Heavenly Father thank you for the gift of your awareness and the awareness of Christ within us, to give us power, not our own, but yours, to not only ward off evil, but to actually dismiss it. Amen.
Title: “In the eternal dimension we need have no fear that evil will haunt us.”
Psalm 121
Assurance of God’s Protection
A Song of Ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills--
from where will my help come?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 He who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8 The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time on and forevermore.
Psalms 120-134, fifteen in all, are variously called “Ascent Psalms,” “Gradual Psalms,” or “Pilgrim Psalms.” They are a sub-category of Psalms of Confidence. They all pertain to either going up to or returning from Jerusalem and the Temple. Pilgrims from the Diaspora or other parts of Palestine would naturally sing songs together along the way to lighten the journey, strengthen their bonds of community, teach their children their common history and mysteries, and just have fun. These songs may have their basis in this pilgrimage, required by Jewish law, but they would be sung and prayed on many other occasions as well. The journey-model or theme would fit quite well into many everyday situations since life itself was perceived as a journey. Also, being poetry, the metaphorical meaning of historical and liturgical references would be easily loosened from a particular context and more generally applied. This psalm, for instance, can easily be prayed by a parent and child before the child departs on a journey, be it to school or grandma’s house or leaving the nest for good. This is true even given the fact that this psalm was originally sung in the context of departing from one of the feasts in Jerusalem and the speaker was a priest. All the psalms can be lifted out of their original context and applied more generally. Psalm 121 is no exception. Thus it is used by the Church as a prayer before departure into death or any other departure or journey.
The structure of the psalm reveals its flexible applicability. After the opening question in verse one, verses two answers, but who is answering remains uncertain. It could be the questioner answering himself, or it could be a priest answering a departing pilgrim, or a parent speaking to a child. Verses three to eight, expand on the answer, God is my help, in the form of a blessing, which is more than a blessing, more than a prayerful wish. It amounts to a promise, an oracle of salvation. Like so many psalms, this one may have been revised over the years as it was removed from its original liturgical use and applied to everyday life, to all sorts of departures, ventures and journeys.
In verse one, I lift up my eyes to the hills, in the context of a pilgrim about to leave the Holy City after celebrating a festival this would capture the anxiety of setting out into the dangerous hills that surround Jerusalem. Rugged terrain, wild animals and muggers would all be awaiting the pilgrim who had just enjoyed a few days of rest, relaxation, safety, peace, and a pause from everyday living. Now he or she must return to everyday life and there is apprehension. The environment the pilgrim is about to re-enter is too well known to him or her as fraught with danger.
“From where will my help come?” Of course, the psalmist knows his help is from the Lord. Implied in his question is whether the Lord will accompany him on his journey into the ugly, dangerous world or is the comfort of his presence only reserved to Jerusalem, the Temple, holy, geographical, places. He knows the feeling of peace and protection will not accompany him. That is situational. But will the protective shield accompany him or must he leave it behind along with the feeling?
In verse two, “My help,” the pilgrim could be answering himself with a confession of faith or he could be listening to someone else answer, maybe a priest in the Temple at a farewell ceremony. It matters little. His trust in God comes not from his feelings but from the fact of God’s power and, the next verses will say, his desire to protect. The situation may be threatening, fear may be present, but God will look out for his own. This is not so much a theological explanation as a decision to surrender oneself to God as one faces a very practical challenge.
In verse three, God will not let you foot be moved, every step is under the watchful eye of God. Even though past experience has taught the pilgrim that he, indeed, does slip, he still has confidence that God will protect him somehow, even at those times. True, it is an exaggeration on the physical level, and even on the psychological, but not on the spiritual level.
Your guardian does not sleep: This line and verses four and five, refer to God as “guardian” or “keeper” of Israel. The word echoes the Aaronic blessing, “May the Lord bless and keep you,” a blessing that closes every synagogue service. Unlike the nature gods of the pagans, Yahweh does not fall asleep at the end of a season and need to be re-awakened or even re-born, when that season returns. God is ever alive and awake, watching over his responsibilities without winking or blinking.
