Psalm 8
October 6
David A. Davis
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“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” It’s one of the verses from the psalmist that ought to stick with you. Like “Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within bless God’s holy name” and “Be still and know that I am God” and “Hope in God, for I shall again praise God, my help and my God” and “I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where does my help come My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth!”

            “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” Ingrid Ladendorf, our Director of Children and Youth Choirs and Director of Children and Family Ministries was helping to lead worship at a recent staff gathering. Ingrid offered a children’s setting of Psalm 8. We read in unison and broke up the psalm like this: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (WOW!) “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you mindful of them, mortals that you care for them” (WOW!) “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (WOW!)

            This first verse from Psalm 8 is also the last. It’s not quite a refrain but is the psalm’s first and last word. It frames the psalmist’s word. It’s the takeaway from the poetry. It sets the tone for the psalm’s guts, which comes in between. It shapes how the psalm will be read like an old adage about preaching. “Tell them what you are going to tell them. Then tell them. Then tell again and sit down.”  “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” You can’t miss the praise even though the word isn’t there. No “praise the Lord” in Psalm 8 but it is a song of praise nonetheless.

It is the kind of song of praise that comes from the children and we sing it our whole life long. “Out of the mouths of babes and infants”, the psalmist writes. From the lips of the youngest, O God, you formed this foundation. You have established this stronghold of praise, this bulwark within your people that shouts our praise to you and lifts our adoration before you. It is a perpetual stream, words and songs and worship in all places and in all circumstances and at all times. A continuous loop of praise intended to drown out all other voices,  intended to silence every voice in us but your own. Even the voice of death will be squelched by our bold song of praise, O God of resurrection life. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

            When I plan a memorial service with a family or plan a wedding with a couple, one of the regular topics of conversation is whether or not to sing a few hymns during the service. I have learned to ask about whether the expected congregation would be familiar with a hymn or would be a singing crowd. That’s because of all the times I stand up here before a community gathered for the occasion and I am the only one singing. I always find it interesting and a bit disconcerting when attendees dutifully stand during a hymn, don’t open the hymnbook, and just look forward; just stare at me. I understand that folks might be from a different religious faith or from a tradition that doesn’t sing hymns. But when politely standing and not participating people just look at me. Sometimes it feels like they are glaring at me. “Can’t you just read along or look at the windows or scan the room? Are you mad at me because of this hymn?” Honestly, I would like to share with them that this is what we do in this place. This is who we are. We are a people built and called together to praise God in joy and sorrow.

This last week I was with my peer group of pastors that I often tell you about. 25 Presbyterian pastors from all around the country. We were at the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church in Seattle. But we were a smaller group this time because our friends and colleagues from Asheville and Black Mountain NC and Spartanburg SC were not able to come because of the hurricane. We were able to talk to two of them by phone and pray for them. The other pastor still had no cell service. What they described to us was more heartbreaking than the videos and pictures we have all seen. How they had no way to check on the members of the congregation. How the Black Mountain Church gave water and food to 1,000 people on Monday. How they were told it might be 6 months before water is restored. Patrick, the pastor of First Church Asheville told us the church had power but no water. They were keeping it open for the community to come and charge devices or use the wifi. As our in-person group listened on a beautiful sunny day in Seattle, most of us were in tears. And then Patrick said, “We will gather for worship on Sunday morning for whoever can get here.” Then everyone in the room was in tears.

We don’t often think about it like this but maybe more often than not the worship of God by the people of God is a subversive act in the world in which we live. The Psalm reading for this morning in the Revised Common Lectionary is Psalm 8. That means congregations of all denominations all over the southeast (those that can gather or still have their building) will be reading Psalm 8 together. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” Most will celebrate World Communion Sunday. The joyful feast of the people of God.” The children of God and the daring, subversive, counter-intuitive steady drumbeat of praise even when the world is washing away. Even when humanity’s care for the earth, the dominion entrusted by God has been abused. Even amid devastation and loss. Even when pondering the world near and far invokes a weariness deep within. Whether standing here for a child’s confirmation or here for a baby’s baptism or here to make solemn vows to one another, or sitting there for the service of a loved one now in glory, or gathered here for a “joyful feast of the people of God”. Or when two congregations gather to both celebrate and lament a history on race that is more complex than can be imagined, or when you are sitting out there on an ordinary Sunday joining in a hymn of praise when you weren’t sure you could bring yourself to sing after a rough week, or when you find yourself unspeakably grateful as three generations of your family share a pew. A steady drumbeat of praise. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

