Finding Life: Summer 2020 - Reservoir Church

Meditation on Psalm 13

For this week’s events, click “Download PDF.”

To watch or rewatch this worship service, click the YouTube link included above.

Today’s spiritual exercise called “Trail Marker” is HERE.

Psalm 13

13:1 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

13:2 How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

13:3 Consider and answer me, O LORD my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,

13:4 and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

13:5 But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

13:6 I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Loving and Gracious God, We step into this worship from many different places. Some of us come seeking joy and comfort. Some of us come tired looking for some answer or sign of hope, some of us, would you draw us near to we’re not even sure why we logged on or keep coming back to you. No matter where we’re coming from, you and your steadfast love. Would you make evident to us the power of your love, and convince us, that your love is stronger than anything we might face. we pray, in Jesus Name Amen.

I love that the Psalms are filled with words of prayer from ages ago, But the Bible, is not only the ideal example or a how to book, they are stories of complex people, giving us examples of various journeys of faith that one may embark on. in complicated situations, that display ebbs and flow of many journeys folks have taken over the ages, in their relationship with themselves, their world, and their God. In fact, we shouldn’t just accept the Bible as authority but as a community. Let me say that again. We shouldn’t just accept the Bible as an authority but as community or communities, witnesses, testimonies, as there are many different voices and perspectives, diversity within the Bible. Some claim the Bible as an authority. The Bible is powerful. It’s helpful. It is convincing and a good wise library of stories to journey alongside with. But Bible as authority, as a sole or most important aspect of the Bible is obsession with authority and thereby submission. Our preoccupation with hierarchy must stop.

Any time we engage the Bible it has to start here. What is the Bible and how do we read it?Like checking who the letter is from before we read the contents, we have to first reconcile a few things about the Bible, before we can get to the good stuff It’s the first thing we have to deal with and address. . So stay with me as I try to take you through that a bit before we get to the meat of the text. First, let me set the context through translation of the original text and touch on the historical context of its time, and then talk about what we can learn from this prayer.

So, verse 1. How long oh LORD? Right off the bat, the original word is not LORD. Lord connotes hierarchy, like yes my Lord, to someone who oversees you, or Lord over you. The original word that’s often translated into English as capital LORD, is actually YHWH, a word the Jewish people don’t actually utter out loud because it is too holy. It actually didn’t even have vowels, and the consonants are all breath consonants, YHWH. The language is so ancient no one is exactly sure how you’re supposed to pronounce it.Maybe, God’s name sounds more like, a deep sigh. Instead, in its place, the Jewish people say, Adonai, which does mean Lord, which is why we translate it LORD. I’m sure you might’ve heard me share this before in a sermon, because knowing the background and context of what we’re basing so much of our time and energy and religion on is so important. What is the name of this God we’re even talking about? If you don’t know the history and know how to capture it properly, then you’re probably not doing it justice. SSo this is me doing Bible justice. ome call it the work of decolonizing, as colonial terms, like Lord, have too often tainted the deeper, richer, broader meaning of seeing God as more a Lord, but one who is also as close and intimate to us as our own breath. God doesn’t just watch over us. God is with us and in us. Emmanuel – a name that Jesus showed us, by the way.

Okay, that’s verse 1. LORD pops up again in verse 3, but every time you see LORD, don’t think of a guy on a horse with a cape and a sword and a shield, I mean sometimes you can but diversify your image of God, sometimes try thinking your breath within you, always coming in and going out, always present, take a deep breath and imagine God’s presence filling you up.

Okay, verse 4. “and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed””

The version we read today is NRSV, which often takes the pronouns into consideration and if it isn’t specific to a certain person and is talking about man, as in human kind or a human being in general, they try to make it gender neutral. Which is what most seminaries use, although as my Old Testament professor would say, NIV is more “accurate” because it doesn’t change the pronoun and translates it to something more like, “and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and yes that’s what the original text said and most translation have something along those line but, NRSV gets it closer to what it was trying to mean for us today.

