Who is Like our God (Psalm 113)

Psalm 113

Psalms 113-118 were ordained by the prophets and Torah scholars to be recited as a unit on special holy days. These are ‘Hallel’ Psalms.  According to tradition, as the reader reads the Psalm, when he or she comes to a command to praise the Lord, the gathered worshipers respond “Hallelujah!”  We will read the first of these Hallel Psalms with the congregation responding “Hallelujah!  Amen!”  This will be the primary text for today’s sermon.

Leader: Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord;
    praise the name of the Lord.

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

² Blessed be the name of the Lord
    from this time on and forevermore.
³ From the rising of the sun to its setting
    the name of the Lord is to be praised.

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

⁴ The Lord is high above all nations,
    and his glory above the heavens.

⁵ Who is like the Lord our God,
    who is seated on high,
⁶ who looks far down
    on the heavens and the earth?

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

⁷ He raises the poor from the dust,
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
⁸ to make them sit with princes,
    with the princes of his people.

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

⁹ He gives the barren woman a home,
    making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord!

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

Who is Like Our God?  (Psalm 113)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, September 18, 2016

            Last week, we remembered the terrorist attacks of 9-11-2001, looking at them from the perspective of the prophet Jeremiah.  Jeremiah saw God through it all.  Take the emotions, the intensity, the horror of that day; take all of it and imagine it as a still photograph. 

Now, fast forward to 2016.  Maybe the still photograph is of police cars and ambulances outside an Orlando night club.  Maybe it is of Syrian refugees standing waste deep in the surf as they desperately try to get their children onto the impossibly overcrowded boat headed to Greece.  Maybe the photo is of people protesting by taking a knee during the playing of our national anthem.  Others around them glare and gesture angrily. 

            Any of these images could serve as testimony of the pain, the chaos, and the fracturing of society today, September 18^th, 2016.  When Jeremiah sees that picture, he sees something else in the background.  Whatever photo you would choose, Jeremiah looks at your photo and sees someone; God is over the entire picture.  Beyond our picture, there is God.  There is far more going than we can see.  God is in the middle of it alongside those who are angry, those who hurt, and those who suffer.  God is with them. 

            The singer in Psalm 113 asks the question.  “Who is like our God?”  If Jeremiah is right and if we see what he sees, then God is in the middle of everything that happens.  God is never absent.  God is in the thick of it in the worst of places.  God does not cause agony, despair, and madness.  God comforts and helps people who suffer because of the chaos caused by other people - those who have rejected God. 

Who is the God who stays with us no matter what we do?

Who is our God who comforts us when all has gone wrong?

Who is our God who delivers us life everlasting?  Psalm 113 is a Hallel Psalm, a Hallelujah Psalm.  This Psalm shows us this God who is like no other. 

Together, we read the Psalm and raised our own “Hallelujah’s.” God is worthy of ours praise. 

As we went through the Psalm, did you notice the connection?  “Who is like our Lord, seated on high?”  “He raises the poor from the dust; and lifts the needed from the ash heap to make them sit with princes.  … He gives the barren woman a home” and gives her joy.”  How do we get from the Lord of entire universe sitting on high to the poor who are in the dust?[i]

Independence Day was a movie with awesome visuals.  An alien race came to earth in ships that were as massive as our planets’ largest cities.  These ships hovered over New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, London.  The most important people on the planet – presidents, generals, prime ministers scrambled to respond to the arrival of aliens.  Clearly these aliens were more advanced than us, so the most powerful among humans must be the first of us to respond to their arrival.

That’s a Hollywood movie that cashes in on our thirst for spectacular special effects and our tolerance for bad acting.  But what if God – the only God – showed up in an over-the-top visual fashion so that everyone on earth truly was shocked and awed?  If we were to meet that God, wouldn’t it be the president of the United States or the leaders of the nations on the UN Security Council at the front of the line to shake God’s hand?

Not in Psalm 113.  Unnoticed God moves past the white house, past the Pentagon, past where millionaires live.  God keeps stepping, past middle class neighborhoods, past working class communities, past farm houses, past the decent apartment complexes.  God finally stops where the poorest of people are – those barely surviving, wallowing in the dust. 

