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A Sermon for DaySpring
By Eric Howell
“The Lord Is My Light and My Salvation”
Psalm 27
The Second Sunday in Lent
February 21, 2016
Jesus cries over the city, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I desired to gather
your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wing? And you would
not.” This is one of the few feminine images of God in the Bible. Here is God as a
mother hen sheltering her children in the storms of life, protecting them from
dangers and predators. Some people want nothing to do with that, but some do
want to be sheltered by the One whose strength and care is a refuge in the storm.
Psalm 27 is the prayer of one who desires that very place. The psalm expresses
confidence and trust in the Lord in the face of dangers all around and
discouragements from within.
These can be our words too: “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?” The psalm
opens with confidence born of trust in God. Because we can trust God’s faithful
protection, there is nothing to fear. No one to fear. God’s light illumines my path.
God’s victory is assured and I am renewed in the joy of my salvation. In the Lord, I
am safe, no matter what seems to be a threat. I am David’s assurance facing down
my Goliaths. I am Elijah’s boldness confronting the false prophets. I am Jeremiah’s
steadfastness speaking a truth no one wants to hear. I am Mary’s trust, “Let it be to
me according to your will.”
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? Can you say those words
today with confidence? I hope so, but the beauty of the psalms . . . all of scripture . . .
is that you don’t have to wait until those words are absolutely true in your heart to
speak them as your own. We say the words and ask the words to come alive in us.
You might have some doubts about whether the Lord is your light. There are times
in life when it seems like we’re groping around in the darkness more than guided by
the light. It is not uncommon at all to have seasons when doubt seems a much
closer companion than abiding faith. It is not uncommon at all when uncertainty
about the future or about a big decision is much more real than the idea that God is
illuminating the path in front of you.
You may also struggle with claiming the Lord is my salvation. Salvation means
victory, welfare, deliverance, safety. For Israel, salvation was much more than an
esoteric promise about life in the next life. It was the here-and-now deliverance
from those enemies over the next ridgeline. Salvation means protection, like a chick
under the wings of a mother hen.
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The Lord is my light and my salvation. Are you feeling that today? Can you shout
that from the rooftops today? If you can’t, then “whom or what shall I fear?”
becomes a real, not rhetorical question. Without this kind of confidence in God, the
very real matters of this world can be quite terrifying.
But the psalms are not presented as tests of your faith. They are expressions of
faith. Now, there’s a need for authenticity in worship before God. We are always
invited to bring who we are before the Lord and lift our stumbling, mumbling
prayers just as they are before God.
And we are always called to have integrity in our worship. We are told that the
words we say must be lived out through our hands and feet and words and wallets.
There’s no question that a great challenge facing worshippers is how to live their
Sunday words on Monday.
Authenticity is important. Integrity is important. But there’s something else going
on here too. Worship gives us words first, offers them to us to speak, to pray, and
sing, and then says let your heart be drawn to what has been on your lips.
From all time the psalms have been worship songs, chants, prayers of the synagogue
and the church. The power of the liturgy then is that we are given words to say and
pray and sing that we may not have chosen for ourselves this morning, but they give
us words we need. The words on our lips draw our hearts to them.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” Is that a rhetorical
question for a people who already know that with the Lord as my light and my
salvation I have no one to fear. Certainly, it is the prayer of one so confident and
assured of God’s goodness that to fear anyone or anything seems absurd.
And even when it is not your confident prayer yet, it is an encouragement to let that
confident prayer become yours. The psalms are a gift to us in just this way.
Our worship songs do the same good work in us. It’s like when we turn to the
hymnal and start to sing “a mighty fortress is our God” you may not feel like God is
your mighty fortress at all, but by the end of the song, your heart may be drawn to
what your lips have proclaimed. When we sing ‘it is well with my soul’ it may not
feel well with your soul at all on that day, but we sing as a down payment paid in
trust that it will be well with our soul. What we profess together claims us.
When we recite the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and confess our faith in all
the ways we do, we are being reoriented toward God. And this Psalm 27 is right at
the heart of spiritual orientation toward God. No matter what the challenges—
evildoers assailing, adversaries and foes devouring, war rising up—yet I will be
confident in the Lord. That’s just the first few verses. And it’s just getting started.
