Morning Prayer: Shannon Cook Choral Amen Hymn of Presence *Spirit* Witness of Scripture: Psalm 139: 7-18 Anthem *The Last Words of David* Randall Thompson. Chancel Choir Sermon *Wonderful Works* David Spain
Recorded on June 2, 2024
Years ago while living in Texas, we were attending a funeral. The service had moved along as one would expect with hymns and scriptures and eulogies. The person being remembered had lived a good life; yet there was grief as would be expected and the sadness was honest as the loss was hard. Toward the end of the service, a familiar tune with the familiar cadences of Louis Armstrong sang out: “I see trees of green, red roses too; I see them bloom for me and for you. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. I see skies of blue, and clouds of white; the bright blessed days, dark sacred nights. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. The color of the rainbow so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people going by. I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do—they’re really saying, ‘I love you.’I hear babies cry, I watch them grow.They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world. Oh, yeah.” It was, to be sure, a sentimental moment in the service because the person being remembered lived that kind of spirit; but it was more than a sentimental moment.It was also a theological moment in the service. It’s not that the family was seeking to deny their loss or pretend their reality was different; instead, they wanted to proclaim a balancing reality, a fuller perspective of life being both grief and gladness. In the context of the funeral service, hearing “What a wonderful world,” provided a courageous counter-testimony.
Perhaps this is one way to hear the magnificent 139th Psalm—it is counter-testimony to a world that can sometimes be indifferent and brutish. In fact, Psalm 139 might have been testimony used in the temple as a defense when an individual was charged with some particular error. Perhaps the charge is idolatry, and the response is a soliloquy become praise appealing to the abiding presence of God who knows us more deeply than we know ourselves and who is always with us, no matter what. The defendant is placing his or her life into God’s jurisdiction, trusting that the One who renders us most finally is the One who discerns us most deeply.The 139th Psalm appeals to God who knows us and lays claim on us, who is over us and over all, who is through all, in all, ever all. Contrary to any charge of idolatry, and counter to all other claims that are made on people, the Psalmist proclaims that God has generously and lovingly claimed us. We belong to God; we are part of God’s glorious design; we owe our lives to God; we delight in our lives so wonderfully made.
As powerful as this proclamation was in that context and moment, so too can it function powerfully in this context and moment, albeit perhaps for different reasons.Few if any are likely to be brought up on charges of idolatry, especially since most idolatries have been readily accommodated now! And yet, the 139th Psalm still bears important counter-testimony, providing an important balancing word in times like ours, for one of the consistent idolatries of our times is the pervasiveness of grievance becoming the probability of grievance that invades too much of our lives. Has anyone noticed many people seem to be a bit edgy—just below what might be a pleasant façade there is roiling discontent and discordance. As the wonderful Steel Magnolias character Ouiser Boudreaux played perfectly by Shirley MacLaine once said, “I’m not depressed, I have just been in a very bad mood for 40 years!” Peter Gomes, reflecting on the story of our ancient Hebrew ancestors complaining in the wilderness, has referred to such discontent as the ‘murmuring tradition.’He describes it as ‘not yet outright rebellion but a low-grade grumbling fever, not outright war but an undercurrent of moaning and groaning, of complaining and kvetching, the sort of little irritants that make up the day, the week, the year, our lives. The murmuring tradition is one we all know; nothing worth causing a fuss about yet never quite settled…vaguely remembering great things, longing for great things to come, yet right now pretty annoyed, pretty irritated, pretty unsatisfied.”(Strength for the Journey, p. 162) Has the murmuring tradition become the grievance tradition—grievance that is impatience, that is unforgiving, that is self-righteousness, that masquerades as quality when it is really just suspicion or accountability when it is really just cynicism or piety when it is really just fear or indignation when it is really just bitterness. To be sure any sermon addressing grievance can itself masquerade as nothing more than whining with a religious veneer. Still though, is there an epidemic of grievance?
Certainly, there are legitimate concerns to fill our days. There are more than enough matters of justice and equity, disparity and disregard, and it is always a matter of faithful discourse—as both the prophets proclaimed and Jesus taught—to address those issues both personal and systemic. It is neither healthy nor faithful to deny, pretend, whitewash. Isaiah warned against pro-claiming ‘peace, peace, when there is no peace.’ This is not advocating a ‘turn that frown upside down, don’t worry be happy’ mantra.When people are hurting for whatever reason, when there are losses as there inevitably will be, when illness strikes as it inevitably does, when relationships struggle as they sometimes do—faith calls people to respond compassionately and courageously as much as we are able in any particular situation, being honest about our own human foibles and limitations.
