Psalm 96 (links validated 9/5/23)
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Sermon Starters (Proper 24A)(2023)
Psalm 96 proclaims that God made the heavens and everything else and as a result, “strength and glory” are in his sanctuary. One could get the sense that a good bit of what constitutes that strength and glory are the things we can see around us in the physical creation. Look around! See what God has made! Revel in its beauty. That seems to be part of the idea here. We see the glories God has made and reflect some of that very glory back onto the Creator. It reminds me of the lyric words that come near the beginning of the Reformed confessional document “The Belgic Confession.” In an article titled “The Means by Which We Know God,” it says: We know God . . . by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: God’s eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. All these things are enough to convict humans and to leave them without excuse. The whole physical universe is like a giant book and the letters that compose the words in that book are all creatures great and small. As imagery goes, that is lovely and can sit very nicely next to the declarations in something like Psalm 96.Praise God!
Three neighbourhood boys, Salvator, Julio and Antonio, lived and played in Cremona, Italy, around the mid-1600s. Salvator had a beautiful tenor voice and Julio played the violin in accompaniment as they strolled the piazzas. Antonio also liked music and would have loved to sing along, but his voice squeaked like a creaky door hinge. All the children made fun of him whenever he tried to sing. Yet Antonio was not without talent. His most prized possession was the pocketknife his grandfather had given him. He was always whittling away on some piece of wood. In fact, Antonio made some very nice things with his whittling. As the time for the annual festival approached, the houses and streets gradually became festooned with beautiful decorations for spring. Dressed in their finest clothes, people filled the streets. On festival day, Salvator and Julio planned to go to the cathedral where they would play and sing in the crowded plaza. “Would you like to come with us?” they called to Antonio, who sat on his stoop whittling on a piece of wood. “Who cares if you can’t sing. We’d like to have you come with us anyway.” “Sure, I’d like to come along,” Antonio replied. “The festival is so much fun.” The three boys went off to the cathedral. As they walked along, Antonio kept thinking about their remark about his not being able to sing. It made him cry in his heart, because he loved music as much as they did, even if his voice did squeak a little...
Resources from 2020 to 2022
Sermon Starter (Christmas)(I)(A)(2022)
In the sermon on Revelation 4 & 5 referred to above, my friend Trygve Johnson of Hope College invoked a clever metaphor. He said he had grown up on Whidbey Island just northwest of Seattle in the Pacific Northwest. This is an area known for its rain, for cement gray cloud cover, for mists and fogs. Yet it is also a place surrounded by the grandeur of mountains: Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, the Olympic mountains. But most days they were invisible, obscured by fog and cloud. Once in a while though, the weather would break. The fog and mist would lift. The skies would clear. The sun would come out. And the folks on Whidbey Island would say to each other, “Did you see it? The mountains are out.” Oh, the mountains were always there, just hidden except for such rare glimpses. And Tryg used this in his sermon as an image, a metaphor, for what John of Patmos saw when God peeled back the curtain between this world and the heavenly throne room to show John the worship of the Lamb that was taking place right then and that, as a matter of fact, never ceases. If we could only see what John saw and maybe what the poet of Psalm 96 saw—if we experience days when the mountains are out—we too would leap to our feet and declare, “I think we need to write a whole bunch of new songs to sing to the Lord!”Sermon Starters (Proper 24A)(2020)
In her short story “The River,” Flannery O’Connor wanted to say something about the drama and the power of baptism. She believed many people had become a bit blasé where baptism is concerned, that we had turned it into a cute little rite of passage for babies on a par with getting their six-month portrait taken at Walmart or something. In her story, therefore, she has a young boy who wants to be baptized but for various reasons cannot find anyone to do it. So he tries to baptize himself in a river but he slips, falls, and drowns. Baptism, O’Connor wanted to remind her readers, involves dying with Christ. When she was later asked why she used such grotesque and harsh imagery like this in this story and in many of her other stories, she replied “Because in the land of the nearly blind, you have to draw big caricatures to get anyone’s attention and help them to see.”
Resources from 2016 to 2019
Proper 4C (2016)
The Supreme Court is often in the news, but even more so lately because of the untimely death of Justice Scalia. The subsequent controversy about the naming of a new justice shows just how important justice is, and how easily justice becomes a political thing. The “truth” of either party dominates the discussion. This gives poignancy and power to those last words of Psalm 96. When Yahweh comes to judge the earth, he will do so, not according to the Democratic or Republican version of the truth, but according to his truth. Thank God!
Resources from the Archives
The Bone-Melting Music of God
Music also has the power to transform our lives. There is a spell-binding scene in the wonderful movie The Shawshank Redemption. If you have seen this movie, you will remember that the main character, Andy Dufrain, has been sentenced to two back-to-back life terms for crimes he did not commit. He is thrown in the tough world of Shawshank Prison where everything conspires to destroy humanity. Andy writes a letter every week to the state legislature requesting books for the prison library. Everyone is surprised when a huge shipment of used books and records appear out of nowhere. His letters finally did some good. Andy puts one of the records on the prison record player. Intoxicated by the beauty of an aria, Andy locks out the warden and plays a portion of "The Marriage of Figaro" over the prison loudspeaker. Everyone in Shawshank Prison stands transfixed by the music - a moment of intrusive beauty in a horrible place. Andy Dufrain is tortured for his little trick. On his release from solitary confinement, Andy explains to his inmate friends how he endured. "I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company. It is in here (pointing to his head and heart). That's the beauty of music… so you don't forget that there are places in the world not made out of stone, that there's something inside that they can't get to, that they can't touch. It is yours." We, too, are transformed when we hear the "bone-melting music of God."...Singing Lessons
Of course there are those people who go beyond silent witness. The name of Heinz is known throughout the world for his "57 Varieties," especially pickles and ketchup. But Heinz was also a committed Christian. His greatest efforts for the Lord began after a particular evangelistic service. His pastor turned to him on the dais and said to Mr. Heinz, "You’re a Christian, but with all your energy, why aren't you up and at it for the Lord?" The great businessman went home in anger. That night he couldn't sleep. At 4 o'clock in the morning he was awake, praying that God would make him a true and zealous witness. Not long afterward, at a meeting of bank presidents, Mr. Heinz turned to the man next to him and shared the joy he knew as a believer. His friend looked at him in amazement. "I've wondered many times why, if you really believed in Christ, you never spoke to me of it." That man later became the first of 267 converts Mr. Heinz eventually influenced for Christ!...