"This is God"

July 8, 2012

Psalm 48

¹Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised

in the city of our God.

His holy mountain, ²beautiful in elevation,

is the joy of all the earth,

Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.

³Within its citadels God

has shown himself a sure defense.

⁴Then the kings assembled,

they came on together.

⁵As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;

they were in panic, they took to flight;

⁶trembling took hold of them there,

pains as of a woman in labor,

⁷as when an east wind shatters

the ships of Tarshish.

⁸As we have heard, so have we seen

in the city of the LORD of hosts,

in the city of our God,

which God establishes forever.

⁹We ponder your steadfast love, O God,

in the midst of your temple.

¹⁰Your name, O God, like your praise,

reaches to the ends of the earth.

Your right hand is filled with victory.

¹¹Let Mount Zion be glad,

let the daughters of Judah rejoice

because of your judgments.

¹²Walk about Zion, go all around it,

count its towers,

¹³consider well its ramparts;

go through its citadels,

that you may tell the next generation

¹⁴that this is God,

our God forever and ever. 

He will be our guide forever.

Sermon: “This is God”

Our Presbyterian Hymnal has some gems, but there is one hymn that wins the great honor of the…Most Depressing Award (beating out Why Has God Forsaken Me and Throned Upon the Awful Tree): It is…By the Waters of Babylon.

 It says in a Jewish chant, “By the waters, the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept, and wept for Zion.  We remember, we remember, we remember Zion.”  But you really need to hear it to understand why it wins this award…

This old hymn from Psalm 137 is heavy with the tears of a people mourning for home in Zion, God’s great city.  Zion is wept for, in the same way that lost hopes are wept for, or missed opportunities, or deep oppression.  All that is is not as it should be, and the fitting response to living in a place that feels far from Zion is grief.  But remembering Zion doesn’t always have to be such a sad endeavor.  Just listen to Bob Marley’s version of this song, and you’ll see!

One of the more bizarre experiences of my life so far was spent in Marley’s home country of Jamaica one January several years ago, in the middle of a Rastafarian village as they met for worship.  I sat on a roughly-hewn wooden bench, with my feet on the bare dirt floor and a welcome breeze coming in the open doors of what was more a shack than a church.  The drums never stopped: constantly reverberating off of the walls in changing rhythms until I felt like my heart was beating along with them.  There was singing, even some hymns I knew, a sermon of sorts about the promise of Zion and then we all departed to sit outside in the shade. 

I spoke with one man in the village and asked him why Zion seemed to be so important to them.  He explained that they were forcibly taken from their homeland (Africa) to be slaves in Jamaica and that Zion was for them a very real place: Ethiopia, to be exact.  Sounding an awful lot like the people of Israel bemoaning their slavery in Babylon and longing for home in Zion, he told me that, as they pray for Zion, they wholeheartedly believe that a boat will come (or an airplane), and that one day, God will take them home. 

They don’t know when this will happen (and they actually don’t worry too much about the details).  What they concern themselves with is remembering: remembering that they are not at home, remembering that there is a dwelling place for them that only God can lead them to, remembering their history of slavery but even more, the hope of ultimate freedom.  Remembering Zion. 

This is why every fence bordering their villages are painted with vibrant green, yellow and red, the colors of the Ethiopian flag.  Rather than weep at the memory of a home they’ve never seen, they rejoice in it, beating their drums with wild joy.

¹Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised

in the city of our God.

His holy mountain, ²beautiful in elevation,

is the joy of all the earth,

Mount Zion, in the far north,

the city of the great King.

The people of Israel saw Zion as an actual place as well: Jerusalem, where God dwelled in beauty.  Zion is on a mountain, where the kings of the earth come and quake with fear before the glory of Yahweh, who is King over all the earth.  This Psalm from the descendants of Korah urges the people of Israel to also remember as the Rastas do. 

They are told to walk around Zion, to overlook no detail of it, counting its towers, exploring its ramparts and citadels, that they would see in every stone, every path, every height and depth that this is God, their Guide.  God is as real as the dirt road beneath their feet, the cool feel of stone towers, the sound of rejoicing from the daughters of Judah. 

If Zion is real, so is Yahweh.  This good news must be passed on to the next generation: that home is not just a comfy concept but a living reality.  That God is not some apathetic celestial deity but a King who stands against all of those powers and principalities that deny that Kingdom through slavery and oppression.

For each of us, we know a place of Zion: where God is as real as the shade of a favorite tree or the laughter of a beloved child, where we finally return to ourselves and our Creator.  Where kings of worry and princes of materialism shake with fear before the undeniable goodness of our King.  

Karen, Taylor and I experienced a bit of Zion at Camp Monroe this week.  Whether kayaking on the cool Lumber River beneath sleepy trees or worshipping together in shorts and t-shirts, we were constantly reminded of the realness of God around us.  It was at times challenging and at others exhilarating, but in exploring God’s kingdom in that place, we each left with the certainty that we had seen with our own eyes that this is God.  And while navigating shallow rivers riddled with logs or rocky rushing rapids, we certainly appreciated the power of God as our Guide!  Karen and Taylor, daughters of our church like those daughters of Judah in Psalm 48, would like to share with you a bit about how they saw God in their time at Camp Monroe.

(Karen & Taylor share)

Psalm 48 speaks about the need to experience God with our own eyes and ears so that we can tell the next generation who God is.  There is great value in this, for we must not keep our Zion moments to ourselves, but share them with those who come after us.  But as we’ve seen this morning, sometimes we need to pause and ask the next generation where they see God and have the humility and patience to listen to them. 

In their energy and enthusiasm, we just may find the antidote to the apathy of our days, the reminder in our times of captivity in the Babylons of our time--anxiety and busyness--that Zion is a real place: in our own hearts, in our own days, where the King of heaven and earth chooses to dwell in glory.  This is God, and God will be our Guide forever!  Amen.