Short and Sweet

Psalm 117
Series: Dwelling the Psalms
September 27, 2026
William G, Carter

Today is Worship Through Service day, a day when the congregation takes on tasks to improve the lives of those around us.

Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol him, all you peoples!
For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord!

That went by pretty quickly. Let me read it again:

Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol him, all you peoples!
For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord!

The psalm for today is short. It’s sweet. Not a lot of words to look up; maybe a couple. We don’t use the verb “extol” very much. One scholar translates the verb, “applaud,” as in “clap for God!” And the phrase “steadfast love” is a single Hebrew word, “hesed.” Someone told me that is the Jewish word for “grace.” As in, “great is God’s grace.”

If you like brief Bible passages, this one’s for you. It reminds me of the conversation from some time back. A group of teenagers are discussing their favorite Bible passages. One of them said, “John 3:16,” and then quoted it. Another said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, the first beatitude.” One more replied, “Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd.” Then they came to the minister’s son and asked, “Tommy, what’s your favorite Bible verse?” He said, “John, chapter eleven, verse thirty-five.” Everybody looked at him, curious. John 11:35 – what’s that?

Tommy said, “Should I recite it for you?” Yes, please. So, he cleared his throat and said, “John 11, verse thirty-five: ‘Jesus wept.’” Everybody laughed, and Tommy said, “It’s easy to remember.” Short and sweet.

Given that some of the Psalms go on for a while – just two Psalms later, Psalm 119 has one-hundred-seventy-six verses – it’s curious that this one is included. Why do you suppose it’s here?

Could it be that it’s part of a larger section of Psalms? And in fact, it is. Psalms 113 through 118 belong together. They are called the “Egyptian Hallel” psalms. “Egyptian” because they recall the exodus from Egypt when God brought the people of Israel out of slavery. They are called “hallel,” which is short for “hallelujah!” That’s what Israel shouted after the people escaped from Pharoah.

To this day, if we eat a Passover meal with our Jewish neighbors, they will recite all seven of these psalms during the meal. In one of the Last Supper stories, we read that Jesus lifted the cup of wine and said to his friends, “Drink the blood of the covenant, shed for the forgiveness of many.” Then it says, “They sang the hymn” before going to the Garden of Gethsemane. Psalm 117 is part of that hymn.

By now, you are starting to realize that a short Bible text does not guarantee a short sermon. Do you know why that is? It’s because of a scientific law called Kinetic Molecular Theory. This is a rule of physics that affects even sermons. Kinetic Molecular Theory states that every gas will expand to fill the available space. The hotter the gas, the more it expands. That’s the best definition of long sermons that I know: a lot of hot air, it fills the room.

But what can be said about this Psalm, Psalm 117? We have just two verses, hardly worth the effort - - until we read it, until we say the words. “Praise the Lord, all you nations! Applaud him, all you peoples!” Could it be there is something here for all nations, all people? Not just the Jews who wrote the text. Not restricted to the Christians who have adopted the text. The psalm is calling upon all the outsiders, too. The goyim – that’s Jewish word for “everybody else.”

What we have today is a universal invitation. It’s a call offered to everybody, without restrictions. It’s an invitation that pushes beyond the walls and steps over the boundaries. There is something about the love of God, something about the steadfast love of God, which reaches out to every single person. This short little psalm opens us up to see an expansive world. God created us all. God has grace for us all.

It happens locally. The other night, one of our church friends was talking about a person in this neighborhood. He is often here before the rest of us on Sunday mornings. He described her and I knew exactly who he was talking about. It’s a young lady. She has a beautiful dog. She walks up and down the sidewalk with her dog. That’s all I know about her. I don’t know her name. I’m not sure where she lives. I’ve waved to her a few times. She nods and keeps walking.

One day, Jim was here early. He saw her and said, “What a beautiful dog!” She paused long enough to say, “thank you” and “hello.” They chatted for a minute. Then she asked, “Do you think the priest at this church would ever bless my dog?”

