“Unbridled Praise!”

4^th Sunday after Epiphany

Duane M. Harris

January 29, 2012 

Text: Psalm 111

Title: “Unbridled Praise!”

          When I was serving in Owosso, a young man and woman came to the church to be married there.  Over the course of the premarital counseling time I learned that he worked for NASA.  He’s a computer scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  The Goddard Space Flight Center works on developing and operating unmanned scientific spacecraft for NASA.  At the time, the Hubble Telescope was making big news with the incredible photographs it was sending back to earth and we began talking about that and some of the other projects Gary was working on with the agency.  He picked up on my interest in space exploration and so when he went back to Washington, D.C. after their wedding, a cardboard mail tube arrived at the church with three posters.  One of them was from a photograph of another galaxy taken by the Hubble.  The second was an image of the earth taken by an orbiting satellite, and the third was taken on February 14, 1990 when the exploratory spacecraft Voyager 1 was turned around to take a photograph of the earth from about 4 billion miles away.  From that distance the earth is just a pale blue dot.  You can hardly see it on the poster.

            The psalmist didn’t know about this poster.   He didn’t know about photography or that one day human beings would actually build something that could go that far from the earth to take a photograph.    He didn’t know the earth revolved around the sun.  The earth was the center then.  But he did know about God who created such an incredible universe.  He knew about God who has done amazing things not only by creating such an amazing place in which to live but also by getting involved in the lives of the Hebrew people, freeing them from the tyranny of slavery in Egypt and leading them to a land of milk and honey.  He knew the God who was both transcendent–whose infinite being we can never fully comprehend–and also the God about whom Paul witnessed to the Athenians in the book of Acts:   “indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:27-28).  The psalmist knew God and God’s works and in a moment of Spirit-filled inspiration, he wrote this psalm.  It is a psalm of praise and thanksgiving.  It’s a psalm constructed by using the Hebrew alphabet.  An acrostic poem, each line in the Hebrew text begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which means it’s about praising God from A-Z.  It’s about praising God, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.  Because it is an acrostic, it is not a story or a logical argument, but a series of thoughts about who God is and what God has done for which the psalmist is giving praise to God.  There are three phrases I want to focus on this morning.

II.  “…with my whole heart”.

            The first phrase has to do with the heart.  The heart refers metaphorically to the inner self.  Out of the heart comes all a person’s thoughts and feelings.  It’s the place of conscience, of understanding, reason and imagination.  When God asked Solomon what God could do for him, Solomon responded, “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil”.  An understanding mind has to do with the heart out of which comes understanding.

            In the Gospel according to Mark, a scribe asked Jesus,

‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ 29Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 31The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’  (Mark 12)

            In the Gospel according to Luke, it’s a bit different.

25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.* ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ 26He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ 27He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’ 28And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’ 

(Luke 10)

            In Mark, the question is which commandment is the greatest of all of them.  In Luke, the question has to do with how to inherit eternal life.  The answer to both questions has to do what God says way back in Deuteronomy after the 10 commandments are issued.  It’s the great commandment, the Shema:  “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” 

            The psalmist gives thanks with his whole heart, with everything he has, in praise for all that God has done.  Is there anything or are there many things for which you can genuinely give thanks with your whole heart?  What are the things or who are the people or what are the experiences in your life that bring you joy, the kind of joy that just makes you want to sing with abandon?  When you think of them you can’t help but smile and can hardly contain yourself sometimes when you reflect on the person or the experience or just the life God has given you. 

            It’s like the gift received when a group of children stand up here and they sing with exuberance some song of the faith that lifts us and brings smiles to our faces.  It’s like the joy two people in love feel when a child has been born.  It’s like the moment a deployed soldier is reunited with his or her family after having been in Iraq for a year.   It’s like the feeling I get when I stand at the top of Hallet’s Peak in the Rocky Mountain National Park and get a glimpse of the vastness of the mountains and really experience how small I am and how great God is, not even mentioning that this vastness is nothing compared to the vastness known in looking at the “pale blue dot” from nearly 4 billion miles away.  “How Great Thou Art!  How Great Thou Art!  Then sings my soul my savior God to thee!”  It’s just incredible how great God is!

            And yet as great as God is, the Bible reminds us that this incomprehensible God is knowable.  This God wants a relationship with human beings like us.  In the same section of Deuteronomy from which the Shema comes, Moses tells the people: 

“From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul.”  (Deut. 4:29)

In Jeremiah, God says,

“Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart” (29:12-13).

            What does it mean to seek someone with all your heart, to give your heart, the whole of who you are to someone?  Doesn’t it mean in part that we become vulnerable?  Because when we share all of who we are with someone, our strengths are shared but our weaknesses also become exposed, and there is the possibility of being hurt, and hurt badly either because of loss or a broken relationship.  Yet, there is also the unmatchable gift of love in the midst of such vulnerability, a love based on trust and forgiveness and the joy of sharing who we are with someone else and they with us. 

            The psalmist “gives thanks to the Lord with his whole heart” in unbridled praise in this poem of profound love for God and invites us all to join in that praise that flows from a love for God that cannot be contained.  Have you ever experienced that kind of love for God, the kind of joy that leaves you singing with abandon?

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.

Naught be all else to me save that Thou art.

Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

II.  “Studied by all”

            The second phrase for us to reflect on has to do with studying.  The psalmist goes on:  “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.”  “Studied by all who delight in them.”  According to Webster, “delight” as a verb means “to take great pleasure, …to give keen enjoyment, …or to give joy or satisfaction.”  People who experience delight ponder all the works of God like Psalm 8, one of my favorites:

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

   the moon and the stars that you have established;

4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

   mortals that you care for them?

            Studying God’s works by pondering the “pale blue dot” or catching the view from a window seat at 30,000 feet or standing on a mountain top to take in the vastness and our place in all of it, raises this question and causes me to wonder with the psalmist, “what are we, Lord, that you are mindful of us, mortals that you care for us?”  It’s incredible!  It’s just incredible this life God has given us!

            But studying God’s works is about more than pondering God’s creation.  It’s about remembering what God has done:  “He has gained renown for his wonderful deeds.”  The words here stir up memories of the Exodus.  They have to do with God’s action in providing “food for those who fear him” as God provided quail and dewy manna for the Hebrews as they wandered in the wilderness following their flight from Egypt; “in giving them the heritage of the nations”, by leading them to a land of their own; and through the giving of the law:  “all his precepts are trustworthy”.  God has been involved with this people, to study God’s involvement is to remember and to worship the One who has saved them.

            Can you look back and remember along with the psalmist and see how God has been involved in the life of the world and in your own life?  What are the markers that point to God’s care for you?  How can you express your thanks? 

III.  Wisdom

            The third and final reflection has to do with the last verse:  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.  “Fear” is not about terror as in the fear instilled by a “terrorist” or a horror film.  Who would be attracted to God if that were so?  The psalmist would hardly be singing the praises of a God who acts like a terrorist, would he?  Gerhard von Rad, one of the great OT theologians of the last generation says, the fear of the Lord includes both the experience of awe and the irresistible attraction to the graciousness of God, but it is not a state of anxiety.  And so awe, reverence, irresistible attraction:  these are words that describe the experience of one who is in love with God.  Have you experienced that kind of love for God?

            Giving thanks with my whole heart, studying the works of God, and holding God in awe and wonder, love and praise as it’s sung in that great old hymn, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”:  all lead us to God’s praise that endures forever.  Let’s sing that praise again this morning as we join in the next hymn.  Will you stand if you’re able and let’s praise God together?