Sermons
“Finding Peace” based on Psalm 4 and Luke 24:36b-48
It seems possible to me that most of us missed a lot of what was going on the Psalm in the first reading, and all the scholars I’ve read have offered a lot of insight into it that I didn’t get on my own. So I’m going to try ruining the beautiful poetry for the sake of clarity. (This is my gift to the world, I make things clear but less pretty.):
God, answer me! I trust you will. After all, you are excellent.
Also, you have before.
When I was feeling crowded in with no space to move,
you made abundant space for me.
Because of that experience, I trust to ask you again:
have mercy on me and hear me.
I need you, because PEOPLE are not excellent right now.
People are after me, trying to take away my reputation, my name, my family honor.
They want to shame me!O people, how long will you lie about me?
You should remember that I follow God’s ways,
and God listens when I pray.Instead of lying and shaming others when you are hurting,
spend some time in quiet, in contemplation, in prayer.
God will listen to you, too. You aren’t alone.
Trust in God.Of course, some say that there is no goodness in the world, no God-ness.
But I remember the blessing,
The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make God’s face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up God’s countenance upon you, and give you peace.You, O God have given me so much more joy
than those who have food and drink in abundance.
Because of my connection to you,
I will sleep peacefully tonight, despite what the people say about me.
You, O God lead me to sanctuaries for rest and recovery.
That’s the experience I get, even from this brief prayer.
The psalmist finds ways through fear through remembering God’s spaciousness, through finding empathy for her accusers, and through remembering God’s trustworthiness. I love that in the Psalm we are taken along for the ride with her – entering into her hope for what God can offer, entering into her dismay at the struggles she is finding in life, entering into the wisdom she finds within, and then entering with her into the rest she finds in remembering that God is with her and she’s OK.
(Btw, I have no way to know the Psalmist’s gender. One of the scholars I read this week simply used the feminine for the author, and I thought it was a good exercise to derive the fullness of humanity from the female pronoun, so I followed that person’s lead.)
It has been said that the Psalms are God’s favorite book of the Bible, because the rest of the Bible is primarily concerned with what God is saying to the people, but the Psalms are about what people are saying to God. The full range of human emotion is found in them, often to rather uncomfortable degrees. In this Psalm we hear the anxiety of being hemmed in, particularly by people who want to harm us. We also hear the witness of a person who has known God’s loving grace. She informs those who seem ready to harm her of the goodness she’s found in her relationship with God, and it almost seems that in reminding them, she is reminded that God is the one whose steadfast love endures forever.
The Psalms always remind me that emotions are OK, and that STRONG emotions are OK, that God is big enough to deal with us as we are, be that anxious, sad, angry, or even numb. In this case, I think the Psalmist was most of all afraid, and that is very similar to how the disciples are presented as feeling in the Luke reading today. Luke says they were, “startled and terrified” when Jesus appeared and spoke words of comfort and assurance to them. This seems reasonable to me! Once Jesus had assured the disciples, and their fear had lessened, he took the time to teach them. It seems like there is a good life lesson in that. Frightened people aren’t able to absorb new information, so taking the time to connect with someone and calm their fears seems imperative to any form of teaching!
Then he gives them a new undertaking. Those who had been his students and companions were now to be “witnesses.” They had seen his ministry, and his life, death, and resurrection, and they were supposed to start talking about it. The final command to the disciples in the Luke version we read today that says, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” I think the awesome part here is that it is “to be proclaimed in his name to ALL NATIONS.”
Jesus spend his ministry teaching repentance and forgiveness of sins. That was the core of his message, as a means to open people to the kindom of God. It is always important to consider what sins he was talking about though! Life wasn’t what God had planned for the people, the vision of the Torah wasn’t the way of life anymore. The communities weren’t caring for each other, and the vulnerable were slipping through the cracks. Life wasn’t focused on God, or on God’s ways of justice. To say that the witnesses were to take the message to all the world is to say that the whole world could be transformed from violence to nonviolence; from fear to hope; from selfish ambition to communal joy! The WHOLE WORLD could be healed and become the kindom.
But first, he had to deal with their fears. They needed to be seeped in hope to offer this message! Whether it be like Jesus working patiently with the disciples, or like the Psalmist working through her own fear by remembering God and instructing others in God’s grace, there are ways through fear to hope. May we find them when we need them. Amen
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Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers