Psalm 145:8-14
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.
All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your faithful shall bless you.
They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom, and tell of your power,
to make known to all people your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. The Lord is faithful in all his words, and gracious in all his deeds.
The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed.
A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel schedules; so, the husband flew to Florida on Thursday, with his wife making the trip the next day. The husband checked into the hotel.
There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an email to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her email address, and without realizing, sent the email.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned home from her husband's funeral. She decided to check her email expecting messages from relatives and friends. After reading the first message, she screamed and fainted. Her son rushed into the room, found her on the floor, and saw the computer screen, which read:
To: My Loving Wife.
I have Arrived. I'll bet you're surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now, and you can send emails. Everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then. P.S. Sure is hot down here!!!!
Well, it sure is hot down here in Houston on this 4th of July weekend as we worship God in this cool sanctuary. Whether expressed as warm and clappy or cool and restrained, worship has always seemed exciting to me. Whether it is clap happy worship with hands held high and singing in an unknown language or the more dignified, orderly service we practice here, worship has always been life giving to me. I remember as a small child standing up in on the pew by my parents waving my hands up and down in imitation of the music director who was directing the hymn we were singing. I was full of unselfconscious joy. Of course, the other worshipers, including my parents, found that a bit distracting and so it was brought to a swift end.
Worship has been life giving to me. I have found it a way to connect myself to a greater cause, a higher power, and the rest of humanity. Worship has never been and end to a means but rather an end in itself. We don't worship just to energized to go out and serve God in the world. We worship also because worship is the right thing to do as a human being. It is a visible expression of our metaphysical relationship to the cosmos. Worship proclaims that we belong on this earth. Worship reminds us that this earth is not our final destination. Just as Jesus was said to be like a fox in that he had nowhere in particular to lay his head at night, we are poor, wayfaring strangers, traveling through this world of woe.
Worship is serious business interspersed with comic moments.
Psalm 45, found at the end of the Davidic collection, is the only one of the psalms given the clear title of "Praise." It also appears in teh Jewish prayer book mor than any other psalm. It has been an important part of the liturgy of God's people down through the ages. This Psalm expresses the beliefs of the worshipping community.
Rabbi Poupko of Chicago describes Psalm 145 as the "prayer of all prayers" and the "entry way to the Psalms," to be prayed three times each day by the devout. According to the Talmud, "Everyone who repetat the Thillh of David thrivce a day may be sure that he is a child of the world to come' (Berakot, 4b quoted by Robert A. Cathey in Feasting on the Word:Year A, Vol 3, 200.
Our session has been discussing Reggie McNeal's book Missional Renaissance. One of the critiques of the book is that it seems to downplay one of our essential tenets as Presbyterians. We believe one of the primary reasons the church exists is to worship God. Therefore, we may be a fully functioning and effective church if all we do is worship God and preach the Word from scripture in a relevant and appropriate manner. Yes, we are blessed to bless others, as McNeal points out, and we are also blessed to bless God. Our worship is a way of blessing the One Higher Power who blesses us. We are giving back to the Great Giver. We are reaching out to the one who picks us up when we fall down.
Yes, we do fall down. There is no denying it. We fall behind on our rent or our car payment or our child support. We fall behind in paying our pledge to the church. We fall in other ways. Sometimes, we literally fall down and break a hip. That may lead to further changes such as finding ourselves laying in a hospital bed after reconstructive surgery or sitting in a wheelchair in a nursing. We fall down.
As the Apostle Paul puts it: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (Romans 7:15) With the same tongue and lips we both praise God and curse God. We are up and down, happy and sad, hopeful and full of despair. Life is messy. The road ahead is never clear. There are always options. Choices have to be made.
In the movies and in real life in places of war and violent upheaval, people fall down when they get shot. They are wounded, sometimes fatally wounded. We fall down on our knees when we pray. We lose our balance when we fall down. Falling down on our knees is an appropriate symbolical posture for prayer. We fall down because we are wounded spiritually, morally, financially, physically, emotionally. We are wounded so we fall down on our knees to pray.
And it is there, from that position of fallenness, down on our knees in prayer, it is from there that God lifts us up. Yes, what the Psalmist says holds true today just as it did 3,000 years ago, "The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed." (Psalm 145:14) As the great old hymn, Jesus Is All the World to Me, puts it, "When I am sad, He makes me glad, He's my friend."
On this Fourth of July weekend we celebrate our freedom and independence. Yet in this time of great opportunity many of us don't feel very free. Beyond the public controversy over TSA agents groping citizens trying to board airplanes, there is also the issue of private freedom within ourselves. Many of us are not living the lives that we had planned on living. We have trouble making choices. And we wonder if we will ever get to that place where we will finally be happy. Worst of all, when you are free, you have only yourself to blame for being unhappy.
When we were children and had to do what we were told by parents and teachers who just didn't understand us, we knew that if only we could get free of that, we would be okay. The burden of maturity is having to take responsibility for how your life is turning out. Now that we are free to do what we want, where we want, when we want, and with whom we want, there is no one to blame for our problems but ourselves.
Some of us still try to blame others. But the more you listen to someone blame others for their unhappiness the more it sounds like the familiar whining of children. You can blame the office where it is all politics, or the parent who wasn't very loving, or the mythical they who are trying to take something away from you. But this weekend our nation is throwing a big party to proclaim that you are free. The pursuit of happiness is all yours. So if you are still struggling to get the life you want, the freedom battle isn't really out there. It is within your own soul.
Mariette in Ecstasy is a novel by Ron Hansen. The novel begins with Mariette entering a convent to become a nun. Joining this convent has been the goal of her life from the time she was young girl because she wants so much to do the right thing with her life and is convinced that means settling into a devout, regimented life in the convent. But after her arrival, she falls deeply in love with Jesus Christ. She prays differently from the other nuns, focusing not on her prayers but on the one to whom she is praying. She is literally in love with Jesus and develops a relationship with him that is too powerful to be contained by the careful routines of monastic life. She finds joy in what should be hardship. Eventually she even bears Christ's stigmata on her body which is too much for the other nuns. So she is kicked out of the convent for her excesses in piety. The failure is devastating to her; she feels disgraced as she is exiled into the unregimented world.
Thirty years later, she writes a letter back to the convent describing what she has learned about the love of God and freedom. The closing lines of the letter are the closing lines of the novel: "We try to be formed and held and kept by Christ, but instead he offers us freedom. And now when I try to know his will, his kindness floods me, his great love overwhelms me, and I hear him whisper, 'Surprise me.'" (Taken from an online sermon by Craig Barnes called "The Pursuit of Freedom" preached at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in 2004)
We value worship because it puts us as human beings in our proper place in the world. Worship reminds us that we are creatures who are created and loved by God but we are not the same thing as God. We live in a culture that says our value comes from being self sufficient human beings but our Bible teaches us that our value comes from our mutual reliance upon God. Somewhere between our personal responsibility and our reliance upon God comes a balance that leads to greater joy. If you listen closely this morning, you may hear God's still small voice saying, "Hey, listen, get up off your knees, surprise me."
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The Rev. Dr. Jonathan L. Burnham preached this sermon at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Houston, TX on July 3, 2011