Maybe this doesn’t matter to you, but the experiences of a person for most of history has been in the perspective of a man.It is more difficult for those who don’t identify as male to relate. It’s actually been used to say that see women didn’t pray, because you only had records of men praying. So you wanna smash patriarchy? It starts with very small things like this, a little word like “he” that dominates and captures the imagination of so many religious experiences and stories like this prayer. They don’t mean “he”. They mean one, one who has experienced enemies prevailing against them and being left with nothing they can do or say.

So whenever you see something like, “therefore man will never….”something something some lessons for humankind…” think, human beings, or human kind. And if it says he, think they or she, whatever pronoun you’re comfortable with.

With that I’m going to go on another, what may seem like a tangent, sorry, but it totally relates. These languages and words we are critically thinking about as we read the Bible, to consider gender and sexuality, that weren’t a thing in times of deep patriarchy, that we’re trying to turn and unearth and change, we need to be doing that with our own words now. Last year, I said in a sermon, “You are God’s beloved son. You are God’s beloved daughter. God loves you.” Good message right?! Well, a person gave me feedback afterwards, to remember those who might not identify as a son or daughter, and would be more inclusive to add, “You are God’s beloved child.” And I was like, oh! So, now I try to, in my sermons or even in prayers, not just talk about the sisters and brothers gathered here, but broadening my vocabulary to be inclusive and say siblings. It’s not a huge fix, but it could mean less exclusion to people. Let’s help each other, without judgement cause some folks really don’t know this whole world of pronouns but we can pastorally, with Jesus-spirit offer invitation to the world of pronouns right? Gender has been a great source of oppression and exclusion. God is the Lord our God who brought God’s people out of Egypt. One who liberated. If we can do the work of liberation through how we name people, her, him, them, then we can at least try in community.

On that note, I’ll skip to verse 6. It says, “I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” We’ve discussed at Reservoir the gender of God not being particularly male, so I won’t belabor the point. Seeing God solely as a male misses out on so many fuller characters and extensions of God. Reinforcing “he” language on God pays a big price. Especially to little girls, thinking only men or boys can be close to God or be anointed by God. Or bring questions like, how am I made in the image of God if God is male. So, just another reminder that, verse 6 is saying, God has dealt bountifully with me, and not sourcing the act of bounty only to a male figure.

Whew, okay we did some decolonizing the language, the culture, the context, and smashed the patriarchy of ancient wordings and expressions. You’re probably like, HOW LONG oh Lord, will Lydia go on about this stuff? Now we can get to the meat.

How long, indeed. A deep visceral cry of lament, that’s more of a rhetorical question than an actual timeline needed. It gets to the agony, the helplessness of this psalmist’s state of suffering.

And yet, even within the suffering, the psalmist has an object of affection. Their, (it was probably a he but i’m using they pronoun) grief is not lost in a void but they are able to direct their emotion, anger, and lament to someone, a being, a God, that they can express raw feelings to. One whom they trust and lean on, as they say later in the prayer. But at the beginning of the prayer, they’re filled with question after question. This prayer shows us that no matter how big or dire our questions are, there is one who we can hurl ourselves to. Our sufferings are not left to our own loneliness in it but just as this psalmist prayed, we also can pray, even when we’re not sure if God’s even listening, even if we’re so angry

Verse 3 hits on such a depth of despair that almost doesn’t seem like the right things we should be saying in a prayer.” Consider and answer me, O LORD my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,” Demanding. Threatening. This is in the Bible as an example of faith?No, these prayers are not just examples, like I said earlier, but they are a consolation. They are in solidarity with those who are suffering. They are here for those who are experiencing such frustration with God that makes demands on God. They are for those who have been to the depths of suffering down to thoughts of death. If you haven’t been there, you don’t know. But if you have, this is a balm to your soul. It’s not a golden prayer high on display, but rather intimate, even hidden or embarrassing moments of darkness one may experience. And I love that such “not so right way to pray” is included in the Bible. Cause I’ve prayed some heretical, inappropriate, not in my right mind prayers to God and wondered if I’ll be struck with lightning right then and there. No. It’s okay to pray like this, the psalms show us.

