Click on a sermon title to read the transcript and view the video recording.
Welcome to the world of Hosea, the prophet whom God invites to dwell in the emotional world of rejection, betrayal, and abandonment. Hosea is the prophet whom God invites, insofar as any human can understand it, into God’s own inner turmoil. God looks at the covenant people, God looks at Israel, and all God sees is unfaithfulness, and violence, God’s own children hurting one another, God’s own children killing one another.
Just because no one is erecting altars to Ba’al (at least, I don’t think they are), doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of false gods and little idols vying for our attention. The problem for us is, they aren’t as easily identifiable as the altar to Ba’al or the Asherah pole. They masquerade as helpful devices (tell me, should I be concerned that last week I had a dream about an iPad?). They convince us they’re about what is best for us (this particular job, that one perfect diet). They call to us to envision a self that is immaculately contoured and clothed, perfectly airbrushed, and, in the end, entirely beyond our reach… without that particular magic product. The thing we need. The thing we turn to when everything and everyone else has let us down. There are gods competing for us, alright. They just have really excellent disguises.
What if we were to look at the world with the assumption that God wants to please us? That God wants to give us joy—the kind of delight that can lift us out of ourselves, even when we think there may be no joy left for us? How might that affect us? How might it change us? How might it open doors in our hearts and minds with a new sense of wonder?
What is the point of our faith? Why are we here today? In particular, why join with a church, be baptized? These questions surely won’t be adequately answered in the next several minutes. But they are good questions, and definitely the kind we should ask ourselves now and again. We’ll at least begin pondering together.
...Moses had run away from slavery, from the situation his people found themselves in. He ran, because he was in danger. And, for a time he felt safe.
But the safety of one person when others are unsafe is an illusion, because we are all connected. Moses is connected to his people, whether near or far.
The freedom of one person when others are slaves is a lie, because when even one person is a slave, no one is truly free...
... I was looking for some paintings of this very famous scene from scripture, and based on the names of works by Rembrandt, Bambini, Moreau, Gaugin, and countless others, the consensus, at least among artists, is that “Jacob Wrestles With an Angel.”
That may be.
The Hebrew word, however, is “man.”
Angel, man, God… who is Jacob struggling with?
...
There are many kinds of laughter. Laughter is at the center of our story this morning, laughter from a woman “several decades past childbearing years,”[ii] who is married to a man who was last reported to be 99 years old. She laughs upon hearing three strangers opine that in less than a year she will give birth to a son.
Sarah laughs...
... This is our story. This is the story of God’s relationship with people. From the beginning. (Almost.) And this story is important. It’s important if you are, say, a high school student who’s being asked to read great English literature, because everyone from Shakespeare to Steinbeck has tried to explain what it is to be human by dipping into this deep well of memory and history and poetry. It’s important if you are interested in what’s going on in the world, because some of the rivalries and family feuds found in this book are still playing themselves out 5000 years later. It’s important if you are interested in things like why families and coworkers drive each other crazy, because the dynamics described in the relationships in this book are timeless. People have been people for a long, long time...
Is God close at hand, or is God impossibly far away?
Imagine this: Imagine you wake up from a fitful sleep, a sleep with unsettling dreams, even scary ones. And then you look out your window to see an unfamiliar person—no one special, not particularly remarkable in any way—standing in the yard, watching your house. You run outside to confront this person, because, it turns out, you’re brave like that. And when you stand face to face with him, he begins to tell you a story. In fact, it’s the story of your life. Some things he could have found out with a little sleuthing, like your birthday, and the names and occupations of your immediate family members. Other things… well, they’re the kinds of things you’re pretty sure you’ve never told a single soul. And yet he recites them to you, your private, inner biography, the things that make you, you. And when you ask him who he is, he replies, “I’m God, Pat.”
Would you do what the teen-aged title character in a TV show did? She pointed her finger in that guy’s face and say, “Don’t ever talk to me again”...
...
One of the things I believe keeps us from deeper intimacy with God is our conviction that we don’t have time for prayer. Yet, when I listen to “Thank U”, I hear a number of quick prayers of gratitude strung together that probably arose in individual moments. Everything from swallowing the last horse pill of a ten day regimen, to feeling the wheels touch down after a long journey, to making it through something truly terrifying in one piece, and sighing, “Thank you.” Or, for the psalmist, experiencing clarity after time in the emotional mire, feeling himself on a secure footing after a time of feeling utterly wobbly and insecure. “Thank you.” Both psalm and song suggest a life infused with gratitude...
A plea that begins with the image of drowning… waters, swirling around your neck, the feeling that you might not be able to keep your head above the powerful currents.
An image of the collapse of a dying star, witnessed by the archangels, in which all sight and memory is eclipsed by the overwhelming brightness of the explosion… before it fades and disappears forever.
We are holding together two laments today, one written perhaps 2500-3000 years ago, one written in 2010. We are pondering this poetic form: the song of sorrow; the plea for help; the agonized wondering: How can this be happening to me? What went wrong? Is there anybody out there?
Birds flying high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel.
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me yeah
It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me
ouh
And I'm feeling good
Fish in the sea you know how I feel
River running free you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree you know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean, don't you know
Butterflies all havin' fun you know what I mean
Sleep in peace when day is done that's what I mean
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world for me
Stars when you shine you know how I feel
Scent of the pine you know how I feel
Oh freedom is mine
And I know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
~ Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse
Previously in Union Presbyterian worship:
last week the Rev. Pat Raube emphasized one fact about the psalms.
She said, “Psalms are songs.”
And her sermon centered on a contemporary song, Pharrell Williams’ “Happy.”
Today, we take another step into the Book of Psalms,
and point out this truth about that collection of songs: they are not always “happy.”
Because they (the psalms) are so darned human, and we darned humans are not always happy.
Sometimes we are scared. Disappointed. Angry. Hurt. Forsaken.
And if we aren’t, we feel as if we are. And the psalms reflect so honestly our feelings.
The recorded song which opened our worship this morning
may not have been written as a prayer, but it is psalm-like.
The Biblical psalms do ask questions: how long? why? who will help me?
And there, in that song “Who Will Love Me As I Am?” is a prayerful question
that comes from a deep place in two hearts shared by two identical bodies conjoined.
Like a fish plucked from the ocean
Tossed into a foreign stream
Always knew that I was different
Often fled into a dream
I ignored the raging current
Right against the tide I swam
But I floated with the question
Who will love me as I am?
---lyricist Bill Russell, “Who Will Love Me as I Am?”, from “Side Show”
Some of you know that my cousin’s daughter Erin Davie
co-starred in a recent revival on Broadway of “Side Show.”
The musical was based loosely on the true stories of conjoined twins
Daisy and Violet Hilton, who were, in their day, considered freaks.
Abused and exploited in their early years, they find themselves making a living
(if one can call it that) in a side show, performing with other “freaks of nature.”
a bearded lady, dog-boy, a three-legged man, a half-man-half-woman, reptile man…
all brought into the tent for our amusement.
On Broadway, the Side Show focuses on the twins,
but we understand the humanity of all the characters,
and their desire to be seen and accepted as persons,
as different as they may be from the rest of us.
Thus, the question sung by Violet and Daisy: Who Will Love Me As I Am?
The show got rave reviews, and the audiences stood and cheered as the curtain came down.
But the audiences were too small, and the financial realities of Broadway led to a short run.
I figured that theater-goers preferred to see TV and movie stars on stage,
and Side Show had no “big names.”
But another theory comes to mind: who wants to see a show about freaks and losers?
About people who wonder who will love them, or even just accept them as they are?
I wonder if on some level the characters in the show hit a little too close to home?
You know…
don’t we all have those moments in our lives when we feel so, well, different…
unacceptable, maybe even odd, or at least marching to that slightly different drumbeat?
Ask a gay pro-football player. Or, Caitlyn Jenner.
Or, that person at the family table whose politics are so foreign to everyone else’s.
It hurts to be so different.
To not be invited back.
To be scorned.
If you’ll promise not to tell anyone, I’ll confess that as a young teenager
I was bullied by two guys who stood a block from here and laughed at my appearance.
I was skinny, gawky, and looked like the character from Disney’s Sleepy Hollow cartoon.
That’s what those guys called me when I passed them: here comes Ichabod!
So, I avoided passing them, my bully radar on high alert.
Add some acne, a changing voice…yeah, I didn’t like being 12 or 13 at all.
Thankfully, though, I was part of a family that loved me as I was.
But not everyone has that gift.
I recalled my own teenage years a couple of decades later
when I interviewed a young singer who took her name from a train
that stopped in her hometown of Hoboken, NJ : Phoebe Snow.
She had a big hit record called “Poetry Man” when I taped an interview for radio.
When she learned that I had a lot of young listeners, she said,
“I want them to hear this part of my story.”
When she was in high school, she was an outcast. “I had the “cooties,” she told me.
