"Wisdom to Sing" (Psalm 111)

I don’t know why the Bible translations still talk about the “fear of the Lord.” It’s generally recognized by scholars that when the Bible talks about the fear of the Lord, it’s not fear in the sense of “run for your lives.” What it means is awe. Reverence.

But language has a strange way of changing. My seminary professor Joe Jones always said that words have a way of “getting up and walking around.”

For example, the word awful used to mean full of awe. In other words, awful meant the same thing as awesome. But parents would take their children to church and point out things at the cathedral, and say, isn’t this the most awful church? (Meaning, isn’t this just the most awesome church?)

But the kids were bored to death in church (church back then wasn’t nearly as exciting as it is now!), and later, they would say to each other, “Yeah, that was just the most awful church…” And eventually the meaning changed to what it is today, which is just the opposite of what it originally meant, and society had to invent a new word – awesome – to mean what the word awful originally meant.

Anyway, awe and reverence of the Lord – not fear – is the beginning of wisdom.

This Psalm – Psalm 111 – was chosen for the lectionary today because in churches where all four lectionary scriptures are read each Sunday, the psalm follows the Old Testament reading, and the Old Testament reading for today describes the time Solomon prayed for wisdom.

You know that story; God appeared to Solomon and said, “Ask me what I should give you…” And Solomon could have asked for anything: long life, riches, victory over his enemies… But instead, Solomon asked for wisdom. This pleased God so much that God gave Solomon what he asked for, but also gave Solomon what he did not ask for: riches and honor.

So perhaps wisdom is what I should be talking about today, not fear or awe.

This verse in Psalm 111 talks about wisdom, but the psalm as a whole is about praising God. “Praise the Lord! I will give thanks to the Lord! He is gracious and merciful…”

It reminds me of Psalm 34: “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.”

But since I started with thoughts of wisdom, now I wonder: is that wise? Is it wise to bless the Lord at all times? Are there times when it’s wise not to praise and bless the Lord?

Whether blessing the Lord at all times is wise or not, it’s certainly not easy.

Israel didn’t feel like blessing the Lord and praising God when it was caught in captivity. Invaded, forcibly removed from its homeland, the people had very little praise in their mouths.

Instead, they found they couldn’t even sing. Psalm 137 shows this: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept. We put away all our musical instruments… How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

They could not sing. They could not praise God. Things had just gotten too bad for that.

I know some people in the church who feel that way today. Remember back in the day when everyone went to church? Now, on Sunday mornings, people go to brunch. They go to soccer games. They sleep in. Nobody goes to church.

And for the few of us who do, come on, you gotta admit: sometimes we think it would be nice to sleep in on a Sunday morning, and then go to brunch, which is really what people who sleep in call breakfast just so they don’t have to admit that they weren’t quite able to eat breakfast at breakfast time because they were still in bed.

Amy Butler – pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City – talked about these things in her sermon at the General Assembly last month. Her scripture was Isaiah 40, and she said she was all ready to talk about how the church has declined, and how we find ourselves in a foreign land, much like the people of Israel, a land that no longer looks like it once did, a land where it is hard to sing the Lord’s song, a land where hope is hard to come by and the future looks bleak.

If that was all she preached on, we would have listened. In the 1960s, the Disciples of Christ had almost two million members; today it’s less than one million, quite a lot less. Churches are closing or facing tough financial decisions (and if you were at last week’s board meeting, you know that we at Bixby Knolls Christian Church are facing our own financial struggles). Indeed, many are finding it hard to sing God’s praises in the face of such a decline.

Amy Butler said she was all ready to talk about these things…they seemed so important… but then…as she put it: “late one Wednesday night…, everything changed.  Breaking news flashed across my phone: nine black people shot, murdered in a Charleston church at the hands of a white supremacist.

She said, “All of a sudden, those hard, hard questions about the relevance of the church stood in stark relief against the raw reality of life in our country these days.

