Third Sunday after Pentecost

Today's text is Psalm 100, read by Farris Varner. This morning's sermon was delivered by Rev. Dr. Phil Snider.

Lead Pastor: Rev. Dr. Phil Snider (he/him)

Associate Pastor: Rev. Emily Bowen-Marler (she/her)

Youth Director: Paije Luth (she/her)

Children’s Church Coordinator: Valerie Bush (she/her)

Executive Assistant: Wacey Rivale (she/her)

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Scripture is from Psalm 100. Make a joyful noise to the eternal one, all the earth. Serve the God who sees with gladness. Come into her presence with singing. Know that the creator of all God. It is she who made us, and we are hers. We are her people, and the sheep of her pasture. Enter her gates with thanksgiving and her counts with praise. Give thanks to the majestic one and bless her name. For the loving God is good, her steadfast love endures forever, and her faithfulness is to all generations. May we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Every time I hear Psalm 100 read in worship service, and this is the passage that Ferris read from a few minutes ago, I think back to a story shared by one of my favorite preachers. His name is Tony Campolo. He talks about a time when he was speaking at a festival, and a couple of Pentecostal Christians came to hear him speak, and they really liked what he had to say. And when they heard that he was going to be preaching at a local church on the following Sunday, they made plans to attend. Now, what they didn't know is that he was scheduled to speak in a really formal, traditional service. Like one of those churches where, like on an Easter Sunday morning, uh the worship leader says, Christ has risen, hallelujah! And the response is hallelujah. Christ is risen indeed. And on this particular Sunday morning, when these Pentecostal Christians situated themselves up in the balcony, ready for the sermon, the worship leader made the mistake of quoting from Psalm 100. The worship leader said, Let us make a joyful noise unto the Lord. At which point the Pentecostal Christians up in the balcony said, Hallelujah! Amen. Glory to God. And everybody's like, What's going on? They were aghast. They didn't expect anybody to actually do it. You know, it makes me it makes me think about a lot of things related to worship style and convention and all that kind of stuff. But in relationship to Psalm 100, um, this is a passage that goes back to the times whenever the ancient Jewish folks would have a chance to make a pilgrimage to visit the temple. And they would sing songs of praise. They would dance on the way as they as, and then they would make it through the gates. This was a grand moment in the lives of the ancient Hebrew people. Some of them waited their whole lives to be able to make this journey. The temple was a center of worship. It was believed that God's presence was located in the Holy of Holies in the temple, this special sacred place. Of course, the ancient Jewish people also believed that God's presence could not be contained to the temple or to any building made by human hands. There are other psalms that talk about the ways that there is nowhere you can go to flee or to hide from God's presence. Even the depths of Sheol, the underworld, what sometimes gets translated as hell. The psalmist says that you you can't even go to the depths of Sheol without encountering God's presence. There's a beautiful way that the ancient Jewish people will talk about encountering God as the holy of holies in and through religious observances. But also sometimes you encounter the holy, you encounter what deeply moves you beyond the confines of any particular religious setting. Sometimes outside the context of a temple, a worship service, or a book. I just had a chance to visit Hawaii on vacation. Um, and and standing on that shoreline, staring out into the ocean, it was majestic, it was beautiful, it was stunning, it was breathtaking. I felt a bit of what the philosophers of religion call the mysterium tremendum, the tremendous mystery, something so beautiful, wondrous, profound that it captures you, it holds you, even as you don't have the words to describe all that you feel, all that you're experiencing. It's such a mystery, it's such a gift. And people tend to associate feelings of wonder and beauty and awe with the holy, and rightly so. When we run up against the kinds of things that that we can't fully express or describe, but which hold us. The kinds of things that make us feel beauty and wonder and awe, to feel something beyond ourselves, something transcendent. It feels like a pure gift. And some of us believe in God, others of us do not. We have different beliefs of God, all that kind of thing. But sometimes, whether we believe in God or not, we run up against the beauty and the wonder for that which we have no words for, but it only feels like a gift, the mysterium, tremendoum, the tremendous mystery. And like those ancient Hebrew people, it can lead us to sing songs of thanksgiving, to be lost in wonder and love and in praise. And Psalm 100 also invites us to reflect on the importance of centering the holy in our lives. Even as we have different understandings of God, different understandings of the holy, to be able to root ourselves, to ground ourselves in the spirit of love that transcends all boundaries, that transcends all religions, that transcends all books, to be able to connect with that spirit of love, to be able to ground ourselves in it, is one of the most sacred, precious gifts of all. One of my very favorite authors is named Andrew Root. He shares a story about a time when he was at church and a visiting preacher told a story about the power of ritual, but ritual that took place outside of the church, but ritual that helps us get through the hardest times in our lives. The preacher explained that he knew a man who was born in a small Midwestern town not long after the turn of the 20th century, so around a hundred years ago. This man came into the world with great struggle, and he bore the marks of that struggle on his body. His face was deformed. On seeing him, his parents rejected him. They didn't offer him the care or the love that he needed, but they did feel an obligation to care in some way for this boy, so they decided to hire someone else to do it. They hired a young girl who was a daughter of immigrants, herself only around 12 years of age, to take on the task of caring for their child. Now, this young girl, feeling lonely and lost in a new world, she embraced this baby. For the next five years, this young girl, really nearly a child herself, she raised this baby, showering him with love, becoming a mother to him, looking in his eyes, sharing with him tenderness, whispering to him that she saw him, that he was beautiful, and that she loved what others said was broken about him. She shared love and care with this child who'd been neglected. And since first picking him up, she sang to him dozens of times each day the same refrain over and over. And as he grew, so did their connection. But you might recall in the early 1900s, there were a lot of harsh, stark, cold institutions that were built. And the parents ended up making the decision that it made more financial sense to institutionalize their child than to pay the girl to care for him. And as if losing her own child, this young girl grieved. She was nearly a woman now. And holding the now five-year-old to her chest, she sang her refrain for the last time. Remembering all of the times of caring for him, of sharing in the wonders of who he was, she said goodbye. And years went by. The child grew into a boy and later into a young man. All in the harsh institutional obsession of early 20th-century asylums, suffering under the assumption that because his face did not look like everyone else's, he was not of value. At some point along the way, he was told the name of the girl who had cared for him. And while the memories of her care all but disappeared, buried under the days past and suffering endured, he could soon remember only her name. The pressure of being a cast off had taken away everything else. And when his 18th birthday came around, he had a plan. No longer could they keep him in the asylum. He was now of age to check himself out, to take destiny into his own hands. So he planned to check himself out, to really check himself out of life. He walked up the tallest hill he could find, carrying in his pocket all the pills that he'd been saving up, preparing for this moment. As he sat atop the hill, working up the final nerve to swallow the pills, he felt unwanted and unlovable. Why, God? He shouted. Why? Why have you hated me so much? Why have you not cared for me? I'll do you the favor. I'll end your disgust of me by ending my own misery. Why? As the echo of his shouted words died away, he took the pills into his hand. He readied himself to throw them down into the back of his throat. But suddenly he was stopped, interrupted by singing. Someone was behind him. He stood to find who it was. The voice was so clear and near. He heard this person singing.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

