GLIMPSES OF TRUTH

Scripture Lesson: Psalm 19

Dr. Matthew S. Brown

September 3, 2006

The popcorn has been purchased. The straw has been inserted into the Coca Cola. The stadium seat has been found. The lights are dimmed. The surround sound envelopes you. The movie screen comes to life. And you snuggle in between your cushioned armrests in anticipation of escaping the mundane day to day of your world for a couple of hours of having your senses overwhelmed.

But somebody sitting right behind you has not clued into the fact that the movie theatre is not really designed for audience participation. He or she has not clued into the fact that the people sitting around her have not paid a pirate’s ransom to hear about the latest round of office politics or about the dilemma of chintz vs. leather for the new living room sofa or to listen to one half of a less than urgent conversation on the ubiquitous cell phone .

What do you do? Do you employ the heavy sigh technique? The sharp glance over the shoulder method? Or do you attempt as a last resort the harrumphing, angry shift to a different seat strategy? Somehow you want to communicate that there are times in life that call for conversation to cease. Hear, all ye extroverts, there are times when our words intrude.

The teacher raises her hand and the well-trained classroom falls silent. Everybody knows it’s time to pay attention. Sometimes, nature has a way of doing that. The deepening orange orb of evening sunlight is swallowed up by the peaceful horizon of gentle gulf coast waters. The rural night sky is ablaze with thousands of spectacular lights shining forth from galaxies incomprehensibly far away creating a scene generations of high school prom committees have vainly attempted to mimic. A brief thunderstorm washes away the summer haze and the white cliffs of a distant mountain shine forth with unusual clarity. A bluebird descends finding a pleasant perch outside your kitchen window.

A momentary sense of awe is called forth and our lips fall silent. Anything we say would intrude on the eloquence of the silence. And O how eloquent God’s creation can be if we will only pay attention. I’ve often been tempted to (haven’t done it and wouldn’t do it) pull the earphones off joggers and walkers tethered to their i-pods to tell them that they are missing the point! Listen to the glorious symphony of God’s creation!

“The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork,” So sayeth the Psalmist. “There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

In awe and in silence we watch and we listen and we worship as nature declares the creativity of the Creator. I love what Fred Craddock said of the wonder of God’s creation. He said, “There is no square inch of earth so barren that the observing eye cannot see, in the lower right-hand corner, the signature of the artist.”

Having reawakened us to the revelation of God to be perceived in the sunrise, the Psalmist moves to remind us that our awe will also be inspired by the Torah of God.

The flared legs of today’s popular jeans hearken back to the bell bottom Levi’s of the granola crunching 70’s when with plaid flannel shirts and hiking boots weighing more than concrete blocks we would debate things religious. Pushing back the ever-lengthening bangs from our eyes, and raising our voices to be heard above the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and John Denver records, we would talk of how we didn’t need to go to church because we could experience God as we walked on mountain trails. Of course, we didn’t have any mountain trails in central Missouri so the point was lost. But with so many other “enlightened” souls we were just sure that we didn’t need anything but the beauty of nature to tell us of God. “I guess he’d rather be in Colorado.”

But we were stupid. The glory of a mountain peak points to something beyond us but there is so much more that we need. Craddock says, “The great book of nature praises the Creator without words, but its pages have no answers for some fundamental human questions. Whence do we come? Wither do we go? Why are we here? Before these questions the stars can only flicker and the mockingbird forgets its song. We need another book.”

And O, how true that is today as we wince at the carnage of war and are once again confronted with the deadly reality of our inability to relate to one another. We need help, and lo and behold, God has given it to us and it has been within reach since the time our fingers could grasp.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul,” the Psalmist praises. “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes...” Reviving the soul; enlightening the eyes; rejoicing the heart. If we can just quell the cacophany of voices, including our own, that fill our lives just long enough to read and to listen, O what treasures God may reveal to us.

The Psalmist’s understanding of scripture here is much more expansive than the restrictive understanding we get out of the word translated as Law. In our culture that word evokes feelings of tension and constraint. But for the Psalmist, the Torah encompasses so much more than the regulations and restrictions of life. The Torah for the Israelite included that whole communal memory of the activity of God in delivering them out of slavery and to the land of promise. It included everything leading up to the making of the covenant upon Mt. Sinai and the setting of that covenant in place. The Torah was not understood as a tool of oppression but as a grace-filled gift of liberation.

“More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.” Reviving the soul; enlightening the eyes; rejoicing the heart.

So precious is the Word of the Lord. In fact, there was an ancient rabbinic practice of actually placing drops of honey on the Torah scroll and inviting toddlers to come forward to taste the sweetness of the law, a law Jesus boiled down in its most basic form to four words: Love God. Love neighbor.

So simple. So clear. So hard to assimilate and put into practice in our world. It is so alien to the way our culture is inclined to function. Think about it, Jesus, who came not to abolish but fulfill the Law, lived the Law and was convicted of sedition.

We are gathered here as people of the book, people of the Word. We assemble under the cross of One who was called the Word made flesh. We know that Word is good. In fact, it is called good news. We know it is a good thing, a living and active thing, a transformative thing. It is something to which we know we need to pay more attention. Christians, Presbyterians are constantly being heard saying, “Well, I know I need to learn more about the Bible.” So, why don’t we?

Peter Gomes, professor and minister at Harvard University, broaches one of the more embarrassing social situations: “the one in which you have more than a nodding acquaintance with someone. At the point of introduction you got the person’s name, forgot it, asked it again, and forgot it again. Meanwhile you go on meeting this person, chatting and being chatted with, but you have clearly passed beyond the point where you can ask for the name again.” Gomes says we develop artful evasions that allow us to continue conversations without confessing our ignorance. “Well, friend how are you.” “What we should know, pretend that we know, and wish that we knew, we don’t. Worse still, we do not know, without risk of embarrassment, how to ask about what we need to know.”

Gomes suggests, “This is the way it is with so many people and the Bible. Once, perhaps a long time ago in childhood or in early youth, or even as late as in college, you were introduced. You have a nodding acquaintance with the Bible, or at least you feel you ought to, and you can recognize some familiar phrases, especially if they ‘sound’ like the King James Version of the Bible; yet, for all intents and purposes, the Bible remains an elusive, unknown, slightly daunting book.”

Elusive and unknown, and yet, we call it the “Good Book” and at some level we know it is. It remains the best of best sellers, but at some point you need to crack the binding to find out what’s inside. Riches unimaginable. Reviving the soul. Making wise the simple. Rejoicing the heart. Enlightening the eyes. More to be desired than gold.

So, the Psalmist begins, acknowledging that the wonder of nature points to something beyond itself, and then celebrates the way God reveals himself through the Word. It is important to note that what follows after this is a powerful prayer of humility. Notice the flow here. Before there is speech, there is watching, there is listening, there is reading. What would God reveal to us?

If first, we would watch and listen for what God would reveal, what inevitably will flow forth from our lips is confession, humility.

“Clear thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins . . . Let the words of my mouth and meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

As the latest unhappy headlines scroll across the bottom of the cable channel, is not this the prayer our world needs to offer?

So then, let us look, let us listen, let us read, and then, let us pray: May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.