Psalm 107: 1-43 (links validated 9/13/23)
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Sermon Starters (Lent 4B)(2024)
Some decades ago parents were able to have a new tool in their child-raising toolbox in the form of wireless baby monitors. The microphone part of the system was placed near a baby’s crib while the receiver end of the system was carried around by a parent or placed in whatever other room in the house where the parents were while the child was in bed. If the baby woke up, cried, or somehow expressed distress, the parents knew right away and could go and give whatever help or comfort was required. Baby monitors meant parents were never far from the cries of their beloved child. God of course can pull this same thing off without the aid of a device as the omniscient and omnipresent God is always aware of the cries of his beloved ones. And that is a great comfort indeed!
Resources from 2021 to 2023
Sermon Starters (Lent 4B)(2021)
In his book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, Neal Plantinga notes at one point that for now and in this world nothing set our tongues to wagging like bad news. Bad news spreads like wildfire. The news media is all over bad news. We regale one another with the bad things that happen, write Op-Eds for newspapers about it. But one day in God’s bright kingdom, things will be different. People will sit on their front porches and call out to passersby to lift up and celebrate good and positive things! We will get effusive about lovely acts and most certainly about the loving deeds of God that led to salvation. We just won’t be able to get enough of the good stuff! This also reminds me of an observation in Marilynne Robinson’s luminous epistolary novel Gilead. At one point the book’s narrator, the Rev. John Ames, muses if we will remember our lives on earth once we get to “heaven.” Some say no, we ought not remember our old troubles in a fallen world. But Ames thinks otherwise. “In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.” Remembering some of what was difficult will be the path to do what Psalm 107 says: ponder God’s loving deeds by which he rescued us from so much sorrow.Sermon Starters (Proper 7B)(2021)
In his book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, Neal Plantinga notes at one point that for now and in this world nothing set our tongues to wagging like bad news. Bad news spreads like wildfire. The news media is all over bad news. We regale one another with the bad things that happen, write Op-Eds for newspapers about it. But one day in God’s bright kingdom, things will be different. People will sit on their front porches and call out to passersby to lift up and celebrate good and positive things! We will get effusive about lovely acts and most certainly about the loving deeds of God that led to salvation. We just won’t be able to get enough of the good stuff! This also reminds me of an observation in Marilynne Robinson’s luminous epistolary novel Gilead. At one point the book’s narrator, the Rev. John Ames, muses if we will remember our lives on earth once we get to “heaven.” Some say no, we ought not remember our old troubles in a fallen world. But Ames thinks otherwise. “In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.” Remembering some of what was difficult will be the path to do what Psalm 107 says: ponder God’s loving deeds by which he rescued us from so much sorrow.They Cried
Pablo Picasso's masterpiece Guernica was painted in response to a very specific event: the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by the Nazi air force in support of Francisco Franco. The town, of little or no strategic value, was attacked over three hours by 25 bombers who dropped 100,000 pounds of explosive and incendiary bombs. Another wave of bombers strafed any survivors trying to flee the village that was now only rubble. The town burned for three days. The mural-sized painting (approximately 11 feet by 25 feet) was commissioned in 1936 for the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. Picasso was supposed to create a piece for the Spanish Pavilion that followed the Fair's theme celebrating modern technology. Instead, Picasso painted this...God Is With Us in the Storms of Life
The African Queen tells the story of Charlie Allnut (played by Humphrey Bogart), a hard drinker who runs a small steamboat, the African Queen, through the shallow rivers of East Africa in the early 1900s, bringing dynamite, gin, supplies, and tools to European speculators and miners. He also carries the mail to Rose (played by Katherine Hepburn), a missionary. When World War I breaks out and the Germans burn Rose’s home and church, the British missionary and Canadian boatman flee in the African Queen. Their destination is a large lake downriver, where they hope to assist the Allied war effort by blowing up a German destroyer. On the river they face one danger after another. Insects attack. Bullets whiz by as they pass a German-held fort. They fight rapids. With a lot of moxie they