#1 – I’m
a nerd for the church calendar. I really am. You know that the church calendar
runs all year, right? Yeah, it’s more than Christmas and Easter. Most people
are familiar with Advent, the season that leads up to Christmas. And most
people are familiar with Lent, the time that starts with Mardi Gras and ends
with Easter. But there’s a whole calendar to fill in the gaps. There’s
Christmastide and Eastertide, Epiphany Season, there’s the oh-so-boring-sounding Ordinary Time. Mixed
all up in there you’ll find feast days – this past Friday was the Conversion of
Paul day, and next Saturday will be the Feast of the Presentation. But going
along with the church calendar is the lectionary, a set of Bible readings that
go along with every Sunday and every holiday in the church year. I like the
lectionary – I don’t always preach from it, but it’s always an interesting
perspective on the conversation that happens between the books of the Bible,
and how that conversation takes a new shape every time we read it.
#2 –
The second thing you’ll notice about me is that my most basic understanding of
God – the most central way I understand who and what God is – is as creator, as
parent, as source of all things. I tend to believe that every aspect of what
God is and what God does (guidance, love, wisdom), all these pieces of the
Thing We Call God rise out of this basic understanding of God as the Maker.
So as I
was looking through the church calendar, and the lectionary readings for last week,
it seemed just plain perfect that I came across Psalm number 19. Take a look at
it below the post. Or Google it. Or crack open a dusty ol’ Bible. Whatevs. I’ll
wait.
A few
nights ago I happened to catch sight of the stars. I was taking the trash out,
and I happened to be thinking about my sermon for today, and the text that I
just read you, and I caught sight of the stars. Now, there’s a lot to notice
about the starry sky – it’s fascinating, knowing that these little pinpricks of
light are burning balls of gas farther away than I could imagine. It’s
beautiful and impressive and magnificent, looking up at this night sky. But
what I noticed this particular time was the constellation Orion. You know Orion
– the one with the three stars in a row that’s supposed to be the belt of the
great hunter. What I realized is that people, human beings, have always heard
our stories sung from the skies. Think of our constellations, the stories that
they have told for thousands of years. You have the family of the Greek hero
Perseus – Andromeda and Cassiopeia; you’ve got Hercules, and Orion, the two
great hunters. You’ve got all the signs of the Zodiac. These images, these
stories… once upon a time, these stories helped people define who they were.
What they believed, and how their lives were ordered.
I suppose
for many of us, it’s not quite as literal as that. If you follow astrology or
horoscopes, you still may see your story written dramatically in the heavens.
But for most people today, it’s a little more vague. But our stories are still
there.
When
you look into the sky, what do you see? At night, you may see pinpricks of
light, telling the stories of burning stars, the stories of the universe
churning along, growing and progressing. In the day, you may see clouds
covering the sky – the stories of our ecosystem, as blessed water falls from
the sky to rejuvenate life, then once it’s released from life it rises to the
sky to start it all over. You may see the endless blue expanse – the sky, in
case you didn’t know, the sky isn’t truly blue; the blue sky is a trick that
our eyes play in response to the atmosphere scattering sunlight around
everywhere.
How’s
that for a story from the sky? The thing’s only blue because your eyes make it
blue; you and the sky collaborate on a piece of art, and only you see the sky
in exactly the way you do. How intimate that is, how personal and unique!
The
thing is, the universe tells stories, and they’re stories about all of us,
stories for all of us. And one story that the universe can’t help but tell is
the story of God. By its very existence, by its natural laws and natural order,
the universe tells us the story of the One who created it.
That’s
what the writer of the Psalm that we read today is thinking about. The
Psalm-writer is seeing the natural, ordered universe and hearing it sing a
story of Creation, a hymn to the Creator. Now, it’s not very scientific –
depending on how you read the text, it sorta sounds like the Psalm is saying
that the sun revolves around the earth, and we know that’s not true. But it’s
not a science lesson. The Bible isn’t a science book. Psalm 19 is not a
lecture.
Psalm
19 is a poem.
Lots of
the Psalms are poems, and this one is no different. In a way, the very fact
that it’s a poem is another example of the universe telling stories – how words
composed by people and heard by people can be more beautiful than people ever
realize. In reality, Psalm 19 breaks apart into three pieces – two poems and a
prayer.
The
first poem, verses 1-6, discuss what we’ve already talked about – the sacred
story of God the Creator that the Universe sings to us. The second poem, in
verses 7-11, has a slightly different take on things. “The Torah – the Law – of
the Lord is perfect… the commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the
eyes… The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous; for they
are more precious than loads of pure gold, and sweeter than honey straight from
the honeycomb.”
Now
there’s something you don’t hear everyday – a poem praising laws. A poem that
lifts up laws as perfect, righteous, precious, sweet, even.