Well, is she here today? I don’t see her, but if you should spot her, please tell her, “Yes, of course! Today he’s hard to pick out. He’s wearing a yellow T-shirt, but he would be happy to bless your dog. Or anybody else’s dog.” All our companions in life are worthy of - and welcome to - the blessing of their Creator. Great is God’s steadfast love for all of us. Dogs included. Maybe even the cats. Maybe even the people who belong to their animals. God’s blessing is for all God’s creatures. Our little bitty psalm opens up that far.

And it opens up a good bit further, too. Have you heard of a guy named Ron Garan? He’s an astronaut and he spent 178 days aboard the International Space Station. When he landed back on earth, he brought back something far heavier than space equipment or mission date. He returned with a transformed understanding of the blessing of God.

As he described it, “From orbit, Earth doesn’t look like a collection of countries, borders, or competing interests. It is a single, radiant blue sphere suspended in darkness.” Lines do not divide the continents. No flags mark territory. From 250 miles above the surface, every human conflict suddenly looks small – and every human connection is unavoidable.

Garan watched lightning storms crackle across entire continents, auroras rippled like rainbow curtains, and city lights glow slowly against the planet’s night side. “What struck me most,” he said, “was not earth’s power – but its fragility.” A paper-thin blue halo is the atmosphere. Barely visible, that thin halo is responsible for everything that breathes, grows, and survives. There is no backup, no second home, no escape.

Up in orbit, he says, pollution has no nationality. Climate systems ignore borders. Environmental damage in one region ripples across the entire globe. All those divisions we defend so fiercely on the ground simply don’t exist from above. The notion that life is “us versus them” disappears, replaced by a single, unavoidable truth: there is only us.[1]

All of us. All of us subject to the steadfast love of the God who makes us all. All of us, called by God to show that steadfast love to all the nations. All of us, with no “them.” Just us, God’s children. Praise the Lord!

Well, that’s all I have for you today. I apologize that the sermon is so brief, but the scripture text was short and sweet. Not only that, but we also have work to do. So, let’s get on with it.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Quoted on Facebook, 26 September 2026: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1673600016825249/posts/2240600823458496/

 

Known By Their Limp

Psalm 129 (click here to read it)
Series: Dwelling in the Psalms
September 13, 2026

William G. Carter  

            As we dwell in the Psalms, we must take the time to consider our enemies. Enemies. It is not only that there are natural difficulties in the journey and physical challenges. There are people out there who wish us ill. So, the psalmist takes time to begin working this through.

            One way to do it is through revenge. Maybe you have heard the old Irish prayer, which I first heard it from a priest named McGowan. He was called upon to offer a blessing, and this is what he said: 

May those who love us love us,
and those who do not love us, may God turn their hearts,
and if God cannot turn their hearts, may He turn their ankles
that we may know them by their limping.

We laughed when he told it at the Rubber Chicken banquet. It seemed so Irish: the joyfulness, the turn of the phrase, the little twist of judgment that would seem so delightful (“that we may know them by their limping”). We laughed because it seemed so funny. Vindictive, but funny.

In the Bible’s prayer book, we have a psalm that sounds like this. Psalm 129 is a prayer for the downfall of Israel’s enemies. The Psalmist stops in his tracks, shakes his fist in the air, and hurls a curse: “May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward!” Or to put it another way, “Lord, give them a little limp!”

            Notice, if you will, that the Psalmist does not use ink in scripture to call down judgment on his personal enemies – say, on the butcher who cheats him or the neighbor who dumps dirty dishwater on the lawn. Rather, this is righteous anger. He is angry with God’s enemies, the ones who “hate Zion,” the ones who disrespect the ways and the worship of God. He prays that their hatred will cause public shame to heap on their heads. He wants those who despise God’s presence on the earth to be exposed and embarrassed.

            But he cannot keep it there, so he offers another little curse. Apparently, the Psalmist looks around the countryside, and his imagination begins to flutter. He sees the peasant housing with rooftops made from sod. What’s more, it must have been another sweltering day in Palestine, for he says,

• Let them be like the grass on the housetops that withers before it grows up,
• Let them be like the grass which reapers can’t use or share with the farm animal.
• Let them be like the ones who will not hear the blessing of the Lord.

