I preached this sermon on May 9 at St. Lydia's as part of our exploration of the Psalms. The text is Psalm 121; read it here.
A few weeks ago I heard that two very dear friends, friends
who have been together for five very good years, have decided to end their
relationship.
I’ve known Patrick and Chad since they got together, and I
remember the unbound glee that seemed to inhabit Patrick in the very first days
of their relationship. He was
completely twitterpated. We’d be
having a planning meeting in the chapel, and he’d be practically dancing around
the room with joy.
Patrick and Chad have been clear with friends and colleagues
that moving into this new phase in their relationship has been the right and
good thing to do, and that they’ve made that decision together. So I think it’s very possible that I’m
more traumatized by the end of
their partnership then they are…
For some reason, the wonderfulness of their togetherness, it turns out,
was really important to me, and it makes me strangely sad that such a
beautiful, solid, lovely thing should come to an end.
Psalm 121 uses the word “keep” 6 times:
God is your keeper.
The word in Hebrew is shamar, and it’s connected to the word for “watchman”
God will keep you from all evil.
God will keep your going out and your coming in.
God will keep you life, your soul.
There’s this funny thing that happens to me, every time I
tell someone that everything’s going to be okay. It might be a small child, or a troubled friend, but so
often those words, “everything’s
going to be okay,” come out of my mouth.
I say them because I believe it. I really do, deep down in my gut. And as soon as I say it, a voice in my
head whispers,
“will it?”
People bear pain that should be unbearable.
Humans commit acts of unspeakable evil.
Yet there’s this impulse, this faith, deep in me that says,
“It will be okay.” God will keep
you. And I know that somehow it’s
true, even through that sense of struggle and resistance.
If you had told Patrick and Chad four years ago that in the
Spring of 2010, they would make a mutual decision to end their relationship,
I’m not sure what they would have said.
But I imagine they wouldn’t have liked that idea very much. Time can be a terrifying thing and the
changes that it brings overwhelming.
But Patrick and Chad, in their love and through their lives are living
testimony to the rhythm, the going out and the coming in, that constitute our
existence: the tide that bears us along, sometimes gently and sometimes
violently, according to the rhythms of the planet.
God is the keeper of change.
Perhaps my instinct to say, “Don’t worry, everything’s going
to be alright,” is less a prediction about what the future holds, and more an
assurance that God will watch over what ever it brings.
I think of what is was like to be a small child, going to
sleep at night. Most of us had
probably had a blanket or a stuffed animal that we kept with us as
children. A security blanket. As a kid, you know that a toy or a
blanket won’t protect you. But
what’s important is that it’s with you.
The world changes, quickly.
Partnerships end.
Relationships shift and change.
We get through things we never thought we could.
We change, if we let ourselves.
Sometimes we go to sleep at the end of the day, exhausted,
hoping for a fresh start in the morning, or wondering how we might possibly see
a way out of the situation we’re stuck in. It really is going to be okay. God may not protect us, won’t keep bad things from
happening, but God will be with us.
And God, the keeper of our lives, never slumbers.
What a wonderful expansion of Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well; and all shall be well; and all manner of thing shall be well." An expansion that brings us fully into the precious lives of one another.
Also, I give honor to you for gaining the release of these good men before posting this. In your partnership with God, you yourself are shamar.
Posted by: Dale Sparlin | 05/14/2010 at 06:06 AM
Dale,
The same quote came up after I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, and we sing a setting of Julian's text often. They are words to live by!
Posted by: Emily Scott | 05/14/2010 at 08:39 AM