Scripture: Psalm 146 (NRSV)
Praise for God’s Help
1 Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
2 I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
3 Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
4 When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.
5 Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God,
6 who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
7 who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
8 the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
10 The Lord will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!
Sermon: “Where Do We Find God?”
As many of you know, over the past several weeks I have been preaching a series of sermons inspired by Rabbi Harold Kushner’s 1989 book, “Who Needs God?” In the final chapter, Rabbi Kushner shares a famous Hasidic story about a wise-man who came home from synagogue to find his little 9-year-old daughter in tears. The wise-man asked her what was wrong, and she proceeded to tell him that she had been playing a game of hide-and-seek with her friends, but when it was her turn to hide, she hid so well, that after a while, her friends gave up looking for her. When she finally emerged from her hiding place, she discovered that she was completely alone! Her friends had left her behind, gone off and had started playing another game without her.
As the wiseman comforted his daughter, who was understandably feeling abandoned and lonely, he wondered if God ever felt the way his daughter did when people abandoned God’s ways, gave up looking for God, and went off in other directions. (Kushner, p. 181-182)
It’s a thought-provoking story, isn’t it? And particularly thought-provoking in this Covid crisis because the primary place where most of us go to find God--our church building-- is not currently available to us. And, what’s more, all of the necessary safety precautions for gathering in groups make it quite challenging to plan for even small numbers of people to start to gather again for worship, study, or prayer.
While we may long for--and your church council is working hard to prepare for-- in-person gatherings again, I invite you to join me in some virtual theological reflection. Could it be that this pandemic--despite being scary and devastating in so many ways, is also giving us religious people an opportunity to ask a question that we never would have asked otherwise because we thought we knew the answer? And the question is: “Where do we find God?”
Where do we find God? If not primarily in the company of gathered believers in our church buildings, then where? In our hearts, of course, but in virtual gatherings on the internet? If we’d been asked this question (“where do we find God?”_ back in February, I doubt most of us would have included the internet in our answer. I know I wouldn’t have. But here we are. And God is present with us--believers and seekers-- as we worship and pray and learn together.
But such gatherings of people of faith (virtual or face-to-face) are not the only place we find God. Rabbi Kushner, quoting our scripture reading for today, Palm 146, says it this way:
[We find God] Wherever justice is meted out to the powerless, wherever people share their bread with the hungry, extend freedom to the oppressed, [and] lend a hand to the afflicted, the lonely, and the stranger… (Kushner, p. 203)
In other words, God is found out in the world standing next to people in the midst of their deepest need.
Based on the wording used in this Psalm--and its reference to Isaiah 61, scholars date this Psalm to the period in Israel’s history just after they returned from exile in Babylon in the latter part of the sixth century BCE. (Hans Weirsma, workingpreacher.com) So the references to the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoners, the blind, those who are bowed down, the strangers, the orphan, and the widow, wouldn’t just have been metaphorical or even historical references. The person writing this psalm--and his or her community of faith--would have fit literally into all or most of these categories. The person writing this psalm--and his/her faith community--would have known firsthand what it is like to be vulnerable and scared, incarcerated, detained, oppressed, and powerless and not know what the future holds, where their next meal was going to come from or even, perhaps, whether they were going to live or die.
It occurs to me that during this Covid pandemic--and the societal unrest we are experiencing in our country and all over the world, almost everyone is experiencing levels of vulnerability we have never felt before. Like the exiles returning from Babylon, we--some of us for the first time--are getting a sense of what it is like to feel powerless against forces that are beyond our control, and it is scary.
Even police forces in our country--not a category of people you generally think of when someone says the word “vulnerable”--are experiencing a level of disrespect that is unprecedented. Paul and I have a neighbor who is an officer with the State Police, and he told us about being relocated for a while back in June to a city on the south shore where people screamed at him, spit at him, threw trash at him, and he was expected to remain professional and not react or escalate the situation. And he did remain professional. And calm. But it was hard. And the disrespect he received wasn’t right. Police officers who are trying to do their job to protect and serve should not be treated that way. No one should.
And, yet, disrespect is rampant in our society. And worse than disrespect. Oppression. Interestingly enough, one scholar I read this week said that the Hebrew Bible has 12 different words that are translated into English as “oppression.” The Hebrew word used in today’s reading-- verse 7 of Psalm 146__is ashuqim and it refers to oppression that is “primarily financial.” It is used elsewhere in the Bible in the context of “defrauding one’s neighbor” (Leviticus 6:2-4) and “withholding wages” (Deuteronomy 24:14.) (Wil Gafney, workingpreacher.com.)
Financial fraud and wage theft--unfair treatment and policies that keep poor people down--isn’t that part of what the protests in our cities are about? It’s about that and other systems which function to unfairly keep black and brown people down even more than poor whites.
Our Psalm today does not give us formulas for how to fix what is broken in the systems of our society. But our Psalm does show us where we can find God--right there in the midst of all the suffering and oppression, disrespect and racism. God is right there--reaching out to all who are vulnerable and hurting and--verse 8-- God is right there lifting up those who are bowed down.
What this says to me is that I need to be out there too. And by “out there”--I mean reaching out and building relationships--virtually and/or in socially-distanced ways with people who are bowed down and suffering. Even if I may be suffering some myself--I can put my suffering aside to be dealt with later in order listen to other people’s stories. In order to hear their pain. In order to humbly examine whether I had a part--intentionally or unintentionally--in causing some of their pain. Or, even if I, as an individual, did not cause it, perhaps there is still something I could/can do to alleviate it--and change the systems that cause it.
Psalm 146 is an invitation for us all to find God where it may be--no, it will be--uncomfortable for us to look: in the eyes and hearts of those who are bowed down. May we take the risk to do so. And may we discover--through the connections that we make, with people who are like us and people who are different--that God will turn our pain into praise as God envelopes us all in love and compassion.
Would you join me in a spirit of prayer as I read through a prayer by
Rev. Arianne Braithwaite Lehn entitled, “When I’m longing for peace, within and without,”
Beautiful Spirit of Peace,
I am longing for peace within
And peace around…
For peace in families,
Peace in neighborhoods,
Peace between nations,
Peace for mother earth,
Peace in the quiet depths
Of my own soul.
Peace for people ripped open
By painful divides on
Streets and in conversations…
Peace for friends facing
Suicide or prison…
Peace for loved ones living through
Divorce and death and hard anniversaries…
Peace for people leaving home
Because their job relocated
Or the money wasn’t there anymore…
Peace for those who uncovered a shocking
Revelation about someone they loved,
And they aren’t sure what to do or whom to trust.
Peace for all whose
Greatest fears actualized
Before their eyes,
And sighs and tears
Became a daily language.
Peace that holds all of
Us in wholeness
When we’re carrying
Grief or heartache,
Chaos or tumultuous questions.
When what’s most precious to us
Was swept away in one swift wave,
Or the world’s teeming with
So much noise and busyness [and chaos]
We can’t hear ourselves think.
I ask you, Spirit of peace and hope,
To blow a breath of balm upon the wounds,
And lead us toward bone-deep belief.
Even in this challenging landscape,
May your presence bring
Peace passing all understanding
As it strengthens bodies,
Renews minds,
And heals this land.
I thank you that peace is not a dream,
But a promise.
And you are the Giver of Peace.
Amen.
August 9, 2020
Rev. Dr. Marlayna Schmidt
Franklin Federated Church
Franklin, MA