            In other words, “So there, you dried-up rooftops!” That doesn’t translate really well, but we hear the gist of it. We have all heard, or uttered, more afflictive curses. For instance, there is the curse uttered by a Jewish comic: “May all of your teeth fall out, except for the one tooth that gives you a toothache.” Or there is the response of the Palestinian shepherd: “May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!” Somehow when the Psalmist curses, “May you become like dried grass on a rooftop,” it does not quite cut it. But we understand the sentiment.

At a high school reunion a few years ago, I caught up with a classmate who hasn’t seen his daughter in many years. His ex-wife has primary custody of the girl and moved away without saying a word. That was not their agreement. He hired a private detective and tracked them down. Then he appeared on the doorstep. The mother called the police, accusing him of stalking. It descended from there.

We know these stories. Some among us know them painfully well. Wishing for fleas or turned ankles are mild punishments compared to some of the dark curses that can invade the heart. People are capable of doing horrendous things to one another. Then they perpetuate the warfare. I hear weariness when the Psalmist says, “Often they have attacked me from my youth . . . they have taken a farm plow and run it across my back so that the furrows are deep.”

We have known people who love to pick a fight, just because they are not comfortable living in peace. When things go too quietly, they share a gossiping word, speak the innuendo, or play people off one another like pawns in a chess game. Sometimes they do it because they are bored. Or because they are cruel. Once in a while, the motivation is that they cannot live with peace and quiet.

In other situations, it can be a sense of justice that stirs the pot. For some people, it is the feeling that fairness would not be fair. A woman was recently arrested for setting her own home on fire. She explained by saying, “The judge told me that I had to sell the house and share the profits with my estranged husband, but I could not bear to have him end up with so much.” Well, guess what - she received her wish. Now she has a lot of time to think about what she did.

In spite of each situation and its bag of tangled truths, the one thing we can say about our enemies is that they can be enormous distractions from the pilgrim road. Enemies tie up our courtrooms and tangle up our hearts. They provoke us, sometimes without our conscious awareness. They prompt us to consider violence. And it is not only our enemies who consume us – some time the very ways we respond to them will consume us.

As Frederick Buechner once described the unsavory truth,

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back -- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.[1]

            We laughed when the Irish priest prayed for God to twist the ankles of our enemies. But some of that laughter was nervous. It is simply not healthy to live by revenge. Revenge has uncertain benefits. As Mahatma Gandhi is reported to have said, “If you live by the rule of an eye for an eye, pretty soon the whole world is blind.” Somehow the animosity must cease. We have to let it go.

            In the center of the psalm is the important affirmation: “The Lord is righteous.” God sees things without the scalding tears of hostility. God is the judge who can make things right. God is the One who stands outside the circle of our disputes. God is concerned but immovable, loving, but unable to be bribed.

God’s righteousness is clearly revealed when the world crucifies his own Son, and neither one of them retaliates in revenge. Instead, we hear our Jesus say, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” Our hope is always that God has answered that prayer, that God continues to answer that prayer, for the Lord alone is righteous. Forgiveness is the way of God with infinite mercy. Frustrating as it might possibly be, God inevitably sets everything right.

There is a sadly comic scene in the biblical short story of Jonah. As you may remember, Jonah was a reluctant prophet. When sent to preach doom and gloom to the nasty people of Nineveh, he hopped on a ship to go in the opposite direction. God used a storm and a gigantic fish to return Jonah to shore and redirects him to his commission. Bleached white by the gastric juices of the fish’s stomach, the prophet hobbles his way to Nineveh, preaches his fiery sermon, and waits for God to blast away his enemies.

However, the people of Nineveh change their minds, and that changes God’s mind. The moment of judgment never comes. Jonah is furious. As the poet Thomas John Carlisle voices the prophet’s fury, “I hate God’s enemies with a perfect hatred; why can’t God do likewise?”[2]

The best answer: because this is not the kind of God that we have. God did not condemn the world for killing Jesus, deciding instead to transform the world through the power of forgiveness.

