A sermon based upon Psalm 27: 1-9
Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.,
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
3rd Sunday of Epiphany, January 23, 2011
A little bit flaky, that’s what you would call Wilson Bentley. He lived in Vermont from 1865 to 1931 and was fascinated with snowflakes. They even nicked named him, “snowflake”.
Bentley actually studied and documented over 5,000 snowflakes and photographed them on black velvet either to prove or disprove the theory that no two snowflakes are alike. It seemed that he proved the theory to be true. He affirmed with his study that each individual crystal is a unique, masterpiece of design that was never repeated. Sadly, he also wrote, “when the snowflake melted, that design was lost forever. All the marvelous beauty was gone, without leaving any record at all.
One snowflake the catalogued was numbered 892. It was especially notable. It was a bit irregular and the top left arm did not cap the top like the others. “Even though it was irregular,” said Bentley, it was still very beautiful.” (As told in a sermon in Homiletics.online, Jan. 2011).
That could describe any of us as human beings, couldn’t it? We are all a bit “irregular” at times. But we are also uniquely created and no design is ever repeated. Even our “strangeness” can be viewed as a divine work of art as we are like snowflakes in the mind and heart of God.
But this also means that we are short-lived and vulnerable to “meltdown”. This is the kind of thing that happened to Jared Loughner, the deranged person who committed those terrible murders in Tucson. He was a man who slowly slide from normalness into madness; from stability into schizophrenia. We are created as marvelous, capable thinking, feeling and loving minds, but we are also at risk of short-circuit. Our minds and spirits are vulnerable to breakdown and worse, complete madness and evil that can lead the kind of darkness that can spread to the world around us.
It is perhaps because of our human vulnerability that the Psalmist declared in today’s text: “The Lord is my Light and my Salvation, whom shall I fear. The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? Like the Psalmist, at some time or other in our lives we will come to realize that we have lots to fear if we try to face life all alone. As the Psalmist realized, there are always people, diseases, or stresses in our lives that can appear to want to figuratively “eat our flesh” (vs. 2) or in today’s slang, would like to “have us for lunch.” How do we live in a world where we are always threatened, where we are always vulnerable, and where there is no love, no living, and no life without great risk. How can we remain faithful to God and to ourselves when we are constantly threatened? Sometimes it could seem to be practically impossible.
Recently on a World War II documentary, real-life Marines who survived the landing on the island of Iwo Jima, recounted how they felt when the ships approached and sent them out on small landing vessels to attack the island. One of them said, “When I looked around me and watched as others ahead of me left the boat, they were entering the sea water that had turned as read as blood. I didn’t want to get off. Everything in me was frozen. Then suddenly the commander pushed us out of the boat, whether we were ready to go or not. I felt as if that sea of blood would soon be my own. The next thing I remember was falling down on the shore, then getting up and proceeding ahead to what I knew would be the end of my life. But to my surprise, I survived!, while so many others didn’t. To this day, I’m still trying to figure out why a bullet didn’t take me out, when they were flying all around me? (As remembered from a documentary, WWII in N.C., aired in January, 2011 on UNCTV).
HOW DO WE FACE OUR DEEPEST FEARS?
In a world that can scare any of us half to death, what is the source of human faith?
For the Psalmist who lived in the darkness of the ancient world, the source was having the “the light” of the Lord in his life. But notice how the psalmist expresses his faith. He does not say that the Lord is “a” light or that the Lord is “a” form of salvation, but he says very personally and intimately, “The Lord is MY light; the Lord is MY salvation….”
One of the first things we must understand about faith is that it must be personalized or internalized to become real in our lives. Only an inward, living and personal relationship with faith gives us the confidence we need to face our greatest fears. Here the Psalmist says that his relationship with the light is to “desire” to “dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” (vs. 4). The daily, personal dwelling in the presence of the Lord is what gives him hope, peace and the strength he needs to overcome his fears and live his life with confidence and faith.
Recently the magazine Christian Century related the story of Mary Schertz, a professor of New Testament at Associate Mennonite Seminary. In all her academic studies, she had forgotten most of the “evangelical notion” of having a personal relationship with Jesus.
She reports that “it all began one warm spring afternoon as I was working with a group of women pastors in a Bible study that we had been calling "Luke's quest stories," a phrase used by Robert Tannehill. They are a cycle of stories in which someone approaches Jesus regarding a quest for something vitally important to human well-being. There are obstacles in the way of the quest, sometimes physical, sometimes social, psychological or spiritual. The obstacles are overcome, or not. The quest is fulfilled, or not.
These stories are simple stories that many of us have known all our lives: the paralytic, the centurion with a sick slave, the woman of the city, Mary and Martha, the lepers, Zacchaeus, the rich ruler, the thieves on their crosses with Jesus, the women at the tomb. But the stories' simplicity is deceptive. The more deeply one looks at them, the more complex they seem. There is often more than one quest and sometimes more than one quester. Sometimes the quest presented is not the quest completed…
….The second hour, (she writes) after a break for tea and scones (which was very important), we laid the text next to our experience: What does this quest story have to do with my life and my ministry? Where am I in this story today? How is this text calling me? We divided into two groups for that discussion, and the conversation became more personal, more intimate. There were silences. There was laughter and sometimes there were tears.