We sing Hallelujah because we think we can at least see how mighty, big, and awesome God is.  We praise God because God is so impressive.  But as Psalm 113 moves from stanza to stanza, we see the impressive God sitting down beside people who are stuck at the bottom.  Who is this God we worship?

Walter Bruggemann sees this God as he tracks the journey of the ancient Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land.[ii]  Israel had been enslaved in brutal conditions, doing the hard labor in the construction of the pyramids in Egypt.  They baked in the desert sun and collapsed under the whip of the Egyptian taskmaster.  Then Moses, under the power of God, led the people into the Sinai wilderness.

There they were an entire nation on foot moving through wastelands.  In their thirst and hunger, they despaired.  They longed to go back to Egypt, back to slavery. At least in slavery, they were fed. 

Who is our God? 

God responded by giving manna – bread from heaven.  God poured out water from the rock.  God heard their hungry cries and broad birds to eat – quail.  They had plenty; never too much, never not enough.  They thought the Egyptians were the source of food.  If they could settle down and build cities and plant gardens and pasture herds and flocks then the land would be the source of food and stability. 

We think America’s military and our local police department and fire department and hospital  is our source of security and safety and freedom.  Our soldiers and marines and sailors and airmen, members of the coast guard, our officer and firefighters – they are all courageous, worthy our respect and our support.  The should receive our appreciation and our love.  But they are not the source that gives what we need.  That’s God.  In Israel’s history, the wilderness was where they were closest to God.  All their needs were met by God’s touch.  They lived in completel reliance upon God. 

From a human standpoint, could any situation be more desperate?  Five hundred thousand people in the desert with no food and water: we call that a humanitarian crisis.  For God, it was an answer to a question.  Who is this God we worship?  He is Provider.  Who is like our God?  No one. 

Who is our source?  Who meets our needs?  Our employer?  Our parents?  Our government? 

Do you remember the story of Hagar in Genesis 16 and Genesis 21?  Abraham was told by God he would be the father of a great nation.  But when the promise came, Abraham was a very old man, his wife Sarah was very old, past childbearing years, and they had no children.  He had no children, but God said he would be the patriarch of a great nation.  Abraham did not trust that God was his source.  He thought natural procreation and childbearing, in other words the natural biological process, was his source.  So he and Sarah came up with a plan.  Their slave, Hagar, would be the surrogate mother. 

Abraham went into Hagar and she had a son, Ishmael.  That wasn’t God’s plan.  God was not the source of that plan.  All that did was bring tension between Abraham and Sarah, Sarah and Hagar, and between Ishmael and Isaac.  Despite what Abraham thought, God is the source and when he said barren Sarah have a son, she did. When we ignore God and try to work things out with our wits and power, we interfere with the picture God is painting.  We should contribute to the flourishing of the people around us, but in concert with what God’s doing and in recognition that we need God.  Abraham and Sarah ended up sending Hagar and her child out to the wilds of the desert.  Relying on themselves, the plan backfired.

God is the source of every blessing, of fulfillment, and of every good thing.  And this God was with Hagar when she was cast out.

Abraham and Sarah’s action of rejecting her robbed her of her humanity.  Hagar, you and your child are nothing, and nothing is easily discarded.  No, God responds.  As Hagar gave in to a wilderness death – death by heatstroke, starvation, and dehydration, God declared no to the forces that would rob her of her humanity.  Psalm 113, in showing why God is worthy of our ‘Hallelujah’s,’ says that God gives the barren woman a home.

Hagar had a son, but she turned away from him, too heartbroken to watch her child die (Gen. 21:16).  Barren?  No, she wasn’t barren, but she had accepted labels affixed to her.  You are nothing.  She accepted that.  You are a lost cause.  She accepted that.  How many people in our society are so broken, they accept that all they will ever be is broken?  How many here accept labels like mediocre, failure, worthless, or stupid, or something worse?  We have asked, ‘Who is our source?’  Here is a second question.  Who shapes our lives?

