The following sermon was preached at Silver Creek Presbyterian Church on November 11, 2012. The original title of the sermon was "Feasting on the Verbs" but I decided to rename it "The wanderers, the sitters, the loathers, the staggerers, and the Turner" after the characters that found me during the journey of this sermon. As a side note, the opening rhetorical pattern ("this sermon is not for you if...") is borrowed from a sermon by Walter Brueggemann which can be found in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011). Finally, the pictures that are posted in between the sections of this sermon were taken by me on a wonderful walk around Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia on November 10th. Enjoy!
This sermon is not for you…if you have never wandered.
This sermon is not for you…if you have never sat in darkness
or in gloom.
This sermon is not for you…if you have never loathed what
actually heals you.
This sermon is not for you…if you have never staggered along
the journey of life.
If none of these verbs sound
familiar to you…then this sermon is not
for you. However, if, like me, you have
experienced or are living them at this very moment…then this sermon is especially for you. This story is for you because the Psalms are our story. So perhaps, if we listen closely enough, we
will note that the voices of Psalm 107 might not be as far removed as
previously thought.
I
I like to think of the author of
Psalm 107 as a stage director, who has crafted several “scenes” and invites us
to journey from one to another to arrive at the end of the story changed.
Furthermore, the psalmist cleverly uses verbs to direct us in the
movement of this passage. The psalmist
begins the narrative with a verb directed, rather bluntly, toward you and me. “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever.”
Give thanks. There you have it: our first
verb. The psalmist then directs our gaze
from our verb and toward two verbs
that belong solely to God: gather and redeem. Simply put, we give thanks because God gathers and redeems. Now, thanks to the
verbs of the Psalmist, you and I know exactly
what to look for in the rest of the story.
II
Our
first scene opens as the “Wanderers" take the stage. They have two big verbs: the find no way and then they faint. We watch this scene with a great deal of
empathy for we all, I suppose, at some time or another, search for that
“inhabited town,” that place where we will have purpose instead of
meaninglessness, that place where our hunger and thirst will be perished and
wandering will give way to exploring and fear will give way to curiosity. After finding no way and fainting, the Wanderers cry out to the Lord. And then
the One who has gathered and redeemed delivers and leads.
The Lord hears their cries and leads them by a straight way, a just and
upright path, to an inhabited town where their stomachs are filled and their
thirst satisfied. As we begin our
movement to the next scene, a musical interlude reaches our ears that we will
hear again throughout this story:
“Let
them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to
humankind.
For he satisfies the thirsty,
and the hungry he fills with good
things."
III
The second scene begins as the
moving Wanderers exit stage left and we turn stage right to see the
“Sitters.” They, it would seem, do not
even possess the energy to wander.
Instead, they sit in their darkness and gloom, prisoners of misery and
in irons. However, this is no unjust
circumstance, for they have rebelled and
spurned. They have fallen
down under the weight of their own hard labor. In their misery, darkness, and gloom, they
repeat the refrain of the Wanderers and cry
out to the Lord. This time, the
Psalmist gives God three new verbs in response to this gut-wrenching plea for
salvation: saved, brought, and broke. God saves them from their distress,
brought them out of darkness and gloom, and broke their bonds asunder. The movement to the next scene continues as
the musical refrain begins again:
“Let
them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to
humankind,
For he shatters the doors of bronze,
and cuts in two the bars of
iron.”
IV
The third scene opens with the
“Loathers.” They are called as such
because, according to the Psalmist, they loath any kind of food. In sharp
contrast to the Wanderers who wander the desert in search of the smallest
scrap of sustenance, the Loathers cannot bring themselves to be nourished by
the smorgasbord sitting right in front of them.
Why, we might ask? Because they
are sick through their sinful ways
and endure affliction by their own
iniquities. Their sickness is so
prevalent that they draw near to the gates of death. The Psalmist does not let them off the hook
by giving them a passive verb such as “were drawn.” No, the Loathers are active agents in their
own distress and draw themselves near the gates of death. Once again, the pattern continues, and the Loathers join the chorus of the Wanderers and the Sitters and cry out to the Lord. The Lord, in response, saved, sent, healed, and delivered. God saved them from their distress by sending
out God’s word to heal them and deliver them from destruction. And as the camera turns to the next scene,
the refrain again continues:
“Let them thank the Lord for his
steadfast love,
for his wonderful works
to humankind.
And let them offer thanksgiving
sacrifices,
and tell of his deeds
with songs of joy.”
V
Our fourth scene introduces to us
the “Staggerers.” Perhaps worried that
we might lose attention during this rather long narrative, the director throws
us a curveball by introducing to us these characters. Unlike the Wanderers, the Sitters, and
the Loathers, the Staggerers are not victims of their own doing but instead
find themselves amidst a storm of God’s
own doing. In the chaos of the stormy
wind and the incessant barrage of waves, their courage melts and they reel and stagger like drunkards, so much so that
they are at their wits’ end. To no
surprise, the Staggerers join their sisters and brothers the Wanderers, the Sitters, and the Loathers, and cry
out to the Lord in their trouble.
The Lord responds and brings them
out of their distress, makes the
storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. And the Psalmist
tells us that they were glad because they had quiet, because God brought them to their desired haven. Together at last on the stage in front of us,
the Wanderers, the Sitters, the Loathers, and the Staggerers sing the
refrain that, by now, is familiar to our ears:
“Let them thank the Lord for his
steadfast love,
for his wonderful works
to humankind.
Let them extol him in the
congregation of the people,
and praise him in the
assembly of the elders.”
VI
The fifth and final scene introduces
the main character (who actually gave the script to the director in the first
place). This character goes by many names (“Lord” perhaps being chief among
them) but in this scene is called “The Turner.”
He is called as such because the Turner turns the rivers into a desert and turns a desert into rivers.
The Turner is introduced as the one whom all along has possessed the
ability to turn the Wanderers into sheltered ones, the Sitters into freed
ones, the Loathers into healed ones, and the Staggerers into glad
ones. The Turner allows all of the
characters we have met so far to sow and plant and receive a fruitful
yield. Through the blessing of the Turner, they do not decrease but multiply.
VII
As the curtain comes down on and we
are left pondering the story of the Wanderers, the Sitters, the Loathers, the Staggerers, and the Turner, the director comes out front and addresses
us directly, saying:
“The upright see [these things] and
are glad;
and all wickedness stops
its mouth.
Let those who are wise give heed to
these things,
and consider the
steadfast love of the Lord.”
This is much to consider,
indeed! There are many wanderers,
sitters, loathers, and staggerers in this world, but there is only one Turner. Only this
character can bring us from the depths of our despair and the prison of our
misery. Because of this good news, the
Psalmist invites us to be wise and heed these things, to realize that this
story both begins and ends with the
Turner’s steadfast love. The Psalmist
also lets us in on a little secret: the
lowering of the curtain did not actually end this story, for it is only
intermission. Much to our surprise, you and I are no longer members of the
audience but then again perhaps we never really were in the first place. We are active participants in the story of
God’s steadfast love and we will never be
the same for God has gathered and redeemed and we must give thanks!
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