…..Usually members of the group would readily volunteer for any part except the part of Jesus. So this particular month, as we were preparing to read the text together, I teased the group. "We don't need Jesus today, he's not in this story."
I was unprepared for the intense wave of grief that washed over me at that moment. I missed him. I felt bereft. Of course, I thought immediately, he is still present in the same ways he has always been present—so what is going on here? I pulled myself together and we went on with the session. This jumble of emotions was too new and too raw to mention at the time. But I have been pondering these things. What the quest stories did for me that year was help me know Jesus and for the first time experience his death in a human, personal way. Thanks to the company of my pilgrim friends, Jesus had become a person. As a result, I have reclaimed the language of personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I found Jesus—and some of the old evangelical language I had forsworn seemed newly relevant to the somewhat jaded and shopworn New Testament professor that I had become.” (From Christian Century, “Now it’s Personal”, by Mary Schertz, January, 2011).
For those of us who grew up being taught the need for a “personal relationship” with the Jesus of the Bible we read about and worship, this word from Mary Schertz is a great reminder. Our understanding of faith must become personal, realized, and internalized into who we are and how we live our lives, or it has no real effect at all. Faith must be personal and real to us, or it doesn’t help us overcome the fears of life and death. This is what Mary realized and we all need to hear again in our own walk of faith. We must daily ask ourselves, for the sake of our faith and our sanity in life, “am I walking daily with Jesus?” “Do I find it my desire and delight to dwell daily in the presence of the Lord?” When God is “my” light and “my” salvation, then we can also say to ourselves, no matter the situation: “Whom shall I fear?”
HOW DOES FAITH BECOME PERSONAL?
The Psalmist reminds us with his image of light that the first step out of our own fear and darkness is to “turn on the light”.
Think about what it’s like to wake of early in the morning in the darkness and to get a glimpse of shadows that you are unsure of? All those things you left laying on the floor could become dangerous objects or even your furniture or pet could be “dangerous” for you, until you simply “turn on the light.” When you turn on the light, the shadows and uncertainties disappear and as your eyes adjust the way becomes clear.
Or think about it another way. Have you ever seen a horror movie? My favorite are the classics, Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, and the Creature From the Black Lagoon. In all these movies there is something to fear, but every good filmmaker of horror knows that once you expose or introduce the “creature” or “monster” in the movie, he begins to lose some of his fearfulness. The more familiar and clear we see, even fearful things, they can become less fearful and less monstrous.
In the same way, God calls us not remain or live in the darkness, but he challenges us to come closer to the light. This is how John’s gospel brings us closer to the light, when John writes about the “light of Jesus”: “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. "For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 "But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God." (Joh 3:19-21 NKJ).
The beginning of the movie Schindler’s List is unforgettable. In a day of Technicolor, the whole movie is produced in Black and White to show the contrast between Light and darkness. As the movie begins, the camera follows the smoke of the candles from the Jewish menorah which blends into the smoke coming from a fires of a smokestack in a Jewish concentration camp during WWII, where Nazi’s had imprisoned and killed millions of innocent Jews. You can’t help, in the rest of the movie, to see the contrast between those, like Oscar Schindler who joined the light in their attempt to save lives, with the darkness of those who were determined to bring great darkness into the world through the murder of innocents.
How do you know where the darkness ends and the light begins, a student once asked a Jewish rabbi?
The student goes on to suggest, “Would it be when you can see the difference between a dog or a goat at 20 paces?”
“No,” the Rabbi responds.
“Would it then be when you can see the difference between an elm or a birch tree at 50 paces?, the student continues to question.
“No, that would not be the moment of distinction either, the Rabbi responds once more.
Somewhat frustrated, the student asks a third time, “Well, Rabbi, what is the exact moment when the darkness of the night turns into the light of day?”
“That’s simple,” the Rabbi answers. “It is when you can look into the eyes of the person beside you and see that they are your brother or sister!”
We don’t get rid of our fears by memorizing something or by holding on to a mere philosophy, says the Psalmist. We don’t even get rid of the fears themselves, but we can make friends with our fears. How? Because the Lord is his “light” and his “salvation”, the Psalmist says he can depend upon God as his safe shelter. From that “high” position and “holy” perspective of life and hope, the Psalmist can “lift his head above his enemies” and continue to offer his life as a “sacrifice of joy” in God’s tabernacle. He sings, and his life ‘sings’ even thought enemies are all around him. He can sing because he has already “offered” his life to God and has nothing to fear!: “ For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion; In the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock. 6 And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me; Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle; I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the LORD (Psa 27:5-6 NKJ).
Making God his personal “tabernacle”, the Psalmist’s fears are dispelled and everything, even his enemies look different. In the “light of the Lord” he can make friends even with the worst of fears. In the light of the Lord, he can sing his way through the best and the worst days of his life. The “light” of the Lord, which he has made personal and real in his own life, makes everything look different. It can be a light that reveals “salvation” and “hope” to any of us who are willing to reside in it “all the days of (our) lives.” Amen.
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