Psalm 23
Sunday, April 22, 2018 - Earth Day
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS
Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
Exactly 163 years ago today, a group of people who would eventually become the First Congregational Church of Manhattan, Kansas, gathered to worship together for the first time. The Rev. Charles E. Blood, who had come to the Kaw Nation as a part of the Congregational abolitionist movement, preached to a congregation sitting on boxes and kegs.
Four years would pass before they had a permanent home here at 700 Poyntz. Between 1855 and 1859 the new congregation worshiped in homes, schools, and storefronts. I have to think that, from time to time, weather permitting, they also continued to worship out of doors in God’s creation.
As we gather on this Earth Day, it’s only natural to check in with ourselves and notice how we are connected to God’s Creation that exists outside these four walls. We paused earlier in worship to hear the sounds of birds singing. We center ourselves in the words of our Ancestors who speak of walking beside still waters even as we remember that in the year 2018 we walk in the valley of the shadow of climate change.
Even when we are indoors, many of us turn our hearts outdoors, contemplating the seasons as they pass, the creatures as they crawl and sing and swim and fly.
It is lucky for us, then, that the Bible is what Wendell Berry calls “an outdoor book.” Berry, whose words are featured throughout today’s liturgy is a famous author. He is also Christian prophet, healer, wisdom speaker, and guide.
I want to share with you an extended quotation from Mr. Berry about this idea of the Bible being an “outdoor book.”
I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a hypethral book, such as Thoreau talked about--a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the fuming of water into wine--which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is fumed into grapes. [1]
This “outdoor book” - this Bible of ours - calls us 21st century folk out, beyond the walls, again and again.
Today’s passage from the psalms is another one of those texts that calls us out of doors. The 23rd psalm takes place outdoors - out in God’s green pastures, out beside the still waters carefully crafted by God.
Pastor James Howell notes that the phrase “thou art with me” is at the literal core of this psalm. [2] In Hebrew, there are 26 words before that phrase and 26 words after it. The point, it seems, is that no matter what storms assail us, we are to remember God is with us. When the sea waters rise and the wildfires rage, we are to remember God is with us. When we contemplate the destruction we have collectively wreaked upon our sacred home, we are to remember God is with us.
In the good and the bad. When we get it wrong and when we get it right. God is with us - and not only us. God is with and within every bit of created matter from bacteria to bees from neurons to narwhals. God is with us in our sinning and our saving. God is with us in our wandering and our wondering.
The 23rd psalm reminds us we are never alone. We are eternally connected to God, to one another, to all of creation.
It also speaks of the tension that seems to be an inherent part of our human condition - the desire to seek more than what we’ve already been given. “The Lord is my shepherd,” the psalmist proclaims, “I shall not want.”
God should be enough for us. Being guided and protected and lovingly nudged by the Holy One should fill us. But we, like sheep, go astray. We chase after more: nicer things, ease and comfort, disposable this and that.
The Rev. Howell wisely notices that if God is the shepherd and we are sheep then perhaps one of our characteristics is that, like sheep, we have a tendency to nibble ourselves lost. [3] Sheep will nibble a bit of grass here, a bit of grass there - unaware of the world as it spins around them. And before you know it - poof - they have wandered off and are lost.
We have a tendency to do the same. We wake up each day and step back onto the treadmill of 21st century USAmerican life. Earn-spend. Earn-spend. Produce-consume. Produce-consume. It’s like that iconic piece of art created by Barbara Kruger - “I shop, therefore I am” printed on the side of a shopping bag. [4]
And, of course, I’m not trying to suggest that we somehow try step off the treadmill completely. I mean, I don’t have my own farm, so I’m going to need to go to the grocery store in order to feed my family. I don’t have a loom, so I will need to buy clothing to wear. I mean, really, only a true radical would tell us to get completely off the grid and sell everything we own and give the proceeds to the poor.
Oh.
I’ve not yet found a way to do all of the hard things Jesus asks me to do. I’m not sure that I ever will.
And yet….there is something about that man of Nazareth who keeps calling to me and asking me, very seriously, to consider living differently. There is something about that Eternal Christ who bids me pay attention to the way my consumption affects people in far off places, and the water supply, and the little invisible creatures that live all around me. There is something about that Liberating Spirit that gives me pause on Earth Day and makes me wonder, “How can I just keep going on about my everyday life when the world, our home, is in such pain?”
The psalmist, no stranger to the challenges of being human and staring sin in the face, was also painfully aware of what it feels like to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. If we follow the psalmist on that journey through verdant fields and beside quiet streams, nibbling away as we go, eventually we return, always, to the One who is at the core of our being.
The final phrase in the psalm, “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long” uses the Hebrew word yashab: to sit, to dwell. Bible scholar Joel LeMon notes that yashab shares a root with shuv, which is that command to turn, to repent. [5] And so we are called to turn, to repent, to refocus our attention and energy on the One who is at the core of our being. We are called to sit and stay with the One who created the heavens and the earth and blessed it all and called it good.
This turning towards God again and again is difficult work. This turning towards God is what I think Wendell Berry was writing about when he wrote the poem I’m about to close with. Berry calls this turning - this shuv-ing - practicing resurrection.
Read the full text of Manifesto: The Mad Farmber Liberation Front here: https://www.context.org/iclib/ic30/berry/
[3] ibid
[5] Joel LeMon http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3646. Also http://www.abarim-publications.com/Dictionary/si/si-w-b.html#.WtjrDlpOmhA
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