God heard Ishmael’s cry and said, “Do not be afraid, Hagar.”  She is alone in the wilderness forced to watch her child die.  Do not be afraid (Gen. 21:17).  She accepted the label ‘nothing,’ but God calls her by name.  God promises her a future.  Abraham and Sarah imposed an identity on her, but now God comes and Hagar finds that the most blessed place she can be is in the desert with nothing.  It is there that God comes to her.  Who is this one we call our God?  Hagar calls Him El-Roi, the God who sees (Gen. 16:13). 

Who shapes my life?  The voices of society?  A man my age, with education, should be earning so much money by now, I am told.  Advertising tells me I should be driving a certain type of car by this stage in my life.  A friend from college makes 1000’s of dollars more than me and cannot understand why I won’t travel with him on a vacation he knows I cannot afford.  Salary; professional success; comparisons; are these the things that determine who I am?  

What if I am right where I need to be because God had called me here and in answer to God’s call, I am forced to depend on God?  We should all strive to be responsible with finances.  We should be grateful for what we have (and I try to be grateful).  I recognize how good I have it.  But what if the reason you or I have it good our accomplishments, but rather our need?  In place of deepest need and greatest weakness, we meet God.  Nothing compares to walking hand-in-hand with God?  This is true whether today is the best of the best days or the worst of the worst. 

Who shapes my life?

Who is my source?

Who is this God that we worship? 

We move from “seated on high” in Psalm 113:5-6 to “raises the poor,” “lifts the needy,” and “gives the woman a home,” in verses 7-9.  Rich, filled, and secure, we can’t see our need for God and our praise may be heartfelt, but it falls short.  We meet God when we align with the needy by seeing and acknowledging our own need.  Aligning with the poor is recognition that we are just as poot.  Unless go to the wilderness and wander with Israel, unless we see how small and dependent we are, we can’t know God. 

Who is our God – the God who is bigger than history, the God who hovers over us, the God whose shadow makes insignificant institutions of power – who is this God?  This is the God who sees, the God who is our source, and the God who shapes our lives.  No one else tells us who we are.  Only God.

As we prepare to sing, I invite you to respond to the God who is our source and who shapes our lives.  Pray in silence.  Ask God to reveal your need.  Maybe you have a good job and are financially OK.  Still, in your life as in the life of all people there is poverty.  There is deep, deep need.  It could be relational.  It could be emotional.  It could be spiritual.  Maybe for some it is material.  Ask God to show you your deepest need. 

In silence we all pray and ask God to show us our deep need for Him.  You may come and kneel at the steps as you pray.  We’ll have people at the front and back if you’d like someone to pray with you.  After a few moments, we’ll sing, but you may keep praying as long as you need to.  Don’t let the moment pass. Whether you kneel at the steps, pray in your seat, or come to pray with one of us, turn to God.  Ask God to lead you to the desert, to wander to with Israel, to sit with Hagar, to sing the Hallel Psalm with the community.  Ask God to bring to that place, because that is where you will meet God.

AMEN

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[i] Elmer Martens (1981).  God’s Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology, Baker House Books (Grand Rapids), p.163.

[ii] Walter Brueggemann (1977).  The Land.  Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.25, 31, 33, 34.

Nelson Mandela and his Friend, the Prison Guard

Good Bfana by James Gregory is a book people in America sorely needs to read right now, the summer of 2016, as racial tension burns in our country.  I recently reviewed The Autobiography Malcolm X.  In the 1950’ and early to mid 60’s, Malcolm went on a miraculous journey from hatred of all white people to hatred of evil and a desire for brotherhood of all men, whites included.  Something similar happens to James Gregory and Nelson Mandela as they spend the decades of the 70’s and 80’s together.

Gregory is the jailor.  Of course at the beginning of their time together, he is not Mandela’s personal warden and they certainly are not friends.  But things change.  The seeds were planted early in Gregory’s life.  They weren’t the only seeds planted.  In soil of his soul, Gregory had a love for people that disregarded color.  This goes back to his earliest childhood.  Also from his childhood and from his formal education apartheid and hatred was planted in him.  In fact, by the time he became a guard in the prison system, he hated most people.  Relationships, real, deep relationships, seemed to be missing in his life.

