Today's Sermon

 

“Our Strong Place - Talking About God"

 

            I may have bitten off more than I could chew. I don’t mean with this new sermon series in which we are trying to relearn how to talk about God. I mean with an audiobook I downloaded about George Washington. It turns out, it’s 41 hours and 54 minutes long. It seemed like a good idea. It’s country’s 250^th anniversary, and here is this figure I don’t know that much about, our first president, who faced down what must have appeared an insurmountable foe. I’m still early in the book—about 10 hours in—and no doubt you’ll hear more about it. At this point, much of the action is Washington, or someone else, digging in, fortifying an area in the face of an attack or simply running and seeking refuge from a warring party.

            Even if we don’t experience that sort of danger, we can probably all relate to the notion of needing refuge of some sort. Maybe you’re weathering a particularly difficult season of life. Maybe you’re stuck and pinned down by a bad situation. I heard a story on the BBC just the other day about what’s called “job hugging,” holding onto a job you can’t stand because you don’t think you can adequately replace the income with something more tolerable. There are those who can’t escape relationships. Even when things are going well, we need refuge. I remember there was this tree in our yard I would climb when I was a child just to get away, be above it all, hidden, safe, and I had a fairly idyllic childhood. We used to vacation on the East Coast and we spent a lot of time a National Wildlife Refuge on the coast. It was this beautiful protected space in which all kinds of God’s creatures could live and thrive. That’s what a refuge allows.

            I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us, then, that our ancestors talked about God as refuge. Our Call to Worship/Opening Blessing from the 46^th Psalm calls God, “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” We may think of God primarily like a person, but here God is a safe place. We’re going to read Psalm 18 now which gives an even grittier image of God as safe place. We’ll read it in its entirety. It’s long, but you don’t have to follow it, just feel it, let the images wash over you. It’s also violent. I don’t excuse that, but I do ask you to imagine if you were subject to someone else’s violence how you might experience the promise of the cavalry finally come to protect you. Finally, I’ve alternated the feminine and the masculine for God so we don’t get stuck in just one way of thinking about God’s gender. For some this will be liberating, for others perhaps distracting, but remember, we’re stretching ourselves and Christians have been speaking of God in the feminine too since the beginning.

            I’ve broken it into parts so we can experience it being read all around us, so I’ll need a few volunteers… You can also follow in your pew Bibles.

Psalm 18
1 I love you, O Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,
    my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
    my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
    so I shall be saved from my enemies.

 4 The cords of death encompassed me;
    the torrents of perdition assailed me;
5 the cords of Sheol entangled me;
    the snares of death confronted me. 

6 In my distress I called upon the Lord;
    to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
    and my cry to him reached his ears. 

7 Then the earth reeled and rocked;
    the foundations also of the mountains trembled
    and reeled because she was angry.
8 Smoke went up from her nostrils
    and devouring fire from her mouth;
    glowing coals flamed forth from her.
9 She bowed the heavens and came down;
    thick darkness was under her feet.
10 She rode on a cherub and flew;
    she came swiftly upon the wings of the wind.
11 She made darkness her covering around her,
    Her canopy thick clouds dark with water.
12 Out of the brightness before her
    there broke through her clouds
    hailstones and coals of fire.
13 The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
    and the Most High uttered her voice.
14 And she sent out her arrows and scattered them;
    she flashed forth lightnings and routed them.
15 Then the channels of the sea were seen,
    and the foundations of the world were laid bare
at your rebuke, O Lord,
    at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. 

16 He reached down from on high; he took me;
    he drew me out of mighty waters.
17 He delivered me from my strong enemy
    and from those who hated me,
    for they were too mighty for me.
18 They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
    but the Lord was my support.
19 He brought me out into a broad place;
    he delivered me because he delighted in me. 

20 The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness;
    according to the cleanness of my hands he recompensed me.
21 For I have kept the ways of the Lord
    and have not wickedly departed from my God.
22 For all his ordinances were before me,
    and his statutes I did not put away from me.
23 I was blameless before him,
    and I kept myself from guilt.
24 Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness,
    according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight. 

