psalm 126

Just shortly before my friends father died,
We decided
That together we would walk the streets
We knew as children
To recover the ghosts of short sleeved summers,
And vapour breathed Novembers
With their curling mist and star spangled skies,
We would return to times and places and people
Only available through the power of shared memory.

A pilgrimage
To the shrines of our youth
A walk of a few short miles
Where memory shines like a torch
Onto windows, over streets, along schools buildings
To show up the yesterdays that are hidden there.

And not for from our lips the words: Do you remember?

For friends, “Do you remember?”
Is seldom a question
Seeking a yes or no answer from us;

For friends
To ask
Do you remember?
Is more like an invitation
To allow memory
to take us back
To something, somewhere, someone
That once touched our lives so deeply.

Do you remember?
Yes, we smile, Laugh, pause silently over.
And in remembering
Something of the goodness, value, delight
That It has been to have lived the one life
That is uniquely
Our little life –
Is recovered and recognised again.

(The moment when we savour –yes it’s been good to be me).

Today
An old friend asks us
Do you remember…

That old friend
Is Israel:
Those who have known what it is
To love, wrestle, doubt, rejoice, run a way from and return to
God
As being at the centre of their living.
From Abraham to David
Elijah to Ruth
Old Israel shares with us the friendship of faith.
And in the bible we see how God’s actions
In time and history, judgement and redemption
Sets them free.
And recalled in this psalm
Is how against all the odds
God released them from exile in Babylon
To return home to Jerusalem again.

The streets they were led out of in chains
Never thinking to see again
Found their childrens feet wandering upon them again
As they were brought back to Jerusalem
By the power of God.

It was like a dream
They said
We laughed and sang
For the Lord had done great things for us.

Israel
Is our friend in the faith
Who worshipped and served the same God we do today,
And in this mornings psalm
Israel asks us
Do you remember
What its like
When God ambushes our expectations
When the inevitable, expected end
Is turned around by God’s power
Bringing us back home:
To the certainty
Yes, there is a God -
Bringing us home to the place of gratitude
Where we rejoice that
Any goodness we have known
Has not been an accident
But has come to us by his hand
Bringing us home to the peace
That trusts how much our little lives
Matter to the living God.

Israel is saying to us this morning
Do you remember
When Gods power in your life
Recovered your lost faith
Restored your broken Hope
Empowered you sad resignation
To go out and attempt to love again.

Our friend Israel asks us: Do you remember?
Not as a yes or no question
But as an invitation
To allow memory to return us
To where God has touched our lives deeply.

So that in our remembering
Something of the goodness, value, delight
That It has been to have lived the life of faith
Is recovered and recognised again.

The place from which Israel asks us to remember
Is not the laid back space of nostalgia.
In the psalm
Israel is doing her remembering
From the place where the soil of her living
Is cracked and dry, hard and disappointed
Like a river bed without any water.

And we see how for Israel
Remembering is the precursor to something else:

Israel moves from memory
To prayer
From remembering God
To requesting from God:
Lord takes us back to our land,
Just as the rain brings water back
To dry river beds.
Let those who wept as they sowed their seed
Gather the harvest with joy.

Even for me
Who is a quintessential city boy
The imagery of Israel’s prayer
Is striking when it says:
Let those who wept
As they sowed their seed
Gather the harvest with joy.

Recently
I planted beneath my study window
Lots of tiny little seeds:
Night scented stock
Which
As the packet informs me
Perfume the night
As the sun is setting.

And I can’t wait until the summer evening arrives
When I can open the window
On a warm summers night
And be greeted
With the scent of these little flowers
releasing their perfume into the evening air.

I can’t wait
But I know I have to…
For it’s in the darkness
Underneath the soil
With the sunlight, rainfall
And the feeding of the soil
That their growth will be invisibly done
And done slowly.

And every day or so I go out
And inspect the dirt for signs of life
Of which right now
There is precious little.
Sometimes
The seed we have to sow
Don’t seem capable of growing much
And we wonder if anything worthwhile
Could ever grow.

What I mean is
The experiences we have
Made up of working, sleeping, looking after children
The sore things and disappointments
The anger and failure,
Loneliness and fears
Seems like fallow ground
To plant anything in.

Yet, when we take our ordinary lives
That promise so little
And offer them to God
In prayer
Plant the daily routines of our living
Around trust
Devotion
Confession
Thanksgiving
Then the psalmist says
Expect a remarkable return
From the little we have planted.

For all the while
Mostly unseen by us
God is working with our soil and seed
And will grow it into something
Far beyond what we can imagine or yet recognise:
What we have planted with tears of sadness
Will in the presence of God
By the power of God
Become a harvest of joy.

The planting of our little lives
In trust around God
Is never a pointless exercise
For the power of God is at work in us
In the way Freddy Buechner describes:

“There has never been a time past
When God wasn’t with us
As the strength beyond our strength,
The wisdom beyond our wisdom,
As whatever it is in our hearts
That keeps us human enough at least
To get by
Despite everything in our lives
That tends to wither the heart and make us less human.”