Ever so quietly, the psalmist remembers that we are not defined by our enemies, but by the covenant love of God. We have felt the plow cutting on our backs, but our enemies have not had the last word. “God has cut the bonds of the wicked,” so we are no longer tied down, tied up, or twisted into knots. It is possible to be cut free. Let the angry burden go. You have carried it long enough. Let it go. Let God set you free.

Many years ago, our church had a congregational memorial service on a Sunday afternoon. It was the season of Lent; first time we ever tried such a service. After a brief sermon and a hymn, we invited people forward to light a candle on the communion table and speak the name of somebody who has passed away, somebody for whom they still mourn. It was a powerful moment.

A young woman named Helen attended with her husband and three children. They came forward and lit a candle as a family. Her husband had recently lost his mother, so he spoke her name, paused for a moment of silence, wiped away a few tears, and they returned to their seats.

            A few minutes later, Helen came back, this time by herself. She lit another candle and said another name. It was a name I had never heard, loud and clear, and I wouldn’t have thought anything of it except for the strange look that was on her face.

            The memorial service ended, and everybody scattered. A few hours later, I received an e-mail from Helen. “I surprised myself,” she said. “I never thought I could say that name. I don’t know where this is going. Could we get together and talk?”

            We sat in my study the next morning and the story came tumbling out. It was her brother’s name, and he had been dead for sixteen years. This was the first time she allowed herself to speak his name. The two of them were the children of a minister and her brother Eric had a full-blown rebellion as a teenager. “To say that he and my father didn’t get along would be a gross understatement,” she said. Their relationship grew violent. They threatened to actively do harm to one another.

            The situation became so bad that Eric sat down and wrote a letter. He renounced his father and everything he stood for, cursed him for this reason and that, and then went to his bedroom and took his own life. The final insult is that he did it on Good Friday, while his father was leading a worship service at a nearby church.

            The father was not to be outdone. He refused to print an obituary. He refused to allow a funeral for his son. He arranged for a quick cremation and told mother and sister they would scatter the ashes later at their summer home in the mountains. Then the father decreed the name of his son would never again be spoken in his home.

            Sixteen years later, Helen came down the aisle in our church. For the first time in years, she spoke her brother’s name. “I don’t know where this is going,” she said, “but I need to put it to rest.”

She said the one continuing reminder of her brother was his duffel bag. After he died, the parents cleaned out his room. They gave Helen his duffel bag. Not knowing what else to do with it, unable to throw it away, she carried that baggage with her for the next sixteen years.

            Now it was time to let go of the burden. About a week later Helen, her husband, and I gathered at a country cemetery up in hills near Uniondale. Helen had a shoebox with a scoop or two of soil from the backyard where her brother’s ashes had been scattered, the charred remains of that duffel bag which she decided to carry no longer, and a letter of reconciliation that she wrote to her brother. We laid those relics in the ground and gave her brother a proper funeral.

Sooner or later, we must put things to rest. We have the power to lay our burdens down. We leave them in the hands of the God who alone is righteous, a God in whose justice the whole world has its hope.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973) 2.

[2] Thomas John Carlisle, You! Jonah! (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1968) 43.

The Magic of Melody

Psalm 98 (click here to read the text)
Jazz Communion
September 6, 2026

William G. Carter

If the high school football team spent time in the gym, our marching band hung out in the band room. That was the scene for my teenage crowd. We brought our lunch trays to talk and listen to music. One fateful day, nobody was talking, only listening. Listening to the large, expansive music of an orchestra. At the heart of it was the sound of an improvising trumpet, or something like a trumpet.

“Who’s that?” asked one of the kids. A trumpeter said, “It's that new guy from Rochester, Chuck Mangione.” Tony, the Italian kid, said, “That's pronounced man-go-ni. Rhymes with macaroni.” “I like this,” said one of the flute players, “because it sounds like a symphony.” Another said, “It’s jazz. Normally, I don’t like jazz. But this is surprisingly good.”

They listened for a bit, captivated by the sounds. Halfway through the LP, one of them said, “I can whistle every song.” The trumpet player stopped him. “Don't do it. Let's just listen.” We were moved by the melody, transported. The school bell rang, calling all of us away from lunch period and back the class. Somebody said, “We have to do this again.”

