First Sunday in Advent Year A. December 2, 2001
Psalm 122
Title: “God incarnate.”
Psalms one hundred twenty to one hundred thirty-four, are commonly called Songs of Ascent, sung on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the three major annual festivals- Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. Psalm 122 is the third pilgrim song in the collection. Verses one and two, express the joy at going to and arriving at Jerusalem. Verses three to five, express praise for the holy city and all it represents. Verses six to nine, pray for its welfare and that of the people of God. Placed on the lips of a single individual, it represents the sentiments of all pilgrims to God’s presence. It could have been composed at any point since the time of David. Since “Jerusalem” represents much more than the physical, historic city, the psalm has been prayed in many other settings and contexts, particularly among Christians with the “heavenly Jerusalem,” God’s dwelling with his people, in mind.
In verse one, I rejoiced when they said to me. We can imagine some sort of call in the village center announcing the departure for the great city, Jerusalem. We can imagine all the emotions that would be stirred up as a group of fellow pilgrims set out for so desirable a destination.
In verse two, and now our feet are standing. The psalmist thought he was overwhelmed with emotion as he set out for the city. Now that he is there the emotional impact has really hit him.
In verse three, Jerusalem…city…walled. All cities would have walls around them, but this was his city, his people’s city, the city of man, David, and the city of God, all packed into one. The experience was overwhelming.
In verse four, the tribes of the Lord. The more common expression would be “the tribes of Israel.” Too much should not be made of this. Perhaps, after the split of the northern kingdom, called “Israel,” the expression is an attempt to maintain their prior unity by calling the “tribes of the Lord,” the one God whom they commonly worship regardless of political division. Jerusalem was David’s city because he made it his capital according to 2Samaul 5: 6-12. At first, David was anointed king of the single tribe of Judah 2Samaul 1-4. Seven years later, after all the tribes of Israel came to him and proclaimed him king 2 Samuel 5: 1-5, he represented in his person a unified people heretofore only loosely identified.
As it was decreed for Israel. According to Exodus 23: 14-17, Deut. 16: 16f, among other texts, all Israelite males had to “appear before the Lord,” that is, go to the Temple in Jerusalem, three times a year. In practice, for those scattered all over the known world, this amounted to at least once in a lifetime.
In verse five, here are the thrones of justice. The securing of peace and the administration of justice were the major functions of the Davidic king. On lower levels, e.g. familial disputes, religious practices, the priests, both in Jerusalem and at other shrines, would share in that function. The prophets would ensure that justice was properly understood and exercised. But, it was the king’s function to see to it that all the tribes kept the law, understood it and interpreted it correctly. Thus, all the “thrones,” seats, centers, of justice found their center in the king as the people found their center in the city of the king, which was also that of the King of Kings.
In verses six to nine, the psalmist prays in the name of his “family and friends” that Jerusalem, the city and the symbol of all the people, may enjoy peace. Peace, Hebrew shalom, means “fullness” of life, well being, health, God’s presence. Essentially, it does not differ from the meaning of justice, a right relationship with God. Those two virtues, peace and justice, can only exist together. There cannot be one without the other, except in time of war. War was seen as a temporary suspension of peace in order to secure even stronger peace. “Blessings” is also synonymous with peace. Blessings were what resulted from a right relationship with God, justice or righteousness, and being all one should be, peace. Of course, in praying for peace, justice and blessings for the city, the psalmist is really praying for the people. “May those who love you prosper.” He knew full well the difference between a symbol and the reality it represents, and a sign and the reality it reveals and expresses.
Sermon
The Incarnation, the word becoming flesh, God becoming human, revealing himself in a human person and human life, had not happened when this psalm was written. That mystery was in the process of being unfolded through time. However, the Jew did have preparation for it. The city of Jerusalem was simultaneously the city of God and the city of man, poetically expressed as the city of David. It was simultaneously the dwelling place, on earth, of God and that of God’s people. Even those who did not actually reside there felt it was their home. They felt it was the perfect merger between God and humans, both the earthly dwelling place for God and the heavenly counterpart for man.
David, himself, was representative of the ideal human being. He stood for, practiced and lived justice and peace, the two virtues close to the character of God, along with hesed, faithful love. He also embodied the whole nation. What David did redounded to the advantage of all. He really prefigured Christ in that sense. As the human body of Jesus was the physical dwelling place of Christ God, so the city of David was the extension of his inner being, the visible way he expressed justice and peace. True, people exaggerated the size of the Temple and the height of the mountain and the thickness of the walls, but they did so because the mere physical dimensions did not express their interior sentiments about them. We presume that most of them knew that and kept that separate in their minds. But, as this psalm shows, it was the exuberance, the deep swell of feeling, at the physical sight of these images that made the difference. They could not contain their joy. Their God might be invisible as such, but he does reveal himself to humans in a way they can grasp that invisible presence through visible signs. Humans just need to “lift up their hearts,” to look beyond the physical and recognize what, who, is really there.
