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Sunday May 17, 2009 "Celebrating the Power of God" Psalm 98 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 5/18/2009 3:49 PM | As we continue to move toward the amazing events of Pentecost, we resume our look at “The Power of God”. Last week we talked about recognizing the power of God, in ways big and small. Next week we will finish the series by exploring the issue of sharing the power of God. Today, we turn our attention to “Celebrating the Power of God.”
I have seen some great celebrations in my time, and I bet you have, too.
What celebrations stick out in your mind? For folks of my parents generation, V-E day and V-J day, those days celebrating the allied forces victories in Europe and Japan, seem to stand out. There are famous pictures of crowds dancing in the street, embracing and kissing, all because of the end of the hostilities in World War II.
I was privileged to find myself in the midst of an amazing celebration the night Pope John Paul II ascended to the papacy. There is a large Polish population in Detroit and the center of that population is a neighborhood called Hamtramck. On the night when John Paul was elected by the college of Cardinals, I witnessed the biggest street party I had ever seen in Hamtramck. Smiles were everywhere; tears of joy flowed freely; strangers danced and embraced; music boomed out of store fronts; everywhere you turned someone was giving you food, food and more food…and it doesn’t get much better than authentic polish food. There might also have been a beer or two consumed, but I can’t say for sure about that.
In high school I was part of a championship basketball team that triggered a celebration that we all savored. My high school was relatively new, I was a member of the first class to attend four years at the school, and for the first three years of our existence, we were the doormat of our league. But our senior year, we broke out of that role and became league champions and went to the state tournament where we won our district championship and made it to the last 8 teams in the state before we lost on a last second shot in the regional finals. We had suffered long enough and to be at the center of that celebration was wonderful.
What other types of celebrations have you experienced?
Weddings? Birthdays? Promotions at work? The birth of a child? One of the most heartfelt, if more subdued, celebrations I ever was part of was when a friend got a clean bill of health after a long struggle with cancer.
So many reasons to celebrate. I wonder, though, what is the thread that runs through all those celebrations?
V-E and V-J represented the end of a long period of hostility the world over. My grandparents had witnessed the “War to End All Wars” during WWI. But here, less than 30 years later was a bigger, more destructive, more hate filled war than the world had ever seen. To witness it’s conclusion would have been wonderful. The end of so much violence and death. The beginning of rebuilding, in Europe, in Japan, even at home, were ahead, but that was a positive thing and that hard work would take on a much different tone than the hardship that waging the war had been.
Experiencing the election of one of your own to such a vaunted position as Pope might have been a similar experience for the Polish Americans of Detroit. They had long been a sort of closed enclave and to this day, a large percentage of the citizens of Hamtramck speak Polish as their primary language. The ravages of the war years had decimated families and neighborhoods and huge cities in Poland, and 35 years after the fact, they found themselves still trying to hold on to their heritage, yet so far removed from their homeland. The election of John Paul did not materially change the day to day life of the people in Hamtramck, but it did give them a reason to celebrate! One of their own was the Pope! I’m not sure I can fathom what a profound thing that was for thousands of people.
Winning the basketball championship signaled the end of an era of loss after loss after loss. In the grand scheme of things, it is pretty minor, but it was an emergence from a somewhat gloomy past and it was to be celebrated!
My friend who received the good news of being cancer free felt that emergence in a much more important way. Days of struggle and worry were behind: better days were here, and that was worth celebrating.
Now, I’m not saying that all celebrations are triggered by hard times being replaced by good times, but there are sure are a lot of times when that is exactly the case.
Weddings on the surface do not seem to fit into this category, but if you think about it, the change that comes with the pairing of two souls, united to make a life together is moving from one station in life to another. And the celebration is one of joy that two people have found each other and hope that this union will be lead to a better life for both of them.
What about birthdays? Do they fit this mode? The celebration of such a milestone as a birthday is recognition that we have been through some things, and we made it! Celebrating the day of our birth is a way to say thank you to our parents, and a way to say, “I am still here and each day I have is a reason to celebrate.”
There is another connection between all these celebrations: each of them mark a beginning…the start of something new…the continuation of a journey into the future, unable to know exactly what will happen, but thankful for the chance to find out.
The end of WWII marked the chance to begin to build a world anew, even if we weren’t entirely sure how that would work. The election of John Paul marked the beginning of a new direction for the Roman Catholic church, even if no one knew what direction that would be. The clean bill of health that my friend experienced gave confidence that life could be embraced in a completely different way, and even though they didn’t know what the future held, the idea that there would be a future, in all its glorious uncertainty, was wonderful!
So, these situations are marked by remembrance of the past and the celebration of the unknowable future. Why? Because in each of these situations, hard times were survived. Perseverance paid off. A new beginning awaits.
Surely the Israelites of King David’s time felt the same way.
The 98th Psalm that was read this morning fits the hard times/perseverance/new beginning pattern very well.
First, the people are exhorted to sing a new song. A new start awaits. Hard times have been conquered. It’s time to celebrate where we are and where we are going! So sing out!
What is interesting here is that the Psalmist is making it clear that God was the reason that the Hebrew people were where they were: secure in David’s kingdom, conquerors of a past that threatened them, looking forward to greater and greater things. “This is God’s doing,” the Psalmist says. “It is not our power that brought us here, but God’s power and God’s power alone.”
This, then is the first part of what the Psalmist is celebrating, the ever present power of God. Throughout all their ups and downs, God’s power saw them through and for that they are to celebrate.
