Sermon notes 2/24, Gen. 15, Lk 13:31-4, Phil. 3:17-4:1, Ps. 27

February 24: Lik 13:31-35, Ps. 27, Gen. 15,Phil 3:17-4:1

James Limburg starts off his comments on Ps. 27 by recalling a sign painted in Denver, “why pray when you can worry?” That’s our entry point this morning. Ps. 27  is one of the great psalms of trust, a companion ot Ps. 23.It is filled with images of security. this is not defensive crouch, however. this is no head in the sand, everything will be OK cry of denial. It fully realizes that life is fraught with difficulties, but it has trust that God is with us, to strengthen and uphold us. I have thought a million times that if we can accept that, we approach those who are bullies or unkind, or hurtful in a far different light..

In the primitive ritual of Gen. 15, is an an image of separation and reunion.Ritual joins the secular and sacred dimensions of awareness.This ancient ritual seems to me  to be about separation and joining. Abram has been promised an heir, a child. He is accumulating goods, but he will have no direct heir.  Janzen notes that fear not deals with each stage in our psychological devleopment, and that it all is based on the fundamentla virtue of trust.vv2-3 may be a questioning of waiting so long for a promise to be fulfilled, so at this time of year, it is a Lenten question.Is the promise in the stars but not from them? Are they fated to childlessness? To believe root is a support, a pillar, to nourish, or to trust..Janzen sees the ritual as an act of mutuality, of friendship, of parity. Though, divided, they are as whole as the two birds. In covenant the two disparate beings are joined.Notice we are in a netherworld of vision and sleep, an altered state of consciousness.

We have many images of the divine.I just noticed that the birds in the Abram story are joined with another avian figure in the gospels. Jesus selects a surprising one today. Jesus commanded us to be not anxious, to not worry, because worrying does not add an inch to the span of our lives. That same Jesus selects a most anxious image. Mother hen is a significant image to me. It has the sense of being careful of its young, but a mother hen is mostly noise and flying feathers against a predator. Its cries are ineffectual. It is not a powerful image is it? I think of Chicken Little a bit here as well. I lived through this image a bit this week, as our youngest called to tell me that she woke up with pain and almost passed out in the shower, and I worry about our eldest and her doctoral exams.  We often speak of a parental quality in the divine.To me being a parent is a constant struggle with anxiety and learning to let go in a sea of anxiety. I hoped it would go away when they were adults, but not so far. I have realized that parenting was saying a series of goodbyes right when the kids walk away from you, even as they check to see if you are  still within eyesight range, or when they talk and say I can do it myself.

We receive Communion again today, the fundamental ritual of Christians. As voting is a basic act of citizenship, Communion is the basic ritual of our lives together. It is both individual and corporate, of keeping body and soul together, a declaration of the interplay between the elements of creation and human transformation. It is food for the journey. Hear the ending words of the psalm again, if you were taken by the musicality of the presentation and lost some of the words.

further notes: this sermon exploded on me, so please check additional work on Gen. 15 on the blog.

I was also taken with the citizens of the commonwealth of heaven. What are marks of citizenship in our time? Note the President in the SOTU 2013 address ended with evocations of citizenship. When I was a child, we had more public civic activities than we do now, parades, addresses, and the like. What elements of “civic religion” remain, as in the flag salute and national anthem? What are marks of church citizenship? Chrysostom had a good line aobut entering into concern for the public welfare as a piece of christian ethics.

Ps. 27 opens us up to the polarities of danger and security in its verses. Limburg does a good job with it in his WBC commentary. Why do you think it lies so close to 23 and 24? When do psalms of trust not work for you and when do they?