February 21, 2021 | Worship

Amazing, bountiful creator,

Dreamer, energizer of faith,

May the words and ideas that we share today be acceptable to you, may we grow more attuned to your presence in our lives. Amen.

Friends, here we are in Lent, again. Last year, when we started out on this journey in the wilderness, we were in person. I remember those last few Sundays before we had to quickly switch tracks and worship online. I think about how the hugs and handshakes on the last Sunday in particular felt like we were doing something bad—but we weren’t aware of just how risky they were until much later. In retrospect, knowing that none of us had the virus yet, I would have hugged everyone a million times—and that’s saying something coming from an introvert at heart! I remember the prayers during our Church at Prayer time. Each week leading to our final Sunday in worship (which we didn’t know would be our last) our usual prayers for folks within our community were punctuated by the anxious prayers of an illness that was terrifying, growing in numbers, and yet was still so far away from our mountain community on the west coast. I know I was harboring doubts that it would get this far before there was a cure. I remember how we thought we would be worshipping from home for a week or two, tops. Then, it was that we’d be back by Easter. Then, maybe summer.

I think by mid-summer, the hope that we would be back in person by Christmas was gone. And I’m thankful for it, we didn’t have looming question marks above us for the immediate future, and we could focus on the ways we could stay in community, while separate. We were able to remain faithfully in our homes, keeping our neighbors and ourselves safer.

And here we are, beginning another season in Lent. It feels like it has been Lent all year, for all of the wilderness of this COVIDscape. In this wilderness, we’ve all been touched in one way or another by the effects of a long-term pandemic. When we add elements like fire and wind and snow, we can see that the COVIDscape we’ve wandered has been rocky, perilous, the terrain rough and unforgiving. It is with this in mind that I offer to you this suggestion: This Lent, if you have chosen a discipline that is one of the “giving something up” nature and it is too much, do not be too hard on yourself—you’ve already given up much in the course of the year and by your staying home and wearing personal protective masks and making your hands raw with hand sanitizer, you’ve been faithful in the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Do your best, but remember that the purpose of a discipline as we wander this wilderness with Jesus for 40 days is that we are seeking to eliminate the things that come between us and God. If you’re miserable for God’s sake, it might act as a further barrier.

That’s also, to lead into the real purpose of this morning’s sermon, why I have decided to go with the Psalms as the focus texts during Lent. As we prepare for the one year anniversary of our physical separation in the coming weeks, my hope is that we can build up our spiritual muscles so that we are in good shape for whatever this milestone may mark for us. The psalms are a great way to do that.

I used to think that the psalms were just some fluffy poetry, that they existed to fill out a memorial service when all other words failed or that they were nice to throw in as a prayer here and there. It wasn’t until about a year ago when I started listening to Richard Bruxvoort-Colligan of https://www.psalmimmersion.com/ that I recognized the psalms for what they truly are: revolutionary words from people—humans just like us—as they grappled with God.

Walter Brueggemann says this of the psalms, “The Psalms with a few exceptions, are not the voice of God addressing us. They are rather the voice of our own common humanity—gathered over a long period of time…a voice that continues to have amazing authenticity…It speaks about life the way it really is, for in those deeply human dimensions the same issues and possibilities persist.”

As we enter into this next phase in the church—whatever it may look like, the Psalms are a great guide for us to know how to approach God, no matter what it is we’re dealing with. The following weeks are going to be a little interactive—or a lot, depending on how you click with the material discussed here. They’ll be sort of experimental, we will be creating together—and yes I mean together. You can maybe get away with it these first few weeks, but on March 7^th we will be worshipping on Zoom and there will be some time for reflection together. The reality is, a sermon is nice, but it doesn’t include actually practicing the things we talk about. It’s so easy to listen and then…remain unchanged. My hope is that this lent, as we continue through the COVIDscape and enter another wilderness together, that we will explore practical ways of deepening our prayer life through the psalms. So pull out your Psalm 25 sheet from your Lenten Bags—if you don’t have one, email me and I’ll send you the file. 😊

If you were listening carefully, you may have noticed that you’ve heard Psalm 25 in three different ways during today’s service so far. In the gathering prayer, we had a version of it written specifically as a call to worship for Lent from Worship Ways. Our Church at Prayer time started out with a Living Psalm written by Sonny Graves (you may remember Sonny from the NCNC-UCC conference office a few years ago!) and of course, we heard Barb as she read Psalm 25.

25 is a psalm of lament, it is a prayer that comes from a psalmist in distress. In it, our psalmist asks God to let those who have tormented them to feel ashamed for their “wantonly treacherous” ways. I actually really loved that phrase. So much that I put white out over the print on my own psalm sheet and uh…wrote in my own. In psalms, we can be a little dramatic. Those who are downtright rotten to us aren’t just bad, we can call them “wantonly treacherous.” But also, with lament, comes acknowledgement of the psalmist’s own areas in need of improvement. In a supremely relatable line, the psalmist pleads that god “not remember the sins of my youth.” We’ve all had a learning curve, or character arc, even the psalmists.

What this psalm does is it allows the person praying to be completely open and self-revealing. This is not a prayer designed to make the psalmist merely look good, it is one where the psalmist is opening up to God and letting God see all of the tender, hurt, and heartbroken bits. It is written with an unshakeable understanding that God is good and loves those who look to God for guidance. Psalm 25 is also an alphabetical psalm. These psalms are akin to what we know as acrostic poems. Following the alphabet is a great way to remember the contents—remember that many of the things we have written down now were at one time passed down from memory. Having a mnemonic device would be incredibly helpful in committing a prayer like this to memory.

There are a few options for engaging with today’s psalm. You can, of course, spend time meditatively coloring in the Psalm 25 sheet. You can copy the psalm word for word into the spaces in the ribbons that don’t already have words on them. Or, you can try your hand at writing your own alphabetical acrostic prayer. Don’t worry, you can use the latin alphabet rather than the Hebrew one as was used for Psalm 25.

I’ll start one right now.

You can see that it doesn’t have to be perfect or worthy of canonization in the book of psalms. This is between you and God—but if you would like to share it, I would love to read your psalms! As we journey the Lenten wilderness, feel free to take a photo of your colored in psalm sheets or your prayers as you write them and I’ll share them in the newsletter if you give me the go-ahead.

The psalms are a place where we can locate deep hope-hope that can be hard to access in time when lament is caught in our throats. When we learn from the psalmists how to voice our lamentations, we can also see clearly how God’s righteousness and love provide a way forward for us, even when we’re re-entering a wilderness we never truly left. After all, according to the psalmist, ”  All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.”