Celebrate God making them the chosen people.
Celebrate God guiding them in the Exodus from Egypt.
Celebrate God’s keeping them safe in the wilderness.
Celebrate God’s gift of the Torah.
Celebrate God’s leading them into the promised land.
All of these things are the work of God’s power, and for that, the Psalmist says, “Celebrate! Celebrate with instruments and horns and singing a new song! Celebrate with all of creation, because God’s power is at work there, too! Celebrate that God is just and equitable! Celebrate!”
But this Psalm is not only useful for the Hebrews of David’s time. This Psalm speaks to us, too.
As Christians, it is God’s power that has been with us on the continuation of that journey. It is God’s power that we celebrate when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, his ministry, his death and resurrection. It is God’s power that we celebrate when we celebrate the birth of the church on Pentecost, the missions that spread out from Jersusalem and ultimately to the entire world.
As individuals, we also celebrate God’s power in our lives. We celebrate our baptism into the Body of Christ, forgiven and redeemed. We celebrate the grace of God in giving us second and third and fourth chances. We celebrate the people that God puts in our path for companionship along the way.
But you know what the Psalmist thinks we should celebrate the most? The awesome power of the continued presence of God in the world and in our lives.
It is easy to celebrate when times are good. The Psalmist seems to be writing at a time when the Hebrew people are secure and the extreme difficulties of the past are just that, in the past. But we’re are missing something here if we think that the celebration marks only good times. No, the psalmist wants us to understand that God was there in the hard times, which is what pulled us through. God is present in this time, which sustains us. God will be present in the future, which is the solid promise upon which we build our hope for the future.
So, when should we celebrate? ALWAYS! God’s continued presence in the world is to be celebrated. God may be invisible to our naked eyes, but God is neither absent nor indifferent to us or to our situation. God’s new unexpected, marvelous acts don’t just sustain us, they point us to new possibilities, even better possibilities, possibilities we can’t even fathom.
We celebrate, we sing new songs, we sing the old songs with new fervor, because we know God is control. We celebrate, we sing, because God is constantly doing new things around and among us!
Even if we find ourselves in hard times, in despair, in exile, the psalmist exhorts us to remember who God is, what God has done, and have faith in what God will do. And while we are waiting to see just what it is God has in store? Sing. Dance. Celebrate. Because what God has done in the past is simply prelude to what is to come.
The theologian Ismael Garcia sums it up this way: “This is why we celebrate. This is what makes the proclamation of the gospel ‘good news’. The good news is that the captive and the poor will be liberated and the blind will be given sight. The good news is that no dimension of reality will be untouched by the redeeming power of God. The good news is that by God’s grace, we are justified in spite of our shortcomings. All of us can rejoice and sing a new song to the one whose justice, mercy, peace and truth are one and the same.”
We find ourselves in uncertain times, yet we are here to celebrate. We celebrate because we are not only relying on the promise of heaven to see us through. You see, that is what too many faithful people do in hard times. They point to the next life and say, “I can endure anything because I know where I am going.” And while I give thanks for the truth of that statement, we are not called to endure: we are called to celebrate! We need to celebrate the ever present, every active God who still speaks today. Even though we do not know exactly what is coming, our history with God makes it clear that it is something that will sustain us.
So, how do we celebrate God’s power among us, here and now? We all may do it differently. We do it through our prayers, through our singing, through our worship, through our actions toward other people. I don’t know exactly how you celebrate. But it is something we should do, and we should do it often!
There is a sheet in the bulletin this week that is titled “Celebrating the Power of God” and it asks you to fill in a blank for each day of the week “Today, I celebrated the power of God by…” I don’t know what that will look like for you, and to be honest, I don’t know what it will like for me each day. But this I do know: no matter our situation, the more we celebrate the powerful presence of God, the more our attitude will be one of gratitude and hope. Even in uncertain times, even when our hearts are heavy with grief, celebration for what God has done and for what is coming in this unknowable future is simply the right thing to do.
I would be remiss if I did not point out that this congregation has chosen to celebrate God’s power in a very specific way. The upcoming renovations to this sanctuary in these somewhat uncertain times are testimony to the power of God at work in this place. This renovation has been thought through, prayed about, discussed, prayed about some more, prayed about some more, and apparently, someone else out there agrees with us that this is not a foolhardy idea: this past week, the Board of Church Extension approved our loan application to make the sanctuary renovation a reality. A renovation that will honor God. A renovation that will allow us to accommodate many types of worship experiences. A renovation rooted in understanding that God has been with us on the journey throughout our history and that God is with us now. A renovation made possible by our willingness to celebrate that God will be with us as we move into an exciting, but unknowable future!
God’s power is evident everywhere we turn. So take some time, every day, this week and next week and every week from now on to celebrate that power! It is worth celebrating!
O sing to the Lord a new song, for the Lord has done marvelous things!
Let the sea roar and all that fill sit, the world and those who live in it. Let the flood clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy at the presence of the Lord!
God is here, God is near, it’s time to celebrate! Amen and Amen!
Let us pray: We hardly know where to begin, Lord. May our celebration to the breadth and depth and strength of your power never end. May our celebration of your presence be worthy of all we have been given. May our celebration of you lead us to gather more and more people for this purpose. For we celebrate only what you have made possible and we give you thanks. In the name of Christ Jesus we pray. Amen. | | | Permalink | Trackback |
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