I’ll
admit – those verses about the law make me a little bit uncomfortable. Because
as much as the Psalm says “The Laws of the Lord are perfect, reviving the
soul,” I know of times when those same laws have been used to oppress people,
when people have decided to take the work of judgment into their own hands and
punish or ostracize Breakers of God’s Laws.
I’m sure we’ve all seen that done, and we know that it’s not who we want
to be as God-people. This section makes me a little bit uncomfortable, because
as much as the Psalm says “The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to
the heart,” I know and you know of times when people are so certain that they
know what God wants – based on the laws and precepts of the Bible – that people
remove joy from their hearts, remove it from their vocabulary entirely.
But
what we have to remember about the Laws of the Bible – what we have to remember
about the whole big collection of “Do-This-Don’t-Do-That” in the pages of
Scripture – is that they’re not a list of individual behaviors that are
supposed to be rewarded or punished. Taken all together, they’re a statement of
identity. If you take a look at the Bible – if you take a look at each
individual book, at all of them grouped up together in their various sections – then you get the overwhelming
sense that this is not a book of laws, not like we understand them.
It’s a
book of stories. It’s the book of our stories, those of us who claim them. They
were once the stories of a small clan of Middle-Eastern nomads, but they have
grown and evolved and been reshaped and they have shaped us.
Sure,
there are lots of places in Scripture that are pretty clearly rulebooks, and
I’m not going to stand here and tell you that everything in those books
resembling a law or a commandment is right and perfect. It’s just not true.
Some of them are ritual laws for a system of rituals that doesn’t exist
anymore. Some of them are medical or scientific laws based on outdated
scientific knowledge, and they don’t even make sense anymore. And some of them
are rules written by well-meaning people from a different time and a different
culture, and today in this place they cause more pain than they do joy.
But
taken as a whole, this thing – this Torah – this Bible – this set of laws and
set of stories? It tells the story of a God who came first, of a God who created
all of this, of a God who loves all of this, and of a God who will complete all
of this in the coming Kingdom. After all, in the story of Creation, in Genesis,
after God creates each thing – after God creates the light and the skies, after
God creates the animals and plants, after God creates humankind – what does God
do? God calls it good.
Psalm
19 is a three-parter. In part 1, the Psalm-writer speaks of the stories found
in the skies. He says that these stories point to God, using the generic Hebrew
word for any ol’ God, for anything divine. In part 2, the Psalm-writer speaks
of the stories of Scripture, says that these stories point to Yahweh and to our
dealings with Yahweh, and he gets more specific by using God’s proper name – these stories, about this God, for you specifically.
Both parts, 1 and 2, deal with
“law”, in their own ways – natural laws and the stories of Scripture. In this way, the Psalm-writer is saying
simply – “God sets the proper path for all things”
But there is a tension between the
two, and in this tension there is beauty – because part of the natural world is
the will of humanity, the ability to decide and discern, our ability to learn and to grow and to flow through this world and
eventually know something. What do
you know? What do I know?
I know that the sun rises in the
east and sets in the west. I know that water boils at 212 degrees. Natural
laws, the universe telling us that there is order; and we are still learning
them, every day, we are learning more of the order of this Creation – we just
learned about the Higgs-Boson, that thing that turns energy into stuff, and
we’re only starting to understand how gravity works – “Day after day the
universe pours out words, night after night it reveals knowledge.”
What do you know? What do I know?
I know that whether it took 6 days or 13.7 billion years, God is responsible
for this place that we call home. I know that respect and care for all people,
for all life, for all things is part of our duty to God and to this world where
God placed us. I know that the words of the Scriptures, the words of the
prophets, the words of Jesus Christ and all the saints point with one big
finger towards the path of love.
And that’s why, perfect or
imperfect and this universe may be, and perfect or imperfect as the words of
the Bible may be, Psalm 19 ends with a prayer.
“Who can discern their own errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from willful
sins; may they not rule over me.
Then will I be blameless, innocent of great
transgression.
May the words of my mouth and the
meditation of my heart be pleasing in
your sight, O Lord , my Rock and my Redeemer.
Amen.
------
PSALM 19
PSALM 19
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of God’s hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where
their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a groom coming forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens and
makes its circuit to the other; nothing is
hidden from its heat.
The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving
the soul. The statutes of the Lord are
trustworthy, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the
eyes.
Awe of the Lord is pure, enduring forever.
The ordinances of the Lord are
sure and altogether righteous.
They are more precious than gold, than lots of pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.
By those words is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
Who can discern their own errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from willful
sins; may they not rule over me.
Then will I be blameless, innocent of great
transgression.
May the words of my mouth and the
meditation of my heart be pleasing in
your sight, O Lord , my Rock and my Redeemer.