25 With the loyal you show yourself loyal;
    with the blameless you show yourself blameless;
26 with the pure you show yourself pure;
    and with the crooked you show yourself shrewd.
27 For you deliver a humble people,
    but the haughty eyes you bring down.
28 It is you who light my lamp;
    the Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.
29 By you I can outrun a troop,
    and by my God I can leap over a wall.
30 This God—her way is perfect;
    the promise of the Lord proves true;
    she is a shield for all who take refuge in her. 

31 For who is God except the Lord?
    And who is a rock besides our God?
32 The God who has girded me with strength
    and made my way safe.
33 He made my feet like the feet of a deer
    and set me secure on the heights.
34 He trains my hands for war,
    so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
35 You have given me the shield of your salvation,
    and your right hand has supported me;
    your help has made me great.
36 You gave me a wide place for my steps under me,
    and my feet did not slip.
37 I pursued my enemies and overtook them
    and did not turn back until they were consumed.
38 I struck them down so that they were unable to rise;
    they fell under my feet.
39 For you girded me with strength for the battle;
    you made my assailants sink under me.
40 You made my enemies turn their backs to me,
    and those who hated me I destroyed.
41 They cried for help, but there was no one to save them;
    they cried to the Lord, but he did not answer them.
42 I beat them fine, like dust before the wind;
    I cast them out like the mire of the streets. 

43 You delivered me from strife with the peoples;
    you made me head of the nations;
    people whom I had not known served me.
44 As soon as they heard of me, they obeyed me;
    foreigners came cringing to me.
45 Foreigners lost heart
    and came trembling out of their strongholds. 

46 The Lord lives! Blessed be my rock,
    and exalted be the God of my salvation,
47 the God who gave me vengeance
    and subdued peoples under me,
48 who delivered me from my enemies;
    indeed, you exalted me above my adversaries;
    you delivered me from the violent. 

49 For this I will extol you, O Lord, among the nations
    and sing praises to your name.
50 Great triumphs she gives to her royalty
    and shows steadfast love to her anointed,
    to David and his descendants forever. 

So many names for God.

• Here, God is our strength, our rock, fortress, deliverer, and refuge.
• Here, like last week, God is the one who hears the cries of those calling for help
• Here, God is powerful, so powerful that the earth shakes at her presence and puts that power to use for rescue and to put the enemy, the abuser, to flight with her arrows.
• God is rescuer, the one who pulls us from the waters. I watched a horrific rescue of a cyclist last week in the Indiana floods. A woman was in the process of being pulled under a bridge she was crossing. The wavers were so strong, even with several people pulling, her head was held beneath the water for what seemed like minutes. I do not know how she survived. That’s God, wrestling us back from the grips of a drowning current.
• God is the one who rewards the good we do, who sees it, counts it, remembers it.
• God is the light within us, the energy that makes us feel as though we could outrun an entire troop of a pursuing army, the strength to emerge victorious in the face of those who who do us harm.
• And again, God as deliverer, rock, the one who spares us from violence.
• God bestows good fortune to the generations.

            What would happen if you brought some of these names into your prayer practice? Work them into the journal I invited you to start last week both to see how God is showing up as a refuge in your life and to see if it sharpens your attentiveness to your need for refuge in your everyday living.

            Imagine if there were a place we could go whenever we needed to take whether the storms or the attacks of this world, to get away, maybe above it all, where we could catch our breath, a place that would allow us to reemerge stronger, more grounded, more courageous? The spiritual path says that place exists. In addition to needing actual safe places in the world, we always carry one within us, and we can go to it whenever we need. It’s not a about dissociating from the world but rather forging that deep association with the unassailable always available love of God. Can you grasp the power of this, God not just as someone to whom you pray in the sanctuary, but God as sanctuary?

            I said each week I’d pair our name for God from scripture with an entry from Matthew Fox’s book on names for God. This week, Fox actually reminds us another biblical name for God, one found in the book of Acts. There, God is described as “the One in Whom We Live, Move and Have our Being.”[1] God isn’t just someone to whom we can go, it’s someone or something in which we live. When we are connected, we realize we reside in the refuge of God. We do have a button we can press and go there; it’s the button of our hearts.

            We learn the route to our divine refuge through the practice of contemplative prayer, quite time with God. When the warring parties descend upon you, remember you have a refuge, a very present help in trouble. Until you know it, you’ll have no idea what you can face.

            Amen.

[1] Matthew Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God….Including the Unnameable God, 18.