survive these tests, but then the river dissipates and splits into a hundred streams. The African Queen bogs down in a marsh. With no current to push them along, Charlie and Rose use poles to propel forward, and eventually Charlie has to wade the shallows, pulling the boat by a rope. He shudders when he finds leeches on his back and arms, but he grimly returns to the water, and soon Rose herself slogs through the marsh, hacking a path with a machete while Charlie pulls. Eventually they come to the end of their strength. The boat is stuck on a mudflat, and Charlie is feverish. He says, “Rosie, you want to know the truth, don’t you? Even if we had all our strength, we’d never get he off this mud. We’re finished.” She responds simply, “I know it,” and they resign themselves to death in the wasteland. As Charlie drifts to sleep, Rose offers a simple prayer of resignation: “We’ve come to the end of our journey. In a little while we will stand before you....Open the doors of heaven for Charlie and me.” But the camera slowly draws back to reveal what the couple cannot see because of the reeds—the African Queen is less than a hundred yards from the shining lake. The camera then transports us far upstream to the river’s headwaters. A torrential rainstorm is sending animals scurrying for cover. Further downstream, the rains have turned the rapids into cataracts. Down on the mudflat a small channel begins to run through the reeds. The channel swells, gently lifts the Queen off the mudflat, and carries it to the lake. Charlie and Rose awaken to the gentle rocking of the boat and a refreshing breeze...
Resources from 2015 to 2020
Sermon Starters (Lent 4B)(2018)
Psalm 107 opens with a call for corporate thanksgiving: “Let the redeemed of the Lord say this….” But such group thanksgiving is becoming increasingly rare. One of the chief reasons is the sheer inconvenience of corporate worship. I was convicted by a recent piece in The Christian Century by publisher, Peter Marty. Entitled “Church is Inconvenient,” it makes the point that church is a bother in many ways. Convenience often feels great, says Marty, but it’s not an unalloyed good. For example, he points out that if we only exercise when it is convenient, we will not enjoy maximum health. And he concludes that the inconvenience of worshiping together is central to a healthy spiritual life. “We Christians love to talk about Jesus, and with good reason. But it’s impossible to have Jesus apart from the church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reading of the apostle Paul led him to say that we cannot know Christ apart from Christian community, because the church is Christ’s body.”Sermon Starters (Proper 26A)(2017)
The Psalmist is priming the pump of thanksgiving. You might need to explain that image to children. Back in the olden days when people got water out of a well by vigorously pumping a big iron handle, sometimes they had to pour a bucket of water down the well to get the water flowing. That was called priming the pump. Or to put it another, more modern way, Psalm 107 is designed to jump start the engine of thanksgiving. When your car won’t start of a frigid morning, you can use a set of jumper cables to connect your dead battery to a battery of a car that is already running. The current from the good battery will get your dead battery started...
Resources from the Archives
Drawing Near with Songs of Joy
Take just one word from our Psalm reading for today. The word is translated “steadfast love.” The Hebrew word translated as steadfast love is one of the first words that students of biblical Hebrew learn: cheséd. That little word occurs 127 times in the Psalms alone, and some 241 times in the Old Testament. We might not spot it every time in translation, because translators are doing their job of translating the word in context, and no single English word or phrase can fully do it justice. So it is variously translated as “loving kindness,” “mercy,” “goodness,” “grace,” “kindness,” and, that old favorite, “steadfast love.” In fact, in the phrase of the beloved 23rd Psalm that we remember as “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me...” the word translated as “mercy” in that context is our old Hebrew friend, cheséd: “steadfast love.” Surely goodness and God’s steadfast love shall follow me…Lent 4B (2012)
("The Old Testament scholar Terrence Fretheim says Psalm 107's imagery reminds him of the baby monitors many parents of young children have. They resemble walkie-talkies. Parents place the monitor near their baby and keep the receiver near them. So no matter where the parents are in the house, they can always hear the noises their child makes...")Overcoming Obstacles - Together
("There was a businessman who had five kids, his wife stayed home to care the kids. And it never failed, he'd come home from work and Mom, needing the care and advice of another adult, would begin to tell him all the things that went wrong during the day. And which of the kids needed further disciplining from Dad...")