Homily: July 1, 2018 – Our Savior
Proper 8
lectionary
- David: “lament” poetry and song
- Psalm 130 De profundis
- We are a church built on the backs of prophets and apostles who have gone before
Personal conviction: in order to see, hear God, one can start anywhere.
Based on the premise that God created all that is; so therefore God’s imprint is found everywhere.
The same applies to preaching the Gospel.
I have taken my vow to faithfully preach the Gospel very seriously. “As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ,…” 1
Conviction, then, that the Gospel can be proclaimed from any setting.
For me, to preach the Gospel does not mean that my sermon must focus on the text we read from one of the 4 gospels. It includes that, but it is much bigger than those particular words from the Bible. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is much larger than that. It was, afterall, “at the birth of the beginning.”
Today, I begin with the psalm. In the course of reading Psalm 130, I hope to open up, at least a glimpse of, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
De Profundis … Out of the depths
Text
De profundis clamavi, ad te, domine, … 2
From the depths I call to you,
Lord, hear my cry.
Catch the sound of my voice
raised up, pleading.
If you record our sins,
Lord, who could survive?
But because you forgive
we stand in awe.
I trust in God’s word,
I trust in the Lord.
More than sentries for dawn
I watch for the Lord.
More than sentries for dawn
let Israel watch.
The Lord will bring mercy
and grant full pardon.
The Lord will free Israel
from all its sins.
To hear with wide open heart
Bernstein’s Mass
Listening to L. Bernstein’s “Mass” countless times – good fortune to be able to see/hear it performed in Columbia earlier this year. In it, just before the climax of the “theater piece” a song in 2 parts is sung. It is a part of psalm 130, De Profundis. “De profundis, clamavi, ad te Domine…” I can hear the music and the words so clearly. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”
I cannot hear this psalm without also hearing the powerful tenor voice and the orchestra of Bernstein’s Mass. Perhaps you have texts like that. In preparation for this homily, I was tempted to play a little piece of it … but decided against it.
While listening to the music this past week I had an insight. I realized that these past 40 years or so, I had understood “out of the depths” as meaning something like “from the bottom of the sea” or “from the bottom of the Grand Canyon.” It’s like … something deep. It’s like … down there. In other words I had heard these words coming from a place of profound awe and the grand gestures of God’s creation.
In other places in the Hebrew Bible the word here refers specifically to the depths of the sea. I grew up in Colorado where most of the land mass was above you. You looked up to see the Rocky Mountains, sometimes from a great depth.
Reading metaphorically
My insight this week was in realizing that the psalm in this case is speaking figuratively. “Depths” is really a metaphor – like most of the Bible, actually. It’s a metaphor for looking deep within oneself. But it’s also about seeing with eyes and ears of awe and wonder, as if you were on a boat in the middle of the ocean or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, looking up with awe and wonder.
Reading the psalm all the way through to the end, one realizes that it is about looking deep within a nation and a people as well as within an individual person. The translation I have just read makes that clear as it alternates from verse to verse, from an individual voice to a community voice. Crying out from the depths is as much a corporate need as an individual need.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ, this week – as really every week, is addressed to each of us personally, but it is addressed to us as a community and as a people.
Buechner on Religion
Frederich Buechner, the author, has often been able to put into words what is for me only a gasp of wonder. He wrote about religion in general:
Religion as a word points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage; where he senses meanings no less overwhelming because they can be only hinted at in myth and ritual; where he glimpses a destination that he can never know fully until he reaches it.
We are all of us more mystics than we believe or choose to believe – life is complicated enough as it is, after all. We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmersat least of what the saints are blinded by…
On our refrigerator, like lots of refrigerators, there are lots of different kinds of things posted, taped, and variously attached: photos, mementos, that sort of thing. Among them in our kitchen is a little magnet that my wife gave to me. It says: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.”
It is with such a spirit that we should approach Psalm 130, ready to have our breath taken away.
Listening to the psalm
Listen again with me from the 4 verses of the psalm:
I.
“From the depths I call to you …” I imagine a deep sea fisherman. Out in a small boat, water all around. One tiny voice, calling out. Expecting the Lord to hear.
I can hear the voice of the father in today’s gospel reading. Do you know the sound of a father, crying out at his children stolen from him? A father whose daughter is sick unto death?
A “little girl” who stood up after being put down. A young girl raised up as a sign of the Resurrection.
Jesus raised up a little girl, he rewarded her father’s humility in bringing his burden before Jesus. Though he had no children of his own in the biological sense of that word, all children were his. He felt the sorrow of all fathers as he heard the voice of one individual father.
How unrealistic we human beings can be? One little voice? Remembering that this psalm speaks not just literally but also figuratively. How can we expect God to hear the voice of this community of Christians, tucked away on one side of the continent? Or the voice of this nation, crying out at this particular point in human history?
II.
“If you record our sins, Lord, who could survive?”
The voice calls out with such passion and poignancy only because the woman is at her wit’s end. For 12 years she has bled. It’s impossible to keep her condition from being public. What kind of sin has led to such a thing, she mistakenly asks herself. How have I gone wrong?
Or the people ask, "How have I not lived up to my calling? My potential at one time was so great? How is it that I live in such mediocrity now?
Do we have the courage to ask those kind of questions? The psalmist does. Perhaps we can let the psalm speak for our deepest voices.
The courage comes from the conviction that God’s mercy and loving-kindness exceeds anything we can possibly imagine.
III.
“I trust in the Lord”
… blood that can’t be hidden. In society all too often it has been a focus of shame. It has been a way that men have shamed women. Even to the present day. Men of power have attempted to Lord it over women.
She doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it. But she is adamant that Jesus know, that he touch her. Jesus is worthy of the trust she puts in him. He is completely trustworthy in a world where trust has become scarce.
Jesus touches her with compassion, unclean though she be. Outcast that she is, Jesus reaches across the lines of separation.
The psalm reminds us throughout that it is about the community as much as the individual. Perhaps more so. As a community and as a people we have wandered astray, failed to match our potential, fallen short of the goals we have set for ourselves. We have done those things which we ought not to have done and we have failed to do the things we ought to have done.
The Gospel tells us that if we approach the Lord with courage and humility, enough to know and acknowledge our shortcomings, that the Lord is full of compassion and loving-kindness. We trust in the Lord’s mercy.
IV.
“More than sentries for dawn let Israel watch.”
We’ve seen the movies where a watchman is needed, even to the approaching dawn. Perhaps you have served in the military and you know the necessity of such a watch. The psalm calls us to that kind of attention.
As individuals, as a community, as a people, we are called to look honestly at ourselves. We do it with courage and humility, for we trust that the Lord will set us free.
“The Lord will bring mercy and grant full pardon. The Lord will free Israel from all its sins.”
Closing
As our collect puts it, we are built on the foundation of:
- a weeping pastor who had lost his daughter A leader of synagogue and daughter at the point of death. … “Do not fear, only believe.” … “tabitha cum”
- a woman bleeding for 12 years – who had to go public with her plea to be healed
An appropriate thing to be doing during the week that we observe our national independence day. It is appropriate for you as a congregation in your search for pastoral leadership. It is essential for all of us to do – as a people, as a nation, as a world – to maintain our humanity.
Out of the depths, I cry out. Hear my voice, O Lord. Hear our voice, O Lord.
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