            As I looked at the pictures coming out of the Montreat Presbyterian Conference Center where the Nassau Youth group went for the summer youth conference for several years, I thought of folks I know who live or lived there. David and Nancy Mulford lived there in retirement before moving here to Stonebridge to be closer to family. Marti and Peter Hazelrigg who were on staff with us here at Nassau now own a home in Montreat. Their home is okay but it will be some time until they can get there from Greensboro where Marti’s church is located. And I thought of Pat and MaryAnn Miller. They were part of Nassau for so many years when Pat taught Old Testament at Princeton Seminary. They owned a home for decades in Montreat that their children now have since both Pat and MaryAnn have joined the Communion of saints.

Dr Miller once wrote this about our praise and adoration of God. The worship and praise of the people of God “assumes and even evokes a world….where impossible things become possible, where things too difficult become the order of the day.” Miller continues “In a world that assumes the status is quo, that things have to be the way they are, and one must not assume too much about improving them, the doxologies of God’s people are one of the fundamental indicators that wonders have not ceased, possibilities not yet dreamed of will happen, and hope is an authentic stance.” That’s all ridiculous, he notes, “unless one has seen the wonders of God in the past.”

In other words, our doxology, our drum beat of praise, our subversive act of worship assumes and evokes the very kingdom of God. The sounds of our praise serve both to witness to God’s past faithfulness and point to God’s future. The steadfast presence of our song on the sabbath day dares give witness to a world where justice and righteousness kiss, where the weak are made strong, where the poor are lifted up, where the hungry are fed, where the wounded are cared for, and where the oppressed are set free. It’s that song of God’s people. The proclamation of God’s people. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

            A few generations of children have grown up reading the book “Guess How Much I Love You” at bedtime. It’s the story of two rabbits: Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nut Brown Hare. The two, parent and child, are engaged in a dialogue trying to one-up each other about how much they love each other. This much. THIS much. THIS MUCH. The little one is falling asleep and trying to keep up. “I love you to the moon”, Little Nutbrown Hare says just as sleep takes over. With the young one now fast asleep, Big Nutbrown Hare says, “and back”. As in “I love you to the moon and back again.”

One can imagine all sorts of children now grown who share the refrain with those they love. “love you to the moon…and back”.  Maybe the psalmist has offered a version of that dialogue to God’s people. More than a dialogue of praise. A dialogue about our love for God and God’s love for us.  “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” Not just as part of our drum beat of praise but deeply ingrained in our relationship to God. You, me and God. When we rise, when we nod off to sleep. Expressing all the fullness of praise that comes with our life in God. And knowing ourselves to now and forever be basking in the love of God made known to us in and through Jesus Christ. God’s offering of the “and back” part of the steadfast love God has for us.

Come to the Table this morning. Even after a week like this, come and dare to celebrate the joyful feast of the people of God.

“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

James 5:13-18
September 29
Len Scales
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At the close of the passage today, we hear of a harvest. Last week, in James chapter 3, we explored a harvest of righteousness, elsewhere translated the fruit of righteousness. Dave in his sermon reminded us of the good fruit that we hear of throughout Scripture. The passage that always comes to my mind is the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. As we consider good fruit that comes from prayer, we can discern between the bad fruit that too often accompanies conversations around prayer in our current world.

It is not good fruit when prayer is only “thoughts and prayers” without any accompanying action. It is not good fruit when people are told they aren’t praying with enough conviction because loved ones are still sick. It is not good fruit when prayer is used to isolate an individual rather than surround them with supportive community.

We hear in our passage today how prayer is a part of community care. It has to do with connecting those praying with God and with others. Prayer acknowledges the mysterious working of God, the responsibility of the community, and the participation of the one praying.

Similarly, as we celebrate a baptism today (in the 11 o’clock service), we as a community are surrounding a family in prayer and with promises to help care for the child baptized and always tell them about Jesus. Baptism reminds us of the promises of God that nothing, nothing ever, can separate us from the love of God. Baptism of a child is also about the promises of the family to raise the child in the family of faith. Baptism of an adult includes the individual’s promises of faith. The prayers at baptism are about these promises, acknowledging the mysterious, unending love of God combined with the community’s active engagement in the life of the one baptized. Baptism is a sign of God’s love and seals us as Jesus’ disciples, caring for one another and our world.