“I had thick glasses, my hair was frizzy, and I was shaped like a giant pear.”
Things were so bad for her that between classes, she’d run into the girls’ rest room,
and hide in a stall until just before the bell rang.
Then she’d run to her next class, all to avoid the abusive taunts of her classmates.
“And now,” she said, “I have the number four record in the country,
and those same people are paying big bucks to see me in concert in Hoboken
hoping that I’m going to recognize ‘em.
Yeah, I’m going to recognize them all right…”
Who will love us as we are? Before we get famous.
Who will love me…not just accept me, not just tolerate me, but LOVE me as I am?
Mr. Rogers? Sure.
Billy Joel? “Just the Way You Are.” Sure.
But what about the people who know me?
My dark moods. My sins. My failures.
Maybe we can identify with Anne Lamott who wrote of her life some years back.
I was 32, with three published books, and the huge local love of my family and life-long friends. I was loved out of all sense of proportion.
I gave talks and readings that hundreds of people came to.
I had won a Guggenheim Fellowship, although, like many fabulous writers,
I was drunk as a skunk every day.
I was penniless and bulimic, but adorable, and cherished.
But there was one tiny problem. I was dying.
Oh, also, my soul was rotted out from mental illness and physical abuse. …
I couldn't imagine there was a way out of all that sickness and self-will,
all those lies and secrets…
Just imagine the prayers she must have said, or the psalm she must have sung.
Anyone struggling with addiction or dependency or abuse must wonder:
God, where in the world are you? Are you even there? How long will you hide from me?
Who will love me as I am, and not as I only appear to be?
Anne Lamott’s writings will flesh out her story
but for now it is enough to know
that, as she says, “…but God always makes a way out of No Way.
…Then I blinked, and today is my 29th recovery birthday...
Don't give up on yourself.
In recovery, we never EVER give up on anyone, no matter what it looks like,
no matter how long it takes.
Because Grace bats last.
That spiritual WD-40, those water wings, that second wind--it bats last.
That is my promise to you.
…Don't. Give. Up.”
Because there IS someone who loves you are you are,
as broken, unfaithful, un-beautiful, fragile, despairing, alone, and/or angry as you are.
It’s just that sometimes, we have to holler at God to get God’s attention.
We may have to be not-so-nice in our prayers, not so diplomatic.
Go ahead; all of us freaks, victims, loners, the forgotten and the forlorn,
it’s OK to get God’s attention by crying out, even lashing out.
We know it’s OK, because the Psalmist did it!
It’s in the Bible!
+ + +
Last week: psalms are songs.
This week: psalms are prayers.
Brutally honest prayers.
Because if we cannot be honest with God…well, what’s the use?
God knows what’s going on before we even put our thoughts and feelings into words.
So, when we put our thoughts and feelings into words,
because it’s good for us, we may as well be honest, right?
Why hold anything back?
Our prayer speech must be completely open and direct,
for the God to whom we address our every prayer is, after all,
the “Lord of human experience and partner with us in it.” (Brueggemann)
One would think that if we can be so very open and truthful with a best friend…
well, there’s God.
There’s no use pretending that we must be careful in our approach to God,
that we must hold back our deepest thoughts,
choose our words cautiously, frame our feelings delicately.
No, we may as well follow the lead of the psalmist and, as we said back in “the day,”
let it all hang out.
Today’s psalm is such a good example of honest prayer.
It begins with all the niceties that one might expect in our corporate worship
where we begin with praise, sing hymns of joyful adoration,
look and listen for light and hope and promise and peace.
We’ve heard the opening words read and sung, and here’s another take,
from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase:
Your love, God, is my song, and I’ll sing it!
I’m forever telling everyone how faithful you are.
I’ll never quit telling the story of your love—
how you built the cosmos
and guaranteed everything in it.
Your love has always been our lives’ foundation,
your fidelity has been the roof over our world.
Yes, hire a praise band and get ready to tap your feet!
But wait.
My jazz/pastor friend Bill Carter has suggested that if a church needs a praise band
to accompany the psalms, we need another group of musicians to make the ensemble complete:
a Lament Band!
…Because this book of honest and forthright prayers is full of the dark side…
complaint and protest, lamentation and grumbling.
The verbal version of fist shaking and breast beating.
…Because this psalm takes an odd turn.
While one verse has the praise band happily playing the music to accompany these words:
you’ve been so good to us, Lord, we’re walking on air…
the later verses turn ugly.
