Psalm 90 Give us Wisdom

Transcribed from the sermon preached October 11, 2009

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

St. John’s Presbyterian Church
2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705
http://www.stjohnsberkeley.org

Scripture Readings: Psalm 90, Hebrews 4:12-16, Mark 10: 17-31

Psalm 90 contrasts the eternity of the divine with the transitory nature of human life. “Before mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
    Let us, for a moment, contemplate our place in the cosmos. Some fifteen billion years ago an incredible compact pellet of matter exploded to launch its components on a voyage that still continues…Atoms gathered into gaseous clouds. Stars condensed from whirling filaments of flame, and planets spun off from those to become molten drops that pulsated and grew rock-encrusted…” (Smith, Houston. Why Religion Matters. Harpers, San Francisco, 2001)
    On our little planet, “Some three and a half billion years ago, shallow waters began to ferment with life. Life spread from oceans across continents and intelligence appeared. Several million years ago our ancestors arrived.
    On a recent trip to Israel, I was fascinated by city of Megiddo. It is a hill that grew larger over time; as over a period of seven thousand years, new city after new city was built over the ruins of the previous one. There are twenty-six layers all built and destroyed by 586 BCE. People have been fighting there for nine thousand years. In our own young country, we have been cursed with and fought against racism for four hundred years; and we give President Obama the peace prize after a couple of great speeches on race and the Middle East.
    A thousand years in your site are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. The night watch is divided into three shifts. The watchman comes and goes in the dark without much notice. Our life is seventy, maybe eighty years if we are strong and lucky, the psalmist points out.   This may seem like forever to the young, but to those who have reached it, a flash. Like grass in the morning it flourishes and is renewed, in the evening it fades and withers.
    Life is full of struggle and hardship. When we are in the midst of this struggle, it may feel all-consuming. Seeking to hold onto control, we may narrow our vision. When we can no longer deny our inability to control, we are free to see, that from everlasting to everlasting, God is God.   Why is the poet struck with the shortness of life? I imagine he has just lost someone dear, and was not ready for it. Or perhaps, with his nation at war, he has lost many he loves and a peoples vision is cut short. There is more he would like to have done with this beloved, more to say, more love to share.
    It appears to be a part of the facing of our mortality, that we also face our sin. Not just about some traditional imaginary list, a list of our parents or any written law, but more importantly our brokenness, our alienation, our sense of separation from God and others. There are things we haven’t completed: we haven’t finished that Van Gogh puzzle, Cal still needs to go to the Rose Bowl, we have yet to earn and receive that promotion, we haven’t been able to make our children get along, we have yet to get over the sins of our father, we have yet to say we are sorry, or I love you. Maybe nobody even knows certain shame or guilt that haunts us, but it is there. “The word of God is living and active; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Before Him no creature is hidden…” Yet mysteriously, it is when we come to the end of our rope and must face ourselves, we find the Christ, the high priest, interceding on our behalf that we might know forgiveness, strength and peace.
    “Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” It is a strange paradox that our understanding of the smallness and shortness of life helps us understand the eternal depth of each moment. How precious are those simple moments. That nibble on your babies soft ear. Coffee in the morning with the shades tilted for perfect light. Children, both playing lethargic yet despite the act, brimming with the days potential; they pour cereal in those bowls mom picked up at a garage sale. The way grandma sat on her porch at the edge of the town square, with three generations of girls acting like themselves all around her; the 100 year old midwife still delivering; the swish, click or thump of a certain loved ones footsteps through a dark house where every creak is known; working together in the garden, between the Buddha under the tree and St. Francis on the fountain. The smell of nightclothes. When we have had an up close look at our mortality and yet been restored, perhaps we or someone we love has had cancer or a heart attack, and they come through with more time to live and love, we can multiply our pleasure from the common place. And when we have lost someone, grief oozes into our lives from all over, as we find ourselves missing a thousand little things. And as we miss them, we also give thanks for them, for that beautiful little moment in time we have had. There is no logic, no words to explain, but we have been touched, our moment has been touched by the eternal.
    Stanley Hauerwas in God, Medicine and Suffering quotes from Peter DeVries’s novel, The Blood of the Lamb. After several trials and tribulations including a broken marriage, the lead character’s beloved daughter contracts leukemia. Initially he looks to medical technology and doctors for hope, for help with the fight. But eventually this effort of control falls shallow and short. The hustle and bustle of the hospital doesn’t prevent nor cover the silence that is so uneasily shared. In frustration and anger he speaks of the doctors hunt for the demon disease: “They hounded the culprit from organ to organ and joint to joint till nothing remained over which to practice their art: the art of prolonging sickness.” Despite his unbelief, his anger at God for not existing, looking for something deeper, more real, he can’t help but pray.
    He finds himself in cathedral near the hospital praying before St. Jude, “Patron of Lost Causes and Hopeless Cases.”
    “I do not ask that she be spared to me,” he prays, “but that her life be spared to her. Or give us a year. We will spend it as we have the last, missing nothing. We will mark the dance of every hour between the snowdrop and the snow: crocus to tulip to violet to iris to rose... We will seek out the leaves turning in the little-praised bushes and the unadvertised trees. Everyone loves the sweet, near blossom of the hawthorn in spring, but who lingers over the olive drab of her leaf in autumn? We will…We will. When winter comes, we will let no snow fall ignored. We will again watch the first blizzard from her window like figures locked snug in a glass paperweight. ‘Pick one out and follow it to the ground!’ she will say again.”
    Life is short, but the psalmist doesn’t think this realization of the truth will cast us into despair or nihilism. It is just this insight with the grace of Christ that may give us the will to hold fast to our confession, as the author of Hebrews says, or give us the grace to ask and receive forgiveness, and a vision for a heart of wisdom. In the fullness of God’s grace, despite out sin, our brokenness our death, life is beautiful and love is eternal.
    When we realize our smallness, we are more open to God’s cosmic grace. As big fish in a small pond, in the church, hospital or board room, we are tempted to congratulate ourselves, to hold onto our imagined control. But when we finally realize the smallness of our pond, we are free to swim into the mystical sea of all life. Jesus, a mere human humble before God, drew upon the power of God   Not a high priest unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every way has been tested as we are, yet without sin. So human in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus tells his disciples that the weight of the hour is pressing on him so, that he feels like it might kill him. He doesn’t want to be there to suffer, but as a human there he is. Father, take this cup from me. Yet, not my will but thine be done.” Hey God, is it possible for a plan B. We don’t have to hunt down suffering. The difficult in life will find us and then it will be our lot, by God’s grace, to hold fast with the power of the eternal God in the midst of it. Jesus is not seeking to suffer. He is seeking to do God’s will, to love with God’s love, to forgive with God’s forgiveness. And if and when that life of love leads to suffering and death, so be it, he will meet sin and death while loving. Death will not chase him away from life. Death will not have the last word. The fear of suffering and death will not prevent us from living life with God’s love in the moment, wherever or whatever the moment presents us with.
    In our smallness our vision grows large. From everlasting to everlasting, you are God. As small as we are, as small as our faith is, we have a place in God’s plan. Small acts of love have great significance. “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace in time of need.”
    Lord of life, pour out your Spirit upon us, that we may be free to enjoy and do what good we can, to work to end war and prejudice, to cure disease. And when the doing is done, give us the grace to be, to rest faithfully in your eternal love and peace. From everlasting to everlasting, you are our God.    Amen