Second Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2019
Psalm 27 Be strong and of good courage. (Jewish Publication Society translation)
Philippians 3:17-4:1 He will transform the body of our humiliation.
Luke 13:31-35 How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.
O God of our longing, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
At the beginning of the Ash Wednesday service, the presiding minister invites the congregation to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. The spiritual purpose is named in the beginning of our Eucharistic Prayer during Lent: to respond to the bidding of the Holy One to cleanse our hearts and prepare with joy for Easter, and to experience the fullness of grace prepared for those who walk in Love. In Lent, we are urged to prepare for Easter by focusing our attention on our hunger and thirst for right-relationship with one another and with God. According to the Bible, God is Love, and I find that saying Love (capital L) in place of the word God is a helpful Lenten discipline.
Sometimes people tell me that they have tried to read the Bible and failed. Occasionally someone tells me that they want to read the Bible, or to try again, but they don’t know where to start. I usually recommending starting with Philemon in the New or Second Testament. Then I suggest going to the Psalms in the First Testament. “For heaven’s sake,” I say, “don’t start in the beginning with Genesis. Your wheels will get stuck in the mud faster than the chariots of Pharoah’s army in the Red Sea.” No, if you want to get a sense of the First Testament, start with the Psalms – the poetry of longing. The Psalms are a poetic treatment, the songbook for the whole First Testament, which was called by medieval monks, “The Book of Longing.” [1] Paging through the songbook of the people of God will give you a good idea that the joys and struggles expressed there are both ancient and are the same as ours.
Our psalm appointed for today, the second Sunday in Lent this year is Psalm 27. It’s printed on your announcement sheet in the St. Helena Psalter translation. It’s much like our Book of Common Prayer translation, but we use it because of its expansive language for humans and for the Divine, and its careful attention to maintaining an English cadence suitable for congregational recitation or chant. As there is for about half of the psalms, there is a dedication prior to the beginning of Psalm 27 that says Le’David – to or for David (not “by” David, by the way). I hear that dedication as an invitation to keep in mind the great monarch, who was handsome (except when he behaved in vulgar ways), very smart (except when he did stupid things), and so faithful (except when he disobeyed God). But there’s more, David represents Israel, so although the psalm is written in the first person singular, we can hear it as applying to the whole people of Israel. And as Rabbi Berman often says, “we are all Israel.”
The song begins with metaphors for the Divine that appear often in the Psalms: “Love is my light and my deliverance (or my rescue); whom will I fear? Love is the stronghold of my life; of whom will I be in dread?” The important thing to remember, I think, is that, those lines are most powerful, most poignant, when the singer is terrified. Last week I compared the psalm with singing Amazing Grace. The line: “through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come,” is what plays in my mind. Or, because I usually have several tracks of music playing in my mind simultaneously, Oscar Hammerstein’s song lyrics from The King and I: ”Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my head erect, and whistle a happy tune, and no-one will suspect I’m afraid.”
It turns out, of course, that there are many things to be afraid about. The psalmist sings, “I’m consumed by people who do injury, who wreak havoc, who shatter the well-being of the people. I’m under siege by those who rise up against me. Those who seek to do me harm are all around; even my father and my mother forsook me. My enemies breathe lies about me and utter words of hatred.” In the midst of so much danger, the psalmist seeks refuge in the house of the Lord, the dwelling place of Love, every day – for all her days, to perceive Love’s sweetness and beauty, and to consider Love’s palace or temple or sanctuary or masjid. [2] And here, I must say that words fail me when I try to express the extent of the depravity of the desecration of sacred space when people who have come together in prayer and worship and peace are slaughtered in their places of refuge, whether those places are synagogues or churches or mosques or other gathering places for prayer and connection with Love. It seems to me that only silence will do, and yet we cannot keep silent, lest our silence be misconstrued as complacency, especially when it comes to calling out white supremacy. We cannot keep silent because, as the great Audre Lorde taught, our silence will not protect us. She also wrote that, “Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.”
So when speech fails, we must make music as we continue to call on the great power of Love and to listen to the voice of our grieving and fearful hearts longing for Love, seeking the face of Love. The psalmist calls out to Love, “do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger. Hear me when I call and answer me. [Here the words are sh’ma Adonai rather than sh’ma Israel]. Have mercy on me and take me in. I will sing and make music to you, O Love. I will make offerings to Love for you and my neighbors, not from my leftovers, but from the first fruits of my endeavors, from the initial results of my efforts, not from the remainders. And you will hear me, Love, because we have a deal. We are in a covenant relationship with you, O mighty Love. Teach us your ways and lead us on the right path.” And just to be clear, there are many right paths but they don’t include giving up, or selling out, or vengeance or retribution. The right path is doing everything we can, everything in our power, to repair the brokenness of the world. The right path is restorative justice.
While our Book of Common Prayer and the St. Helena psalter offer an English translation that is poetic and beautiful, the last verse (verse 18), based on Miles Coverdale’s 16th century rendering, goes off the rails. “O tarry and await God’s pleasure; be strong and let your heart take comfort, wait patiently for God.” Coverdale used the word “leisure” instead of pleasure, which might even be a little worse.
The word for word translation, using the word Love in place of the four-letter unpronounceable word for the Holy One, is this: Qavah al’Ahav. Wait on Love. Chazak, Be strong. Ve’ya’ametz lilecha, Let your heart take courage. Ve’qavah al’Ahav, and wait on Love. The word qavah, or wait, comes from the Hebrew word for bind together by twisting, entwining or collecting. There is no word in the Hebrew text that could possibly be translated “patiently” in the sense of sitting quietly and not complaining – not mentioning one’s hunger or thirst for Love. (In fairness, to Coverdale, the 16th century sense of the word patience was five centuries closer to the Latin word for passion, a quality of suffering, enduring with a constancy of effort, that’s not the way patience gets heard in 21st century American English.)
The sense of waiting, here, is of sure expectation and preparation. Prepare the way of Love as John the Baptist cried out in the wilderness. Make a way for people to experience Love. If you have two coats, give one away. If you have food, share it. Waiting on God or on Love does not mean doing nothing. Waiting on Love is like waiting on tables – you don’t just stand around idly, doing nothing! When you’re waiting on tables, you’re busy, you’re strong and you’re offering yourself in service.
Considering the metaphor of waiting a table, leads me to think about waiting for our own table ceremony of communion and our looking for, hoping for, preparing for, and expecting Love freely distributed to whomever desires a closer relationship. Our communion service is a ritual that acknowledges and enacts our hunger and thirst for right-relationship with Love. When we put our hands out, we are assuming the posture of begging. It’s a vulnerable posture, not unlike prostration or bowing one’s head and closing one’s eyes, and it’s worth acknowledging that most people who are truly vulnerable would prefer to be otherwise. [3] When we sip from the cup, we are enacting our solidarity with all of the other people thirsting for something to slake our parched throats. As we approach the altar with weighty and worthy fears and sorrows, may we keep in mind the idea that being strong, taking courage, does not mean not being afraid. As the old saying goes, “courage is fear that has said its prayers.” [4] I implore us all to draw near and to look for, hope for, prepare for, and expect Love. In fact, don’t leave here today without it.