Hilton Head Island, SC – April 7, 2013
The Chapel Without Walls
Psalm 73:1-28
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. – Psalm 73:16-17 (RSV)
As I look back on my preaching patterns through the years, I have belatedly come to realize that often after Lent, I have preached several sermons based on the Psalms. That pattern has been accentuated over the last few years, because I have set a goal for myself to preach from as many of the Psalms as possible before I retire in less than two years. I am drawn in particular to the Psalms, because I think they have some of the most “preachable” texts in all of scripture. They speak to the human condition in a unique and powerful fashion, and the themes they raise are universal. Everyone everywhere, regardless of whether they do or do not have religious faith or biblical faith, has encountered many of the issues addressed by the Psalms.
Today we are investigating Psalm 73, which is identified as a Psalm of Asaph. We know a little bit about this Asaph, but only a little. He was the son of a man named Berechiah, who was a Levite. David appointed Asaph as one of the principal officials in charge of the liturgical singers who led public worship in Jerusalem. Twelve of the 150 Psalms are ascribed to Asaph.
Psalm 73 is written out of a concern about a particular problem with which we are all at least vaguely familiar. “I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked,” it says in Psalm 73, v. 3. Currently, the behavior of the North Korean dictator (or perhaps more likely, puppet dictator) comes to mind. Kim Jong Un is infuriatingly arrogant, and he lives in great prosperity while most of the North Koreans live in utter poverty. Or we read of very wealthy people who look down on the poor, accusing them of not working hard the way they, the rich, work, as though every wealthy person is industrious while every poor person is a slacker.
The Hebrew is not written exactly as that verse is translated into English. It actually says, “I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the shalom of the wicked.” It isn’t just prosperity which the wicked may feel; it is peace: peace! That is really galling, isn’t it – to observe how really nasty people sometimes live in a smug peace with themselves. Their skullduggery doesn’t bother them “one iota,” as my mother would say.
However, this is personally a much greater issue for some of us than for the rest of us. For example, I know someone who was cut out of a very sizeable inheritance for no apparent reason at all. There were two sons in the family, and when the parents died, everything went to one of them, and nothing to the other. This disinherited son never knew why there was no inheritance for him, but there was for his brother. It has caused him unending hurt and sadness. I know a woman who totally trusted a financial adviser, and who was swindled out much of her assets by this person. He was never tried or found guilty for his misdeeds, because he cleverly covered his tracks. “They have no pangs; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as other men are; they are not stricken like other men,” said Asaph (73:4-5).
Injustice is an immense burden to some people, while others endure it with remarkable equanimity. Perhaps that phenomenon is best explained by personality types. Some things simply bother some people more than they bother others. Whatever the explanation, Asaph was having a very hard time trying to get a grip on his feelings and emotions because of having been wronged by someone, though he never says specifically what “the wicked” did to him.
A few weeks ago we went to see Quartet. Within half an hour of its opening scene, I whispered to Lois that it is one of the five best movies I have ever seen. I thought that even more so after its glorious conclusion. It is no longer in any of our local theaters, but I urge you to see it later when it comes out on Netflix, if you didn’t get to see it. Better yet, buy the video when it comes out; it will be one of the best investments you ever made. I personally will give you a money-back guarantee if you are dissatisfied. Well, maybe, anyway.
The story is set in a beautiful country house somewhere in England. In the plot-line, the house was willed by its owners to become a retirement home for elderly musicians and singers. Four of the people there are retired opera singers, and after considerable hesitation by one of them, they agree to sing a quartet from a famous Verdi opera at the annual fundraiser for the home, which is about to go under financially.
It turns out that two of the singers had once been married, the soprano Jean (played by Maggie Smith) and the tenor Reggie (played by Tom Courtenay). Both of these actors have been in many outstanding British films over the past half-century. They, along with everyone else in the cast, were absolutely superb. The marriage had not lasted very long, and Jean had dumped Reggie unceremoniously, and with no warning. It turns out, as these things often do, that it was all the result of a huge misunderstanding. Almost at the end, just as the quartet is going onto the stage to sing, she asks him if he would marry her again, and as he steps past the curtain, he says yes. At the conclusion, as we listen to the quartet singing gloriously from a camera-shot taken outside and above the country house on a magical evening, we are led to believe that the two star-crossed lovers shall be reunited many decades after they had so sadly and unnecessarily separated.
Reggie had envied the success of his ex-wife, and Jean had missed Reggie all those years. He thought her wicked, and she did her best not to think of him at all, but she failed miserably in her attempt. When next February comes around, if Quartet, Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, and director Dustin Hoffman do not all win Academy Awards, the members of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences shall “scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression” (Ps. 73:8). I declare that it will be the greatest injustice in the history of filmmaking if Quartet does not sweep at least a quartet of the 2013 Oscars.
The enmity which Reggie felt toward Jean was unfounded, as it turned out. But sometimes such enmity is deserved. Presumably this is the way it was for poor Asaph. It is like Idi Amin, living in splendor in Uganda while his country was falling apart, and then being given asylum in Saudi Arabia after he was driven out. It is Saddam Hussein with his many palaces and his fabulously wealthy lifestyle, until he was finally captured in a hole in the ground, and eventually executed. It is Bernie Madoff, bilking billions from his clients, making opulence look meager, until he too was apprehended. “Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches” (73:12). Of course it isn’t always like that, but to Asaph, it felt like that.