Just as the soil
The sunshine
And the rain
Work together
To grow from the dirt a small insignificant seed

So the father
The son
And the Holy Spirit
Work with the soreness and the spareness
Doubt and dream
Of our living soil
Until from it something beautiful is grown.

The psalmist is adamant
That the seeds life has given you to plant
Might not seem much
And often will have to be sown with tears
But In the end
God will bring forth from them
A life you will know
Has been worth living
That for those
Who plant their living
In the soil of faith in Jesus Christ
There is for every tear of sadness
A corresponding tear of joy.

psalm 131

Often
On a Saturday evening
I will make my way over here to church.

I unlock the front door
Switch off the alarm
And walk through to the sanctuary.
I’m on my own
But I’m not alone.

I’ve come over to pray:
That the Spirit of God
Will pass among us while we worship
Walking pew by pew
I ask God to bless you
To do all he wants to do
In and for you
I ask that we might see God’s glory shine
Like sunlight dancing on the water.

I ask that come the morning
He will forgive my inadequacy
And make me able
To so bear his presence
That I am hidden and only he is seen.

I don’t do this because I‘m particularly holy
I do it because I’m particularly sinful
And know
That if anything real is going to happen
While I lead worship
Then it will have to come from the miracle of God
Acting in our midst.

I walk along the centre aisle
Climbing up the steps to the balcony
Where I sit
And for a few moments at least
I do nothing
But watch and listen:

Because although I’m on my own - I am not alone.

Sometimes the sunlight
Pours through the stained glass onto the walls
The colours jostling
As though a fire had been lit on the stone.

Always I stare at the figure of Christ
Patterned on the glass
Showing the wounds inflicted by a cross.
And I wonder
Where have I added to those wounds?
In the days before
By some wrong done
Or some good left unfulfilled.

But mostly
I listen to the silence.
Because silence has its own sound.

When we listen to the silence
I think we must come closest
To hearing what heaven is like.

Sitting on the balcony I am on my own
But I’m not alone
For In the silence I hear
The hush of holiness
The unheard echo of hymns sang
Of prayers said
Of worship offered
The silence is full and brimming over
With the sound of sanctity
As the music of holiness is released.

Its not that silence itself is holy
It’s more what the silence does for us:
It makes us pause
Invites us to notice more
It slows us down and Raises our awareness
Of the deep longing buried within us
That can only be satisfied
With the company of God.

The music of silence
Invites us to be still
And know the company of God.

I sit in the silence of St Nininas
On a Saturday evening
Until I am aware
Of my hunger for God
Until like a weaned child
That hunger is satisfied
By the presence of God.

In those moments
I’m not asking questions
Or thinking impressive thoughts
I am, simply looking at God
And God is looking at me.
In that moment I recognise
I am a created creature
In the presence of my creator
I receive the banquet of his love
And offer my crumbs in return

And as I do this
My soul
That deepest part of me
That yearns and fears and strives
Settles down
Until I feel
Refreshed
Renewed
At peace

Simply by allowing the silence
To make me still enough
To know I am in God’s beautiful presence.

Maybe the hymn writer puts it best:
When he writes the words
We have already sung:

Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease
Take from our souls the strain and stress
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of thy peace.

In the hush
Where we become still
The presence of God
Bursts in on our senses
And we experience his beauty
As peace.
in the stillness we know God
and taste and see he is good.

Don’t let the fact that I do this in an empty church
Mislead you,
This experience of quiet and stillness
Only needs the corner of a room
A familiar chair
A walk outside

From the place of quiet
From the place of peace
From the still encounter with the living God
The psalmist urges:

O Israel
Hope in the Lord
From this time
And forever more.

When we have met with God
In the stillness that comes with quiet
We are enabled
To return to the world we have come from
With the power to imagine
The good God wishes for us
As being more real
Than the circumstances we are in.

Isn’t that what hope is for a Christian
The ability to imagine
and live with confidence
That God’s good intentions for our lives
Will win
over the present struggles, and troubles.

When I leave the sanctuary
I know God is real
I know the little life I have
In its shortness and fragility
Is kept and provided for
By a good God
And I am empowered
To live by the goodness I can see.

Hope in the Lord...
That the wrongs weve done
Cannot cancel out God’s love for us

Hope in the Lord...
That the death Christ died
Wipes out the sin that separates us from God

Hope in the Lord...
That the resurrection of Jesus
Means his living presence
Is here with us even now

Hope in the Lord...
That illness and death
Won’t have the final say over who we are

Hope in the Lord...
That what eye has not seen
Nor ear heard
Nor mind conceived
God has prepared for those who love him.

People of st Nininas...
Hope in the Lord
Who is here to meet you
Not least
Through the sacrament
awaiting us on the table.

We feed our hope
On the real presence of Christ
Coming to us
In bread and in wine.

Jesus said
I am the bread of life
whoever comes to me will never be hungry.