. Faith is about journey, like Abraham and Sarah, like James and John and Peter and Andrew and everyone else that encounters God. May we have to courage to follow. Amen.