God's mercy is wide. God's love is deep. And you dear child already mercy is wide. God's love is deep. And you, dear child.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Wiping the tears from his face, his imminent dreadful ending interrupted by this song, he he searched for the voice. He saw no one, but he heard it again.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

God's love is deep and you dear child alts mercy is wide. God's love is deep and you, dear child alone.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

He looked all around on that hill and he was alone. Yet he also knew he was anything but alone. He put the pills back in his pocket and walked down the mountain. He had felt God's love. Still broken but moved to discover what this voice could mean, he later became a pastor, and over the next five decades, he would lead hundreds of people into their own contemplative moments of hearing the voice of God. But still, even into his 70s, he can make no sense of the singing voice that beckoned him back from death into life. As his life shifted into retirement and his later years, he again prepared himself for death, but this time from a very different perspective, this time with a deep appreciation for the blessings of life that he had encountered along the way. And by chance, due to the advent of new technologies, he got word that the name that he had carried so near his soul, the young girl who had been his only experience of care for nearly the first two decades of his life, she was still alive. And he had never tried to reconnect with her. He could remember nothing about her but her name, and he held her name near his heart like a sacred charm. And this man's wife was able to get in touch with this now woman who was in her 80s. And they made arrangements for her to come and visit. And she felt like a stranger until her eyes met his. The warmth of her face communicated something surpassing time and space. It was as if looking into her eyes awakened parts of him that he'd been accessing, but only at a deeply submerged level. Seeing her brought them to the surface, and as if he were five again, he felt the immediacy of her care, her joy, her gift, her love, that which sustained him and held him during those first years of his life. And as they sat together, they reminisced. She held his hand and told him that she had never felt in all her life more important than at that time. She had never felt more called into something beyond herself than to care for him as an infant and to embrace and share in his young life. And then, still holding his hand, with her other hand, she grabbed his elbow and said, Do you remember? Do you remember what I used to sing to you?

SPEAKER_00 17:39

He shook his head, and quietly, with her beautiful aged voice, she sang, God's mercy is wide. God's love is deep and you dear child. God's mercy is wide. God's love is deep and you.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Condemning people simply for who they are and for who they love. And so we have folks who hold this sign up to block out those voices of hatred. So that our LGBTQ beloveds, they can know that no matter how much hate people spew, and people are capable of spewing a lot of hate, but no matter how much hate people say, for folks to know that in God's eyes, they are loved beyond their wildest imagination. We stayed on the West Coast while on Hawaii in Wainai. I'd never been there. It was a gift, it was beautiful, it was breathtaking, it was stunning. All the things that people say about the beauty of Hawaii were absolutely true. Here's a picture of a site that we visited. Each day. I can't pronounce the words very well, but this is commonly referred to as the Dog Temple. And it's a short little walk from where we were staying. It's named after the legend of a dog who blessed those who were traveling upon the seas. There's a sculpture there that is of the dog, and it's named Traveling Companions. As the next picture shows, it's kind of a three-tiered area. And the last tier, the highest tier, it overlooks the sea. And as you can see in the next picture, if you're careful, you gotta be very careful, you can walk out and sit on these rocks and just take in the beauty of the sea. Now, by uh the third or fourth day, we picked out the perfect rock and we went to it every time. Gorgeous, beautiful gift. And one morning as we were sitting there, we were surprised to hear the sound of a conch that was being blown. We looked behind us, and on the upper tier, there were about 15 men standing side by side, all from the island. Now I could not understand the language that they were using, but I later learned that they were offering words of praise and gratitude, taking turns one person at a time, looking out upon the beauty of the sea, and embracing the new day and letting go of the past and the harms associated with it. We later learned it was a 12-step group. Folks who were fighting addiction, trying to recover. And in the morning they would gather for this sacred ritual, letting go of the past and embracing the new day. They would take turns giving thanks for this gift. You may call that place holy, you may call it religious, you may not. Because when it gets down to it, whether it's in a temple or a church, whether it's in providing food, drink, shelter for those who wouldn't have it, whether it's standing in front of the beauty of the ocean, when it gets down to it, life is about connecting with that sacred spirit of love that knows no boundaries, grounding ourselves in it, knowing that no matter what we go through, that sacred spirit of love will hold us and get us through.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

God's love is you, dear child of lust, God's mercy is wide, God's lovest and you, dear child already