Psalm 15
February 1
David A. Davis
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O Lord, who may abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on your holy hill?

Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right
and speak the truth from their heart;
who do not slander with their tongue
and do no evil to their friends
nor heap shame upon their neighbors;
in whose eyes the wicked are despised
but who honor those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even to their hurt;
who do not lend money at interest
and do not take a bribe against the innocent.

Those who do these things shall never be moved.

Live free of blame. Do what is right. Speak the truth sincerely. Do no damage with your words. Harm neither friend nor neighbor. Call out wickedness. Honor those who honor God with their lives. Keep your word even when it hurts. Don’t take advantage of others to make money. Live like this and you won’t stumble.

That is the psalmist’s answer to the question: “who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?” Who can live in your tent? Who can dwell on your holy mountain, Lord?  Eugene Peterson poses the leading question of Psalm 15 like this: “God, who gets invited to dinner at your place? How do we get on your guest list?” But Peterson’ cozy paraphrase misses the reference to the holiest of places. God’s tent. The Lord’s holy hill. The tent is reference to the traveling tabernacle housing the ark of the covenant. The holy hill is Jerusalem and the temple. The holiest of places. Places made holy by the presence of God. Abiding in God’s tent. As one scholar described these holiest of places; “it is the place where God comes to dwell with God’s people and the place where God’s people come to dwell with God.”  Who can abide, who can dwell in the holiest places, the holiest moments with you, Lord?’

Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right
and speak the truth from their heart;
who do not slander with their tongue
and do no evil to their friends
nor heap shame upon their neighbors;
in whose eyes the wicked are despised
but who honor those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even to their hurt;
who do not lend money at interest
and do not take a bribe against the innocent.

Those who do these things shall never be moved.

Interestingly, the same scholar I just quoted digs in the Hebrew verbs, “to dwell” and “to abide.’ They make the argument that the verbs and the tense used in the Hebrew connote a brief stay; a lack of duration to being in the tent, to being on the holy hill. There was no mention of what that grammatical observation might mean. What the take away might be of the ancient language indicating what the writer describes as “remaining in a place for a short period of time.”

I have only been inside the lobby of The Graduate hotel down the block a few times since it opened. Some of you know that the bar and restaurant are to the right as you enter from Chambers Street. To the right is a beautiful lobby area designed to look like a library. A beautiful library with tons of books on shelves, big leather chairs, and a long library table that stretches the length of the room. Each time I have been there that long table is full of students studying on their laptops with headphones or earbuds and their own water bottle there on the table. Students working there for the long haul, some for the day, others perhaps for the night. It is either a warm policy of hospitality to the community or an unwise or anticipated business model. I would imagine the room was designed and intended for briefer stays.

Maybe the implication of the short stay in the holy place is less about duration and more about a vitality, a freshness, an active, day in, day out, each moment experience between God and God’s people. You don’t go to the tent to rest on the laurels of your piety. You don’t experience the holy hill as a place to linger apart from the world where God has sent you to serve. As one writer observed, perhaps Psalm 15 is less about a moral test for the priests who can enter the tabernacle or the temple and more about the “longing for the kind of community the psalm describes and the kind of God who would be in the company of such people”.

O Lord, who may abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on your holy hill?

Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right
and speak the truth from their heart;
who do not slander with their tongue
and do no evil to their friends
nor heap shame upon their neighbors;
in whose eyes the wicked are despised
but who honor those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even to their hurt;
who do not lend money at interest
and do not take a bribe against the innocent.

Those who do these things shall never be moved.

Old Testament Professor Beth Tanner, is a graduate of Princeton Seminary and on the faculty at New Brunswick Seminary. In her book The Psalms for Today (2008), she references the use of the psalms during the Reformation and tells of something I never. Dr. Tanner points out that the psalms were song in public during the Reformation. Songs of praise sung in public as songs of protest. And in their singing, Tanner suggests, the psalms became prayers for strength and for seeking God’s presence.

I first heard of “Singing Resistance” in Minneapolis. It began with small numbers singing songs of protest in the frigid streets of Minneapolis. It has grown into a movement. Andrew and Len Scales shared with me that Slatz Toole is a leader in that movement. Slatz was nurtured in faith through the Breaking Bread community. I watched a video of a Methodist Church full of 1,5000 singing and lighting candles. Prayers for strength and for seeking God’s presence.

