Psalm 63
Matthew 6: 31-33
Luke 6: 17-19
Early one morning I was walking in our neighborhood when I encountered one of our neighbors I have come to know over the past seven years. He is a life long Louisiana resident and highly active in his own denomination and we share church stories a lot. I stopped to talk for just a minute and our conversation led us to speak of the problems we are encountering as a state with hurricane response. As a part of that discussion, we talked of the slowness of the government and all the difficulties that is causing. Then he said something that really grabbed my attention. He said, “Former state administrations taught our people that we should come to the government with our hands outstretched and our palms turned upward. We don’t know what it is to take responsibility for ourselves.”
I walked on down the street and the power of that image and that statement just pounded in my mind. I don’t know when I’ve had any image more dramatically impressed upon me. I couldn’t quite shake it. Then I became aware of why I couldn’t rid myself of the image.
It’s the same position with which we approach Holy Communion. We come to the celebrant with our hands extended and our palms turned up ready to receive the elements and the blessings and strength of God. And we come, if we come correctly, in total dependence on God for our very lives. It’s the position we should assume when we approach God! And it looks so similar to what my neighbor described with regard to our relationship to the government. But it is so very different!
The first image portrayed is that of EXPECTATION. I am your dependent and you owe me something. It is not my responsibility to care for myself, but your responsibility to take care of me. I come with hands held open, expecting you to fill them with what I feel I want and deserve. In this image, I am the most important. I am the focal point.
The second image is quite the opposite. It is the image that says, “You are my creator and all that I am and all that I have comes from you. You don’t owe me anything, yet I come on bended knee and humble heart and with outstretched hands begging you to give me even a small morsel of yourself that I might have life. You have graciously given me life and you wish for me to have life in abundance, but to do so I have to turn myself totally over to you that you might fill me and take charge of me. You have no responsibility to take care of me, but I am begging you to include me in your kingdom. I come with hands outstretched, begging you to fill them with anything you will give me. “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy,” and I am begging you for mercy Lord.
In this second image the HOLY OTHER is the main focus and I am just the recipient of whatever the Holy Other’s mercy and grace will extend to me.
Think with me for a moment about all the images of hands as they relate to our relationship with God.
There are hands raised in praise in worship.
There are hands raised in position of invitation, such as the celebrant in Holy
Communion.
There are hands extended in the “right hand of Christian fellowship.”
There are hands enveloping one another in the passing of the peace.
There are hands that surround us in a hugging manner.
There are many ways we use our hands in worship and you could add and add to this list. But here’s the image I want us to grasp tonight…Hands that are stretched out….reaching hands….grasping hands….almost desperate hands.
Think of the hands of Mardi Gras celebrants who are reaching for something, signaling to those on the float to throw them something, waving almost in desperation for that certain strand of beads, that stuffed animal, that funky hat. Think now of the hands of the truly desperate – the refugees who are reaching toward the truck that has the first morsels of food they have seen in some time. That desperate stretching, those hollow eyes, the emaciated faces, the protruding teeth, the bony bodies with skin stretched tight over brittle bones. There is that frantic sense of “You have the only thing we need. You have the only thing we must have. You have food for our bodies that will keep us from starving to death.”
It’s that reaching, desperate image I want us to capture in our minds for these few minutes as opposed to the hands held upright with an unrealistic expectation behind them that basically says, “You owe me something.”
Let me simply illustrate my consuming concern with two Psalm passages. In Psalm 28, a prayer for deliverance from personal enemies the Psalmist cries:
“To thee, O Lord, I call;
My rock, be not deaf to me,
Lest, if thou be silent to me,
I become like those who go down to the Pit.
Hear the voice of my supplication,
As I cry to thee for help,
As I lift up my hands toward thy most holy sanctuary.” (Ps. 28: 1-2, RSV)
Or, in the words of the Eugene Peterson translation:
“Don’t turn a deaf ear
when I call you, God.
If all I get from you is deafening silence,
I’d be better off in the Black Hole.
I’m letting you know what I need,
Calling out for help
And lifting my arms toward your inner sanctum.”
Hear also a portion of this personal lament found in Psalm 143:
“Hear my prayer, O Lord;
Give ear to my supplications!
In thy faithfulness answer me, in thy righteousness!
Enter not into judgment with thy servant;
For no man (or woman) living is righteous before thee.
For the enemy has pursued me;
He has crushed my life to the ground;
He has made me sit in darkness like those long dead.
Therefore my spirit faints within me;
My heart within me is appalled.
I remember the days of old,
I meditate on all that thou hast done;
I muse on what thy hands have wrought.
I stretch out my hands to thee;
My soul thirsts for thee like a parched land.”
