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| The Baffled King Psalm 121:1-4; 46:1-3 November 25, 2007
I don’t want you to restudy this psalm just now, but I used a proper translation of its litigious dialogue. The psalm is often mistranslated, though beautifully, as a kind of John Muir testimony to the uplift of the human spirit that comes with gazing upon some western hills. The mistranslated version of this psalm—and you can almost see it carved in the massive mantle piece of a national park service lodge in Yosemite—has human need and God’s help all synthesized in a beatific up-gaze to the hills. We read, misread, as if the words are, “When I look to the hills, well there with my upturned eyes, I see the place of God’s help, the ‘whence’ of my rescue and refuge.” But our lives are really rougher than that vision, as is our need deeper, our sought-after refuge, and our hope for strength and power for rescue. Fortunately theology offers what such art alone cannot deliver: a more clear-eyes view of our real dangerous human situation, our real lottery for the kind of help we think we need, deserve, or will get. And so our psalm is properly posed in the powerful and characteristically Hebrew rhetoric of arguing at God, putting before God’s throne a worst-case scenario: as if to say, “God, what if I lift my eyes up to those hills, then, knowing what you and I, God, know about the lions and robbers and lairs up there, what’s going to happen to me if I try to pass through those hills? Let us not forget the Jericho Road, Lord, and those robbers and beaters on the way!” The great American preacher and theologian, the 18th century’s Jonathan Edwards, used these texts in what is anthologized as the greatest American sermon ever written and preached: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Not that we have to go there today, but on the psalm’s next line, he had a realistic eye. Would God let your foot stumble? Well, stumbling feet were on New England people’s minds. When their austere Dr. Edwards preached, we’re not used to it now, but in the early 1700s when Edwards preached, New England had been the site of some major earthquakes and people’s fears for refuge by the hand of providence were high. Worse still, the very balcony in Edwards’ Northampton church had actually collapsed one Sunday morning while full of devoted worshipping saints. Was God slumbering on that Sabbath, was God “suffering” their foot to be moved?—not keeping them from evil, not guarding their life? And so we called each other to worship with these words of the psalmist plaintiff. And our cry, or muffled mumble, “where’s help, O God,” we followed on hard with the opening lines of Psalm 46, which, while claiming God as refuge and strength, must also have been on the minds of those New England Puritans, about the part where it says, “though the earth should change, though the mountains shake….” Now I think it’s just plain wrong for preachers not to help prepare worshippers for the inevitable times in life when God’s refuge and strength, God’s very present help in time of trouble, seems far away, or even gone. So under the obligation to be honest, the foundations of faith have been shaken in our time. The truth is we come here as doubters too. And we feel a personal plight for personal rescue and refuge. We bring it with us in worship. I picked the beautiful and dramatic story of how young David and Jonathan conspired against the mad king Saul to save young David’s life. David hides for refuge among the rocks. If Jonathan shoots three arrows to one side of the rock, David is safe to come out. If the three arrows go on farther, he is not. A real story of real danger and refuge and rescue by real human hands, intrigue and love. But then, inspired also by our anthem, “Hallelujah,” words by Leonard Cohen, I also chose the suggestive first lines of the famous David (now King) and Bathsheba story. The risks of such a story for a sermon are high. We’ve got sex and gender stereotyping for one. But we also have a very personal image and story about refuge and strength, rescue and help. In short, whose gonna help Bathsheba?! Bathsheba and all the Bathsheba victims since then up to the sex slave trade now, or just the media sexualization of pre-teen girls and the continuing use of rape and abuse as a weapon of mass destruction?! So, let’s keep Jonathan, David, Bathsheba in mind as personal visions of our faith-in-God’s-power theological problem. It’s a fairly common theme among the religious folk: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). But it is, of course, this religious praying for help that occasions our greatest doubts and provokes derision and scorn in the mouths of those who mock God and/or we who try to gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing. Nothing seems easier to prove than that refuge and strength are either purely human productions or at best bestowals of a God with a severe attention deficit disorder. Any wise fool, sophomore, can just about prove that case against beseeching divine refuge, strength, safety, power. From the Holocaust to