Prayer is this line that runs throughout our actions as a community in our entire life together. Civil Rights activists would gather to pray, preparing themselves, inviting God’s presence with them, that come what may, they would be ready to respond with nonviolence. One of my first sermons at Nassau in 2017 was the weekend of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Andrew and I saw our seminary colleague Seth Wispelwey gather with other faith leaders the evening they were surrounded by tiki torches in the church. They were there praying. They were preparing themselves for the day ahead. They prayed that night and they sang “This Little Light of Mine” in the morning as they stood between the Nazi-inspired white nationalists and the counter-protestors. The Rev. Dr. William Barber II when interviewed then and since has continued his call for a “non-violent moral movement.”^[1] Barber’s call for a moral movement is built on a fusion coalition, bringing together people across differences for the good of the poor.^[2]

So too prayer is about bringing us together, from our different identities and concerns. Our passage today offers several examples of how prayer is communal, for one, James encourages the sick to gather the elders, to pray in a way that is embodied. In the passage, they anoint the sick with olive oil, which was tradition. It is not about magic powers, but about a humanizing touch, a reminder that we are here together.

The call to confession is also in community, that we may together be honest about the brokenness of our world, our need for healing. When we participate in confession in worship in the Presbyterian tradition, we only do so in conjunction with the assurance of forgiveness. It is a time to tell the truth that God has the power to forgive and transform us to follow God’s call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.”

Through our prayers of preparation, our prayers of petition, and our prayers of confession, we engage them together. As we face the challenges of life, we as a congregation will do so with the compassion of community and the promises of God.

A particular community known for its prayer is the Taizé Community in France. Taizé is an ecumenical monastic community that joins together in prayer three times a day, welcoming young people from around the world. The fusion of people of faith from protestant, catholic, and Orthodox traditions along with their growing conversations between Muslim and Christian young people, results in this unique space of prayer and in their collective work for the poor. David Hicks wrote about the prayer and action of Taizé on the occasion of their fiftieth anniversary as a community in the 90’s. Hick’s encourages, “To be faithful to the lesson of Taizé, then, would be to use a ‘prayer and action’ commitment to the gospel to discern present, particular needs in present, particular places.”^[3] As we share in prayer with one another, we can better see and understand the opportunities and needs before us in any given season.

One of the traditions on Sunday evenings at Breaking Bread Worship with the 40 or so undergraduate and graduate students who gather in Niles Chapel is how we participate in the prayers of the people. With a community of that size, we take the time to pray for one another with a communal bidding prayer. We ask for students, as they want, to briefly share something they are bringing with them that is either a joy or a challenge they need help holding. Then, the person leading the prayer rephrases the petition aloud, so that the person can hear it in another’s voice. We close by praying “Lord in your mercy,” and the congregation responds, “Hear our prayer.” In this way, it gives us space to acknowledge what we are carrying into worship with us and some insight into how to care for one another during the week.

In a larger community, small groups can be a way of understanding the present, particular needs. As you heard from Marshall & Debbie in the Moment for Mission, Small Groups are gearing up for a new season and are a wonderful way to get to know one another. They include a space to share prayer requests and join in prayer. Prayers for when we are sick, prayers for when we are celebrating, prayers when we don’t even have the words.

Praying is not about having the most eloquent phrasing or just the right description. It’s not a test of our vocabulary or faith. Prayer is about what is going on. Whether it is a timely topic, a shared silence, or a joining in the Lord’s Prayer, we are reminded that we are not alone when we pray. We can be carried by the community who is praying with us and even for us at times. It is an opportunity to be lifted by the community when we don’t have the energy or the focus to be able to put into words what is going on. We can draw on the words from Jesus and tradition.

In our prayers, we carry the needs of our community and are equipped by the Spirit to respond together. It reminds us that we are not alone. God is with us. Last fall, we explored prayer in the Old Testament with several narratives. As we turn to prayer in the New Testament with today’s text, we hear both descriptions of how people prayed but also prescriptions to simply pray. So in our corporate worship and in our gatherings in small groups, may we pray. Pray welcoming God’s everlasting love. Pray with an intent to follow it with action. Pray in sorrow and in joy. Pray in ways that bear good fruit.

^[1] “Religious Leaders Respond to White Nationalists in Charlottesville,” August 12, 2017, https://www.msnbc.com/am-joy/watch/religious-leaders-respond-to-white-nationalists-in-charlottesville-1023675459700.

^[2] Matthew Desmond, “A Prophet for the Poor,” The New York Review of Books, October 3, 2024, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/10/03/a-prophet-for-the-poor-white-poverty/.

