Sermon 10/8/2017
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of
my heart be acceptable in your sight, * O Lord, my strength and my
redeemer. Psalm 19:14
You’ve heard those words before, haven’t
you? The words to this little prayer
many preachers say as they come to the pulpit to preach. Sometimes they begin with the word “May.” “May the words of my mouth and the meditation
of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”
Sometimes preachers change it to
communal language, “may the words of our
mouths and the meditation of our
hearts be always acceptable to you, our
strength and our redeemer.”
Perhaps you have wondered where we
came up with this little ditty of a pre-sermon prayer. Well, today, you have it in your hand. It comes at the end of Psalm 19.
It comes at the end of a Psalm that
praises God for creation, and then acknowledges the need humans have for the
laws God has in place for us to be in right relationship with God. It goes on to ask for protection from all
those things that distract us from our relationship with God, because they are
numerous and it takes great strength to stay the course and to remain focused
on God.
And then, then it ends with those
familiar words, this time from the Common English Bible translation: “Let the
words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, Lord, my
rock and my redeemer.”
Why do we use this prayer when we come
into the pulpit? While I cannot speak
for all preachers, I can speak to what I understand this prayer to mean for me
and for what I hope it can mean for you, when you hear it.
When I enter this space, after
studying and praying and putting the words onto paper, I need to let God know
that it is my hope that all the preparation I have done will reflect the
messages I believe I have been given, only by the grace of God, through the
Holy Spirit.
And after last Sunday’s massacre in
Las Vegas, after trying to make sense of something so unimaginable, and yet
something that is becoming such a part of the fabric of our history, these
words from Psalm 19, are so very necessary to give me, and you, confidence and
trust that God has helped me, has helped each of us, find the appropriate words
in the face of such tragedy.
Actually, these are words we could
pray every morning when we awake. Maybe
they would sound more like the way Eugene Peterson translated them in The
Message. He writes: “These are the words
in my mouth; these are what I chew on and pray.
Accept them when I place them on the morning altar, O God, my
altar-Rock, God, Priest-of-my-Altar.”
Accept them when I place them on the
altar.
Let them be acceptable to you.
Let them and all that is in my heart
be pleasing to you.
The funny thing is that words are
complicated and numerous and can carry proverbial baggage. They are sometimes used without much
thought. Sometimes measured with too
much thought. How anyone chews on them,
mulls them over, inwardly digests them and then speaks them can be
complicated.
Even as, maybe especially for, a
person of faith.
And so, countless preachers across the
globe, pray this little prayer, aloud, before they open themselves to the
people in front of them, hoping that the work they have done, the prayers they
have prayed, the words they have found that best describe what they have heard
through study and the Holy Spirit, will be reflected in an acceptable way to God.
For many of us, we have to, because
when the world is hurting and we must break open scriptures to help all of us understand
such pain and hurt through the lens of Jesus, we need God to know that we are
trusting Him to give us the best words to tell the world, over and over again,
that God loves us.
God loves you. And you.
And you. And you.
I believe that. Do you?
I believe this because God gave us the
Law on those tablets Moses carried from the mountain, those ten commandments
that are the rules we need to follow if we are to be in right relationship with
God.
And while they don’t seem to be all
that difficult to follow, we mess up all the time because we begin to trust
ourselves, forgetting that who we are and what we have ultimately come from God.
We succumb to idols that tempt us: things that draw our
attention from God—like working too much, playing too hard, accumulating “stuff”
and never feeling fulfilled.
We murder or kill the spirit within ourselves and others
through unfaithfulness, theft of tangible and intangible things, sometimes
lying and cheating to protect ourselves or because it’s just easier than taking
the time to learn what is true to self or to others.
We want what isn’t ours.
We struggle with respecting the dignity of others…those as
close to us as our parents, families and friends…those with whom we share our
cities, counties, states, countries and world.
We “swear to God,” so easily, not verbally elevating God to
offer the thanks and praise He deserves.
But what we might fail at most of all is that we don’t set
aside enough time to simply ‘be’ with God.
We don’t give ourselves time enough to ‘stop’ and know the intimate connection
we have with our Creator.
We forget that God is our strength or as
it is written in some translations, our rock.
God is to be our first and last thought in our day. God is the foundation on which our lives are
to be based. The first commandment is
that we are to have no other gods, little “g,” before God, big “G.”
That’s not easy. And I don’t think
that God expects us to do it all perfectly.
But we have these rules to help us know God more fully. These commandments are God’s plan for each of
us. This is our list of how we are to
love God and to love our neighbor.
And then we are confronted with an
incident that makes us see that there are those who do not understand any of
this. They have come to a place in their
life where there is no love of God or of neighbor in them and they take out
their emotions, whatever those emotions may be, on others.
There is no sense in this.
Even as Christians who believe in the
power of redemption, the healing power of reconciliation, and in the hope of
the resurrection, actions such as these can make us sit up and take notice of
how any of us live out our relationship with our God.
Actions such as these may motivate us
to reflect upon how we show our love of God through our love of neighbor.
They may make us stop to pray and to appreciate
more fully all that God has provided for us.
They may help us say. “Forgive me,”
and “I love you,” a little more often.
And now, because there are so many
more words that could be said, but that won’t be uttered, now, I invite you to
come over to the chapel altar in silence to help light the 59 candles
there. One for each who died in the
shooting last week in Las Vegas.
Before we do this, let us pray.
Let the silence from our lips help us
to more fully meditate in our hearts all that is acceptable to you, O God, our
comfort and our savior. Amen.