PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Psalm 27:7-9                                                                                    SEEK  MY  FACE

Sermon June 14, 2009:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            This summer my sermons are drawn from single lines, half-lines, phrases in the Book of Psalms, that have leapt off the page at me as I have read psalms, prayed psalms, meditated on psalms.  When my regular devotional hour begins to feel flat and tired, I pick up the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer and for a month I read the psalms assigned for morning and evening each day.  After thirty days I always come away refreshed, and part of that refreshment comes from these little snippets, whispers of a deep spiritual river that flows through the psalms into my soul.  Today I'm looking at three lines in Psalm 27:

Within these three lines there is buried such intimacy with God, such desire for communion with the One who is Wholly Other, that it almost breaks your heart to hear the singer plead, "Do not hide your face from me!" 

            What the psalm-writer has done is nothing short of a transformation.  The words "Seek ye my face" are presented as a command of God, not to the individual worshiper, but to the whole nation of ancient Israel.  The verb is plural, so I add in the plural subject "ye" (the singular would be "thou").  What the singer has done is take this objective commandment and make it very personal.  He has taken a general command of God to the nation and personalized it, intensified it so that a doctrine becomes devotion, and theology comes mystical experience:  "Your face, O Lord, shall I seek—do not hide your face from me!"  The "I" and the "me" are singular.  From general to personal; from national to intimate—this is the movement of this snippet of Psalm 27. 

 

            I've said before that I love history, but a lot of people don't.  To many people history is not only about things that happened a long time ago, it also feels impersonal, objective, unemotional, sterile.  When Hollywood makes a movie that's about some historical person or event, they have to throw in a love scene or two, or some kind of personal danger that isn't really part of the history—something to get our attention and keep us entertained, something to bring a tear to our eyes.  I think it's something of the same thing when we talk about "the commands of God."  We know them—most of us can cite all the Ten Commandments; but we don't recite them with much emotion, do we!  They're rules, they're impersonal, objective, unemotional, sterile.  In order to get excited about the Ten Commandments we have to see what they do for us, what blessing is hidden in them, and how they made ancient Israel such a morally advanced nation:  we have to turn the laws into a story. 

            Well here's a law among the Ten Commandments:[2]

If you had been one of those slaves in Egypt, it would stir your heart and make you weep for joy; but we just hear a command.  Here's another:[3]

That's from Deuteronomy.  There's not much emotion there unless you're threatened with exile:  even the phrase "with all your heart and soul" doesn't carry much emotional power as we read this command.  But these are the words that Psalm 27 is referring to when it says, "He has said to you… 'seek my face.'"  As one commentator put it, this just means to worship God.[4]  I discovered that throughout the early history of the church, Christian teachers and commentators ignored these verses:  not Saint Augustine, not John Chrysostom, not Gregory the Great, not any of the great teachers touched on it.  I think they were all reading the letter of the command and missing the spirit of the response. 

            In the orthodox doctrine of the Holy Spirit we say that the Spirit of God is given to us to comfort us and to guide us.  We sense the comfort as personal, but the guidance doesn't feel very personal.  It means that as the church faces new situations, new issues, new cultures, Jesus' promise is fulfilled again and again, "The Spirit … will teach you all things."[5]  That is:  teach the church.  That's not very personal:  it's objective.  If you've ever been to a General Synod, or even a Conference annual meeting you know just how impersonal and objective the work of the Spirit can be when the church learns something we didn't realize before. 

            So we know well this experience of commands and promises that are welcome, that bring us blessings, but don't move us emotionally, don't make tears of joy flow.  The singer of Psalm 27 has taken one of these dull, objective, plural commands from the Law of God and discovered within it a great miracle.  No wonder he was singing:

What he has discovered, what has touched his heart, what has flowed forth from this command and become a mighty river of joy is the same response we have to Jesus' invitation:[6]

This—THIS is what the singer is singing about!  "Seek my face"—"Come to me."  And he responds, "I do seek your face, with all my heart, and all my soul, and all my strength, and all my mind."  I reach out my hand and wait for you to grasp it.  I lift up my heart and wait for you to receive me.  I am here, O God, and I wait for you:  "Do not hide your face from me!" 

            And he has transformed this bland command, the objective rule into the heart's deepest desire, the soul's great search. 

 

            Now:  what can we do with this experience?  How can we discover such a transformation in the directions and teachings of Christ so that they become deeply personal, powerful motivation, experiences of hope?  Well, let's consider the New Commandment:[7] 

All the verbs here are plural—"you" is plural, "we" is plural.  But what if some courageous disciple of Jesus were to take this New Commandment into their very soul, try to discover in it the power and the joy that lies behind it? 

            I have a friend in Ohio named Dick Woodward.  When we met he was a committed bachelor with idiosyncrasies of the type people now label "nerdy."  He was a nerd:  he was an aerospace engineer working for a NASA flight laboratory near the Cleveland airport.  He carried in his pockets tools for measuring thousandths of an inch tolerances.  He had a shock of thick black hair at the crown of his head that always stuck straight up, and he didn't seem to care.  He didn't just ride a bicycle:  he took five-day bike excursions.  The first tandem bicycle I ever saw was in his garage.  He loved church camp, and he was the unofficial camp photographer; so he was always pushing photographs at you.  He had a goofy grin and a child's happy laugh.  And Dick loved people.  There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for you if he knew you needed it.  He was our son's transportation to church camp after our son got old enough to be embarrassed for his mother to hug him before we drove away.  Dick was willing to help the divorcee single-mother who lived next door with her four children—those kids were at Dick's house as much as they were at their own.  He had a young cousin living about an hour away whose parents separated, and the boy was having a really hard time:  Dick brought him to his house often and did things with him that a father usually does.  Overall there was nothing spectacular about Dick Woodward, nothing that would warm the cockles of your heart, no grand heroic act of selflessness—he just lived, did his work, spent time with people, did what they needed, cared.  And he was the most respected man in his church. 

…this is the message…:  love one another.

            What would your life look like if you discovered a transformation in the directions and teachings of Christ so that they become deeply personal, powerful motivation, experiences of hope?  You already know:  every one of us has known somebody like Dick Woodward—and some of you hearing this sermon right now are that person for someone. 

 

            The psalm-singer sang:

 

It's a miracle:  to take an objective command in the Bible and transfigure your life with it—personally.  So I ask you:  what command in the Bible has caught your attention—won't let you go—hangs on, keeps coming back.  That's your personal invitation to discipleship.  It is the face of God dwelling in your spirit.  "Your face, O Lord, I will seek."  Time to go with it!

AMEN