(Ps. 143: 1-6, RSV)
Do you hear it? Do you feel it? It is the totally desperate and dependent person, calling on the source of all life to give life.
In Psalm 63, another psalm of lament, but also a psalm of trust, there is a beautiful picture of this totally dependent person. In “one of the truly notable bits of devotional writing in all the literature of religion,” (Interpreters Bible, Vol. 4, pg. 327), the author dramatically shows that God is our ultimate need. God is the beginning of our life, the essence of our life, and the end of our life.
Listen to Eugene Peterson’s translation:
“God – you’re my God!
I can’t get enough of you!
I’ve worked up such hunger and thirst for God,
Traveling across dry and weary deserts.
So here I am in the place of worship, eyes open,
Drinking in your strength and glory.
In your generous love I am really living at last!
My lips brim praises like fountains.
I bless you every time I take a breath;
My arms wave like banners of praise to you.
I eat my fill of prime rib and gravy;
I smack my lips. It’s time to shout praises!
If I’m sleepless at midnight,
I spend the hours in grateful reflection.
Because you’ve always stood up for me
I’m free to run and play;
I hold on to you for dear life,
And you hold me steady as a post.
Those who are out to get me are marked for doom,
Marked for death, bound for hell.
They’ll die violent deaths;
Jackals will tear them limb from limb.
But the king is glad in God;
His true friends spread the joy,
While small-minded gossips are gagged for good.”
One contemporary praise song seems to capture it in this phrase, “God is our all in all.”
This unknown Psalmist clings to God with all of her or his strength and is a model for those who strive first for the Kingdom of God, believing that in so striving and prayerfully attaining, all other things will be added as well.
This total dependence on God and belief that being at one with God is better than life itself, is what led other protestant traditions, the Calvinist traditions to be exact, to ask candidates for the ordained ministry this pointed question, “Are you willing to be damned for the Glory of God?” We don’t fully understand or appreciate such a question in our Wesleyan tradition and especially we don’t grasp it in the self-centered culture in which we live. Aren’t we more important than that? Aren’t we more the reason for God’s existence than God is the reason for our existence? Why should I be so dependent on God that I am willing to be damned personally if it will bring glory to God?
Jesus puts this same understanding this way:
“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” (Matthew 6: 31-33, RSV)
Again, Eugene Peterson nails it: “What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving.”
I have one burning and consuming thought I want to convey tonight to ordinands and to all others alike, whether you are clergy or laity. It is not our place to be going up to anyone with our hands out expecting them to be filled. It is our calling as Christians to approach only God the creator, Jesus Christ the redeemer and the Holy Spirit the sustainer with our hands out! And not in a “gimme” stance. But in a pleading stance! I need you! I must have you! I cannot live without you! Give me any little portion of yourself that you will for I am nothing without something of you in me!”
Gregory the Great put our calling as clergy this way: “Those who carry the vessels of the Lord are those who undertake, in reliance on their way of living, to draw the souls of their neighbors to the everlasting holy places.” (Jones, L. Gregory and Armstrong, Kevin R., Resurrecting Excellence, Eerdmans, pg. 80)
Wow! Do you hear that? We are to draw the souls of our neighbors to the everlasting holy places! And how can we lead them there if we’ve never been there ourselves? The clergy and lay leaders of the church are called to be the ones who lead the world to the light of God’s kingdom. What an awesome calling!
I’ll never forget the evening two people from a religious tradition that compels their members to do door to door witnessing and distribution of the literature published by their sect. After a long exchange of thoughts and differences the final volley was fired. The man of the visiting duo asked me, “Are you willing to take responsibility for leading all the people in the church next door astray?” My answer was a resounding “Yes,” followed by a not subtle statement that it was now time for this discussion to end and they should be on their way!
My question here tonight is somewhat similar. Are you willing to take the responsibility to lead all the people you are privileged to know and shepherd to the everlasting holy places? Are you committed to going there yourself? It is much more challenging and takes far more devotion to lead anyone to the holy places than it takes to lead them astray from them!
It is challenging because we all live in a challenged and challenging society. Rodney Clapp puts the challenge to us clergy this way, “it’s not so much that we are ‘spread thin’ but we are ‘crushed thin.’” And Richard Lischer of Duke Divinity school puts our dilemma like this. We are ‘sliced, diced, and cubed into a thousand contacts and competencies but left without a heart of passion in the word, without a vocation.’”(Ibid, pg. 25)
And speaking of Richard Lischer, let me relay a story he tells in his delightful book Open Secrets, about his first pastorate in a small country church in southern Illinois. On his very first Sunday there a ghastly sight in the sacristy took him aback. “A dying man was sprawled on a chaise lounge in the center of the room. He was white as snow and as cold to the touch. His total hairlessness, I was soon to learn, was the result of an experimental drug therapy. He was dressed in a cassock, surplice, and stole. A hymnal lay open across his lap.