This prayer also shows us various facets of one’s experience that faces suffering in all the different angles. It’s uncertain what the suffering is but it’s complicated and involves not one particular thing, but multiple folds. Suffering comes from God who does not listen or answer. “How long will you hide your face from me?” Suffering comes from within for they cannot turn off their minds and get any peace. “How can I bear this sorrow all day long?” And Suffering comes externally, “my enemies have prevailed.” They are in a theological, personal, and social predicaments. Have you experienced that? Making rounds to all those we can blame–God, ourselves, others. It doesn’t reveal who is actually at fault. That’s not important. It just is. Problems are complex. Where the trouble comes from is all sides. It’s hard to decipher exactly who is responsible and what to do. It just hurts everywhere.

Lastly, verse 5 and 6, it turns. And it doesn’t mean that this is how prayers should always end, on a good note. There are psalms that end abruptly without a resolution, and plenty of good songs that end without a resolution chord. So what does this turn mean?

It could be an example of how we can turn our minds from things of our current suffering to the past remembrance of God’s faithfulness. It could be a spiritual tool of one who has dealt with suffering some and knows the power of coupling our grief with gratitude. It could be a picture of a gift that comes unexpectedly while you’re praying. It seemed like they were so lacking in the beginning of the prayer and all of sudden they remember how bountiful God has dealth with them. How could that be? Or maybe it’s a protest. A protest against all that is evil and wrong. A dumbfounding ray of hope in unexpected places. Maybe the audacity to be both, to hold, “how long oh Lord?” and “you have dealt bountifully with me” in both of our hands, is the call of prayer that this psalmist needed in their life. May we have the faith to say both, in prayer and in petition, in grief and in gratitude, in life and in death, to God. Let me pray for us.

Jesus I pray that just as you faced both death and resurrection, that you give us the courage to face both. Help us to lift our hands in weakness and receive the power of your abundant love again and again. Hear us oh holy one. May those who sow weeping, go out in songs of joy. Amen.

A Time for Groaning, a Time for Hope, A Time for Freedom

For this week’s events, click “Download PDF.”

To watch Virch online service, click HERE to watch entire service.

Note: The June 21 sermon was powerful for many people, but the video quality was poor. To watch just Steve’s sermon (re-recorded for better video quality), click HERE!

Hey, Friends, So I’ve been planning a few sermons in Philippians this summer. I still want to continue with that little project later. But I had prepared a talk for today that didn’t sit right with me, and then yesterday afternoon, Spirit of God, with a little help from my great partner in life, my wife Grace – that it didn’t make any sense. So, I’m going with what’s been in my gut and my heart all week instead.

I want to talk about this moment in time we’re in as a time for groaning, a time for hope, and a time for freedom.

It’s been a hard year so far, hasn’t it? It’s still achingly hard. A mentor in my life, the Rev. Dr. Ray Hammond, recently used the phrase a “triumverate of trauma” to talk about our collective experiences of pain, dislocation, and anxiety. We face an enormous public health crisis. We face political and economic crises. And we face a massive exposure of our country’s systemic violence toward Black lives and the fact that ending this is somehow still a matter of controversy. This is a lot of pain for us to process – it’s been a year of trauma.

If you feel anxious or angry or exhausted or kind of unmoored, maybe even locked up – not sure what to say or what you think or feel – if any of that’s been true for you, you are not alone. I feel all those things a lot; most of us do.

Strangely, though, this is a year of some considerable opportunity as well. Many of my colleagues I love and respect have a lot of hope right now.

Back in early April, Arundhati Roy wrote this stunning essay, “The Pandemic is a Portal.” I’ve read it dozens of times. She writes of the US and of India, and how even by early April, the COVID-19 pandemic had opened windows into massive inequities and pain. She was unmincing in the horrors we’re seeing this year in public life. And again, that was back in April. There’s been a lot more since then.

But she also closed her essay with these words that I still read as prophetic, as full of the Spirit of truth and insight.

She wrote:

“Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

My friends, this pandemic, and our protests over racial injustice and violence, these offer us the biggest of disruptions. They are offering us an opportunity to imagine our world anew, to imagine and fight for another world.