That was the scene in my high school. In upstate New York, that was the scene in lots of high schools. There was a buzz about this young dude with long hair and a floppy hat. He lived not far away and created songs that moved our hearts.

We did not yet know Mangione had strong credentials from the New York jazz world. When Chuck was a kid, every prominent jazz musician who passed through Rochester was invited to the Mangione home for pasta and homemade wine. When Chuck was fifteen, Dizzy Gillespie, one of those musicians, gave him one of his up-bent trumpets. Not long after that, Dizzy recommended Chuck to join Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with a young piano player named Keith Jarrett. With strong musical skills, prodigious talent, and an effervescent personality, he made a lot of friends.

So, imagine our excitement when our music teacher handed out one of Chuck’s tunes to our high school jazz band. It was called "Hill Where the Lord Hides." To a teenage Presbyterian, that almost sounded religious! I was so captivated that I borrowed the score off the conductor’s stand without his permission. I took it home, copied out the notes, and gave the tune to our basement band to play. In my musical photo album, there's a picture of me in a gray leisure suit playing that song with my friends in a high school talent show. Mangione's music has been with me for well over fifty years.

When we discovered Chuck was coming with his band to nearby Binghamton to play in the County Arena, I was euphoric. Their hit tune, "Feels So Good" was soaring on the radio waves. It was on all the AM and FM stations. I mustered the courage to ask a pretty young thing to be my date. In that era before cell phones, she sat through the concert looking at her watch. Meanwhile, when Mangione and his quintet hit the stage, they got a standing ovation before they played a single note. So, what was so exciting for everybody but her? Songs we could whistle but didn't. Tunes that lifted our spirits. Music that healed our souls. It was the magic of melody.

Ancient Israel knew all about melodies. According to the scrolls of First and Second Chronicles, the Jerusalem Temple had a multi-generational school to teach music through example and repetition.[1] In that time and place, music was taken seriously. It was an integrative art form. Like incense, music changes the room. It pulls together body, heart, mind, and spirit. Music creates community. It can be offered as the conduit for prayer.

Now, I love the Bible. For 41 years, I’ve been working with the Bible. My biggest gripe about the Bible is that somebody took out all the melodies. I now believe the culprit must have been a preacher, a preacher who considered himself superior to the choir director. “Words are what is most important,” he said, “just print the words.” It was a stupid mistake, for a life without melody is no life at all.

What is a melody, anyway? Pat Metheny, the jazz guitarist, said, “Melody is the most impossible aspect of music to nail down.”[2] A scientist can dissect a melody into notes and spaces, but for the average person that’s about as interesting as an autopsy. It’s just parts, no life. A good melody is full of life. As Metheny says, every melody has an inner wisdom. It speaks in invisible poetry. It can linger in the ear for years. It has the power to ignite imagination.

Psalm 98 celebrates the power of melody. Sing a new song. Make a joyful noise. Blow the horn. Strum the strings. Play a duet with creation, where seas roar, floods clap, and hills sing. Music surrounds us because it is inhabited with the life of the invisible Composer, Conductor, and Critic – a sonic Trinity if there ever was one.

As notes are shared, life is shared. We join all creation to experience what it is to be alive, the sorrow and the joy, the surprise and the confirmation, the passion and the pathos and the abundance of God's gift of life.

Musicians knew this in ancient days. They know it now. There is no rational reason musicians like these would make the music that they do, unless there was something life-giving at its heart, something that brings them alive and gives them an incredible purpose. They aren't doing it for the money, or the working conditions, or the travel. (Jeff, what time did you get up this morning to drive down from Syracuse?) Here we are, re-presenting the music of Mangione. It has been a gift for us, and we want it to be a gift for you. A holy gift, a life-giving gift.

Listen to how Chuck said it himself, “If you’re honest and play with love, people will sit down and listen. My music is the sum of all I have experienced.”[3] His love affair with music was characterized by “his boundless energy, unabashed enthusiasm, and pure joy that radiated from the stage.” And he wanted to share what had been given to him with as many people as possible. The night of that Binghamton concert, he sat on the edge of the stage after the show to sign records and photos for hundreds of people for people like me. His melodies were offered as a public gift.

