This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.
Readings
The first reading is a translation of the 65th Psalm from a book published by the American Unitarian Association in 1867, a translation of the book of Psalms by Unitarian minister George Noyes, which I have modernized and adapted slightly.
Happy are those whom you choose
to bring near to you, to dwell in your lands….You make fast the mountains
with your great strength;
and still the roaring sea,
the roar of its waves.You make the coming of the morning,
and the time of the evening to rejoice.You visit the earth,
enrich it exceedingly,
with your river full of water.You supply the earth with corn
when you have thus prepared the earth.You water earth’s furrows
and break down its ridges
and make it soft with showers
and bless its increase.You crown the year with goodness,
your footsteps make fruitful the wilderness;
the hills are covered with gladness.
The second reading comes as essay on the Psalms, written by Kathleen Farmer, from The Women’s Bible Commentary:
“As a category, the psalms of lament are remarkable for their use of abrasive, impetuous language. The psalmists refuse to mince words or to couch their demands in polite, euphemistic terms. Thus, for instance, the speakers in Psalms 35 and 44 bluntly tell God to wake up, pay attention, and get busy helping them before it is too late for them to be saved. The psalmists remind God that human beings have too limited a life span to wait for justice to come at God’s own convenience (Psalm 90). The psalmists also use remarkably vivid, picturesque, and exaggerated language to describe the unbearable situations in which they find themselves. Most remarkable of all is the consistency with which the psalmists seem to find themselves empowered by their prayers to move from their situations of grief and despair into situations of hope and confidence….
“Assurance does not come only to those who wait passively for their pain to be noticed or for their needs to be filled. The psalm shows that a renewal of faith can come through the articulation of rather than through the denial or repression of innermost thoughts, no matter how far those thoughts seem to go beyond the ‘accepted norms’ of society or organized religions.” [“Psalms,” Kathleen A. Farmer, in: Carol A. Newsome and Sharon H. Ringe, editors, The Women’s Bible Commentary, p. 141]
SERMON — “Songs of Comfort”
Half a dozen years ago, I spent the summer at Massachusetts General Hospital doing a chaplaincy internship. A hospital chaplain sees all kinds of extreme situations: people who have been told they will die in a few days, people suddenly struck down with debilitating illnesses, all the situations you’d expect to find in a hospital. But one of the most memorable incidents for me had nothing to do with one of these life or death situations.
I was making the rounds in one of my assigned units, and a woman who was in the hospital for a couple of days for minor surgery asked to talk with me. I sat down, and we talked about her illness; she was in quite a bit of pain. We talked further, and it came out that she was a good Bible-reading Christian of the old school. Then it came out that she would like to hear me read one of the Psalms. Which one? I asked, thinking that she would want to hear that old standby, Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” I thought that would be the sort of psalm you’d want to hear if you were in pain.
But the psalm this woman asked me to read was quite different: it was one where the poet who wrote it calls on God to strike down the poet’s enemies. I’m no longer quite sure which psalm the woman asked me to read, but to the best of my recollection it was Psalm 35, which begins:
Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with me;
fight against those who fight against me.Take up shield and buckler;
arise and come to my aid.Brandish spear and javelin
against those who pursue me….May those who seek my life
be disgraced and put to shame;
may those who plot my ruin
be turned back in dismay. [New Revised Standard Version]
Although I was a little surprised at her choice, I read the psalm to her. “Oh, that’s a good one,” she said, and leaned her head back against her pillow. She was quite satisfied with it, and took great comfort from hearing it.
Personally, I wouldn’t take any great comfort from that particular psalm, or from any of the psalms that call on God to strike down one’s enemies, to do vengeance. But later, as I thought about it, I realized that the 23rd Psalm, the one which is best known in our culture, and the one which many families request to have included when I do a memorial service, has its own call for vengeance. It begins with: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters”; which all sounds fairly comforting; but towards the end, we hear: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”
For some of the greatest pain that human beings can experience is the pain that comes when you are held down by someone who has power over you. Much of the poetry in the book of Psalms was written thousands of years ago by people in the ancient Jewish community who were being held down by a few wealthy people from their own community. In his book The Hebrew Bible, Bible scholar Norman Gottwald says this about the ancient Israelites who wrote the psalms some three thousand years ago: “…there can be little doubt that an enormous part of the suffering which psalmists protest is the pauperization of the populace through the manipulation of debt and confiscation procedures in such a way that even the traditional courts of Israel can be used to amass wealth in defiance of the explicit laws of the community.” [Norman K. Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible: A socio-literary introduction, p. 539]
In other words, a few extremely wealthy people in ancient Israel managed to get even more wealth by manipulating the legal system by confiscating property and getting poor people even deeper into debt. These few wealthy people even flouted the laws of ancient Israel, laws which actually prohibited anyone from amassing too much wealth, for the ancient Israelites knew that it is not right for a very few people to have a very large amount of wealth.
