Sermon: The Land of the Living

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, April 25 as part of our five week exploration of the Psalms.  The text is Psalm 66.  You can read it here.

The Psalms are not about who we should be.  They’re about who we are.  They’re about the parts of ourselves we’d rather not see or acknowledge.  The Psalms are the expression of emotion.  They are unfettered, unashamed, unabashed emotional response, and this is what gives them their power.

So as we sing Psalm 66 tonight, I’d like you listen to how the psalms resonate with your emotions, or create friction with them.

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A few weeks ago I bought a bike, and I’ve been completely and totally enamored of it every since.  I bike everywhere, and it gives me this wonderful sense of freedom that the subway somehow doesn’t afford.

Every evening I bike home from work up the West Side highway, and there’s this little place near the Boat Basin where the bike path comes down over a crest and runs right near the water.  On my left are the sailboats and bigger boats, bobbing up and down on the waves, and the water, which is sometimes still and other times choppy, and the sun going down, and the bridge in the distance, and on my right is the row of incredible blooming apple trees.  And it is truly spectacular.

 

Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth,

sing the glory of God’s name…

All the earth worships you,

they sing praises to your name.

Come and see what God has done.

 

In those moments, I always wish that there was someone else with me to see.  Come and see what God has done – that’s exactly what I want to say.  I want to be able to express, to show someone, anyone, the way that my heart seems to actually expand in those moments, almost painfully.

It is a moment in which I feel alive.

Another moment:

A good friend has a baby named Allie.  He’s one and a half years old, and he’s recently learned to say my name.  It’s really cool.  A week or two ago she was here visiting the city, and when I rang the doorbell Allie opened the door and said, “Hi Emmy!”

And I felt alive.

 

If there’s anything the Psalms capture, it’s life.  It’s what’s alive, what’s living, what’s moving.  And what’s alive and living and moving is sometimes joy, but sometimes extreme pain:

Staying awake with my small pet rabbit a few nights ago, trying to nurse him through the night and knowing it wasn’t going to work. Feeling strange and frightened to be close to the death of a creature.  I was alive in that moment.

The painful moment of separation from someone you love, but know you can’t be with.  To leave them seems impossible, but still, necessary.  We are alive in that moment.

The feeling of release after letting go of something you should have let go of a long time ago.  You’ve given up on a possibility, but it’s offered you freedom.  We are alive in that moment.

They are moments of pain, of joy, or grief or celebration, in which our hearts seem to expand, grow bigger, more supple and flexible.  It hurts when your heart grows, but growth is the sign that we’re alive.

 

Bless our God, O peoples,

let the sound of her praise be heard,

who has kept us among the living,

and has not let our feet slip.

 

The Psalmist praises God for keeping us among the living.

 

It’s possible to be alive, but not among the living.

It’s possible to be alive, but to have a heart that’s shrinking smaller instead of growing bigger.

It’s possible to be alive, but to be a stranger to joy.  To allow hardships to calcify rather than actuate.

 

You brought us into the net,

you laid burdens on our backs,

you let people ride over our heads,

we went though fire and through water,

yet

you have brought us out to a spacious place.

 

What fires have you walked through?

What snares have you encountered?

What burdens have you carried?

And how, in the midst of all of that, are you finding, with God’s grace, a spacious place?

How, in the midst of all of that, are you finding, with God’s grace, the land of the living?

For me, right now, it’s that moment on my bike, when I crest the hill and the city and the water open up in front of me, to know in my gut, even for a moment, that God has done mysterious, perplexing, but wonderful things.  There is a place of space, of life, there is a call to the land of the living.

 

 

We finish the sermon together at St. Lydia's, and so I invite you to share a story from your experience that’s been brought up by the text or my words. 

Comments

[Tracy Haughton]

I love this sermon, Emily. Thank you for acknowledging that in our pain and suffering, we are alive and in the presence of God. I have stood by people who are very dear to me who were "alive, but not among the living". Excruciatingly painful to stand by them and yet I have never felt more alive and in the presence of God. In fact, now that my dear ones are better I am grateful, but I sometimes long for that sure feeling of God's presence that I felt as I bore witness to their suffering.

[Emily Scott]

Many thanks, Tracy. The thing about being alive but not being in the land of the living, I've found, is that when you're in that place, you don't know or care...I've found it hard to gain perspective, until something comes along and disorients me, snapping me awake...