The city of Jerusalem with its Temple came pretty close to “God incarnate.” As such it was a preparation to accept an even more focused sign of God’s presence among them and us, that is, a human person, a son of David, Jesus. And the old city of Jerusalem, symbol and sign of God’s dwelling amidst and among humans, is a preparation for us who are Christian as we ponder the eternal city of God and our dwelling in it at the End Time. All the psalmist says of himself, his people, Jerusalem, impregnability, peace, justice, prosperity and blessing is and will be even more true of us Christians as we one day totally abide in the presence we now merely visit. Hopefully, we visit God more than three times a year or even three times a day the number of times for a Jew to pray. Hopefully, we abide in the conscious presence of God wherever and whenever. However, it remains true that now matter how much time we have been graced to be with God, it still gets interrupted by the demands, details and distractions of life. One day we will be finished with all that as “our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.”
The city of man turns out to be the outer courts of the city of God. It is where we get used to the atmosphere of God and also where we do our part to clean up the air, the ground, the environment, in order to make it conform to the purified air, ground and environment of the inner courts. When we have done that in even the smallest way, like cleaning up our room or the kitchen, bathroom, garage or yard, we can stop for a moment and survey the new situation and pray this psalm or express the sentiments in it and experience however briefly what eternity must be like all the time. That experience gives us a rush of energy and resolve, energy to continue to show respect for God’s creation and resolve to continue to be a co-creator with God, bringing order out of chaos. These moments of arrival at a goal are sacred and sacramental. Our lives are replete with them. Prayer helps make us aware of them. The Psalms, like this one, are great aids for not missing them.
Rejoicing is the human response to experiencing God.
The form rejoicing takes depends on the context, situation, environment wherein we had the divine experience.
Brief moments of intense awareness of God’s presence gives us hope for more, energy to do more and resolve to live more in his presence and in accord with his character.
Sacrament: We have no idea, really, of what life in eternity will look like. We can be pretty sure there are no buildings, no houses, no mansions, no churches, at least, as we know them here on earth. The Lord has been pretty tight-lipped about the details. We know it will be peace, justice, truth, love and, of course, joy, always. We know we will have bodies of some sort, our earthly bodies now glorified, equipped to live forever in the atmosphere of unadulterated love. But we really cannot picture it. There are two very different responses to this truth. Some, predominately those who live in the East, are so impressed by immortality of the soul that they have disregard and even disdain for life here on earth. They simply ignore the ravages of poverty, the requirements of cleanliness, the prevalence of disease and squalor. They are intent on concentrating on eternity where they will one day live. Many of them even believe that they keep coming back, become re-incarnated after death, until they become totally purified of the evil within and around them. They are mostly passive about what is wrong on earth. Then, there are others, Christians, mostly living in the West, who are impressed by the resurrection of the body, meaning the whole person, not just the soul, who realize that the human body and the matter that composes it, indeed all matter, is good and redeemable. They see their lives on earth as being servants of the Lord, called, among other things, to clean up the earth, to so arrange the matter of earth that its otherwise hidden beauty and goodness is expressed in works of art and service. So, we build buildings, churches especially, that express the hidden presence and beauty of the otherwise invisible God. We care about and care for the earth and spend a good bit of each day bringing order out of chaos, that is,. participating in God’s creation as co-creators with him, in order to enjoy the beauty that emerges from it and “see,” God as best we can see him while here on earth and show him to others. In other words, Christians see all matter and every combination of the elements of the earth as sacramental, visible signs of the invisible God’s presence. Thus, beauty is essential to our being, our being here on earth, for it is the closest we can come to “seeing” and enjoying heaven’s beauty. However, we admire beauty, the beauty of churches, houses, building; we do not worship them, even if we worship in them. As sacramentals, they remind us and enable us to extend our vision and see God in all things, in every moment, not just is every monument. Thus, we can pray Psalm 122 and all the Songs of Entrance in the Psalter, whenever we “enter” into any scene. They help us to stop, look and listen and experience, become aware of, the presence of God. We are always entering into differing scenes throughout our daily lives. That pause, that gasp at the beauty we see, can prompt awe, maybe not always the awe that overwhelms us, but the quiet and familiar awe we experience when we meet something that is “more than what meets the eye,” when we connect. We learn that awe is available to us as we ponder, however briefly, any scene before us. That awe causes us to think of eternity and what it might be like. It brings eternity down to earth in a felt way and we understand what the psalmist is saying and even feeling. The beauty of our local church, indeed of all the churches of the world, should not prejudice us against the beauty we encounter in virtually every scene, for every scene is a “temple” or a “church” of God, as is, at least, potentially, every person. This universe is all about God. We need life on earth to learn about God and to know God more and more. If every building is potentially sacramental, every moment is also. We can be surrounded by beauty and miss it because our standards for what is beautiful may well be too earthly and our minds too distracted to notice. Amen.