I can’t tell you how many people sent me a link to the Ezra Klein Podcast with James Talarico. Family members, church members, neighbors, colleagues near and far. Talarico is running for office in Texas. He was raised in the St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin and is a seminary student at Austin Presbyterian Seminary. His popularity has grown, in part, because of his willingness to talk about his own faith and his willingness to challenge the Christian right. The interview reminds me of our January inter-generational series on sharing faith stories. It was Talarico’s faith story including his impressive knowledge of scripture. At one point in the podcast Ezra Klein asks James Talarico about his faith and his progressive views on being pro-choice and for full inclusion of the queer community. His answer to that question alone is worth the listen. He criticizes both the obsession and the reductionism of the two issues as it relates to the gospel. He concludes by saying there are over 3,000 references in the Old and New Testament to economic justice and yet the story is as old as time, he says. “The powerful and those in control pervert religion and use it make more money and to control people.”

O Lord, who may abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on your holy hill?

Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right
and speak the truth from their heart;
who do not slander with their tongue
and do no evil to their friends
nor heap shame upon their neighbors;
in whose eyes the wicked are despised
but who honor those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even to their hurt;
who do not lend money at interest
and do not take a bribe against the innocent.

Those who do these things shall never be moved.

“The place where God comes to dwell with God’s people and the place where God’s people come to dwell with God.” That sounds a lot like the Lord’s Table and the promised real presence of Christ here with us as we gather around. But we don’t stay long, do we? Here at the Table where we eat, drink, sing, and pray. Christ meets us here at Table made holy not just by his presence. But by his promise. His promise that he is with us out there too.

Come to the table this morning longing for the kind of community the psalm describes and be nurtured by the grace of the of  Jesus Christ to who longs be in the company of the people the psalm describes. Not just here today. But Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday.  Nurtured for faith in here. Doing faith out there.

Psalm 40:1-10
January 18
David A. Davis
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Each year, as the holiday to honor the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. approaches, I reread Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. The letter is dated April 16, 1963, and it is in response to a public statement signed by 8 clergy people published on April 12, 1963, in The Birmingham News. Four bishops. Three ministers. One rabbi. I realized this week that I while I have read The Letter from a Birmingham Jail more times than I can count, I have never read that published statement. So, I read it this week. The statement reads in part:

“We the undersigned clergymen are among those who, in January, issued ‘An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense’….We are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.”  The statement also refers to the protests for civil rights in Birmingham as “technically peaceful”.

Near the end of Dr. King’s lengthy letter, he offers a stinging, timeless lament for the white moderate church. “So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century,” King proclaims, “with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail-light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading to higher levels of justice.”  He writes of traveling the length and breadth of the south, looking at the plethora of beautiful churches “with their lofty spires pointing heavenward” and pondering the people who worship there. “Where were they when the lips of Governor Wallace were calling for defiance and hatred?” he writes. “Where were their voices of support when tired, bruised, and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”

It is impossible to read The Letter from the Birmingham Jail and not see the compelling relevance to these days. Impossible to read a letter from Birmingham and not think of Minneapolis. “A headlight leading to higher levels of justice” when an epidemic of injustice spreads. Nassau Church. I believe that is who we are. That is how we are. That is who and what the God we serve is calling us to be. Jesus Christ is calling, empowering, guiding each one of us in our life of discipleship to pray for, yearn for, work for higher levels of justice. The faithfulness of our lives is our letter. Each Sunday being sent from here to live our faith every day in the world. “To do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with our God” Or as adapted in the vision statement of this congregation, “By God’s grace in our lives, we engage with the world, yearn to do what is just and fair encourage what is kind and helpful, and seek to walk humbly before God and alongside our neighbors.”

As we go to Psalm 40 together this morning, I invite you to reflect with me on the theme The Unconcealed Love of God. The Unconcealed Love of God. Because as I have read and reflected on the first several verses of Psalm 40, it touches me as a prayer. My prayer. Our prayer A prayer from each one of us. A prayer for these days

We have waited and waited and waited for God to hear our cry. And we’re waiting again, Lord! You have heard. We know you have heard and we ask that you hear again. Our urgent, fervent prayer for these days. Hear us again, God. As in days passed, when you pick us up from the lowest of points, from what felt like a foggy chaos. Each of us can point to the moments, Holy One, “when the Lord lifted me.” When God lifted me. God really lifted me. We remember. We know, O God, when you lifted us high upon the Rock of our Salvation. When you drew us close, O Rock of Ages. Draw us and your world close again, Mighty God, you who are our rock and redeemer.