As a cold, hardened, relationship averse man, prison guard seemed to be in the perfect job for him.  He was the kind of tough guy that could keep rowdy prisoners in line.  What changed?  This tough cuss was faired minded, and when he discovered his famous prisoner, Nelson Mandela, was a good man, a fair man, and not a terrorist, his perspective changed.  The two formed, unintentionally at first, a trust that evolved into a friendship. 

I am not spoiling anything here.  The subtitle is ‘Nelson Mandela – My Prisoner, My Friend.’  Knowing the ending doesn’t spoil the story.  In fact, what’s so amazing for me is that I was amazed even though I knew the ending.  I was in tears because I saw that even in Apartheid South Africa, love is more powerful than hate.  I believe God was in the friendship of the guard and the political prisoner.

And I believe God can bring people together in America today.  Some black people, with reason, totally fear the police and by extension ‘the system.’  Some white people, not wanting to face their own prejudice, reject the notion that they benefit from the system.  They – we (I am as white as they come) – do.  In 2016 America, white people, educated people, and wealthy (read middle class) people benefit from privileges others lack.  But, I think God can bring us together in love.

God will work through programs and protests and government legislation.  God will work through movements and interfaith worship services and black-white gatherings.  But more than any of these macro-level efforts, God will work through relationships.  When individuals step beyond themselves and befriend individuals totally different than themselves, totally ‘other,’ God will reform the hearts of those individuals.  And that’s where a change in society will rise up, in individual hearts.

“Saved in the Wilderness” (Exodus 16:2-16)

Once upon our time, there is a man named Joe.

Twenty-nine-year-old Joe, an only child, is going through his parents’ financial records. Or, more accurately, he’s trying to read what is left of those records. He’s a week into sifting through materials from the bank, documents from the lawyer, reports from the police and fire department.

Five years ago, Joe finished law school and got married. He started his job with the firm that represents nonprofit organizations, mostly those that advocate for environmental causes. Four years ago, Joe’s young marriage failed – infidelity on the part of both spouses. Joe cranked up the partying for a while. Booze carried him through the depression, but only so far. It stopped working. Then, booze made the depression worse.

Hitting what he thought was rock-bottom, Joe three years ago accepted a friend’s invitation to church and within a few months, accepted Christ. His life truly turned around. He was even awarded greater responsibility at the firm and nice pay raise. Life was looking up.

Then, one of the major clients went out of business. Less lawyers were needed and a few months ago, Joe was let go. The search for new employment has been fruitless.

Last week, Joe’s parents were killed in a house fire. It is still unclear what happened, but it is entirely possible that medication both parents were taken played a role in them being unable to escape before they died. Now Joe has made the startling discovery that his parents had a lot more debt than money. He’s dealing with investigators who want to determine what happened. He’s dealing with creditors. He’s had to work with the funeral home and the attorneys who handled his parents’ will.

Joe feels utterly lost and completely alone.

I thought about beginning this morning with some word association. I would say, “Wilderness.” And you’d maybe shout out the first thoughts that came to mind. The campers and lovers-of-all-things-outdoors among us hear “wilderness,” and get excited. When can we go?? Others despise bugs and itchy, hot weather, and frosty cold nights in a tent with a sleeping bag that just isn’t quite warm enough. I say, “Wilderness,” and they say, “Next question.”

Or, I thought about opening up by saying, “Now imagine, without any preparation, you were dropped into a wilderness that is far, far from the nearest home or road. It’s so far out there, you have no idea which direction is civilization. What would you do?” And we would each write down our answers and share with the person on our left or on our right.

The problem with that illustration is it isn’t going to happen to you or to me. No one is going to take us out to the middle of nowhere with zero warning and then just leave us there. We can imagine what we might do in such a circumstance, but that imagining is unrelated to anything that will happen in our lives this week. It’s unrealistic.