^[3] Douglas A Hicks, “The Taizé Community: Fifty Years of Prayer and Action.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 29, no. 2 (1992): 202–14.

James 3:13-18
September 22
David A. Davis
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Our church went on a staff retreat two weeks ago to a retreat center in Quarryville, Pa. Quarryville is about 30 minutes from Lancaster. The GPS route to get there takes you off the highway about an hour from the conference center. Then it was all two-lane roads, rolling hills, and farm after farm after farm. It was a beautiful day and it was a beautiful landscape. A road was closed and we found ourselves crossing over a one-lane covered bridge. We passed horses and buggies and saw house after house with laundry drying on lines that looked like they stretched the length of a football field. During one afternoon break, I was in the car again passing buggies, and kids walking home from school carrying their shoes and lunchboxes. I was so enjoying my surroundings that GPS had to reroute more than once. I came upon a farmer harvesting what I guess was hay and being pulled by a team of four horses. I saw a barn full of harvest hanging from the ceiling to dry. Maybe it was tobacco, but I don’t know.  I drove along a field where a family of all ages each had baskets in their hands and they were bent over harvesting something, but I couldn’t see that it was. As a kid who grew up not far from the river in Pittsburgh, I could tell from the smell in the air where the millworkers were in the steelmaking process but my knowledge of agriculture and the harvest is sort of embarrassing. It was like I needed a farming docent riding shotgun because the harvest may not always be what one guesses.

There is no shortage of reference to the harvest in the pages of scripture.  No shortage of reference to the harvest in the teaching of Jesus for that matter. You remember what Jesus said about the harvest. Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”.  Jesus said it in Matthew and Luke. “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the vineyards.” Harvest. Jesus usually mentions the harvest in a parable. Like the parable of the weeds and the wheat (Mt 13) or the parable of the vineyard (Mt 21) or the parable of the seed that grows in secret (Mk 4). They all include mention of the harvest. But a conversation about harvest and the teaching of Jesus usually starts with “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”.

            This memory verse, this quote, and this sound bite from Jesus often comes with a connotation of evangelism. It may conjure up thoughts of revivals, altar calls, and invitations from the preacher. Salvation’s rolling landscape full of hearts yearning to be transformed, waiting to hear the gospel, longing for grace and forgiveness anew. It is the harvest of conversion and the Gospel laborers attending to those hearing the gospel. The preacher concludes with the invitation, the plea, the promise. Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

            In the 10^th chapter of Luke, Jesus speaking about the harvest and the laborers is wrapped up in the Lord’s appointing 70 others beyond the 12. He sent them ahead in pairs to every town and place he intended to go. That is when he warned them, telling them “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.” Jesus told them if they are rejected to shake the dust from their feet and move on. The sending starts with “the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. The gospel of Luke and Jesus’ sending of the 70. It does have that evangelistic flavor, that feel, that context.

But the harvest is a bit different in Matthew. Jesus dropping the verse in Matthew has a different feel. At the end of the 9^th chapter, Matthew tells the reader that Jesus went around to all the cities and villages teaching and proclaiming the good news. Jesus was also “curing every disease and healing every sickness.” As he came upon crowd after crowd Jesus “had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”. And that’s when he turned to his disciples and said  “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the Lord’s harvest.”  Yes, the harvest for Jesus is about proclaiming the gospel. But here in Matthew, it comes with the feel, the flavor, the twist of his mercy and compassion. It comes with Jesus looking around and with a heavy heart full of love. Jesus looks into the faces of the crowd, turns to the disciples, and says, “There is so much to do and so few of us. We have to ask God for more help. This harvest of need is so plentiful. The harvest isn’t just about proclaiming the gospel. It is about living the gospel too.

The harvest. This harvest. This isn’t like taking our granddaughters to Terhune Orchards this fall and going out into the pumpkin patch to let them pick a pumpkin. No, this kind of harvest is where the exhausted farmers work all night long, and nameless, faceless migrant workers spend days that never end out in the field because there is so much to do and bad weather is coming and the economy of an entire region is at stake.  A plentiful harvest, A plentiful harvest for Jesus among the crowds of people harassed by the world and so helpless.

