Proper 25 / Ordinary Time 30
Preaching
Hear My Voice
Preaching The Lectionary Psalms for Cycles A, B, C
Object:
Psalm 90 is a prayer, expressing gratitude for God's abiding presence in the face of the transient and frail nature of human life. Any human life, no matter how noble or helpful or wise, is terminal. Time marches on, and generations come and go. Some people have more years than others but none have life unending -- not in this existence, anyway. The psalmist does not bemoan that fact. Instead, he prays that in this lifetime, we will gain the wisdom to value the days we have and the fact that God is with us in them.
One stark difference between God and us is that the Lord is eternal and we are mortal. H. Richard Niebuhr once wrote that "we are in the grip of power that neither asks our consent before [he] brings us into existence nor asks our agreement to continue us in being beyond our physical death."
The wisdom the psalmist prayed for is the clarity to see ourselves rightly in relationship to the eternal Creator. It is to acknowledge joyously, not grudgingly, that we did not make ourselves, but are contingent on the one who grants us life. Then wisdom calls us to trust God, to praise God, to seek God's will.
It may seem obvious to say that God is eternal and we are not, but things are not quite that simple. Think how, in our sense of loneliness in the world, we have sought another human being whom we believe can free us from our loneliness. This is the way it often is when we fall in love. At that moment we may have the notion that this other person can meet our needs -- for love, for romance, for companionship. "Now I'll never be lonely again," we may say to ourselves. "Never" is a very long time, and in placing another person in the position of banishing our aloneness forever, we act as though we are to live forever. Because we are mortal, we cannot escape loneliness forever. Only an immortal can do that. The psalmist was wise enough to know that the only permanent anchor for the solitary individual is in God, who is immortal. For, in attempting to defend ourselves against what is a part of every human existence -- aloneness -- without including God, is to act as if we were divine ourselves.
"Every time we build new defenses to protect our life as inalienable property, we find ourselves caught in the tenacious illusion of immortality," says the late priest/writer Henri Nouwen (Reaching Out [Doubleday, 1975], p. 116). Whenever we give eternal value to things -- either things we are or the things we own -- we have forgotten that we are only here temporarily.
Human togetherness, which does briefly allay some loneliness, is not an ultimate solution. The loneliness of existence is a seed God has planted within us to drive us to look beyond ourselves, to God.
The psalmist tells us that while our relatively short existence here on earth is extremely valuable to us, it is not everything. God is all in all. When we live as though our lives are even more important than God's existence, we behave as though we were designed to live forever right here.
-- S. P.
One stark difference between God and us is that the Lord is eternal and we are mortal. H. Richard Niebuhr once wrote that "we are in the grip of power that neither asks our consent before [he] brings us into existence nor asks our agreement to continue us in being beyond our physical death."
The wisdom the psalmist prayed for is the clarity to see ourselves rightly in relationship to the eternal Creator. It is to acknowledge joyously, not grudgingly, that we did not make ourselves, but are contingent on the one who grants us life. Then wisdom calls us to trust God, to praise God, to seek God's will.
It may seem obvious to say that God is eternal and we are not, but things are not quite that simple. Think how, in our sense of loneliness in the world, we have sought another human being whom we believe can free us from our loneliness. This is the way it often is when we fall in love. At that moment we may have the notion that this other person can meet our needs -- for love, for romance, for companionship. "Now I'll never be lonely again," we may say to ourselves. "Never" is a very long time, and in placing another person in the position of banishing our aloneness forever, we act as though we are to live forever. Because we are mortal, we cannot escape loneliness forever. Only an immortal can do that. The psalmist was wise enough to know that the only permanent anchor for the solitary individual is in God, who is immortal. For, in attempting to defend ourselves against what is a part of every human existence -- aloneness -- without including God, is to act as if we were divine ourselves.
"Every time we build new defenses to protect our life as inalienable property, we find ourselves caught in the tenacious illusion of immortality," says the late priest/writer Henri Nouwen (Reaching Out [Doubleday, 1975], p. 116). Whenever we give eternal value to things -- either things we are or the things we own -- we have forgotten that we are only here temporarily.
Human togetherness, which does briefly allay some loneliness, is not an ultimate solution. The loneliness of existence is a seed God has planted within us to drive us to look beyond ourselves, to God.
The psalmist tells us that while our relatively short existence here on earth is extremely valuable to us, it is not everything. God is all in all. When we live as though our lives are even more important than God's existence, we behave as though we were designed to live forever right here.
-- S. P.
