Psalm
84
August
26, 2018
William G. Carter
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of
hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of
the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for
herself,
where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and
my God.
Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your
praise.
Sometime
ago, some church people had a dilemma: a bird was flying around in the sanctuary.
During the prayers one Sunday, they heard the fluttering of wings. Perhaps they
assumed it was the sound of an angel or even the Holy Spirit, but a young lad
opened his eyes during the prayer and announced in a loud voice, “It’s a bird!” Nobody knew how to handle it.
Some
were concerned how the bird got in. This was a security concern. Was there an
open window? A door left ajar? A crack in the wall? A hole in the roof? There
were quick investigations and no conclusive results. Nobody knew how the bird
got in. All they knew was the bird was still there.
Some
were concerned how they might get it out. They thought they might chase it when
they saw it, and then they didn’t see it. And when the bird appeared, the matter
was over their heads. Somebody requested the organist to blast up the volume
and scare it out. Somebody else asked the preacher to do the same thing. A
third person, who owned a swimming pool, showed up with a pool skimmer, the
kind with a net at the end of a long pole. The bird was still there.
So, the
jokers met downstairs at coffee hour and suggested a few possible solutions. A
member of the finance committee said, “Let’s give that bird a pledge card; if
it fills out the pledge card, it can stay.” Somebody else told the old joke
about the squirrels that got into a church attic, so they sent the squirrels to
confirmation class, got the squirrels confirmed, and they never showed up again.”
The Christian Education committee groaned.
That
reminded another one of the jokers about the bear who showed up in the
synagogue. The council sent the rabbi to circumcise the bear. The rabbi returned,
a bit beaten up, but the bear never came back. When the laughter died down, the
Presbyterians still had a bird in their church sanctuary.
The
concern was not merely the distraction of fluttering wings. It was the
possibility of something terrible happening. The choir might stand to sing an
anthem, for instance, and as a tenor opened his mouth to intone a really big
vowel, the bird might fly in. Or even worse, the bird might anoint somebody’s
shoulder or make a deposit on Grandma’s wig.
It
was then that a young Boy Scout, fresh from his ornithology merit badge,
announced to the crowd, “It’s a sparrow.” The news was easier to take. The next
Sunday, the choir stood to sing, “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m
free. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.”
The
preacher, who was always scrambling for material to use for the children’s
sermon, told the kids how Jesus said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to
the ground apart from your Father… So do not be afraid; you are of more value
than many sparrows.” For the moment, everybody felt superior.
Yet
there was evidence the sparrow might stick around for a while. When they did an
inventory of the Christian Education closet, a few pipe cleaners were missing.
Some snippets of twine were pulled out of the custodian’s garbage can. Somebody
in the church’s knitting group was missing some strands of purple yarn. Could
it be that the sparrow was building a nest in their church somewhere? Not only
that, but the sparrow might be reproducing in the sacred precincts? The
frustration increased, and the bird was still there.
Then
one Sunday, something unusual happened. The choir stood to sing a piece from
the Brahms Requiem, “How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord.” The conductor wrote
a note in the worship bulletin to say the piece was a setting of Psalm 84. The
high school German teacher smiled and reached for a pew Bible. You see, Brahms
wrote the piece to be sung in German, so the teacher thought she would read
along in English.
To her shock and
surprise, Brahms includes verse one, verse two, and verse four of the psalm –
and skips over verse three. There it was in English, plain as day: “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest
for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of
hosts, my King and my God.” When the benediction was over, she rushed up to
point this out to the choir director, and they both hurried to show the verse
to the pastor.
Pretty soon it was declared: the scriptures were
fulfilled in their hearing. And there was still a sparrow in their sanctuary.
Here
we sit in the woods. There are birds, bugs, and critters just out of sight.
This is their home. They were here before we showed up. Try as we might to domesticate
this space, chase them away, name them as pests and eradicate them, they live
on the same planet with the rest of us.
We
can fuss about that. Philosophically, we can amplify the words of Jesus and
declare, “We are of more value than they,” although I’m not sure the One through
whom all things were made would say some of his creatures are better than
others. We can also build temples and declare them pest-free, although that’s
silly. Pests arrive every Sunday, and some stop by for coffee on Tuesday
afternoons.
But
to separate ourselves from other creatures in God’s world is short-sighted. Have
you heard that the honey bees are in danger? Their population has dropped by
ninety percent over the past twenty-five years. These are the chief pollinators
of blueberries, tomatoes, and wild flowers.[1]
This is not what God intends for the peaceable kingdom.
Early
yesterday morning, I took a cup of coffee to the front porch. I watched my
corner of the world wake up and thought about this sermon. My rocking chair is
seated among ferns and geraniums, wild flowers and rose bushes. The late summer
cicadas hummed, as a chorus of unseen birds broke into song. Off in the
distance, a mourning dove cooed.
A
small black and white cat wandered down the street. We don’t know the people
who belong to the cat, which has appeared recently. Inside the screen door, one
of our springer spaniels whimpered, asking if he could introduce himself to the
kitty. I said, “No,” to punish him for the four pieces of chicken wing pizza
that he stole off the kitchen counter when we weren’t watching; I’m sure he was
incapable of remembering he had done it. I reached for a final sip from the
coffee cup, only to announce a gnat decided to plunge in for a swim.
It
was then I affirmed the natural world does not revolve around me. It was a moment
of repentance. The great illusion of our climate-controlled existence is that
we can create a pristine environment. That’s impossible. Any attempt
disconnects us from the earthworms who enrich the soil beneath our feet and the
sparrows who fly over our heads. It seems best to make peace with this, to live
collaboratively with the birds and the beasts and the flowers of the field.
This is their home too.
Over
the past couple of weeks, I’ve mentioned the Scottish island of Iona and its
marvelous chapel. Built in the sixth century, it was the largest Benedictine
training ground until the Vikings plundered it two hundred years later. The
Book of Kells was created there, that incredible illuminated manuscript of the
Christian Gospels. A Presbyterian minister named Macleod gathered some
unemployed stone masons to help rebuild it, starting in the 1930’s. It’s an
amazing place on a little tiny island.
As the guide took
us for a tour inside the stone chapel, we saw a cluster of ferns growing in the
cracks of the western wall. The guide said, “They were here. They love damp,
dark environments. We water them regularly.” As if to head off any questions,
she said, “They remind us of our calling to live at peace with nature, that
this is what God intends, and remind us that nature will outlive us all.”
Recently,
I have also heard again a favorite poem by Wendell Berry, the farmer-poet of
Kentucky. It has been set multiple times to music and sung by choirs. The poem is
called “The Peace of Wild Things” and is especially appropriate here. Listen to
it:
When despair for
the world grows in me
And I wake in the
night at the least sound
In fear of what my
life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down
where the wood drake
Rests in his beauty
on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the
peace of wild things
Who do not tax
their lives with forethought
Of grief. I come
into the presence of still water.
And I feel above
me the day-blind stars
Waiting for their
light. For a time
I rest in the
grace of the world, and am free.
The
words sound clearer in this rustic chapel. All creatures of our God and king
lift up your voice with us to sing alleluia. Our task is to join them, to come
alongside them, and to praise God for this life. When we build our temples to
worship their God and ours, we take them in consideration and do as little harm
as possible. This world is our home –
and their home too. It is here that we are invited to join all creation in worshiping
the God who creates it all.
So
let’s listen for a few minutes to the alleluias that they offer. We will ask
the birds and the beasts to complete the sermon.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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