Like a pilgrim ascending a holy mountain, the psalm’s contemplative spirit reaches
higher and higher. From confidence to ascent beyond the troubles, to a desire for
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uninterrupted contemplation of the Lord, we join the psalmist’s desire to behold
the beauty of the Lord and remain in God’s holy temple.
The center of this psalm (v 4-6) has been called a cool breeze on a warm day. We
are drawn into an image of a quiet sanctuary, cool and dark, a sacred space. We all
know church can be a frenetic, hectic place. We’re reminded here with gladness of
what church is to be: a place to meet the Lord and praise God with our words, our
lives, everything, to “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.”
The psalmist’s journey up the mountain of faith has now moved into the sanctuary
of the Lord. This is where the psalms of ascent lead as well, where the pilgrim in
Psalm 134 finally reaches the door to the mountain top temple. We’ve arrived there
as well in this psalm. Having arrived, dare we hope to see the face of God? Seeing
the face of God was a dangerous thing in the Old Testament. Now we’re audaciously
to hope for it? If you are with the psalmist, then certainly!
There are times when you feel so at peace, so settled, like your trust in God is so
secure that it seems you almost see God’s face. “Come,” my heart says, “seek his
face! Your face, Lord, do I seek.”
With the psalmist we reached the top of the spiritual mountain, unvanquished by
our enemies, bolstered by God’s faithfulness, full of confident humility.
But then, if you’ve lived long enough, (you know this is coming), just when you
thought you’d had a breakthrough into a new spiritual plane, and might never come
down again from that mountaintop, you’ve lost it again. Madeline L’Engel in
reflecting on confidence wrote, “It is a good thing to have all the props pulled out
from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet,
and what is sand.”
Just when your faith is rock solid, your knees go wobbly all of a sudden. What’s that
all about?? Just when your spiritual discipline has really taken hold and you are
unshakable in your confidence of the Lord’s goodness and blessing, you’re not there
anymore.
And just like that . . .neither was the psalmist. One minute it’s, “Show me your face.
Your face do I seek.” We are reaching toward the highest form of contemplation.
The next, we’re a puddle of doubt and discouragement and God is nowhere to be
found. The psalm takes a darker tone:
Do not hide your face from me.
Do not turn your servant away in anger.
Do not cast me off.
Do not forsake me.
Teach me your way.
Lead me.
Do not give me up to my adversaries.
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The dramatic downcast turn in the psalm is such that some scholars think this
might have been, must have been, two psalms mashed together. The first, a psalm of
orientation expressing gratitude and faith in a God who can be trusted and life is
good. The second, a psalm of disorientation expressing dismay and fear in a God
who can disappear, and life is tenuous. How could these two prayers possibly be
written as a single whole?
Maybe this was a mash up of two original separate psalms. Maybe they were even
written by two totally different people who had totally different life experiences.
One had a blessed life and could easily connect with the presence of God. The other
had a troubled life and could easily feel alone, disconnected from the divine
presence.
Maybe.
But the way it is given to us as one psalm, it is a lot like real life. As someone wrote:
“It is cyclic, just as our lives are. We praise. We cry. We praise. It’s the stuff of our
existence.”(Beth Tanner: Commentary on Psalm 27, Workingpreacher.com)
It seems quite familiar right?
Hiding under the wings and then squirming to be free of them; resting in the shelter
and presence of God and then feeling all alone and abandoned. Seeking God with all
our hearts and then turning toward whatever shiny idol captivates our attention.
Gaining mastery over our temptations, then indulging them yet again. Believing God
is right here and for us; and then wondering why my prayers keep bouncing off the
ceiling and going no where.
From the darkness, in the valley, the psalmist rallies, with a renewed praise of trust
in God who will see us through. God will not fail even if everything and everyone
else does. It’s one thing to sing it when you’re on top of the mountain; it’s another to
still hum the tune when you’re in the valley. The power of this psalm, like the whole
gospel itself, is both its realism and its strength. While the rhythm of the verse
echoes our real lives, it begins and then ends with words we can cling to throughout
life’s peaks and valleys:
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?
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage.
Wait for the Lord.
Whatever is most true of your own prayers and your own heart today, may these
prayers also rise from your lips and draw your heart up with them. The Lord is my
light and my salvation; the Lord is the stronghold of my life.
Copyright by Eric Howell, 2016