Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 3, 2002
Psalm 95:1-7
A couple of weeks ago I was along the Russian River, just kind of scouting it out, thinking about doing a little fishing. I just kept driving along and ended up going all the way to Warm Springs Dam, were the hatchery is. I parked the car right at the last bridge, right before you go into the hatchery. I walked out on the bridge and looked down just to see what I could see down in the water. And what I saw was about forty steelhead, all different sizes, getting ready to go up into the hatchery to lay their eggs. But they weren’t all going to go there. As I watched closer, there were two or three females who were clearly making nests and were going to spawn right there in Dry Creek. It was fascinating to watch. There was one right below me, a beautiful female. I could see her digging out the stream bottom with her tail; she was preparing her nest. It looked like she would be ready to lay her eggs any minute, while hovering around her were four or five males. And one in particular seemed to have the inside track and was driving off any who would come close. You could tell that as soon as she finished her nest, he was ready to fertilize those eggs. For me, who loves fishing and fish, it was a moving, indeed a sacred moment, to be able to witness this miracle of nature, this powerful affirmation of life. These beautiful silver fish – had survived for years in the ocean, had endured the perils of swimming up the Russian River past seals and pollution and fishermen – although certainly seemed to ignore my fishing line without any trouble whatsoever – and had now returned to Dry Creek to lay their eggs and fertilize the eggs and continue the circle of life. Again, a sacred moment. As I watched, I found myself closing my eyes and praising God. I don’t even think I consciously decided to do it – it just happened as a response to what I was witnessing the creek below; this hymn to life being sung my these marvelous creatures whose very existence has been threatened by human greed and shortsightedness. Yes, I praised God. I praised God for surrounding us with so many wonderful and wise creatures, for sunny days and clear rivers, for life itself and the absolutely amazing opportunity to be able to share in it, if even for a little while. I’m reminded of the words of a contemporary hymn written by Thomas Troeger:
Each breath is borrowed air,
not ours to keep and own,
and all our breaths as one declare
what wisdom long has known;
to live is to receive
and answer back with praise.
to what our minds cannot conceive
the source of all our days.
To live is to receive and answer back with praise. The words of another poet come to mind, words we already heard this morning:
O come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into God’s presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to God with songs of praise!
Praise – praise to God - certainly a key element of our Biblical faith. We hear it from the Psalmist. We hear it from Paul who tells the Ephesians to “live for the praise of God’s glory.” We hear it at Jesus’ birth: “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen…” And almost every Sunday don’t we sing: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”
Praise…don’t leave church without it.
But why? What’s the big deal about praise – specifically, praise of God? I can understand why it might be important to praise my children, my spouse, a friend who does something special – to let them know I know what a great job they are doing and how much I appreciate them. But is praise of God really all that important? I think it might be.
First and foremost, praise of God is a way of keeping life and the events of life in perspective. My moment of praise on a bridge above Dry Creek did not occur in a vacuum. I was recently returned from my trip to Phoenix and was still struggling with feelings of worry, frustration and guilt over my mother’s health. Closer to home, Dorothy McHugh was near death; I had just learned that a young woman, former member of church senior high youth group, I officiated at her wedding, had lost twin girls at 21 weeks. I was feeling kind of down, wondering what bad thing was going to happen next; feeling like I had bought a ticket on what Bruce Springsteen calls that “downbound train.” But that moment on the bridge, that moment of praise, helped to bring me back; reminded me that while yes, my despair was real, it wasn’t my entire life. It wasn’t all there is.
How easily the world captures us. How easily the painful events of life capture us. We become blinded, paralyzed, prisoners of what is. “Oh well, today is pretty much like yesterday, which no doubt, won’t be much different than tomorrow.” Or, in the immortal words of Charlie Brown, “I’m learning to dread just one day at a time.” But praise, particularly praise to God, serves as an antidote to that kind of thinking. Because praise gets us out of ourselves and our preoccupation with ourselves; you might say that praise opens us to the bigger picture, to all the many ways God has touched and blessed our lives from the very beginning.
I’ve told you before about John Claypool, Episcopal priest. Several years ago, he and his wife lost their young daughter to leukemia. It was, needless to say, a devastating time – a wound was opened in their lives which will never completely heal. And yet, when he returned to the pulpit, Claypool praised God, proclaiming to the congregation: “Life is a gift!” From the depths of grief, still able to affirm the blessedness, the giftedness, of life.
For Claypool – for us – what opens the door to this kind of appreciation is praise. Again, in the words of the poet, “to live is to receive and answer back with praise.” I was called into something from nothing and through it all a dimension of goodness and mercy has in fact sustained me all the days of my life. I have known darkness to be sure, but also great light. I guess what I’m saying is that praise enables us to live with life’s ambiguity. Things can be good without being perfect, we don’t see everything but we do see something, again we know darkness but also light. “O come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to God with songs of praise.” Praise begins, not with us and our problems, not with all of our anxious navel-gazing, but with God. The One who has chosen, accepted, blessed, forgiven, and cared for each us. Everything else flows from that.
And one further word. In praise, there is hope. William Willimon of Duke University shares this true story: “Back in the days of the Civil Rights movement, I well remember attending a march for civil rights in the Deep South. We students had gathered to march for justice, bravely to stand up and be counted, to demand that the government do something for the rights of black people.
“But what was the first thing that the organizers of the march made us do? They made us gather in a hot, rural, black Baptist church for hours, endless hours of singing and praying and preaching. ‘Let’s get on with the real work of justice,’ we young white activists said. ‘Let’s get out in the streets where we can do some good.’ What did all this singing have to do with the matters at hand?
“Patiently they reminded us that they had been at this struggle just a little longer than we had. They told us that we were not contending against a few bad laws, a few bad people. We were struggling against nothing less than principalities and powers, against cosmic evil. If all we had to sustain us out in the streets was superficial optimistic humanism, we would not be out there for long.”
Concludes Willimon, “We saw that we were there, in the church, to be reminded of just Who had called us together, Who had sent us out to the battle, and Who marched with us. We came to see that the most important, most revolutionary act we could make was to sing a hymn, to praise God, and thereby to believe, and thereby to act. Praise precedes Christian action, calls it forth, sustains it.
Sometimes our vision can get so narrow; discouragement always lurks just below the surface. Will anything ever change? Will this broken world of ours ever heal? Where are the sources for hope? But in praise you see, our story is linked with a larger story – a story of justice, love, freedom, and hope, a story that existed long before we showed up on this earth and will continue long after we have made our exit. But we are a part of it now. I have always loved these words by Dag Hammarskjold: “I don’t know who – or what – put the question. I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something – and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life had a goal.”
Praise keeps us open to why we are here – constantly reminds us that we, in our worship and life together as a community of faith, are indeed part of the advent of a new heaven and new earth. We are a sign, a witness to that coming kingdom where the poor, the hurting, the wretched of the earth are royalty, where anyone in need is our neighbor, and where all things are made new. As they sang and worshipped and praised God in those hot rural churches in the 1960’s, they knew the Kingdom hadn’t come. My goodness, as they looked around they knew it probably wasn’t even close. But they caught of a glimpse of it and a glimpse was all they needed. As we sing and worship and praise God in Lent, 2002, may we glimpse it also, and may that glimpse enable us to be signs and instruments of God’s purposes wherever we live and work and play.
And, as that great saint of the church, Howard Thurman, reminded us, it all begins with praise. In his words: “Jesus belongs to no age, no race, no creed. When we look into his face, we see etched the glory of our own possibilities, and our hearts whisper, ‘Thank you and thank God.’”
Return to Sermon Table of Contents