In verse six, by day the sun…the moon by night: God’s protection extends over day and night. The heat of the day, literally, causing sunstroke, and metaphorically, the danger of the night, and all else in between is no match for the great power of God. The moon god of the Babylonians, to whom was attributed all sorts of evils- fever, leprosy, even being “moonstruck” -was no challenge to God.
In verse seven, the Lord will keep you from all evil, this comes even closer to the Aaronic blessing. However, it is stronger than a blessing, a powerful wish. It is really a promise, an oracle of salvation. The pilgrim has God’s direct and explicit word on it: he will guard. He will guard from all evil, bar none, and will do so throughout a pilgrim’s life journey, not just the journey home from the Temple. Practically speaking, this promise, this oracle, does not mean that the pilgrim will not experience evil or be exempt from evil’s machinations, only that evil will not win. Evil will always try, but never win, unless the pilgrim loses faith in God.
In verse eight, your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore. There is hardly an activity more descriptive of a human life and a metaphor more comprehensive than “coming and going.” Humans are constantly moving, constantly saying hello and good-bye, constantly entering and leaving- new days, new situations, new assignments, new relationships, etc. Humans are always on the move. The psalmist realizes that through it all God is there. He goes with his children. He is not confined to the holy place, the Temple, or any other place. As maker of heaven and earth, his “place and home” is everywhere and his “time or hour” is always. The powerful presence of God who is everywhere, who never sleeps, cannot but protect those who are under his “shade” or eclipsed by his “shadow.”
Sermon
This psalm captures a moment we all experience. While it happens in many circumstances, the moment at the end of our service is by far the most frequently recurring one. Like the pilgrim Jew of old at the end of a festival, after being with people of like mentality, attitude and behavioral principles, having celebrated the sheer gift of life, fortified with God’s grace, there comes that weakening in the knees and returning pit in the stomach as one now faces the “mountains” of everyday living. Looking out on the obstacles to continuing to live in the conscious aura of God, an aura intensified by the worship service now about to come to an end, one is momentarily daunted by the challenge and by the remembrance of past failures. While some cannot wait to see the service end, to hear the words, “Go in peace. Serve the Lord,” others like ourselves, rue the moment and ask, “Will I truly go in peace or will I lose it on the church steps?”
So, we, like the pilgrim psalmist on his way back into the world, ask, “From where will help come to me?” Then, the answer comes either from within or from the voice of religious authority, speaking for God, “Go in peace.” And we understand that this is the Lord’s way of saying, “Your help is from the Lord, your God.” We respond with “Thanks be to God.” All the power of the Word and the Word made flesh gets collected and concentrated in our beings and we go forth fortified, “to love and serve the Lord,” the Lord who promises to be with us, to accompany us, to provide the power we need to be faithful. Since we do not have to do this on our own power, indeed cannot, we can both relax and, at the same time, brace ourselves for the rugged terrain and the attackers both human and sub-human.
We do not leave the Lord when we leave the Lord’s house, church, synagogue or building. He accompanies us- minus all the visible, tangible assurances of his presence. But, if we do not attend to, capture, the grace of that moment of dismissal, all that went before is in danger once again of being lost, of being left at the church doorsteps. We would be back to where we started from, no better and possibly worse. We would return to living life as if going around in a circle, repeating and retracing to same old turf. But, fortified with his explicit promise, we can break the cycle of life and learn to walk in a line, not really a straight line, but, at least, a spiraling one. After all, there are “mountains” out there to traverse. We may have to dodge and weave, backtrack and regroup, consult our compass, etc. Nonetheless, we do not have to repeat the same old mistakes. The power is, of course, the Lord’s, but the choice is ours.