Faith strives for a balancing perspective, willing to address those matters that ultimately matter in a way that does not engage the grievance gambit. Perhaps hearing the 139th Psalm can provide a foundation from which to live. We are known, proclaims the first five verses—there is not a move we make that is unknown, for the One who knows us knows us completely, even to our thoughts.That thought alone might be a bit unsettling, especially when our thoughts might drift in ways that are not helpful. Yet the Psalmist proclaims that whatever our thoughts are, they never land us outside the purview of God’s care, the reach of God’s compassion, the assurance of God’s presence. Even darkness—in whatever form that takes—is not beyond God’s power to act and to bring light. It is a powerful and poetic way to say God’s reach, God’s love does not let go —a love that both comforts and challenges, assures and reforms. There is nothing so lost that God cannot find. And then the Psalmist proclaims, against any claims to the contrary, that whatever and whoever God creates is a wonderful work—from before life has any form to when life is reformed into eternity, God is, God abides—no conditions. We mark time by hours, days, weeks, years. God’s time is unmarked, unlimited, unrelenting.
Well, that is all fine and good, but why do these ancient words matter? The 139th Psalm is addressing one of the deepest human hungers. We long to be fully known, to be redemptively known. When we experience a loss in life—whether it is vocation or relationship or status—at the core of any loss is the fear and sometimes the reality of not being heard, not being honored, not being appreciated, not being acknowledged, not being recognized as one imbued with the Divine imprint. The Psalmist testifies that in the midst of losses that happen and human hungers that occur in life, God’s vision never loses sight of us; God’s grace never falls short of us; God’s hope never abandons us; God’s love never rejects us; God’s mindfulness never leaves us. This is true of our origins, our days, our endings. Wonderful are God’s works…this we know very well.
Here and there and now and then, there are those who embody God’s abiding and redeeming way. Author David Brooks, in an article entitled, The Essential Skills of Being Human, tells of being in a diner in Waco, Texas meeting with a stern, imposing former teacher, seeking to understand her efforts as a community builder. Brooks commented he was struck by her toughness, and even a bit intimidated. As they were talking, a friend named Jimmy Dorrell came into the diner, rushed up to the table, grabbed Brook’s former teacher by the shoulders and beamed:Mrs. Dorsey, you’re the best!You’re the best! I love you! I love you!’Brooks wrote, “I’ve never seen a person’s whole aspect transform so suddenly. The disciplinarian face she had put on under my gaze vanished, and a joyous, delighted 9-year old girl appeared. That’s the power of attention…’Attention,’ the psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist writes, ‘is a moral act—it creates, brings aspects of things into being.’ Jimmy Dorrell is a pastor. When Jimmy sees a person, any person, he is seeing a creature with infinite value and dignity, made in God’s image…You may be an atheist, an agnostic, a Christian, a Jew or someone else, but casting this kind of reverential attention is an absolute precondition for seeing people well.”The way the Psalmist wrote it was, “Wonderful are your works, this I know very well.” Nowhere we go away from God’s attention.
The Psalmist is not trying to blow sunshine everybody’s way…the Psalmist prayer is not some variation of Norman Vincent Peale’s power of positive thinking.Instead, seeing life from this perspective is a foundational, theological, courageous counter-testimony spoken into a world that Marilynne Robinson once said has “a habit of thinking only cynicism is honest—and this is a terrible blindness.” (quoted in The Christian Century, 4/21/19 p. 28). So, as counter-testimony to grievance there is gratitude; as counter-testimony to grievance there is remembering who has made us; as counter-testimony to grievance there is life-affirming attention.Of course this does not make everything perfect, but it can help to balance the scales. “Wonderful are your works.”
You may remember Madeleine L’Engle’s story of being with her grandfather. She wrote of one occasion—“Grandfather took us out long after dark and set up his telescope on the lawn and showed us how to look through the lens. We saw the mountains on the moon! We saw the rings around Saturn! We saw the stars in the Milky Way—too many to count! ‘See,’ Grandfather said, ‘what wonders God has made!’ And then he hugged each one of us and said, ‘And you are wondrous, too.” (Anytime Prayers, p. 52 quoted in Imaging the Word, Vol. 2, p. 28)
That’s exactly right. “Wonderful are your works, that we know very well.”