Psalm 145: 1-21 (links validated 6/27/23)
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Sermon Starters (Proper 13A)(2023)
In one of the Chronicles of Narnia, specifically The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis depicts for us how Aslan created all of Narnia. Consider this the Genesis 1 of the Narnia tales. If you have ever read it—and if you haven’t you need to—then you remember that what is most striking about this depiction of Creation is the fact that Aslan sings the creation into being. The character of Digory gets this displayed before his mind and Lewis describes it this way: “In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. It was hardly a tune. But it was beyond comparison, the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it…”...God and the Falling, Bowed Down and Heavy Burdened
I am a member of Amnesty International, and in their Spring 2023 newsletter, The Candle, (pp. 4-5), they provide the following examples of oppression, injustices, and human rights violations. Amnesty is focussing on several long-term cases of individuals who are wrongly imprisoned and whose freedom Amnesty members continue to call for. No one has seen Aster Yohannes since her enforced disappearance almost 20 years ago. Aster had been studying in the USA when her husband, Petros Solomon (a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Maritime Resources), was detained. In December 2003, Aster returned to Eritrea after graduation to be with her children, only to be arrested at the airport. Human Rights Defender Nasser Zefzafi is serving decades in prison for peacefully protesting. A believer in justice and equality, Nasser became a prominent figure in the Morocco Hirak El-Rif protest movement. Just for speaking out, he was arrested and tortured by police officers, and, in June 2018, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Zeynab Jalalian an Iranian Kurdish woman, is one of the longest-serving women prisoners held for politically motivated reasons in Iran. Zeynab was arrested in March 2008, convicted on charges of “enmity against God,” and sentenced to death for her work focused on empowering women and girls from the oppressed Kurdish minority and Kurdish self-determination. Her death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. In China, Gao Zhisheng is a prominent human rights lawyer. Over the years, he has been persecuted, kidnapped, and sentenced to prison. In August 2017, he went missing again after publishing a memoir detailing the torture and other ill-treatment he experienced while in detention from 2009 to 2014. He has not been seen since...
Resources from 2019 to 2022
Sermon Starters (Proper 12B)(2021)
There is virtually no way to duplicate this in any translation into any language but Psalm 145 is actually an acrostic (hence my earlier comment that despite the RCL’s chopping up of this poem it is overtly designed to be read as a unity). This psalm’s 21 verses correspond to the letters in the Hebrew alphabet with each successive verse beginning with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Verse 1 begins with A, Verse 2 with B, Verse 3 with C, and so on. So in essence Psalm 145 goes from A-Z. At the very least we think that some Hebrew Psalms were composed this way to make them easier to memorize. But there may also be a sense in which this literary structure reflects what is also contained in this poem—and as reflected on above in this sermon starter—and that is the sense that God is being praised here for every reason one could think of from A-Z, the whole kit-n-caboodle, as it were. That structure is pretty interesting on both levels: first, this is to be memorized, to be carried in our hearts as a constant reminder of the nature and character of our God. These are the truths we must live by! But second, God is worthy of praise for the whole kit-n-caboodle of Creation, Salvation, and soon the Re-Creation of all things. Everything God is, everything God has done and continues to do, everything God will do through Christ Jesus the Lord and by the Holy Spirit—all of it from A-Z and beyond is worthy of all praise!Sermon Starters (Proper 13A)(2020)
There is virtually no way to duplicate this in any translation into any language but Psalm 145 is actually an acrostic. Its 21 verses correspond to the letters in the Hebrew alphabet with each successive verse beginning with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Verse 1 begins with A, Verse 2 with B, Verse 3 with C, and so on. So in essence Psalm 145 goes from A-Z. At the very least we think that some Hebrew Psalms were composed this way to make them easier to memorize. But there may also be a sense in which this literary structure reflects what is also contained in this poem—and as reflected on above in this sermon starter—and that is the sense that God is being praised here for every reason one could think of from A-Z, the whole kit-n-caboodle, as it were. That structure is pretty interesting on both levels: first, this is to be memorized, to be carried in our hearts as a constant reminder of the nature and character of our God. These are the truths we must live by! But second, God is worthy of praise for the whole kit-n-caboodle of Creation, Salvation, and soon the Re-Creation of all things. Everything God is, everything God has done and continues to do, everything God will do through Christ Jesus the Lord and by the Holy Spirit—all of it from A-Z and beyond is worthy of all praise!I Love to Tell the Story
Arabella Katherine Hankey (1834–1911) was a contemporary of Harriet Tubman’s (ca. 1822–1913), but she grew up in a much different context, as the (white) daughter of a wealthy English banker. Her family, though, used their wealth and influence to serve others. Her father, Thomas Hankey, was a leading member of the Clapham Sect, a group of evangelical Anglican social reformers whose avid campaigning, in society and in Parliament, led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. Though the group was waning as Kate was growing up, social justice (alongside personal conversion) remained a key aspect of the gospel her parents taught her, which impelled her to embark on ministry to young female factory workers in London, teaching them the Bible and, I presume, advocating for better working conditions, as her father had a generation earlier. In her early thirties, a serious illness left Kate bedridden for a year. During her convalescence she wrote a long poem in two parts that she called “The Old, Old Story,” which tells the story of redemption, from the Garden of Eden to Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection to the Spirit’s outpouring, in fifty-five quatrains. “I Love to Tell the Story,” as well as her other famous hymn, “Tell Me the Old, Old, Story,” are derived from this longer work...Proper 27C (2019)
There is something in this psalm that seems to parallel a poem familiar to several generations. You may recognize it as the opening entry of the book, “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein. If you are a dreamer, come in, If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer, If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire… Come in! Come in! It may seem odd to invite liars and pretenders along with hope-ers and pray-ers, and yet in many ways, this psalm does exactly that...
Resources from 2015 to 2018
Proper 9A (2017)
One way to help people understand this ancient Jewish song is to remind them of an old Christian hymn, “This is My Father’s World.” I’ll combine two stanzas to make the point. This is our Father’s world: O let us not forget That though the wrong is great and strong, God is the ruler yet. This is my Father’s world: Why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King, let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad.