Text: Psalm 62:5-12
One of the challenges for pastors is to preach with some sense of balance. Over the seven years I have served as your pastor, I have preached an average of about 45 sermons a year. I have printed and posted on the Internet about 270 of those sermons. I use the lectionary most of the time, and it gives me four passages per Sunday on a three-year cycle. I almost always choose one of those four for the text for the day.
As I looked back over those 270 sermons I found that 200 have been from the New Testament and 70 from the Old Testament. Obviously, I like preaching on the New Testament better than the Old Testament, apparently about three times as much. But today I have once again chosen the Psalm in an effort to balance my preaching.
One of the difficulties of preaching from the Psalms is that there are so many themes in each text. Sometimes every verse will bring a different topic. But in the New Testament, it seems that I am usually preaching a narrative passage that is more likely to have one focus.
I wanted to preach about six topics from our passage today, but have settled on just three.
1) My soul waits in silence
The first has to do with noise, or the lack of it. Psalm 62:5 says, "For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him."
Ours is a noisy culture. Our modern world is filled with noise; some call it noise pollution. The Noise Pollution Clearinghouse at www.nonoise.org says that "the word 'noise' is derived from the Latin word 'nausea,' meaning seasickness. Noise is among the most pervasive pollutants today. Noise from road traffic, jet planes, jet skis, garbage trucks, construction equipment, manufacturing processes, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and boom boxes, to name a few, are among the audible litter that are routinely broadcast into the air.
They argue, "Noise negatively affects human health and well-being. Problems related to noise include hearing loss, stress, high blood pressure, sleep loss, distraction and lost productivity, and a general reduction in the quality of life and opportunities for tranquility…"
On the page marked "Quitenet," I found a variety of anti-noise groups to join, including these:
(BLAST) -Ban Leafblowers And Save our Town
(HORN) - Halt Outragous Railroad Noise
(ROAR) - Residents Opposed to Airport Racket
I thought those were clever titles, and perhaps we should join one of them. But I have made up a couple of other anti-noise groups that we could join.
We need to join the BS & C group, which stands for "Be Still and Cool." This phrase comes from a famous Quaker scholar.
The Quakers are known for long periods of silence in their worship services. It is not unusual for the congregation to sit silently for 30 minutes or an hour, and then maybe someone will be inspired to stand and say a few words.
The Quakers are a wonderfully quite people. They have a great phrase which describes what we should do when we come to worship. They call it "centering down."
Ed Cone writes a weekly column for the Greensboro News Record. In a recent column he reflected on the fact that his great-grandfather Cone used regularly to row himself to the center of a lake and just sit in the boat.
He says, "Centering down, the Quakers call it, reaching a quiet core of your self, and it is all the more essential today in a culture that has lost its appreciation for silence and gentle ambient sounds. The boom-box on the beach that drowns out the waves, the iPod carried on a run around the park, the cell phone required for any car trip longer than five minutes -- it's as if people are afraid to be alone with themselves."
(http://radio.weblogs.com/0107946/stories/2005/08/14/howCanIMissYouIfYouWontGoAway.html, downloaded 1/21/2006)
The well-known Quaker, George Fox, used to say, "Carry some quiet around inside (you). Be still and cool in (your) own mind and spirit… and then (you) will feel the principle of God to turn (your) mind to the Lord from whence cometh life; whereby (you) may receive the strength and power to allay all storms and tempests."
I love that appeal for the quite within us. We do need to be still and cool.
Another group we might join is the MGM group, which stands for "Meet God in the Morning." An anonymous poem with wonderful sailing imagery goes this way:
I met God in the morning,
When my day was at its best
And His presence came like sunrise,
Like a glory in my breast.
All day long the Presence lingered;
All day long He stayed with me;
And we sailed in perfect calmness
O’er a very troubled sea.
Other ships were blown and battered,
Other ships were sore distressed,
But the winds that seemed to drive them
Brought to us a peace and rest.
Then I thought of other mornings,
With a keen remorse of mind.
When I too had loosed the moorings
With the Presence left behind.
So, I think I know the secret,
Learned from many a troubled way;
You must seek Him in the morning
If you want Him through the day.
(I Met God in the Morning, Author Unknown)
I love that imagery of casting off the moorings. It's as if we are in a sailboat docked in the harbor at the beginning of each day. We start by casting off our moorings. We need to get the presence of God with us first, then God will ride with us through the storms of the day. All of us need to find that quiet calm within us.
Sometimes our relationship with God is so cluttered with words that I think may think our prayers are noise pollution because we throw so many words at God. The Psalmist says, "For God alone my soul waits in silence."
A second phrase I really like from this Psalm comes from verse 6 which says, "He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken." I love this imagery of not being shaken. Aren't there those times in life when our cage gets rattled and we are shaken.
In 1936, a movie was made of the Broadway play "The Green Pastures." The movie, with an all-black cast, would probably be politically incorrect today.
The movie tells the story of how God first sent Moses and then the prophets to call his people back to him, and, when all else fails, sends his Son to share their suffering. All the angels grow exasperated with the rebellion of humankind. Time and time again in the play Gabriel wants to blow his horn and bring it all to an end. Gabriel repeatedly implores God, "Now Lord, can I blow the trumpet now?" But each time God holds out in patience. Finally, one of the angels watching the chaos on earth exclaims, "Everything nailed down is coming loose!" Yet still God would not give up.
Did you ever feel that way - that everything nailed down was coming loose? Did you ever feel that a seismic event had shaken your world beyond recognition? The Bible provides hope for us in just such times as that, for the Bible often speaks to people facing cataclysmic events.
Biblical writers were fascinated by earthquakes, and referred to them often to make their point. An earthquake is a good image for cataclysmic times when "everything nailed down is coming loose." Earthquakes threaten our assumptions about the stability of life. We like to think of earth as rock solid, but sometimes the earth moves. Sometimes when people fear flying on a plane, they resort to the ancient Latin by saying, "Just get me back to terra firma." We expect the ground to be firm. We want our buildings tied to the bedrock because our foundations need to tie to something that won't move.
We are easily lured into thinking the same about our lives. We expect stability. We expect our lives to be "rock solid," but then something traumatic happens and "everything nailed down is coming loose."
What do you do when "everything nailed down is coming loose?" Isaiah says, "Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats. But my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended" (Isaiah 51:6).
At another place in Isaiah, we read, "For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the LORD, who has compassion on you" (Isaiah 54:10).
When everything nailed down is coming loose, we find our hope and comfort in God. As the Psalmist said, "He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken."
One last phrase from the text comes from verse 8, "Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us."
The Bible often talks about the importance of confession and talking to God. There are those times when we need to pour out our hearts to God. God is big enough to hear and accept whatever we have to say. When we pour out our hearts we will find refuge.
As you well know, I love Psalm 107 because it is a sailing Psalm. It says, "Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the mighty waters; they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their calamity; they reeled and staggered like drunkards, and were at their wits’ end. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind. Let them extol him in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders."
Have you ever been staggering at your wits end when the storms of life are tossing you back and forth? What do we do? We cry to the Lord in our trouble, and God brings us to a place of refuge.
Look up refuge in the dictionary and you will find it means a shelter or protection from danger or difficulty. The Psalms are filled with words for encouragement for us.
Listen to these verses again:
"For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him."
"He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken."
"Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us."