She said, “a month ago the big fear was the dying church.  Then we saw nine people die in church.

She said that “now the question is, perhaps as it should have been all along, no longer whether the church can survive, but more: ‘What is our call and responsibility as God’s people, in this culture of structural racism, injustice, and death?’”

There was wisdom in her words.

This week, I’ve begun reading a brand new book by Leah Francis Gunning called Ferguson and Faith. This week, Sojourners magazine interviewed Leah Francis Gunning about her book, and asked her what church did racial justice well in the year since Ferguson.

She said, “Compton Heights Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in St. Louis.” Now, this is a small congregation, even smaller than Bixby Knolls Christian Church.

According to Leah Francis Gunning, “In the past, they have been involved in outreach activities but not a lot tailored toward racial justice. When Ferguson happened, their pastor got involved in protests, and when she invited the congregation to participate with her, they did so.

“And here’s how: They reimagined what it means to be a safe sanctuary. Often times we think of safe sanctuaries as places where children won’t be harmed and people are appropriately trained. That’s important.

“But they’ve expanded this definition of safe sanctuary to really think about what it means to welcome those who don’t feel welcome. In the movement, they opened their sanctuary doors as places of training, gathering, cooking—and equally important—as places of prayer.

“One of the young activists came to the pastor and said, “Why are your doors opened to us?” Because so many doors had been closed—not just to the protesters, but to young people generally who don’t often feel welcome in our congregations because of who they choose to love or how they choose to wear their clothes.”

I’m glad that Leah Francis Gunning named a Disciples of Christ church. I’m even happier that Compton Heights Christian Church – a small, struggling congregation – has kept singing the Lord’s song, has kept blessing God and blessing the community.

So it doesn’t matter if we have two million people, two hundred people, or two people: we have a song to sing.

And no matter what, praise is a part of that song.

And even when it seems inappropriate to sing a song of praise, we must do so. It is wise to do so. It is necessary.

When we are caught in a foreign land, a bleak landscape, we must sing our song of praise.

When our numbers are down, we must sing our song of praise.

When there is violence in the land, we must sing our song of praise.

And here’s why.

The God we worship is a God who comforts the afflicted, who dries every tear, who – as the psalmist says –  is close to the brokenhearted and heals those whose spirits are crushed.

The God we worship is a God who is gracious and merciful. This description of God is repeated over and over again in scripture: Numbers 14, Nehemiah 9, Psalm 103, Jeremiah 32, Jonah 4…

The God we worship cares more about faithfulness than numbers. During Vacation Bible School, we learned that things once got so bad for Elijah that he believed he was the only faithful one left. Talk about a decline in membership! Elijah looked around, and there was no one else. But with God’s help, Elijah kept doing what he was called to do, and through his faithfulness he came to realize that there were, in fact, others. Not a lot, but more than he had thought.

The God we worship focuses more attention on nine people who were killed in church than on millions who choose to sleep in on Sunday mornings. All people are important to God; but it is those who are being oppressed, terrorized, murdered, and hated who God pays special attention to.

So we can mope and lament all those who no longer attend church in our society… or we can focus our attention on the children who are dying in church, the children who are dying in the streets, dying at the hands of violence, dying because we have forgotten them and the neighborhoods they live in, dying because their skin is the wrong color, dying because their parents can’t afford to protect them, dying because of the sins of a nation.

And we can be silent in the face of a church that is no longer what it once was, or we can sing out loud the Lord’s praises, sing out a song of justice, freedom, and love.

Because that is the Lord’s song, and it is a song that, more than ever, needs to be heard. It is a song to sing in the morning and sing in the evening, all over the land. It is a song of wisdom, and it is wisdom that teaches us to sing.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sing. God is faithful; God has not abandoned us. God is here, and God is inspiring me to sing. Are you ready to sing? Let’s sing. And let’s praise and bless the Lord at all times, for God is good and God is faithful.