Psalm 138
As I continue to move toward the age of forty-two, and as I look beyond that, I find myself taking inventory of certain things that I am very content to say will not happen before my last breath. Most of the things I’m quite glad to keep off of my “bucket list” involve great risks. So I can tell you with considerable peace of mind this morning that I’m not ever going to be a rock face climber. I do hope to go to one of those indoor rock wall gyms a couple more times. That’ll be enough. I have no intention of ever learning how to scale George Washington’s Mt. Rushmore face so I can place a rock-pick up his great nose!
I have rock climbing on the brain this morning because of a passage I read in Eugene Peterson’s rather intriguingly titled book, The Unnecessary Pastor. This well-known Presbyterian pastor and scholar has two sons who are both rock climbers. He writes about listening to them meticulously plan their ascents and about how this planning takes up as much time as the actual climbing. I can trust that this faithful father is greatly reassured in knowing all the tiniest safety details involved with such a potentially perilous sport.
One such key detail has to do with equipment called “pitons.” These are the small metal spikes with an eye for threading rope through that get hammered into small crevices of the rock face. They are the climber’s protection from rapid descent to death. As the reverend bluntly puts it, “Rock climbers who fail to put in protection have short climbing careers.”
Metaphorically speaking, what can we say these life-saving spikes have to do with our living faithfully? With appreciating what Psalm 138 has to sing to us?
Pastor Peterson writes, “Our pitons or ‘protection’ come as we remember and hold on to those times when we have experienced God's faithfulness in our lives. Every answered prayer, every victory, every storm that has been calmed by his presence is a piton which keeps us from falling, losing hope, or worse yet, losing our faith.”[i]
I fuse this devout insight with language from Psalm 138. As we carry on through life’s great adventure -- with its great, joyous peaks and its tough, often tragic, valleys – we do so placing our trust in God alone to faithfully “strengthen our soul.” Life is full of both celebrations and desolations. Ascents and descents. Is trust in God honestly your truest security measure through it all? Security as absolutely essential to your life adventure as those metal spikes rock climbers depend upon in order to complete their mission safely and celebrate life?
The Psalmist acknowledges that there are many false “gods” people place their trust in over and against the one God of biblical faith. In the Psalmist’s day, these were the deities of foreign cultures. To dance with them meant peril and impurity. The names and cultural identities of these are different today, but that they are unreliable when it comes to being fully present and trustworthy for us throughout our life adventure remains steadfastly true.
Having acknowledged the existence of other “gods,” the Psalmist then operatically sings praise to our God that is splendidly resilient. This faithful person had been through some very troubling life experience. We aren’t told what it was. I imagine it could have been anything a grave illness on through surviving an assassination plot. All we have in print is the honest report of this brother or sister having been divinely delivered through the midst of that trouble.
I think it’s good that the trouble is vague. When we read the Psalm, this lack of detail allows us to relate to being in the “midst of trouble” in our own personally relevant ways. Our troubles are at once universal and intimately unique. So too God’s soul strengthening is global yet also particular for each and every one of us. What we all have in common is the grateful, joyful proclamation that follows our faithfully concluding that God was very much present with us through all the fearful desperation.
To really sing along confidently with the Psalmist – and remember, the Psalms were originally like a hymnal -- we need to have a good understanding of what the ancient Israelite’s understood the “soul” to be.
Bible scholars teach us that the Hebrew word for “soul,” nephesh is not a body part but a full part of our body. It can be translated as referring to God’s breath within our complete body. So when the Psalmist sings of his or her soul being strengthened, we hear praise for God being totally and immediately present. Indeed, alive in every breath taken. It’s not strengthening just for one part of us that will one day return to our Creator. It is God very directly being part of and strengthening our daily living. The soul is not some part of us whose function we may not understand – like the appendix. It’s integrated into our whole self and thus more like God breathing air into our lungs.
Do we trust bodily breathing is what we most need to sustain our lives? Yes! So should we trust in God. We do not have a soul so much as we are a soul. We don’t have God as some part of us so much as we are in God.
Trusting in God’s faithfulness to you in the dramatic way that climbers trust their pitons to preserve them from death, in the way resiliently proclaimed by the Psalmist, means you trust God’s loving grace is circulating with your blood and breath through every moment of your life -- a faithful trust most especially grasped through perilous times.
One of my twelve year old daughter Anna’s favorite songs that I’ve written is called, “All Will Grow.” I asked her just a week or so ago what songs I should consider putting on a new CD. She immediately blurted out the title of this one. I was not expecting this, given that it is not as fun and funky as some others I write. This song, this contemporary Psalm, was written at the perilous feeling time when our family was at the onset of divorce. As it goes with my musical expression, it was prayer. The lyrics, melody, chords … all were my breathing with God, God breathing with me. Though she has never said so directly, I can tell it has helped and helps Anna breath as well … to be reminded that God has been present and will continue to present, that God’s love is steadfast and resilient.
Each stanza functions like one of those life-sustaining spikes I’ve been talking about. I’d like to share these words with you as a very personal example of how holding fast to God’s good, gracious presence has helped me not to lose hope, or as Eugene Peterson has said, “worse yet, faith.”
The song is metaphorically about fruit – specifically apples. At the time, I was deliberating within myself about God’s intention for marriage and where a failed marriage fits in with the narrative beginning of the Garden of Eden. I say deliberating with myself, but, as I’ve mentioned, also with God since God is present in every breath and thought. In the song’s three brief stanzas I sing the following words –
“So the apple has fallen, from the firm rooted tree. It has split apart, upon new ground / Four solid pieces, each precious in its own right, each holding seeds, for the future / New orchards will rise up, from healthy hearted parts. Many will be nourished, from this fallen fruit.”
The apple represents our family and the tree our firmly-rooted faith. The apple fell and split apart … but on new ground where each piece was still precious and part of new, nourishing future growth. The chorus to the song is but one line, “All will grow in love.” And there is but one line to a refrain at the end, “Nothing can break redeeming grace.”
Like the Psalmist, I breathed out my time of trouble … the time of feeling perilously down low. Like the Psalmist, I breathed out my trust in God as I recalled my Creator’s past loving faithfulness toward me. Now, it’s been over two years since I wrote “All Will Grow.” I am joyfully well into appreciating God’s healing grace and God’s birthing of new beginnings for us “apples.” As such, the song is like a new piton I’ll rely on for the rest of my life adventures. Like Psalm 138, it is a soul strengthening celebration song!
I encourage you to go home from our time of worship together today celebrating times when you believe God strengthened your soul, your whole self. Do so as witness to God’s steadfast presence and unflappable faithfulness. Speak it, write it, sing it. Just be sure to share it! It may well be a word of security some other soul greatly needs to hear and grasp for their life adventure. Amen.
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