“Erich Martin was the former pastor of the church. He was so weakened by cancer that he couldn’t sit in a pew. He worshiped in the sacristy with the door to the chancel wide open. From his lounge chair he could also keep an eye on me, and from anywhere in the chancel I had him in view. Since no one could see him but me, he constituted my private audience of one, a second congregation. Whenever I stood in the pulpit during those first months, Erich was a barely living blur to my right. If I was tempted, as preachers occasionally are, to replace the proclamation of the gospel with affable chatter, the presence of a liturgically vested, dying man in a chaise lounge never failed to dissuade.” (R. Lischer, Open Secrets, Doubleday, pg. 66)
Annie Dillard has advised writers to write as if they are addressing an audience of dying people. “What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?” (Jones and Armstrong, Resurrecting Excellence, Doubleday, pg. 38) Shouldn’t we preach with as much intensity and intentionality? We don’t want to enrage people with trivialities!
We must always be turning ourselves toward the Holy One and grasping for truths that can be shared and lived with other seekers. Are we committed to bringing people to the everlasting holy places and not trivializing the gospel? Oh, it is a serious question!
Let me share one story of a Louisiana legend, Lea Joyner, founding pastor of Southside Methodist Church in Monroe. That church humbly, yet proudly today is known as Lea Joyner United Methodist Church. The biography of her life, Standing in the Gap, tells of her low self esteem in all ways except when she was working for the Lord. Listen to this excerpt:
“Lea was never able to overcome the feeling that she was unworthy and inadequate. And in the address she gave at Asbury Theological Seminary on the occasion of the conferral of her doctorate, she told the assembled audience that what she had done at Southside anybody could have done, and that many could have done better because they would have known more than she. . . .
It is almost as if she were two different people - -Lea the woman and Lea the pastor. In her private self she saw all of her imperfections and magnified them. In her estimation, she did not measure up to other people whom she imagined to be self-confident, satisfied and capable. However, when she was Lea the ordained minister, in charge of a church, that was a different matter. In this capacity she was God’s advocate, God’s right hand, and, as such, she cold undertake any task. Moreover, because she was the servant of God, her energy was boundless, her horizons forever reaching into the distance as she found new heights to conquer. If as a person she had limitations, she denied them as she became Lea the minister who had no limitations. In this sense she was a true ascetic. The fatigue, the aches and pains, the need for sleep or rest or food - - all could be set aside, as could embarrassment and a sense of unworthiness, because Lea the ordained minister drew continuously upon the strength of God to be her strength.
Thus it is possible to understand how this small, frail and self-effacing woman could start from a weed patch and build the largest Methodist church in the world pastored by a woman.” (Harry Hale, Jr., Standing in the Gap, Fairway Press, pp. 79-80)
We could all learn a lesson from her. She STRETCHED her hands to God, seeking God’s strength and help. She never trivialized the gospel and taught and preached as if to a dying soul.
There are images that have burned in my mind for weeks as I have attempted to pull this sermon together - - and I must admit this has been one of the most difficult I’ve ever tried to assemble!
Some years ago, when I was pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I was at the church late one afternoon after everyone had gone home and before everyone came back for evening activities. I was busying around in the office area and I heard a banging on the outside door. I went to the door and one of God’s homeless and traveling sons was standing there. I invited him in and he began to tell his story and requested $3.00 for a spaghetti dinner that they were having at Denny’s. I only had $2.00 and I offered it to him. But he needed three! Again, I offered what I had, explaining what it would buy at McDonalds. But he had his mind set on spaghetti at Denny’s.
Finally, he grudgingly took the $2.00 and left, cursing all the way. Before long he was banging on the door again. He stormed in and slammed the money on the desk and shouted at me, “Too damn little is just too damn little.” And he stormed out.
Tonight I want to say with regard to our approach to the Holy that “too damn little is NEVER too damn little.” Any morsel that can be dispensed is like a banquet. Any drop of the dew of God’s spirit is like a rushing river. There’s never too little and there’s never enough! Don’t turn it down! We may not get the full banquet, but we still grovel, we groan, we reach for the crumbs under the table!
Think of the hymn “Fill my Cup, Lord.” The words are “Fill my cup, Lord, I lift it up, Lord, come and quench this thirsting of my soul. Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more; fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole.” (Richard Blanchard)
We lift the cup with our hands and we pray “Fill it up Lord.” But I want us to say, “Any drop you put in Lord is what I need. If you fill it Lord, I am overwhelmed and blessed, but a drop will do as long as it comes from you!”
