Psalm 126
David A. Davis
December 17, 2023
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Most of us, I imagine, have a member of the family or maybe a friend who loves to be the storyteller. That could be a plus of a minus. It might be an aunt or uncle at the Christmas gathering next week who insists on telling anyone who will listen the same story they tell every year whether anyone wants to hear it or not. It could be the grandparent who just beams when the grandchild asks for them to tell again that one story from a Christmas in the family a long time ago. Maybe it’s the friend who can’t answer a simple question but instead always has to pontificate, editorialize, and tell yet another story which is, of course, about them. Then there is that person you’ve known forever who remarkably tells a story from their life you have never heard before when you thought you had heard it all.
When you stop and think about it, in the whole household of God, in the great cloud of witnesses, in the communion of saints, the psalmist, more often than not, is sort of like a grandparent at the table who never stops telling the same story. Telling some version of the same story over and over again. The story of God and God’s people. No, not in every psalm but in many psalms. Psalms of devotion and prayer, psalms of lament, psalms of praise and adoration, the royal psalms hailing God as king. Time and time again the story of salvation history and the people of God is told. Over and over again the story tucked in a psalm. God created the heavens the earth. God led God’s people out of Egypt, liberated from the captivity of Pharoah. God heard the people’s prayer. God brought water from the rock, manna from heaven. God gave the harvest after the famine. God brought rain after the drought. The Lord’s people learned to sing the Lord’s song in exile in a foreign land. God brought God’s people back. God created. God led. God heard. God restored. God returned. The Lord saved. The storytelling psalmist singing, sometimes weeping, often shouting the salvation history that tells of God and God’s people.
“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, ‘the Lord has done great things for them’. The Lord has done great things for us and we rejoiced.” The Lord restored the fortunes of Zion. The Lord brought the people back from exile home in Babylon to Jerusalem. After decades in captivity the people couldn’t believe it. They thought it was all a dream. There was laughing and shouting! God has done great things. God has done great things. Telling all that God has done. The story and the shout. Shouting praise. Shouting joy. Our tongues were filled with shouts of joy.
Last week between worship services, we told a story. Thee story. Our annual Wee Christmas popup pageant with the youngest among us. If you weren’t here, each age group plays a part. So we had two Mary’s each carrying a baby Jesus. One Joseph. I think there were five magi; five wise girls. The youngest were the host of angel with help from their parents who of course wore halos as well. I don’t remember how many shepherds we had but they each had a stuffed sheep to carry. Sheep were carried like never before; not slung over the shoulder but hanging by an ear, maybe a leg. The shepherds seemed a bit shy. Maybe they were off by my sweater wearing attempt to embody Mr. Rogers. They were very hesitant follow the directional cues in the Wee Christmas script that I gave them along the way. You know the bible says the shepherds “returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” Our shepherds…they weren’t all that sure.
After the shepherds find Mary and Joseph, and babe, lying in the manger (Joseph, Mary(s), and the babes), I am supposed to tell the shepherds to go down the aisle into the congregation telling all they had heard and seen. The action is to go down the aisle with a hand to your mouth pretending to tell. The shepherds were not interested in telling much of anything. To be fair the Gospel of Luke doesn’t say they told anything. It says at that point in the story they glorified and praised. So really, the shepherds shouldn’t go down the aisle in a sort of whisper they should go out into the congregation, out in the world with a shout. “The shepherds returned, GLORIFYING AND PRAISING God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”
There is something a bit odd in Luke’s telling of the shepherds in these verses we know so well. Something odd, easy to miss. When the shepherds arrive in Bethlehem to see “this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us”, after they found the family at the manger, this is what Luke tells us: “When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.” All who heard it. Not Mary and Joseph were amazed but “all”. All who heard it. Mary, Joseph, and the animals, maybe the innkeeper? But where’s the “all’? Whose the “all”? Tradition tells it was just the three of them and the animals. The Magi weren’t there yet. But ALL who heard it were amazed by what they were told. What the shepherds told ALL was “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” What the shepherds told ALL was gloria! What the shepherds told all was “GLORY” It is as if the shepherds are lifted out of the tense of the sentences, lifted off the page and dropped in a timeless, eternal moment of proclamation and praise. Because you can’t glorify and praise without telling something of the story. You can’t tell something of the story without glorifying and praising. You can’t separate telling and shouting even if Mary is treasuring and pondering in her heart comes in between in Luke! The shepherds telling salvation history to ALL and shouting glory at the same.
One of the treasures of my job, of being a pastor, is the gift of hearing all the stories. Not the bible’s stories but the stories of the people of God. Your stories. The stories all run together from the two congregations I have served. The one I was told about the experience of landing on the beach at Normandy. The “yes” to a marriage proposal that was dependent on the fiancé knowing “my mother will always live me and I will always tithe to my church”. A determined spouse getting a driver’s license in their late 60’s after being widowed. The WWII prisoner’s description of all the prisoners singing “Silent Night” in German alongside their captors. The NCAA champion who wrestled for Cornell. A family having an exchange student who became a lifelong part of the family. The professional athletic trainer who would prank rookies by giving them a pill that would turn their urine blue. The person who woke up in the middle of the night, looked out the window of their apartment and saw elephants parading down the street in the middle of Manhattan. The Christmas pageant here at Nassau when the baby Jesus left the building before it was over and all the little ones came forward to an empty manger. The friend from Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church who must be about my age telling of being stopped by police more than once on the way home from elementary school because they had to walk through the white neighborhood to get home. The long-retired pastor who told a banker in the church to quit throwing power around the congregation by telling people their pledge was the largest when the banker’s pledge wasn’t the largest and was, in the pastor’s opinion way too little. The person who snuck money sewn into the lining of a jacket into South Africa to help the fight against Apartheid decades ago. Stories shared in grief, shared in joy, ordinary stories, extraordinary stories, wonderful stories, really hard stories. Life stories.
Part of the wonder, the mystery, and the grace of God is that all those stories that run together in my memory, they are just as much a part of salvation history as the ones the psalmist tells. Glory didn’t just come from the angels in the nativity of Jesus. It came from the shepherds as they told their story. Glory comes from us as we tell our story. Our stories, are lives are part of God’s story, part of salvation history. The stories aren’t just mushed together in my mind. Collectively, the people of God mush all our stories together and we move toward praise. It is what God’s people do. Again and again, we gather them all in again and again, lifting our hearts, together offering to God our GLORY AND PRAISE. Because you can’t tell the story without the shouting glory and you can’t shout glory without telling the story. Yes, glorifying and praising God for “unto to us today a child has been born, a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Yes, glorying and praising God because “The Lord has done great things for us and we rejoiced”. But also glorifying and praising God for our place in the Savior’s story, in God’s story. In Jesus Christ, God sweeps all of us into salvation history, into that story. And we shout glory! Telling and shouting glory. Telling and shouting glory with our lives. Our lives forever wrapped in God’s glory. Gloria!
The artists John Legend and Common wrote and recorded the award winning song “Glory” for the 2014 film “Selma”. The movie tells the stories of the lives of some of the leaders of the movement for civil rights. The song is a compelling combination of rap and gospel music. The rap tells the story. The gospel music shouts the glory. As you listen to this audio clip, notice how as the song ends, the voice of John Legend weaves with voices of the gospel choir to take the shouts of glory to level that soars. A sort of timeless, eternal shout. Lives forever wrapped in God’s glory.