But meanwhile, here we are as summer begins and we’re still in the midst of it all. What do you say while you’re still on the threshold?

When you hope for a new and better future, but you can’t yet see what it might look like, and you can’t yet see the way there?

Honestly, when we’re at the threshold of a dying world behind us and a new one we can’t see, we waste a lot of our energy and heart and time. I was going to go off on all the ways we do it, but I realized I don’t need to do that.

What I want to talk about is a way forward. What do we do when we’re between worlds, when we’re at the portal, when we’re longing for a better tomorrow while our pulses still pound and our hearts still ache today? What do we do?

I’m drawn to a passage of scripture that points our way in the Spirit of God. It’s right in the middle of the very middle chapter of the New Testament’s biggest letter, Romans. From chapter 8:

Romans 8:18-27 (NRSV)

18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Since September, I’ve been meeting with a beautiful community group on Saturday mornings. We used to meet up in person in the lobby of our church building, and for the past three months we’ve been meeting online. But for most of the past ten months, we’ve been studying this letter to the house churches in Rome. We’re almost ¾’s way through.

We’re reading slowly. It’s been amazing, incredible, mind-blowingly awesome sometimes, and a total slog other times. Because Romans is complicated. Its author, Paul, makes no sense to us sometimes. And this letter has often over the past twenty centuries been used as an armed weapon against people. Romans has been used as anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-all kinds of people. In the wrong hands, it’s been a tool of oppression and shame.

But it’s actually this confusing, but impassioned cry of good news – of belonging, of justice, of peace, of God’s love and faithfulness to all people. And here Romans tells us that in this very moment of history, as with all the in-between spaces in which the people of God have ever sat and suffered, the Spirit of God is in us and with us and has a way for us.

Glory is coming. The beauty, the pride, the pleasure, the joy that is the destiny of God’s children is coming, but today we suffer. Today we long.

All of creation longs. Have you heard it this spring? Not a just a desire to return back to normal, but to see a better day.

What’s amazing is the Good News tells us creation isn’t just longing for a better world, it’s longing for something specific. Creation is longing for the revealing of the children of God.

For all God’s children to become what we were destined to be. For those who have suffered, for those who have known too much indignity, too much waiting, too much poverty, too much danger, to know our rightful freedom. Not the so-called freedom that Black Americans have known since Juneteenth, 1865, where as our own Paula Champagne’s art points out, so many “terms and conditions have been applied.” But full physical and spiritual freedom – wholeness, peace, dignity, security.

For those children of God who have been complicit in other’s diminishment, we are to know what the New Testament calls righteousness, which is not just like private, religious living. The New Testament word for righteousness is like rightly ordered. It’s integrity, wholeness, justice.

See it with me for a moment. Imagine a future where you and your children and your children’s … imagine a future where you and your loved ones, and the generations to come after you know the freedom of the children of God – wholeness, peace, dignity, security, integrity, justice. Freedom.

It’s coming. And not just for us but for all of creation, because the earth groans too. It is in bondage to decay – viruses that mutate and kill, waters fowled, air diritied, oceans teeming with plastic, and atmosphere soaked with carbon. So much bondage to decay, our earth cries out with us.

How long? When will we be free?

We’ve had glimmers during this pandemic. I’ve heard that air is cleaner, less carbon-filled than it’s been in years. Even where I live this spring, we live on this tiny urban plot, with a major, busy thoroughfare in front of us, and a long row of brick apartments to one side of our place, and a gas station being torn down on the other.

But on our tiny patch of land, my wife Grace has over the past decade grown and tended a beautiful garden. And it’s been more breathtaking this spring than ever. So sometimes when I sit in the chair outside our door and read or pray there, I see that garden, and I see our future miniature – the renewal, the beauty, the freedom, and I think: Glory, it’s coming.

But even with the hope of glory, we long too, the passage says, for the redemption of our bodies. That not just our spirits but these bodies of our would be free. These Black bodies of ours, these disabled bodies of ours, these measured and found wanting bodies of ours, these judged bodies, these queer bodies, these too fat or too skinny bodies, these scarred and stretch-marked and wrinkled and sagging bodies, these bodies of ours that cause us shame or danger or regret – when will these bodies be free?