It is true that we are always saying “hello” and “good bye,” though much less formally than the opening greeting “The Lord be with you” and the closing rite of dismissal “Go in peace Serve the Lord” of the service. We are constantly entering and exiting contexts and circumstances throughout a typical day. We go to work and come home. We enter and leave times of the day-rising time, morning, lunch, afternoon, dinner, evening, night, bedtime. We enter and leave rooms all day long. Each movement is not accompanied by a voiced greeting or farewell. Though more often than we usually realize, it is. Every time someone enters our presence or we theirs we usually say “hello” and when we leave “bye” or “see ya later” or something similar. Indeed, “good-bye” is a contraction of “God be with thee or with ye “Ye” is the old English plural for “you.” It is not difficult to train ourselves to be more conscious of these “comings and goings” and recall the protective presence of God as we move from one place to another, even if it be in an office or an aisle of a supermarket or wherever. It is even good to memorize this psalm or a line or two of it and use it as a centering prayer in the midst of driving, walking or just looking out the window from home. We experience power when we do such things, the same power as when we are dismissed from church. The Lord’s protective presence is always with us. There is never a time or place when he is not, except when we sin seriously.
While the Lord protects us even when we are not aware of it, being aware of it while it is happening makes the experience so much richer, even thrilling at times.
We may physically fall and get hurt or get mugged or have an accident, but we cannot be spiritually hurt unless we ignore God’s presence hidden amidst the pain.
God’s Protection: God has promised to protect us from all evil, if we let him. Nonetheless, we do experience evil and its effects in our lives. We still feel pain. We still get hurt, cheated, robbed, beaten, and undergo many injustices. We get into accidents. We trip and fall. So, what does God mean when he promises us that he will not even allow our feet to slip? Clearly, he means something else than we might originally think. Our desire, indeed, our impulse, to avoid pain in any form can cause us to read into God’s promise of protection something that God does not mean. Then, of course, we become disappointed in God and begin to doubt his word. This is evil working within us to cause disbelief in God. It is that evil God protects us from, if we let him. God has promised us, through Christ, an eternal world where we will live totally free from fear, harm, hatred, and any other form of evil. When he created this world he created it in such a way that this ideal condition of life was possible, but not inevitable. Giving humans free will opened up the possibility that humans would trust in something other than God, namely, themselves, other humans, even demons. So, the all-wise God created one world but with two dimensions: time and eternity. In the eternal dimension we need have no fear that evil will haunt us. Evil is totally powerless in that dimension, just as we are totally powerless in this dimension, the earthly, because evil has such a foothold in it. While it is true that being conscious of God’s presence will severely diminish the evil we experience and the evil we might otherwise commit, that awareness does not create an impermeable protective bubble around us. A shield, yes; a bubble, no. God will never remove anyone’s free will and so we can become victims of evil, if not perpetrators ourselves. Being constantly aware of God with us and Christ within us, does give us power, not our own, but his, to not only ward off evil, but to actually dismiss it. That’s an awful lot of protection, but not total protection so long as we live in this dimension. However, when we fully enter into eternity and cross the threshold of time once and for all, never to return to earth, we have God’s guarantee that it is all over. We will not even or ever encounter evil at all. We will not have to spend eternity looking over our shoulders, hiding out, looking both ways, ducking, cowering, retreating or fearing anything or anyone. It will be a completely safe world because God will reign without competition from evil. It only makes sense that the more we allow God’s presence to remain foremost in our consciousness here on earth, the closer we come while still on earth to that ideal condition of life. This psalmist knew this, sung about it, and, presumably, lived it. So can or should we.
God’s Permeability: From the viewpoint of eternity God is always there, everywhere and simultaneously nowhere. He cannot be confined to any space, yet he fills all space. However, from the viewpoint of time, we can speak of God permeating all time and space. That kind of talk is acceptable when we are speaking of our being aware of God. God is really always there everywhere, but when we become aware of that we have a sense of God entering a space or filling a time. He really does not from his eternal side, but seems like he does from our time space side. We do not cause God to be presence. He does not really come and go. We do let God be present though, present to us. When we do that, our earthly world lights up. It become different, not objectively, but feels different and is experienced differently. We do not see different things, different from what others not conscious of God see, but we see things differently. God’s presence permeates everything and every time, moistening dry time and space with eternal love. Amen.
