Lent 2C
Feb. 21, 2016
Psalm 27, Genesis 15:1-12
“I am sure I
shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Yes! I shall see
the goodness of our God. Hold firm, trust in the Lord!”
When I sing
this I am transported back to the hills of Burgundy, France, to the little
village of Taize, where there is an ecumenical monastery. It was founded during
World War II as a place to shelter refugees, many of whom were Jewish, and
eventually also orphaned children and German prisoners of war. Today it is home
to over 100 brothers, Catholic and Protestant, from about 30 different
countries. It draws pilgrims from around the world, especially youth; each year,
100,000 young people travel to spend a week or more at Taize, where they
participate in sung prayer three times a day, engage in Bible study, work
around the camp to keep it running, and learn Taize’s principles of kindness,
simplicity, and reconciliation.
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| Taize: my friend Jenny and I (spring, 2009) |
I have been
blessed to travel twice to this beautiful little community, and as I said,
those words I began with characterize my time there. “I am sure I shall see the
goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Yes! I shall see the goodness
of our God. Hold firm, trust in the Lord!” They are words that come from
today’s Psalm. Both times I was there, I was in a time of life where these
words brought such consolation to my searching heart, and as I repeatedly sang
them (as is the style of Taize worship), it was with earnestness and longing. I
sang them because they were already true, and because I wanted to believe them
to be true. I was a pilgrim in search of the goodness of the Lord I knew was
there, even as I sometimes struggled to see that goodness.
This is not
a new feeling for people of faith, this feeling of both knowing something is
true, even as you still long to see it be true in your life. Just look at
Abraham in today’s reading from Genesis. We often think of Abraham (or Abram,
as he is still called at this point) as the very example of deep trust and
faith. And yet here, he has trouble holding onto that trust. God says, “Don’t
worry, Abram, I got this! I’ll make good on my promise to give you many
descendants. Your waiting will be well worth it in the end, and I’ll protect
you in the meantime.” And two times Abraham replies, “Really? What are you
going to give me to prove it? Because so far, you totally haven’t delivered on
your promises, and I’m beginning to think that my servant is going to have to
inherit everything, because I’m old, and I don’t see an heir yet.” In the words
of his mouth, we can hear the pleading of his heart: “I want to believe you,
God, that you’ll bring about your promises, but I’m having a really hard time
with that right now. You gotta give me something, anything to hold onto here.”
And who of
us has not had that prayer before? When we are faced with a difficult
situation, or a fearful one, and we cannot make sense of it – we want to
believe that God has something good in mind, but in the darkness of the moment,
we have a really hard time seeing what that might be. Or we have been the
recipient of a number of difficult blows and can barely believe anymore that
any of God’s promises are true, that the words we read in scripture hold any
water.
It’s a
tension we see in today’s Psalm, too. Psalm 27 begins with utter confidence: “The
Lord is my light and my salvation; whom, then, shall I fear?” For six verses it
goes on in utter confidence… but in verse seven, the tone changes, almost as if
it is a completely different Psalm: “Hear my voice when I call. Have mercy on
me and answer me.” Suddenly it becomes a Psalm of desperation and pleading, and
for the next six verses, it lacks its previous confidence. It is the song of
a
heart longing to see some evidence that God does, in fact, make good on God’s
promises.
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| Taize: Front of sanctuary |
Somehow,
though, the Psalmist makes his way back in those last two verses to a
resolution to believe in those words that, centuries later, became a Taize
chant: “This I believe: that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of
the living. Wait for the Lord, and be strong. Take heart and wait for the
Lord!” How does he get from despair back to assurance? How do we?
I think the
key is in verse 8: “My heart speaks your message: ‘Seek my face.’ Your face, O
Lord, I will seek.” Last week I asked you to name what is your current
wilderness, and what Promised Land you seek. Full disclosure: for me, this is
it. It is to seek God’s face, or said another way, to be more intentional and
focused on noticing and naming God’s action in my life, to not only see God’s
face in my day-to-day life, but to be more intentional about seeking it.
One of the ways I am doing that is a
method I shared with some of you at our midweek service this past week, and
that is by doing a daily examen. The examen is a spiritual practice describedby St. Ignatius of Loyola, which is a technique of prayerful reflection on the
events of the day, in order to detect God’s presence in it. In essence, you
begin each day by naming some people and things you want to hold in prayer
throughout the day, and at the end of each day, you take time to name and even
to write down reflections on these two questions: For what today was I most
grateful? For what was I least grateful? Asked another way, when did I give or
receive the most love today? When did I give or receive the least love? When
did I feel the most alive? When did I feel life draining out of me? When was I
joyful? When was I sad? And through all of this the question becomes: And where
was God in this? At the end of the week, I look over what I have written down
each week and find how God might be speaking to me through that prayerful
reflection.
I hope, even as I already believe,
that in doing this, I am seeking God’s face. I hope and pray that others who
might be participating in this practice feel the same. But I’ll tell you –
seeing God’s face is not at first a really lovely experience. Already by doing
this, I have become aware of habits and perspectives I need to change, because
they are keeping me from living as wholly in God’s love and promises as I could
be. And change is never easy, and sometimes it hurts, and sometimes it takes
away a safety net or a coping mechanism you’ve come to rely on. And all that
can be very painful at first. Spiritual growth is like that.
This week I came across a quote that
seemed to speak directly to me on my Lenten pilgrimage. I share it with you
because I think it might resonate with you as well. It says: “The Lenten walk
is one of release, of letting go of our own plans, of welcoming the death which
will be our new life. We never know exactly where the walk to Jerusalem will
lead us – even if we’ve walked it many times before. It is always a mystery, a
venture into the very heart of God. At first we might make plans of how we’re going
to live into the new life, but soon we learn these plans are in vain – and we
abandon them. This is not what we were expecting. It never is. There’s a very
good
God’s vision is far more expansive
than anything we can imagine. Expansive like the stars. Expansive like the
wilderness. So expansive that it is impossible to see everything we want to see
from our meager vantage point. It is so hard to trust when you can’t see the
end of God’s plan. Yet Abraham did, and he became the father of a nation that
continues to grow. The Psalmist did. And I believe that we, even as we are
still in the chaos of our wilderness journey toward the Promised Land, can also
trust that that chaos is merely a piece of the grand, expansive vision that God
has in mind for us.
Let us pray… I am sure I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the
living. Yes! I shall see the goodness of our God. Hold firm, trust in the Lord.
(sing 3x) In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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