Series: March 2025
Speaker: Rob McClellan
Today's Sermon
"Praise, Even Now"
Psalm 150
1Praise the Lord!
Praise God in God’s sanctuary;
praise God in God’s mighty firmament!
2Praise God for God’s mighty deeds;
praise God according to God’s surpassing greatness!
3Praise God with trumpet sound;
praise God with lute and harp!
4Praise God with tambourine and dance;
praise God with strings and pipe!
5Praise God with clanging cymbals;
praise God with loud clashing cymbals!
6Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
Praise Even Now?
A psalm that is entirely and effusively praise is out of place right now. We are in the middle of Lent. Lent, if you didn’t know, is the 40 days, not counting Sundays, leading up to Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday and traditionally is a time of penitence or deep reflection. We’re finishing our Psalms series just now because our calendar doesn’t align with that of the liturgical artist, Marcia McFee, who put the structure of the series together. The typical biblical story to begin the season of Lent is Jesus’ temptation by Satan in the wilderness. Lent is a time of sackcloth and ashes not clanging cymbals and tambourines.
What’s more, we just passed the 5thanniversary of…Does anybody know? COVID. We might prefer to forget, but we can learn something by looking back.
It was surreal wasn’t it, when it started? We all probably have moments when it became real, aside from a diagnosis. March is the time of the big college basketball tournaments. When they were canceled, it was an iconic public moment. When in-person school first closed, we assumed we’d be back in a couple of weeks. Then we got notice of our assigned time to come to the school to pick up our 7-year old’s things. We arrived outside the classroom to find a row of black trash bags each beaing a strip of masking tape with a child’s name.
Globally, over 7 million died, at least 1.21 million Americans died. There were almost 15 million what’s called “excess deaths,” deaths above what would be normal for the time.[1] And, it’s not just death. Many suffered lasting health trouble. I was speaking to a pastor just this week, younger than I, fit, who had long COVID and still has flare ups whenever he is sick. He’s been down this latest stretch for 6 or 8 weeks, barely able to pastor his people. I know of another pastor who had to resign because he lost his health. There were tolls taken by the protective measures employed as well. It was a tough time.
I say all this because I’m about to try and link praise and difficult times, and I first wanted to honor the difficulty side of that relationship. Maybe there is something to be learned from being out of sync with the standard liturgical calendar—there’s almost always something to be learned from being out of sync. Offering a psalm about praise when we’re supposed to be battling Satan and giving up chocolate—I’m not sure which is harder—maybe has something to teach us.
Let’s take COVID as a case study. Could there be gratitude to be found, cultivated, in the toughest of times, even in the midst of that? I was at a regional meeting this time last year, sitting outside for lunch with a few pastors, and Paul Mowry from Sausalito said, “Do you remember the good parts of COVID,” the little silver linings? Acknowledging all the hardship of lost health or lost jobs, lost connection, there were some things that were…good, right? Whether it was extra time with family, no commutes, learning to use zoom to connect with people far away, getting to know neighbors. I remember seeing an entire family—two parents, two or three kids, teenagers (!) playing soccer all together on the field at the school at the end of our block, a field where I saw families spread out and have picnics.
For a solid year I never missed a bedtime with my son. That’s worth giving thanks for. I think of walks we took in the open space in our neighborhood, praise. I think of driving across the country to see family, visiting national and state parks on the way back, so much beauty and beautiful time together, praise. I got to preach an Easter homily from the top of a hill in God’s true cathedral. Whether it was day to day blessings, new appreciations for things previously taken for granted, or bigger changes made to life’s priorities, there were things to be…celebrated? Weren’t there? Praise?
Mowry reminded us how we promised we would try to hold onto some of those good things when life returned to normal. Did we? Many people rethought what was important in their lives. Have we stayed with our discoveries or allowed ourselves, understandably, to be pulled back into the way we assume it has to be? A little critical distance can provide important perspective if you can keep it.
Was there anything in there that became an occasion for you to offer praise? It doesn’t have to be COVID because I know for some of you that time offered nothing silver. Can you think of another time that moved you nonetheless, or even more, to give praise?
Psalm 150 is the final Psalm in the book. Praise, then, is how the editors wanted the collection to end. This poetic articulation of every human emotion and condition under the sun—raw, beautiful, painful, glorious, it all culminates in praise. Something about faith says, in the end, and in the midst, without sugar coating any of it, praise. Faith wants us to get there. Praise. This—all of this—is a gift, even though it doesn’t always present that way.