Major rifts between people threaten spiritual health. Sometimes these breaks occur because one person is solely at fault, sometimes because both are at fault, sometimes because no one is at fault. Events simply conspire to create great tension and rancor, and there is no one who can or should be blamed. But if someone feels badly wronged, whether the feeling is correct or not, it can cause ceaseless pain and ill-will. How can we overcome this, if we ever find ourselves in this situation? This is the single theme of all 28 verses of Psalm 73.
Kurt Vonnegut was a famous American author who wrote several best-selling novels, the most famous of which was probably Slaughterhouse Five. Mr. Vonnegut always marched to the beat of his own drum, and as a result, his writing did not appeal to everyone.
Years ago, Kurt Vonnegut was asked in an interview in Playboy Magazine, “Is there any religion you consider superior to any other?” In an answer perhaps typical of the author, he said, “Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous gives you an extended family that’s very close to a brotherhood, because everybody has endured the same catastrophe. And one of the enchanting aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous is that many people who join aren’t drunks, who pretend to be drunks because the social and spiritual benefits are so large. But they talk about real troubles, which aren’t spoken about in church, as a rule.”
I would hope that last statement is not generally true, but obviously to Kurt Vonnegut it was true. In any case, his observations about AA are both salient and profound. People who attend Alcoholics Anonymous regularly likely do derive a kind of close-knit extended family as a result of their association with this amazing organization. Its positive influence on countless millions of people all over the world is incalculable. Thank God for Bill W. and all his friends.
Kurt Vonnegut implies that ordinary Christianity, and perhaps other religions for that matter, do not give people enough assistance or solace who are struggling with certain kinds of problems. If so, that is an indictment on us. Those who battle with spiritual demons should be able to find support and comfort in the company of others who struggle with similar issues.
This past Thursday marked the 45th anniversary of the date Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee. No one who was at least a teenager or adult at that time can forget that awful day and its aftermath. I remember that time as though it were yesterday.
Our family had moved to Chicago from northern Wisconsin less than three weeks before the shooting occurred. I had become an assistant minister at the Fourth Presbyterian Church. That was the congregation we attended while I was in seminary in Chicago, and it was where I came to gain so much admiration and respect for the pastor of the church, Dr. Elam Davies. About him I have spoken periodically and always positively from this and other pulpits.
April 4, 1968 was a Thursday, just as it was this year. Dr. King was shot at about 6:00 PM in Memphis. There was always a dinner at Fourth Church on Thursday evenings, and it was there where I learned of the shooting. By the next day, half-tracks were driving down Michigan Avenue with National Guardsmen who has their rifles at the ready. By that evening, two days before Palm Sunday, smoke was rising hundreds of feet into the air over the west side of Chicago. It seemed as though the wicked had won, and the poor and forgotten were paying the price once again in an urban inferno.
Between Thursday evening and Sunday morning of that fateful week, Elam Davies prepared a totally new sermon from the one he had intended to preach. It was titled The King Must Die. A few years earlier, Mary Renault had written a novel of that same title about a hero from Greek mythology named Theseus. Dr. Davies took the book title and wove it into the greatest sermon about a tragic contemporary event I ever heard. He referred not only to Jesus coming into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, but also to Martin Luther King coming into Memphis for a sanitation workers’ strike. Dr. Davies enabled us who felt crushed and enraged and forsaken to find another way of looking at a huge injustice and still find hope and comfort at the very center of calamity. The fourteen hundred people in that beautiful Gothic church that Palm Sunday were given a powerfully positive message from a terribly negative tragedy. It was among the most masterful sermons I ever heard.
“But when I sought to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end.” In general, the highest church attendance of the year happens on Christmas Eve and Easter. In particular, however, especially after painfully memorable national disasters, people flock into the churches as on no other occasion. It happened on Dec. 14, 1941, seven days after Pearl Harbor was attacked. It happened on Nov. 24, 1963, two days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It happened on September 16, 2001, five days after 9/11. And it certainly happened on Palm Sunday, 1968, with dozens of cities across the country ablaze in the aftermath of a cynical racist murder. What does it all mean? How can we survive it? Where do we go from here? These are the questions prompted by Psalm 73.
“Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart,” it says in the opening verse of Psalm 73. That is more a statement of wistful hope than observed fact. We want God always to bless the upright, but it doesn’t always work out that way, at least not in the middle of things. At the end, maybe, but not necessarily in the middle. “Purity of heart is to will one thing, the love of God,” said Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish sage and philosopher. If we love God above all others and all else, we will also discover purity of heart within ourselves, particularly for when things seem to fall apart, and the evil triumph. And the place to go to understand this is to the sanctuary of God.
Regularity of worship doesn’t answer all questions, but it helps us much better to deal with the questions which perhaps can never be answered. Worship is no panacea for all problems, but it is a means for us to get a handle of the factors which most vex or befuddle us.
In the past decade or two, an expression has evolved in American English. “Get a grip,” we say. When someone is flailing about in a sea of self-pity or self-induced despair, “Get a grip,” we say. When people allow the world to get the better of them, “Get a grip,” we say. When we ourselves feel life has gotten out of control and we see no end to its chaos, “Get a grip,” we tell ourselves. It is good to get a grip, especially when we know we don’t have one.
“Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart.” That is the first verse of Psalm 73. Its last verse is similar: “But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord my refuge, that I may tell of all thy works.” Martin Luther could have based “A mighty fortress is our God” on Psalm 73 as well as on Psalm 46. In between verse 1 of the 73rd Psalm and verse 28 are examples of the dismaying things that everyone encounters, the detritus of lives that don’t always go smoothly, when we find ourselves looking at a colossal curve ball.
Where can we go to get a grip? --- To the sanctuary of God; that’s where. Right here; that’s where. Get a grip!