God is so faithful and so constant. There is a place for us to raise holy hands in praise. There is a place for Hands Up. But there is never a place for Hands Out with that selfish expectation that God owes us something and will give us what we want.
We need to stretch! We need to reach! We need to beg! We need to plead! Here’s my cup, Lord. Put in it what you will and I will be blessed. I will be filled. I will be yours.
God is so faithful and so constant. God is so “there for us.” The late Glenn “Tex” Evans has left us with the perfect picture of God’s ever-present reality. Tex tells of taking some friends from Kentucky over to East Texas to visit and to see a lot of things for them to remember. One of those were the tall pine trees that he said were so tall you have to put hinges on them in order to let ‘em down at night so the moon can pass.
One of the people they met was Jeff Waller who had quite a conversation with the visitors. The conversation went something like this:
“Mr. Waller, what do you do for a living?”
“Well, I’m fifty-four years old and I’ve lived right around here all that time. The last fifty years I have spent my time fighting Bermuda grass. And you can tell from most of my clothes and my hound-dog-look how successful I’ve been.”
They asked, “What do you mean, you’ve been fighting Bermuda grass? Why do you fight Bermuda grass?”
“Well, what else can you do around here? You can’t lean against the fence all your life with your pants held up with a ten-penny nail and a clothespin. You can’t sit on your front porch waitin’ for a lawn mower to fall in your front yard. You’ve gotta do somethin’, so you fight Bermuda grass.”
”Well, why do you fight Bermuda grass?”
“To kill it”
“Can Bermuda grass be killed?”
“Why, sure it can be killed. You see that patch right over there? Well, I’ve killed that patch twenty-seven times - - right over there.”
Puzzled, they asked, “If you’ve killed it twenty-seven times, why is it still there?”
“Because it’s Bermuda grass!” “Buddy, I’m telling you right now if you ain’t had the joy of fighting Bermuda grass, you don’t know what a slow death is like. Fella, I’ll tell you what you can do. You can go out in your field and dig it up, get you a plow, get you a hoe, get you a rake, get you a shovel, get all your family out there. You can dig up every blade, root, stalk, stem, and take it out to the end of the row and hang it on a barbed wire fence and it will still take root and grow on that barbed wire fence.”
They said, “You don’t mean it?”
“I do mean it. My neighbor Leroy Talbert has eighteen goats in that shed over there and he hasn’t fed ‘em nothin’ except that Bermuda grass hanging on my barbed wire fence. Every time it rains, it blooms and grows - - that’s all there is to it.”
“You can go out to your garden and you can dig it up, stub, sprout, root and everything - - dig it up and put it into a nice, neat little pile like that. Get a gallon of kerosene, pour it on top of the grass, set it on fire and burn it to the ground and the ashes will take root and grow.
“That ain’t nothin’! You can go out to your ‘tater patch or lettuce bed and clean it with a fine tooth comb. You can get the old woman’s sifter and sift it until you know there ain’t a sprig in there. Then you get your tweezers from your medicine cabinet and pick up every bit of it. Then you go out there and douse it with carbolic acid, so now you know you ain’t got nary bit. You can go to sleep and tomorrow wake up and think ‘no Bermuda grass!’
But the next day, let a little wind come and one sprig of it from your neighbor’s field over there be blowed over to your field – just blowed over there and the shadow will take root and grow! Brother, I’m tellin’ you right now, when you’ve got Bermuda grass, you’ve got it!”
(H. Eddie Fox and George E. Morris, Let the Redeemed of the Lord Say So!, Providence House Publishers, pp. 105-108)
God and God’s holiness are like that Bermuda grass. There’s no power in heaven or on earth or any other place that can destroy God or displace God. God is forever. And our need for God is just as persistent. No matter how much we might think we have arrived at independence or at a state of entitlement, we are always totally dependent on God and God’s strength for our life.
Stretch out your hands and reach for God. God is there. God is unfailing. You can’t rid the world of God or God’s holiness. Oh, blessed be the name of God.
And just think, everyone of us in this room – ordinands, ordained, probationers, Local Pastors, Deaconess, Home Missioner, Laity – all of us are called on not to just praise him with our Hands Up, but we are to seek him with our Hands Out, reaching and stretching for him, and make ourselves one with him so we can lead our neighbors and our world to him and to the everlasting holy places.
“Father, I stretch my hands to thee:
No other help I know;
If thou withdraw thyself from me,
Ah! Whither shall I go?
Surely thou canst not let me die;
O speak, and I shall live;
And here I will unwearied lie,
Till thou thy Spirit give.”
- Charles Wesley, 1707-1788
AMEN AND AMEN!