If you see parallels between ancient Israel and America today, I think you’re absolutely correct. We read in the newspapers that the super-rich, the wealthiest one tenth of one percent of the American population, continue to amass more and more wealth; while the poor, the working people, the middle class, the upper middle class, and even the merely rich people in this country find themselves losing ground. We can’t pay for health care, we can’t pay for elder care, we can’t pay for housing; while the super-rich keep getting richer and richer.
Now if you think this is going to turn into a political sermon, you’re wrong. But from a religious point of view, the ancient Jewish poems in the book of Psalms confirm our feeling that such injustice is wrong; such injustice is not inevitable; and such injustice is not moral or ethical. Furthermore, according to Bible scholar Norman Gottwald, the psalm writers knew that even your personal physical illness could be related to things you may suffer at the hands of unjust society, for, as Gottwald writes, “it is well known that the incidence of some diseases is closely related to poor diet, harsh working conditions, ecological abuse,… and demoralization in the face of unrelenting injustice.”
And this may be why the 23rd psalm remains so popular in our society. Next time you hear people reciting the 23rd Psalm at a funeral or memorial service, and you hear, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,” think about what that might mean. Injustice can kill you; even if it doesn’t kill you outright, it can grind you down and hasten your death.
So thinking back to my experience with that woman in the hospital, it is entirely understandable why she asked me to read the 35th Psalm to her, and I can fully understand how it would comfort her to hear:
May those who seek my life
be disgraced and put to shame;
may those who plot my ruin
be turned back in dismay. [NRSV]
I personally do not believe in a God who would “Take up shield and buckler; brandish spear and javelin against those who pursue me.” Yet neither do I believe in religion that remains quiet in the face of obvious injustice; there is no comfort in such a religion.
In the second reading this morning, the reading by Kathleen Farmer from The Women’s Bible Commentary, tells us a little bit more about Psalm 35. Farmer tells us: “the speaker in Psalms 35 and 44 bluntly tell God to wake up, pay attention, and get busy helping them before it is too late for them to be saved.” Kathleen Farmer tells us that some of the comfort that comes from Psalm 35, and from any of the psalms, is an assurance that help doesn’t come to those who sit passively and wait. And so the ancient writers of the psalms cry out, in pain and in anger, they call upon their God to wake up and pay attention.
Along these lines, I am particularly moved by the words of the 69th psalm, which begins:
Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me.I am weary with my crying;
my throat is parched.My eyes grow dim
with waiting for my God. [NRSV]
Who among us hasn’t felt at some point in life that we were neck-deep and the waters were rising? These ancient Israelite writers forthrightly said that their God didn’t always acknowledge human problems: “My eyes grow dim/ with waiting for my God.” Their God didn’t always acknowledge human problems, even when those problems were utterly overwhelming: “I sink in deep mire,/ where there is no foothold.”
Even if we do not believe in the God of the ancient Israelites, we can still appreciate these poems. As with any poetry, you do not need to take these poems literally. They can move you whether or not you believe in God. To hear their “abrasive, impetuous language” [Kathleen Farmer]; to hear poets who don’t mince words, who aren’t polite in the face of suffering and injustice; this alone can empower us, can help us find our own inner power. We do not need to remain passive sufferers; we can find strength within ourselves, strength in the ordinary stuff of daily living.
Lord knows we all could use some strength in our lives. We all have trials to face in our personal lives: health, money (or rather the lack of money), family problems, job; it may be different for each of us, but we each have a greater or lesser share of trials to face. Beyond our personal trials, we also have the big communal trials that we face together: the war in Iraq and Afghanistan that grinds on year after year; injustice and hatred; continued inequality for women and people of color; violence on the streets and in the home; global climate change and looming environmental disaster.
Just listening to that list of problems is enough to bring me down, to make me feel as if “the waters are up to my neck…/ I have come into deep waters,/ and the flood sweeps over me.” Actually, when it comes to global climate change, we might quite literally see floods sweeping over us, what with the melting polar ice cap and rising sea levels.
I’ve been thinking about global climate change quite a bit this year. The scientific consensus is that global warming is happening right now, and the consensus also is that we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. Some scientists tell us to expect more and bigger hurricanes. Some scientists tell us to expect warmer winters, which is nice, but much hotter summers, which is not so nice. But mostly we don’t quite know what’s going on, or how bad global climate change could be. Not a comfortable situation for us to be in.