Darfur, from the Christmas tsunami to Katrina and 9/11, the scorners and the doubters just about have a case closed. And yet like those old saloons in the wild west, when we come into this sanctuary we are supposed to hang up our guns on the hooks on the wall. Here at “the old good cheer saloon” all ye who enter, loaded for bear, armed with your hot pistols of doubt and argumentation, you are supposed to hang it up. This bartending preacher has been saying for some weeks now: suspend your rational argumentative mind; the sanctuary of worship is not the lecture hall. And besides, I’m not the smartest person in the room. Yes, the weapons of mental acuity we survive by all week long (in whom we really trust for refuge and strength) are supposed to be hung up outside the sacred saloon where at the bar we serve living waters and the breads of everlasting life. This is supposed to be more than a happy hour; it’s supposed to be the blessing hour of an eternal now. But in worship we are not here to be “making a case.” To make the worship instructions perfectly clear, I’ll quote that poet of holy English gravitas, T.S. Eliot. He writes about the broken king, and perhaps about life’s whole journey as much as worship: “You are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or inform your curiosity, You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid….” 1 So those really are the posted house rules, the holy house rules. But may I say “damn,” who can live that way? (Perhaps I’d better not say it that way.) And then one day three gun slingers came into the spiritual saloon here and shot down our posted rules and house prayers. Freud just drew and shot down the “God Bless This House” sign (cross-stitched by your grandmother, nonetheless!), saying in a heavy German accent: “There is no God and for refuge and strength stop projecting that out and find it within your own human self.” Marx shot down another heavenly hope sign, saying, “God will make you drunk and high, sober up and fix the economy!” And then Darwin, not known for his pistol-packing ways came along and fired away at all the slow shooters, saying “The Darwin Award goes to the fastest gun in the west, naturally.” Now before we all flee the holy house, let’s look at one more option. We might call it the political option. And while of course everybody says religion and politics don’t mix, what they, we, all really mean is, don’t mix your politics with my religion, but my religion is totally compatible with my politics, and vice-versa. But though our faith foundations have been shaken, we have a hope—in worship—for refuge and strength. Since Advent and Christmas are coming, it makes timely sense. What I am talking about here is our human and divine hope for the good ruler. (Can we make a temporary agreement that the Bible’s archetype for ruler is King?) The King of Kings, the ruler, King or Queen, who has God’s will and purposes well intact and so God’s refuge and strength is near at hand. It is that hope, that heavenly hope for God’s kingdom on earth that drives the millions of dollars in our coming political frenzy, as well as our deepest spiritual longing for a society of refuge and strength. Biblically, this is the spiritual potential of the King archetype, the symbol of King or Queen in a person as our hope for safety and some refuge and strength. But, the best king we have in the Bible is the baffled King David and then the messianic King Jesus, the Christ, who hardly rules the land outside this house. So for the true voice of refuge and strength, we actually have a very different person than the king we imagine. What we have in the song words of Leonard Cohen, the author of our anthem today, is a realistic affirmation of a faith-voice in a time of doubt. Leonard Cohen, a contemporary Canadian-born Jewish poet, novelist, singer and ordained Buddhist, has done to the voice of King David the one thing needful. He has included the broken heart, the broken virtue, and the broken power that is the only authentic voice of faith for us in our time. Whether a leader is politically leading the country, or whether we are just trying to lead our lives and perhaps our family or church, a willingness to be baffled is required. And this Leonard Cohen puts into the mouth of King David (I will admit I tried to do this in a sermon at the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1998 with less success, and so I’m thrilled Jim Levy and his musical buddies came up with this “Hallelujah”). The words worth repeating are these: “I heard there was a secret chord And of course she wasn’t safe for refuge or for rescue. But the bafflement goes on to the political sphere: “I’ve seen your flag on the
marble arch As Advent and Christmas come and some will stand as if the King or Queen were here and sing the Hallelujah Chorus, let us remember the broken king that T.S. Eliot told us must need to kneel, to pray, and let the sound of the voice praying reflect the bafflement, as well as the Hallelujah, of our time and our faith. Amen. 1 “Little Gidding,” from Four Quartets.
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