Joe is not unrealistic. You can imagine being Joe. Many here don’t have to imagine. Sudden losses hit us, drastic life change, change that is not for the good. If you live a charmed life and haven’t dealt with sudden job loss or sudden relationship loss or unexpected financial trouble, you might think I have exaggerated Joe’s circumstance. If you suspect me of overplaying it, ask people in our church about their life circumstances. We’re not one large collection of people down in the dumps, but many here have had to and are traversing the desert of pain, loss, disappointment, and crippling uncertainty.

If you haven’t been lost in the desert, it is something that is probably going to happen. Don’t seek out calamity. Just know that it hits everyone.

What do we do in the desert, with nowhere to turn?

Exodus reads, “The whole congregation complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness” (16:2).

I suggested in my hypothetical that we might imagine being taken so far into remote, wild barren lands that wouldn’t even know the direction of civilization. We wouldn’t know which way to walk for the nearest road. The Hebrews we meet in Exodus were in a wilderness where there were no roads in any direction. They had to make there way and they had no idea how to do that.

The wilderness was a place where they were lost. The wilderness was a place where they had no direction. And they had no provisions. And no ability to provide for themselves. They were powerless. They found themselves at the mercy of nature, and nature, as hurricanes and earthquakes and famines show us, is merciless. The desert wilderness was a place void of hope. In scripture, the ocean depths embody abyss – a bottomless, black chaos that threatens to completely swallow a small, insignificant speck that is the human being.

If the ocean fills the man or women with the dread, the ultimate fear of annihilation, the desert robs the person of hope. The desert is a wasteland where there is nothing, and the person is forgotten. Loss, abandonment, isolation, alienation from human touch and human society; in the ocean we are swallowed; in the desert forgotten. Either way, we become nothing, cutoff from humanity and worse, cutoff from God.

Instead of literally trying to imagine how to survive the harshness of the desert the way an explorer or army ranger might survive imagine powerlessness and hopelessness. When reading Exodus and trying to enter the story, we submit the story of our lives to this Biblical epic, and in doing so, through Exodus, God speaks into our journeys. To connect with Exodus, we don’t put ourselves in the desert. We call to mind our own experiences of powerlessness, abandonment, dependency, and frustrating loss; frustration that brings us to tears because we know we cannot do anything. That’s the wilderness.

It clouds our vision. Why was Israel in the desert? Through Moses, God led them there. Why did God lead them there? In agony, they cried out to God. Why did they cry out to God? In Egypt, the monarch, Pharaoh was cruel. He killed the Hebrew boy babies. He made the people slaves. He made their labors impossible – making bricks without straw. He had his overseers drive the Hebrews with the whip. They fell into a less than human existence and cried out to God and God led them out from that horrid situation.

Now, 2½ into their desert sojourn, they follow God’s Moses, and they feel the massive wilderness engulf them, and their anxieties and their aching bellies create a fiction of where they came from. They forget the Egyptian whip. They forget the murderous evil of Pharaoh. They only remember that Pharaoh wanted his slaves fed, so they could work. “In Egypt, we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread. You have brought us out into this wilderness to kill the whole assembly with hunger” (16:3). They are shouting at Moses and Aaron. They have completely forgotten God and are instead turning full force against God’s representatives, and they shout words that are absolute idiocy. They wilderness does that. It makes us go mad.

The same happens in life when stress builds. It becomes all we can see. We feel totally trapped – maybe it is financial stress. The treadmill is (1) go to work; (2) pay bills and expenses that exceed what came in on the paycheck; (3) dig into savings and watch that number decline; (4) repeat. This trap is a hopeless cycle and we lose the ability to see anything else in life. We cannot think creatively about ways to altar life so we aren’t caught in this rut. We cannot see the blessings that are in life and are obvious to those who look into our lives on the outside. We just feel lost, we then lose sight of God, and then we say and believe the absurd.