With all the bad news about global climate change, I’ve been longing for a little comfort. Archeological evidence shows us that the land of Israel had been forested and green thousands of years ago, but human development had turned it into a desert, perhaps during the time of the ancient Israelites. The writers of the Psalms may well have seen ecological disaster first-hand; and some of their poems can offer us a measure of comfort as we face our own ecological disaster. The 19th Psalm tells about the beauties of the natural world:
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.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 the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
and like a strong man runs its course with joy.Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them;
and nothing is hidden from its heat. [NRSV 19.2-7]
So the ancient Israelite poet tells us about the glories and beauties of the natural world. The next part of the poem can be taken in at least two ways. You can understand it literally as telling you that the God of the ancient Israelites is perfect and must be obeyed; or you can understand it in a metaphorical, poetic way. Let me read you the next passage, and then tell you how I understand it as metaphor and poetry:
The teaching of the Lord is perfect,
renewing life;the decrees of the Lord are enduring,
making the simple wise;the precepts of the Lord are just,
rejoicing the heart;
the instruction of the Lord is lucid,
making the eyes light up…. [Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanakh, Psalm 19.8-9]
If you wish to understand this as literally telling you to obey the laws of the God of the ancient Israelites, that’s fine with me. But you can also understand this metaphorically, where God’s teaching is the laws of Nature. The laws of the natural world are perfect, and Nature renews life and rejoices the heart; the laws of Nature are quite lucid, making our eyes light up when we finally understand them.
Perhaps this poem was written with reference to the desertification of the ancient Middle East; but we can read it in reference to global climate change. The laws of Nature, the instructions of God, are indeed quite lucid:– Don’t dump tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because it causes global warming! And this applies beyond global climate change:– Don’t dump toxic wastes into New Bedford harbor because the toxic waste will cause cancer! Don’t lead an unsustainable lifestyle, because it’s not sustainable! These teachings and instructions are clear, simple, and they should make anyone’s eyes light up.
And I take a certain amount of comfort from the fact that this is a religious poem, carrying with it all the moral and ethical force that religion can carry. Today’s environmental crisis has roots in religion; we seem to think that we have been divinely ordained to exploit the earth. But we can take comfort that this ancient religious poem, one of the religious writings that lies at the core of our Western culture, tells us with all the force of religion that we should not break the laws of Nature.
I take comfort as well from the 65th psalm, which tells of the beauties and wonders of Nature, which tells us how Nature cares for us, supports us, upholds us. To whom was this song addressed?– certainly not to the stereotypical vision of God as an old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud somewhere. No, you could sing this song to the Goddess, you could address this song to Mother Nature. We heard one version of the 65th psalm as the first reading this morning, but let me read you another version, a different translation:
…you are the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas….You visit the earth and water it,
you greatly enrich it;the river of God is full of water;
you provide the people with grain,
for so you have prepared it.You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with richness.The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy. [NRSV 65.7,9-14]
This poem brings me comfort on several levels of meaning. It comforts me because it reminds me how beautiful Nature is, and it reminds me to appreciate what a beautiful world we live in. It comforts me to realize that the Jewish and Christian religions, which take this poem as part of their scriptures, that these powerful religions can be brought to bear to help people understand that we have a religious duty to protect the earth. And this poem comforts me on a very personal level:– personally, when I am feeling down, when I am feeling as if I’m neck deep and the water’s rising, I don’t take much comfort in rejoicing over my perceived enemies. But I have always taken great comfort in the natural world.
Our problems today are unique, of course. The problem of global climate change is of far greater magnitude than the localized ecological problems of the ancient Middle East. And each of us faces our own unique and individual problems. I cannot know exactly what you are going through; nor can you know exactly what I am going through; and neither you nor I cann know exactly what problems that woman in Massachusetts General Hospital was facing, the woman I told you about at the beginning of this sermon.
Yet although each person’s problems are unique to that person; although each generation’s problems are unique to that generation; even so, as human beings we all share something in common. Because of our common humanity, we can have some small insight into each other’s problems; because of our common humanity, we can comfort one another, even if we do not fully understand what another person is going through.
When I read the ancient poetry in the book of Psalms, written thousands of years ago by those ancient Jewish writers, there is much that I don’t understand about them or their poetry. We can’t know much about their lives; the God they worship may not be God as we understand it, and the manner of their worship in the ancient Temple of Jerusalem would probably be incomprehensible to us. Obviously, they can know next to nothing about us: they could not have understood global climate change; they could not have understood what it is like to be in a modern hospital; they could not have dreamed about many of our modern problems.
Yet there is a connection between us, across all those thousands of years. Their poetry describes human emotions that have not changed much at all. As ancient and alien as it might be in many ways, their poetry can offer us real comfort.
We do not have to fully understand one another to offer support and comfort to one another. We can reach out across whatever may divide us, extend a helping hand to each other, and know that there is comfort simply in extending our hands.