We ask the guitar and drums to leave the loft,
and on comes the cello, the bowed bass, the sad flute…
as the psalmist sings plaintively these charges against God:
you’ve spurned and rejected… renounced and defiled…
you’ve turned your back on your David, your own, your anointed one, our best hope.
The community cries out, hurling blame, expressing confusion that verges on outrage,
holding nothing back…”You’ve renounced your covenant?! What were you thinking, Lord?”
“How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?”
“Where is your steadfast love that we once knew?”
Maybe “lament band” isn’t quite right here?
It should be the Complaint Band! Don’t bow that bass; slam those strings!
[Here’s an interesting note: many psalms are nothing but praise.
Like the 100th or the 146th, or the 150th.
And many are just the opposite, full of lament, like the 88th.
Many that begin with lament, take a turn at some point and end in praise.
But this one begins with praise and ends with complaint, somewhat against the template.
Just thought I’d point that out.]
Now, truth be told, traditionally the Church hasn’t had much time for the darker psalms.
Don’t we want folks to leave church happy, more hope-filled,
enthusiastic about living the faith and shining the Light?
Of course.
But at the same time, we cannot be in denial that
we all have times in our lives and in our weeks that we feel the silence of God,
the fear that God is disinterested in our pain, our fears, a broken relationship,
a frightening diagnosis.
And we come into church and everyone else seems to be dancing in the Spirit,
hands waving in the air, and singing “Joyful, joyful, we adore thee.”
Isn’t there a time in our lives when we come to church wondering if we are loved,
really and truly loved?
When we feel apart, instead of a part of? When we’re just plain mad at God?
Because if God is in control, and by definition…(you know)…
and if this is God’s idea of how things should be, well, then, this mess is Guess-Who’s fault!
If you think it now and then, go ahead and express it in your song of complaint;
you wouldn’t be the first one!
And, God, being God, can take it!
That story Peg read from the Gospels?
The father of a suffering, demon-possessed boy comes to Jesus,
and asks for healing for his son.
I’ll bet for years, that father had prayed and prayed for God’s intervention.
We can only imagine what his psalm sounded like.
But, now Grace is up to bat.
And not just that once.
And at the end of that little vignette from a day in the life of Jesus,
there is that foretaste of the end of the life of Jesus.
And we who know the rest of the story recall Jesus on the cross
singing his complaint, a line from a psalm he had been taught in temple school,
“Oh, God, why have you forsaken me?”
In his ministry, he didn’t want anyone to feel forsaken.
Little kids disrespected even by Jesus’ disciples;
the short guy in the tree;
the blind beggar on the roadside; the lame and crippled ones;
the hemorrhaging woman, all those outcasts,
the holier-than-thou-and-everyone-else; they all sing their laments!
Who will love me, they cried out…and Jesus said, in words and parables
and sermons and rant and touching actions: I will and I do.
Grace.
Sometimes, life is so good we want to sing and dance; but life has its turns, just like that psalm when promises seem broken, hope is extinguished, peace has flown the dove’s coop,
and even Bobby McFerrin sings, right now I do worry and I can’t be happy.
When that happens, and it will, when it does,
maybe the best we can do is rail against God as did the Psalmist,
utter our complaints, raise a clenched fist in prayer,
kick the dirt at the Cosmic Umpire’s feet (oh, I’ll dance all right!)…
but then take a deep, deep breath…hold it (not too long, mind you)
and then, close your lament with the last words of this odd and counter Psalm:
Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen and amen.
Imagine that!
After all that rejoicing at the start of Psalm 89, and then the long complaining lament
about being forgotten, forsaken, about God’s seeming unfaithfulness…
somehow, at the very end, kind of tacked on,
as if there’s still that little spark of hope that persists,
one closing uplifting chord in that symphony of lament,
or one kilobyte among the megabytes of complaint…
OK, Lord, you’ve heard me out and I know I’m loved as I am,
so, yeah, may you be blessed forever.
So be it.
So be it.
The love of God.
Isn’t that why we’re here?
Because we’re convinced of it? Or we long for it? Or we fear we don’t have it? Or we’re not sure we deserve it?
Or, perhaps, because we have entered into that very human and terrifying project of parenting another generation, and, for them, we almost desperately want to wrap them in it, like the most beautiful, handcrafted crazy-quit: The love of God.
Or, perhaps, because we have reached a stage in life where we are confronted by our own physical limitations, our own mortality, and we are, almost instinctively, attuned to it: The Love of God.
The love of God...
