psalm 123

Almost alone
In the sunshine
Of a Latvian summer,
We sat in the open air courtyard
Of Riga cathedral
Enjoying the oasis
That was held in there
The thick walls guarding the silence
From the bustle,
Of The town squares shoppers, and tourists and market stalls.

Behind where we were sitting
A young woman passed us.
She was with a wee boy
Who held her hand as they walked.

We watched them pause
At the entrance
Back into the cathedral
When
The wee boy did something
That spoke
Without breaking the silence,
Needing no translation,
In a simple gesture
A language spoken not from lips
But Known to Christians
Though hardly heard at all these days.
And as he spoke it
It drew tears from Ali’s eyes.

They paused together
And as the woman opened the door
That Led back into the cathedral
The boy lifted his other hand to his head
And removed his cap.
It was the language
Of reverence
We heard him speak.

And as it was spoken
So the gentle, powerful, hidden presence of God
Was made audible to us
Through a boys simple respect.

All conversation stopped
As he held his hat and his mother’s hand
And together they stepped into a world
Where for 800 years
God has been sung to in song
Spoken with in prayer
Heard in scripture,
Touched
And tasted in the crumbs of a loaf
The dregs from a silver cup.

A cap taken off by a little boy
In respect for this sacred space
A gesture in awe of who it belonged to,
Wordless commentary,
The language of reverence.

It’s the language you will find in the psalms
Spoken in the psalm we heard this morning:

“To you, I lift up my eyes
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!”

It’s the language
We shouldn’t need to be taught:
the sun warms the morning
And the stars map the night sky
speak there own reverence;
Every shower of rain,
Bird song,
Breath taken
Life ending or begun
allows the language of reverence
Speaks through the world.

And you and I
And the whole human race
Are invited
To listen
and consciously make that language our own
By learning to remove our caps
In the presence of the Holy.

For only then
Do we begin to recognize
The God who is not like you and me
Who can’t be compared
With anything we think about
Or imagine.
As Isaiah memorably describes:

“My thoughts are not your thoughts
Neither are your ways my ways,
Declares the Lord,
As the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are my ways higher than your ways
And my thoughts from your thoughts”

A human mind is no more capable
Of holding the full mystery of God
Than a cup could carry the ocean
Human thoughts ca no more capture the fullness of God
Than a butterfly net
Could catch the air.

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens
And the militant atheists they represent
May huff and puff all they like
But they will never enter into the house
Of understanding God,
never mind blow it down,
For we must stoop down reach understanding
And enter by the door
marked Reverence.
Reverence
Is the door
That opens into Gods presence.

Notice the posture of the psalmist:
He doesn’t look down
Or look beside
He looks up:

“To you I lift my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!”

The psalmist’s words
Are not I think
An attempt at locating the position of God
As if to answer the question “where is God”
The answer would be “up there, somewhere.”

To say that God is enthroned in the heavens
Is a way of celebrating
That all life,
All death,
All sorrow
All joy
All hope and fear
All that is ultimately real
Is lived in the presence
And under the authority of God.

Reverence
Introduces us to God in the world
And according the psalmist
Reverence
Allows us to partner that God.

The psalmist’s song
Makes an important
If easily forgotten point,
That Christians ignore at their peril:

“As the eyes of servants
Look to the hand of their master,
As the eyes of a maid to the hand of their mistress,
So our eyes look to the Lord our God,
Until he has mercy on us.”

Whatever we seek to do for God
In what we call service
Isn’t something that starts with us.

But whatever we seek to do
Must take its lead from God’s authority:
God decides and employs
According to his will and purpose.

And that’s exactly what we find in Jesus
Someone who seeks
Not to do what he thinks might be helpful
Or a good idea
But someone
Whose reverence for God
is such
That by prayer and worship,
He allows his service and sacrifice
To be guided
By God’s hand.

And from that point
Everything and anything
In a human life
Is capable of being used by God
Even a death
That comes by crucifixion.

Reverence
Puts us in the place
Where we can be used by God.

There’s a famous sketch
That’s sometimes repeated
From the early days of comedy
in, "that was the week that was".

In it John cleese’s 6 foot five
Towers over Ronnie Barker
And the tiny Ronnie corbet.

It’s taking the rise out the class system of the time
And about “knowing our place”.

From a Christian perspective
What is knowing our place
In the world
Made by a God
So utterly unlike us?

It is to be open
To holding the mercy of God
In the life we know as our own
With all its rough edges
Selfishness
Creativity
Care and cruelty.

But what is mercy?
And how does God’s mercy
Work in our lives?

Well some Christian commentators put it like this:
God’s will and purpose for your life and mine
Is always done for our good,
So to ask for mercy from God
Is asking God to give us
The good he wants to give us.

"Have mercy on us O Lord,
Have mercy on us"
Sings the psalmist
And what that means
Eugene Peterson helps desribe when he says:
To ask God to have mercy on us:
“Is not an attempt to get God to do something he is unwilling to do,
(It’s) an expressed longing to receive what God is doing in us and for us in Jesus”

In other words
To ask God for mercy
Is to ask him
To give us all that the good has done for us
In Jesus death and resurrection.

For Christians, Jesus is the mercy of God.
To ask for mercy is to ask for Christ.

As the mercy of God
Written into a human life,
Jesus is the bridge
Between who God is
And who we are
In Jesus
The God
Who is so unlike us
Stoops down
To make himself one with us.

And if that story is true
And it doesn’t induce awe in us
Then something’s gone badly awry.

To ask God for mercy then
Is to allow Jesus to be for and in us
All that God intends him to be.

As Karl Barth says:
“this is faith: that I let Jesus Christ be for me what I cannot be for myself:
My truth, my goodness, my righteousness, my salvation”

I wonder
Is it time this morning
For some of us
For all of us
To remove our cap
To meet God through the door of reverence
That we might open our hands
And receive the mercy
That comes to us in Christ.

For by reverence
And the mercy of Jesu
God wants to make a home for himself
In the frail, heart that is yours
In the stained heart that is mine

and through our reverence
he will come in.