I see you, church family, in the longing for a world where Black Lives matter, and Black bodies are safe and beloved. I see you longing for a world where all our children are educated with hope and dignity. I see you longing for your voice to be heard in the world, for an end to your invisibility in how you’re seen again and again through White eyes or male eyes or anything other than seeing and celebrating you eyes.

So much longing among us.

So what do we do now?

If Spirit in us, we groan, and we hope, and we live today like our future is here.

We groan.

I watched my wife bear three children. Not all at once, thank God. But three babies she bore, in five years. And those labor pains were real. That was some hard core pain.

Now I have never known what it’s like to pant and grunt for hours while my pelvic floor feels like it’s about to explode, but brother Paul, that metaphor takes me where we should go.

Because I know what it’s like to hurt so much you can’t put that hurt into words. I know what it’s like to pray and have no words to say.

The groans of our Black brothers and sisters have been loud and clear this past month. They’ve been loud and clear for centuries, to be honest, but not everybody has been listening. But if those are your groans, friends, of exhaustion, of anger, of too much and how long and not again, Spirit of God is with you in your groaning, while you wait for the redemption of our bodies. These groans are holy prayers that God both listens to and joins in with you.

All of God’s children’s cries of pain, and hurt and anger too deep for words, these are holy prayers. God lives and and listens to these groans.

And friends, if you’re not groaning now, if your body and wealth and health and dignity are upheld and in no way at risk, then listen hard and long to the groaning of the rest of God’s family. Listen hard and carefully to the groaning of Black rage, or Black exhaustion, or Black insistence on change. Listen to the groans of our Indigenous siblings who say: can you see my life and my land and all of what’s been taken. Listen to the groan of our Asian siblings who say: we will not be ignored or exoticiszed. We are not a vehicle for your colonial fantasies or fears about who we are. Listen to your immigrant siblings’ groans who say: stop telling us to leave, stop blaming us for your problems, stop making us afraid. Listen to the groans of your queer or trans siblings who just this past week said: thank God we can’t be fired for just existing as who we are. Listen to to the groans of those who lack wealth, lack food, lack health, lack acceptance.

Care enough, listen hard enough to make someone else’s groans yours, if you don’t have enough of your own, because you can’t really pray until you’ve learned to groan. Spirit of God is in our groaning prayers. And you can’t be where God is if you don’t go where the Spirit of God goes, to the groans and cries of God’s people.

We groan. And we hope. Not just sentiment. Not hoping like, I wish, I wish, I wish, but growing that muscle for a better future, so we decide it’s worth our time, our resources. We hope when we commit to action that shows we believe a better future is possible. It’s not too late to change our company’s culture. It’s not too late to fight for drivers’ licenses for our undocumented immigrants, it’s not too late to make our law enforcement and criminal justice systems actually protect and serve us all. Hope says, do something about it. Hope says, get to work.

And listen, I believe in awakening and educating and learning, doing our own work, as much as anyone. On race, I’ve been doing the work of awakening, reading the books, having the talks, all the stuff, for 25 years. I’m going to keep doing it. But we don’t just need a bunch of so-called woke people who can say all the right words, and judge our brothers and sisters when they don’t say it all as well as we do. We need action for a just world of freedom and glory. Hope is the fuel that gets us to put in the work.

We groan, we hope, and we live the future today. The faith of Jesus is what we call an eschatological hope. That’s fancy words for daring to live as if our future is invading our present.

Daring to live as if freedom has come. Daring to live as if we can rest, and play, and touch the earth, and have some fun, even while we’re still groaning. Because faith in Jesus sees the glory coming. And knows that even if I’m still groaning, even if I have reason to be angry or afraid again tomorrow, today I get to live like I’m already free.

Today, I get to love and rest or celebrate or do the work or take a break, as I am so led by the Spirit of God. Because today I am free. Or as Romans ends: Nothing can separate us from our inheritance as God’s children. Nothing can separate us from the love of God.