Nassau’s mission partner, Centurion, held their annual gala in NYC last night. Mark Edwards and Annalese Hume took several Nassau youths up on the buses provided by Centurion to hear more about Centurion’s incredible work. Nassau member and great friend Jim McCloskey started the work now more than 40 years ago and Nassau has served as the ministry’s spiritual home. Centurion has freed 71 people who were wrongly imprisoned. The collective years in prison for those 71 people now exceeds 1500. In August, Jose Carrion walked out of a prison in Queens after more than 25 years

Jim McCloskey and John Grisham have written a book together that tells the story of 12 different cases. The book will be released next month, Jim writes about 6 of his cases and John writes about six cases he has followed and studied. I will be interviewing both of them at the Princeton Public Library event here in the sanctuary. Tickets are free and available on the library website and the evening will be livestreamed. I received an advanced copy of the book and read it this summer. I found it a book I couldn’t read cover to cover. Not because it wasn’t compelling or well-written. Of course, it is. But it is the weight of what McCloskey and Grisham write about. It is the heartbreak of getting to know these stories. Stories of real people and real suffering, most for decades. To read it is to come alongside children of God who were pretty much the definition of harassed and helpless. There is a weight that comes with hearts full of compassion.

A plentiful harvest. Is that a promise or lament? You live in the same world, the same times as me. We, you, me, the followers of Jesus and Jesus himself, we better all be asking the Lord for more help. It can be so paralyzing when there is so much to do; like you don’t know where to start. It can be so disheartening when dominant voices in the public square invoke a Christian faith that lacks any mercy. It can be overwhelming when the need in crowds only seems to grow in our lifetime and humanity’s inability to know the things that work for peace seems etched in stone. And Jesus still turns to the disciples, to the church, to you, to me and says “Wow, we have a  lot of work to do.”

Right here is where the voiceover from James starts. Here is where the soundtrack from James starts to play. Here is where the melody line from James rises from the string section as the requiem heads toward its completion. When the Faith Without Works author gets your attention, he eventually gets to “The harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”  A plentiful harvest of righteousness. No, not a lament. Indeed a promise from James. A word of encouragement. “The harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”

            It is fascinating to discover that James uses a different Greek word for “harvest”. It is not the same word for harvest that is found in the gospels. The word used by James when it comes to “harvest” is crop or fruit. Fruit like in Galatians 5:22: the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  Fruit like in Ephesians 5:8-9 “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of the light—for the fruit of the light is found all that is good and right and true.” Fruit as in John 15 when Jesus said “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last”

            For James, the harvest is the fruit of righteousness. And righteousness? Well, all through scripture righteousness is righteousness. A reference to what God requires, what God intends. Righteousness has to do with the godly work of righting what has been wrong. That the kingdom here on earth might more nearly be as in heaven. Righteousness. Not our righteousness, but the righteousness of Jesus working through and among us. “The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

            James counts the harvest one piece of fruit at a time. Jesus turns to the disciples, to the church, to us, and says “look at this crowd of humanity, harassed and helpless; we have so much work to do”. And James, somewhere in the crowd gives you an elbow and says, “Well, we have to start somewhere.”

We are ordaining new leaders in the life of Nassau Presbyterian Church this morning. People God has called through the voice of this congregation to lead us in the harvest. The fruit of righteousness is not going to be found in the brownfields of church sanctuaries if faith communities have long since lost their edge when comes to the work of the gospel: the work of justice and serving the poor and speaking for those so long and still silenced. Kingdom fruit does not ripen when congregations hunker down, wring their hands, and wish for the good old days. The fruit of righteousness will rot on the vine if Christians like you and me give up on Christ’s call to bear witness and to live what we believe Jesus has taught us. The harvest is not just about proclaiming the gospel. It is about living the gospel. Living it out in the world.

I haven’t had a chance to talk to any of the Nassau youth who were at the Centurion celebration last night. But I imagine as they heard the stories of the recently exonerated and heard the thanks offered for Kate Germond’s 35 years of work, they learned what Jim McCloskey taught me years and years ago. The harvest of righteousness comes one fruit at a time. One life at a time. It is quite difficult to fathom actually, how the entire Centurion team of staff, volunteers, and financial supporters spend years of time, sweat, and tears working endless hours, working for every one of those 71 lives and more.

You and I are called by the Hebrew prophets and Christ himself to speak for and work for righteousness and justice. The call is to follow Jesus and his challenge to systems, practices, and institutions that sow injustice into the fabric of human life. The call is to follow Jesus with hearts full of compassion tending to the crowds so full of need. Let James rest in your ear and tend to your soul. Because we have to start somewhere and the harvest comes one fruit, one act, one work at a time.