What did Jesus think of the wilderness? “In the morning, while it was still very dark, [Jesus] got up and went to a deserted place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). Oh? Is the desert as awful as we’ve made it sound? Jesus proactively sought out the desert, the deserted place. Why would he do that? “Now when Jesus heard this [the news of the death of John the Baptist], he withdrew … in a boat to a deserted place by himself” (Matthew 14:13). In the instance from Mark, Jesus tried to slip away in the pre-dawn darkness. He fled the company of others and sought the solitary isolation of the desert. In the example from Matthew 14, grieving for the loss of his friend John, He got in a boat and sailed away so others couldn’t follow him. Jesus wanted to be alone, so he went to desert places.

We’ve cited the dangers and the potential for spiritual evil in the desert, but throughout the Old and New Testaments, the desert is also where we meet God. In fact, sometimes God leads his people out to the wastelands because they aren’t really wastelands at all. The barrenness and the deathly quiet and the isolation – only there will God be heard.

In fact, Moses says to the complaining people, “You shall know that it was God who brought you out of Egypt.” That is repeated twice in the passage. In the desert, the people would know the power of God.

God tells Moses, “I have heard the complaining” (16:12). God hears Joe as Joe wallows in all his misery. When marriages die, God hears us. When our loved ones are faced with cancer, God hears. In times of job loss, financial uncertainty, depression, and unexpected calamity. God hears. It’s not wrong to cry out to him. There’s an entire Old Testament book called Lamentations. The prayer of complaint to God is sanctioned by scripture. In dire straits, what else should we do? We cry out, and God hears.

“You shall know.” “I have heard.” Moses also tells the people, “You shall see the glory of the Lord.” There’s something about God we cannot see until we are in the spiritual wandering places where it seems despair, hunger, solitude, and pain are in abundance, and hope and sustenance and safety cannot be found. There are aspects of God we need and we can only see God in that saving way when we journey into the desert. That’s where God shows up.

He said to Moses, “I will text Israel.” God provides quail meat and manna bread, and God imposes some rules on how these gifts of his grace are to be used. Only use what you need for today. The day before Sabbath, gather extra, and bake the manna and boil the meat so you can rest on Sabbath as God rests. God tests to see if his people will embrace a life of dependence on Him.

He didn’t save them from Egypt for the sake of freedom. He saved them so they would be a holy people, called out by God to be a nation of priests. Israel was saved to be in service to God that God’s holiness and love and grace and salvation would be known throughout the world.

As Christians, we aren’t saved so we’ll get to Heaven. We aren’t saved so we’ll be happy. We aren’t saved so we will have financial and material success and prosperity and perfect health. We are saved to be God’s people sharing the gospel of salvation in the world. We experience the desert in order we understand our absolute need for God. With that understanding, we receive Jesus and the forgiveness he offers, and then we live as dependent people. We depend on God every day for spiritual truth and for spiritual feeding. In the desert, God tests to see if we will truly depend on Him, or as soon as we feel confident, will we depend on our own strength instead of his grace?

What happened to Jesus? He went into the desert and ate nothing for 40 days. For forty days, he lived off prayer and nothing else – no shelter, no food. Then he was tested by the temptations of Satan.

Obviously the wilderness is many things. It is where we are lost and without hope. It is where God hears us and we know God and see God’s glory. And it is a place where God tests those who would be his people. Disciples are tested in desert times of life.

The hungry Israelites gathered before Moses and Aaron and the blinding glory of God look at the flaky white substance and ask and simple and logical question. Man hu in the Hebrew. “What is it?” That Hebrew phrase Man hu, that natural question from hungry people, “what is it,” is translated into English ‘Manna.’ What is this blessing God has given to satisfy our hunger and help us know we can live in complete dependence on him?

They had never seen this ‘bread from Heaven.’ Upon eating it, they discovered it tasted like honey-soaked wafers, a creamy, sweet taste. Where was God leading them? The land of milk and honey? Ah in there more desperate wilderness time, God gives a foretaste of all his promises of abundant blessing – blessing given to those who live in complete dependence on him.

What’s the path to hope, the path that leads us out of the desert wilderness of fear and despair and into salvation? Jesus. He said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). In Jesus God, hears us as we cry out from the pain of our sin. In Jesus, we know God. In Jesus, we see God’s glory. He is our salvation in the wilderness, our manna. What is it? It is Jesus.

AMEN