St. Mark's Episcopal Church
First Sunday in Lent
February 25, 2007
God Our Home—Dwelling in the Shelter and the Shadow
During this season of Lent, I have chosen to preach each week using the Psalms as my text. I will admit to you that I have never done this before. I have always used the Gospel or one of the other lessons and largely used the Psalm to prove an existing point. Starting with the Psalms is a new experience, even though I have read them and continue to read them as part of the daily lectionary. Last week on Ash Wednesday, I began with Psalm 51. Today, we are considering Psalm 91. This Psalm is appointed for today because it is quoted in the Gospel reading from Luke.
Before going any further, listen again to the first few verses of the Psalm:
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High,
Abides under the shadow of the Almighty.
He shall say to the Lord, “You are my refuge and my stronghold,
My God in whom I put my trust.”
The Psalm then continues to list various dangers that life brings and ends with the affirmation that God will answer when we call on him.
There are some obvious questions that arise from this Psalm, for example: If God is our refuge, if he has given us guardian angels and promises to rescue us, why do bad things still happen to us? If you will bear with me, I want to return to this question in a moment. First, I want to tease apart some of the words and phrases in this rich text.
Let’s begin with the words “dwell” and “abide.” We tend to see these fairly simplistically. To dwell in, to live in and to abide is to stay a while. The complex meaning behind these words reveals layers of meaning that enrich the metaphor. To dwell, in this context, literally means to sit down. In a world where many people still lived a nomadic existence, it was considered a luxury to sit down. It meant permanence and safety. It meant a kind of security that one might have where there were food, water and shelter. Those of you who are familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs see this as the first and most basic level of human need. All human beings long for these basic needs—enough to eat, shelter from the elements, clean water to drink. The millennium development goals that you have been reading about in the bulletin inserts refer to these as part of the goal we have for making our world a better place for all.
To abide means to “rest.” Again, this has deep layers of meaning. To rest implies safety, but it also means commitment to staying with the one you love. In the 15th chapter of the Gospel of John, this word is used liberally when Jesus is speaking: “Abide in me and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. Abide in my love.” The Gospel writer has deliberately taken this word with rich meaning to the Hebrew people and put it on the lips of Jesus to describe the new relationship we have with God. Here in Psalm 91 we see the beginnings of that new relationship.
Verse 9 continues with the metaphor of God being like a home: The word “dwelling” returns, along with the word “refuge.” This time, dwelling is actually the word for “tent.” Once again, we encounter a rich layer of meaning, for a tent was more than just a place of shelter. Tent for the Hebrew people also meant the structure in which the tablets of stone of the Ten Commandments was kept during the long 40 years of wilderness wandering. God had commanded them to have a special “tent,” called a tabernacle, in which God’s presence was evident. God’s glory was so bright, as we read in last week’s Old Testament lesson, that Moses’ face shone when he came out of the tent and had to be covered. Once again there is a powerful link to the Gospel of John: John Chapter 1, verse 14: “And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory….” The Greek word “lived” means “tabernacled or pitched his tent.” Thus John sees Jesus Christ as the living presence of the glory of God, living in our reality within our time and our space.
The word “refuge” has a special meaning to the Hebrew ear. From the earliest time of the settlement of the Promised Land there were established “cities of refuge.” These were places of sanctuary where those who were suspected of various crimes could go to escape revenge killing. The cities of refuge meant that the accused could be properly tried after evidence was presented, and not convicted in a moment of emotion. This was a radical concept back then, one we take for granted in our day and age. We all learn “innocent until proven guilty.” But in an age of “eye for eye” these cities of refuge were seen as part of God’s mercy and justice.
Moving on to verses 11-12, we are introduced to the idea of guardian angels! There are many references to angels in the Old Testament and particularly in the Psalms. Angels were seen by the Psalmist as a part of God’s army. They are not the souls of the departed but other heavenly beings created by God as his messengers and warriors. They arrive in various key points to assist or to bring messages. In our Gospels, angels appear in the story of Jesus’ birth, and in the account of the temptation of Jesus from the Gospel of Mark, angels come to minister to Jesus at the end of the 40 days. Note that in today’s Gospel, it is the devil who quotes scripture, trying to tempt Jesus to call upon the angels, as was his right as the Son of God! Today, angels are a strong part of our spiritual culture but can be trivialized and made too sweet. Here angels are a strong help, mysteriously guarding the ways of the Psalmist.
The Psalm ends with a
quote from God—or at least what the Psalmist imagines as God’s message:
Rescue, protection, deliverance, long life and salvation are promised to those
who love the Lord. If we just read it on the surface, this can ring hollow to
those who are suffering. It may even seen that they do not love God enough or
in the right way. Psalm 91 became popular after 9-11, even though there were so
many that perished that day in their innocence. For those fearing more attacks,
it became a prayer asking for deliverance. But what about those who were not
rescued? What about those who were not delivered? Did they not love God, too?
Certainly, they did. It was not a lack of love for God or a lack of the right kind of love that somehow brought death upon those in the Twin Towers or brought devastation to New Orleans or that brings sorrow and pain in our lives. Those who make this conclusion from the Psalm have not done the careful study of words and phrases that we have completed today. Look carefully. The Psalmist does not ever say that bad things won’t happen. In fact, there is a veritable litany of troubles, especially in verses 3-8, which were omitted to make the Psalm a little shorter for use in worship services: deadly pestilence, terror of night, arrow by day, thousands falling. Instead the Psalm is about where we dwell, where we sit and abide. This is like Jesus’ words: “where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” This has to do with God as our home, God as the place we feel loved, cared for and accepted. This has to do with a choice on our part to sit down in God’s presence, to slow down to hear God’s word, to feast at God’s table, to spend time with God’s people. Ultimately for Christians, God’s shelter—God’s tent—is Jesus Christ. By giving his life on the cross for us, Jesus has made boundaries for the power of sin in our lives. It cannot ultimately conquer us, even though we are still in the battle. Through baptism, we have traveled through the shadow of death, and we now live for Christ and his ways.
Thus, when trouble comes, we are already at home with God. Trouble will knock at the door, it will even come in and tear off the roof or flood the floors. But the home in which we dwell is secure and safe—not out of our own efforts but because we look at God, not at the trouble, as the source of truth and light. As Christians, we are invited to react quite differently to trouble than is truly natural. Instead of instinctively seeking shelter and then striking out at those we think are the enemy, we are invited to shelter in God and extend the hand of peace. We are asked to see the other as a child of God, redeemed by the same blood that Christ shed for us. And when it seems that life has overwhelmed us and that hope is almost gone, we are asked to reach out into the darkness—the shadow—of God and continue to love. We do not do this alone but in the company of the people of the church—those who are the living out of the body of Christ—the tabernacle and tenting of God. They are our refuge as well when we are in trouble; they become our angels of deliverance. It is with these things in mind that we can summon our resources when trouble and danger strike, when sorrow or grief come, when we see injustice and prejudice. For ultimately, this Psalm does not let us rest secure behind closed doors of our own making, but sends us out on the dangerous journey of life, with the assurance that our true home, our shelter and refuge, travels with us in the person of Jesus Christ, our Lord.