"Not Still, Nor Small"

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Psalm 29

¹Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings,

ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.

²Ascribe to the LORD the glory of his name;

worship the LORD in holy splendor.

³The voice of the LORD is over the waters;

the God of glory thunders,

the LORD, over mighty waters.

⁴The voice of the LORD is powerful;

the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.

⁵The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;

the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.

⁶He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,

and Sirion like a young wild ox.

⁷The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.

⁸The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness;

the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

⁹The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl,

and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, "Glory!"

¹⁰The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;

the LORD sits enthroned as king for ever.

¹¹May the LORD give strength to his people!

May the LORD bless his people with peace!

Sermon:

I like a God who speaks through the quiet movements of nature: through the uniform, bare trees of winter, through a bright pink, foggy sunrise.  I like a God who speaks through pinprick stars and goofy goats playing in a field.  I like the god I see in a 2 year old who simply can’t contain their excitement at this world and everything in it. 

That is the sort of God I suppose I’ve worshipped all my life, carrying around that god in my pocket as I walk around Sue Phillips’ park or the painted barns and fields of Cameron and say, “Well done, little god.  This is some beautiful stuff.”  That god is admittedly warm and fuzzy, the Presbyterian grace-drenched god who makes me feel good.

When I read Psalm 29, I suspect that my little god has nothing to do with the God described there.  This God speaks, and from those words, floods rage, the indestructible cedars of Babylon are turned to sawdust, great mountains are made to skip and dance like a young wild ox.  Or as the King James Version so whimsically puts it, like a young unicorn!  This God speaks and fires blaze.  This God speaks and the wilderness is shaken until all is laid bare.  Do I even know this God at all?  Do any of us?

There are some who, just as I love my god who speaks with a still, small voice, relish in the idea of this other god.  The god who brings floods to judge those who differ from us.  The god who has a hand in violence to punish our nation’s infidelity (but who never seems to mind my own sin).  The god who spews hellfire and brimstone all day long, and thinks “grace” a very weak word indeed. 

This is the god of the Westboro Baptist Church.  It might be the god some of us were raised on.  It is the god we invoke when we wish vengeance on our enemies and then ourselves take a hand in helping God dish it out.  This god is not carried around in one’s pocket; this god is carried around in one’s deepest prejudice and hatred. 

When we carry around the first god, our placid pocket-god, the Psalmist urges us, “Be careful.  The words alone of that God might change you forever.  And you’ll never be able to contain those words in your pocket.”  When we carry around our prejudice-baptizing god, the Psalmist concludes all those terrifying, powerful words with “The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;

the LORD sits enthroned as king for ever. May the LORD give strength to his people!’

Perhaps God does not perfectly fit in either category.  God is absolute concerning justice, unequivocal concerning faithfulness, and lets the natural consequences of injustice and idolatry fall like a heavy, frightening thunderstorm.  But over that raging storm, God is King still, giving strength to his people, all of his people.  And saying something we might mistakenly confuse as warm and fuzzy, the Psalmist says that God blesses his people with peace. 

If you have seen the peace of people who were raised to habitually exile each other come together, witnessed the tension of black students’ first day in school with white students, you know that peace is not a soft notion.  If you have lived through a persistent illness, or held the hand of a loved one who endured it on to the life to come, you know that peace at last is costly.  If you have served our country or agonized as family members have placed themselves in the precarious life that service demands, or if you have advocated for a diplomatic solution, you know that peace is deeply sacrificial. 

God blesses God’s people with peace.  Gosh, I hope so.  I hope that when we demonize those who are different from us, God somehow softens our hearts to see that this peace is not just for us to keep in our pocket, but that this word is to be proclaimed in every part of our lives.  I hope that when we think God has abandoned us as the waters of life get rough, and when those things that are never meant to break, do, we still hear that word lovingly spoken to us by the God who sits above, and within, it all. 

God’s voice is mighty enough to lay bare the forests of self-importance we’ve hidden ourselves in, so that we may see who we truly are.  And God’s voice is gentle enough to speak hope into the frigid, artificial light of a hospital room.  Strong or soft, subtle or shocking, the voice is the same.  It is God’s.  It is speaking still, that we might in those words find the strength and vulnerability to also speak words of peace, not just for us, but for all of God’s people. 

I don’t know which God you like to carry with you day after day: a gentle, comforting pocket god like I so often carried with me, or a righteous, demanding god.  But I do know that each of us brings an incomplete picture of God, one that will always be looking in a glass dimly on this side of heaven. 

Yet that picture becomes more clear, God’s voice becomes more recognizable, when we share in one another’s experiences of that voice.  When we listen, without agenda or fixed interpretation, to what God says through this word.  And when we then take that word into the streets, into the daily grind of work or the relaxation of the golf course, into the joy of comfortable, quiet nights or the agony of tension with loved ones or injustice in this world.  Then, we will find that voice of God to be not still, nor small, but constantly on the move, constantly speaking “peace” when peace seems impossible.

One of my favorite series, The Chronicles of Narnia, captures this tension between God’s gracious gentleness and righteous anger best, when speaking of Aslan, the great lion that C.S. Lewis placed as the God figure in his stories.  

The child Lucy hears about Aslan and asks a very logical question, whether Aslan is tame or not.  Mr. Beaver replies:

'If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than me or else just silly.'

'Then he isn't safe?' asked Lucy.

'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver. ‘ Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'

God is not safe.  God’s voice might just turn our assumptions and worldview upside down, ushering in a peace more demanding and transforming than any we have ever known.  Our sin, our pride, our fixed ways of thinking and doing: these are not safe around this sort of God.  But God is relentlessly good: good enough to desire peace for all, good enough to patiently speak to us, no matter how often we fail to listen, good enough to become one of us that forgiveness might be given a human face.  Thanks be to this wild, good God!  Amen.