We cling to those moments when we felt like we could sing again. When you put a new song on our lips, in our hearts. When we could again praise you, O God of everlasting peace and righteousness. When you lifted us, each one of us at some point. When you reached all the way down, O Emmanuel, God with us, and with your everlasting arms, you lifted hearts unto you again. On that one Sunday, when our mouths could again join in with those singing next to us, in front of us, behind us, in these pews. How could we keep from singing your praise, Wondrous God of mercy and grace?  Hear us again, O Lord. Hear our cry. But we’re not going to lie, Lord, we could use a lift again. Today. Right now. Lift us again from the fog of chaos all around us, O Light of the world.

Surround us afresh with more and more people who will see you and the world you desire. Who will be filled with the wonder of your magnificent beauty and the beauty of the world, the creation, the kingdom you intend? Assure us of the multitudes of your beloved children that put their trust in you, and you alone. Those who surround us here in this place. Those that you bring into our lives out in the world. Keep helping us to find our people, Lord Jesus. For before they were our people, they were your people. Your children. For that is who we are.

Blessed. Blessed. Blessed are those who put their lives in your hands and their hearts in you, Ever-present God. You who know each of us by name and the number of the hairs upon our head. Blessed. Blessed. Blessed are those who rest their heart in you rather than the allure of wealth and power and winning at all costs and vengeance. Blessed. Blessed. Blessed are those who turn to you, the Suffering Servant who stretched out your arms on the cross to embrace this broken world, these your broken people. Those who turn to you rather than those who boast of their own pride. Those who become disciples of the false gods fired in the world’s furnace of greed, and violence, and hatred, and bigotry, and evil. The false gods of this world that are legion and tempt us like Satan in the wilderness.

Loving God, you who created this vast universe and called it good. You who created each one of us and called us good. The more we ponder all that you have done for us,  the more wondrous your work, your love, your kindness, and your faithfulness for and to us becomes. It’s not science. It’s not math. It’s not philosophy. It’s not even theology. It’s life. Our life in you. When it comes to life, nothing compares to you. Truth is, the legion of your goodness is always stronger than the legion of false gods that confront us. And at the end of the day, trying to find words, trying to explain, trying to shout it from the rooftops, trying to go tell it on the mountain is not enough. It’s never enough. Not enough words. Never enough when all you desire is the faithfulness of our lives in here and out there.

Here’s the wonder of it all, God. Here’s the mystery of your plan for our salvation. It’s never about what we do for you. It’s not about how religious or pious we can be. You already have us in the book of life. You already have our names on the class roster of abundant and eternal life. You have us. You got us. Here I am, Lord. Here I a,m Lord. Here we are, Lord. All of our broken, frumpy lives, all of our hard edges and wounded, aching limbs as the body of Christ. Here we are for you. That’s all. It’s that simple for these way too complex, frightening days. You are the purpose of each of our lives and for our lives together. You are our joy, our delight. You have imprinted your desire, your intent for this crazy, out-of-control world within our hearts. And today, right now, right here, we claim your promise once again, that you are greater than our hearts. Thanks be to you, O God, of steadfast love and faithfulness.

We have told of your good news, the good news of our salvation, with our lips, with our songs, with our praise, in here and out there, Magnificent Lord. We have not kept your saving grace to ourselves. And you know, God knows, we can’t keep your saving grace to ourselves these days. We have spoken of your every -present faithfulness and told stories of your love over and over and over again. And you know, Jesus Christ knows, we have to tell them more and louder these days. We have to tell of your love not just with words, not just with songs of praise, but with the nitty-grittiness, the everydayness, of our lives.

Your love and faithfulness are utterly concealed these days by those who pervert the gospel to their own end. Your love and faithfulness are concealed these days by those who threaten the stranger rather than welcome them, those who create orphans rather than care for them, those who create enemies in order to hate them, those who seem to want a world where the hungry and poor are demonized rather than fed and lifted up.

So yes, Lord, words aren’t enough. By your grace, and with courage drawn from Jesus himself, and only by the power, guidance, intercession, and advocacy of the Holy Spirit, we are going to live lives that reflect the unconcealed love of God, especially these days. The unconcealed love of God for the living of these days, for the living of these days. Because to be honest, Heavenly One, to open our heart and soul to you this morning, Lord,  it’s really hard to wait and be patient for you these days. Really hard. So hear us. Hear our cry. Hear our plea. Our urgent, fervent prayer for these days. Hear us again, God. Hear us, now. Hear us, O Spirit ever on the loose among us. Hear us and so use us. Headlights, not taillights.

And Jesus, hear us, hear our endless pleas. Because of you, because of our life in you, because you have told us that you shall, you will be with us even to the end of the age. Well, then, Jesus, we’re going to trust and never doubt, Jesus will surely bring us out. Because you, Jesus, you never failed us……yet.

Amen.

Acts 10:34-43
January 11
Jess Winderweedle
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