Do you know how the Psalms begin? Psalm 1 beings with the word “Happy,” or “Blessed.” “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners tread” (Psalm 1:1). From the first sentence, we’re told it’s going to be tough. There will be people who either don’t have the best intentions or aren’t following the best direction and, apropos to Lent, there will be temptation to follow, but no matter how successful they seem to be, they will not be happy. They will not be blessed. Those who trample upon others to get where they are, to get what they think what they want, surrounded by people who tell them what they think they want to hear, they are truly and deeply miserable. And, along the course of their journey they may take out their misery on some of the rest of us, but we will not take it, because we sing praise.
The Psalms are saying to us, singing to us, no matter what, give praise and follow the good road. It may, at times, lead you through the valley of the shadow of death, but you are to fear no evil, for thy rod and thy staff are with thee (Psalm 23). You know how it goes, that beautiful lyric about this unexplainable sense of an abiding, albeit sometimes fleeting, presence.
The psalms are as songs to which we’ve lost the music. There’s an image for us– we’ve lost the tune. As Leonard Cohen put it, “I’ve heard that there’s a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord”[2]Do you know that song, “Hallelujah”? The refrain, which is just the word “Hallelujah” over and over forms such an interesting refrain, because the verses do not describe an easy life or paths particularly well-chosen. Hallelujah? The fourth and final verse is:
I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.[3]
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah. Wow. Hallelujah just means “praise,” “praise to God,” “joy,” “thanks,” “thanks to God.” This is not the tune of toxic positivity. It is not the verse of denial. It is the song of someone who has lived and love and lost and suffered and probably caused some suffering, someone who has laughed and triumphed and cowered and simply put one foot in front of the other, someone who in spite of it all, no because of it all can say freely, “Hallelujah.” Actually, they sing it. Why? Because so often people sing what they cannot say. Hallelujah.
Early in the pandemic we learned a little about who and what was essential. Here at the church we committed to following the recommendations of our health officials. And yet, I remember Bethany, who is as responsible as anyone, also making the case that we, that church, that worshipwas essential. She wasn’t arguing we should defy orders; she was pointing out the necessity of praise to life. Hallelujah is out native tongue and our prescribed path.
Sin, that path we are not to take, according the Psalm 1, has been described by New Testament scholar Herman Waetjen, of nearby San Francisco Theological Seminary, as best understood as a virus. I’ve shared that before (the definition, not the virus). Sin isn’t just all the bad stuff you do or say or think or don’t do or say or think. It’s a larger contagion loose in the world that leads us in ways that are hurtful. We have plenty of infection, of greed, of power, of baseness and cruelty, of lawlessness, of prejudice, of deceit. These are the symptoms, the marks, of sin.
But there’s another contagion, something that is equally infectious, but far more helpful, one that heals not sickens, and that’s the gospel, a power, a way, grounded in mercy, justice, concern for the other, love of the enemy, neighborliness, compassion, empathy. What did Elon Musk say a while back, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”[4]To be fair to him, that comment came in a larger context in which he affirms people caring about others, but warns against what he calls “civilizational suicide,” which I take to mean a civilization becoming too empathetic. He calls it a “bug” in Western Civilization. Maybe he’s right, empathy leads to weakness, but, of course, he understands nothing of the beloved community. For Christians weakness is a good thing. As the Apostle Paul said, power, gospel power, is “made perfect in weakness, so I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
If that’s weakness, call me weak. For in my weakness, I experience Chrit’s strength, in my wrestling with Satan I find God, and in everything I find the song of praise that comes from the Spirit. I may lose the tune from time to time, but I have not lost the ability to carry on my tongue the only word that endures, “Hallelujah.”
Praise, even now.
Amen.
[1]https://www.newsweek.com/covid-death-update-2024-virus-chart-2003132,https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
[2]https://genius.com/Leonard-cohen-hallelujah-lyrics
[4]https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-yes-musk-said-171900322.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZWNvc2lhLm9yZy8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGbBYrDR-iBMx9Nb6ssChvOF0vw8F3i-EP0SMTORu1xdOQLWcgBVM4jkyw29Xsw14rVzBNrP_l8mz8quPA2U_Z3S-tthhXpefTXlWwxYPkhZYL8VntCxZtdZvXKOxX642rtZUuC_9K9DNot1VDXEu50-L7R5In8swtwjswbKw8pR,