In fact, the offertory today was Chuck’s Mother’s Day gift for his mom. The title, “Bellavia,” was her maiden name. It means “beautiful way.” The song was nominated for a Grammy for best instrumental composition. The other nominees that year were Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire, Chick Corea, Henry Mancini, and Quincy Jones. Chuck said, “I felt like I was in the Kentucky Derby and I was riding Mister Ed.”  

He didn’t think he had a chance of winning, so he took a gig in Champaign, Illinois. That night, he watched on hotel TV as Paul Simon announced that he had won. Chuck said, “Buying Mother’s Day gifts is a hard thing, but I think I nailed that one.”[4]

You and I have the opportunity each day to offer ourselves as gifts to one another. What might you offer to make the world a more “beautiful way”? A “Bellavia”?

My friends and I are offering some melodies. Say what we want about jazz, I've given 35 years of my life to share the discovery that this music is internally alive, that the Creative Spirit is present in and among the musicians. When music happens, life happens. Friendships are built, rooms are changed, and people depart with residual amounts of the holy leading them out into the world.

That's the power of music, God's gift to all who have ears to hear. And it has been a deep, deep joy to join my friends in offering this music as our gift to you.

 

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See, for instance, chapters 15 and 25 of First Chronicles and chapters 5 and 7 of Second Chronicles. Specifically, a school is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 25:7-8.

[2] Richard Niles, The Pat Metheny Interviews: The Inner Workings of His Creativity Revealed (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Books, 2009) 137-140.

[3] Chuck Mangione, https://www.wzum.org/jazz-blog/2025/8/01/mcgjazz-r7ltk  

[4] Ibid, 42:08 – 43:10.

Walking in Integrity

Psalm 26 (click here to read)
August 30, 2026
Series: Dwelling in the Psalms
William G. Carter

We have spent enough weeks in the Psalms that it was inevitable we would discover where they are. In the classroom, we invite folks to find the Psalms in the center of the Bible. “Open up the book in the middle, and there they are.” Right in the middle. The Psalms are prayers for the faithful community. In every generation, they have been re-set to music. Even though many of them speak in the first person – “The Lord is my shepherd.” “I will bless the Lord.” - When they are put into the air, they speak for the community. They become our texts.

And where are the psalms? In the center of things. In the middle of real life. In the complications of human situations. So, we have the psalm for today.

It resonates with many of the other texts in Israel’s prayerbook, for it distinguishes between right and wrong. It names the distance between good and evil. It spells out the behaviors. This is one of the ways Israel taught morality. There are stories of life going askew. A lot of them! And there are these poem songs – the Psalms – which summarize and clarify the stories.

This is one of those psalms. Life can go this way, or it can go that way. “I can worship God in the Temple; I can lose myself in the songs of thanksgiving” Or “I can thirst for blood and take a bribe.” There is no middle ground in between.

It’s clear from the very first psalm, which offers an overture of the whole book: “Happy are those who do not take the advice of the wicked, but delight in the law of the Lord.” Good people are planted like trees in the riverbank. They flourish. Their lives are fruitful. As for the evil? Well, they have no roots. When the wind blows, the wicked are blown away.

Hear the similarity between Psalm 1 and Psalm 26? You are good or you are evil. You are righteous or you are wicked. No sliding scale – this or that.

It might have been Walter Brueggemann who pointed out that people tend to talk this way when they are certain they are in the majority, when there is a wide consensus about right and wrong. So, there is agreement about “those people.” The finger pointing is clear.

And the distinctions don’t always hold, do they? We had a kid in our third-grade class. His name was Little Ricky. Red-headed, big freckles, had a cowlick that defied gravity. When he grinned, you knew two things: one day he would need braces, and he was scheming about something. He filled the toilet bowl with paper towels and pulled the handle. When the teacher yelled and wildly waved her hands, he stood behind her and mimicked her actions. He was that kid.

One day, she kept him at his desk while taking the rest of us to the playground. When she brought us back in, he had stolen all the erasers from the blackboard. The chalk, too. In complete exasperation, our teacher said, “Ricky, you’re never going to turn out well.” Years later, we saw his picture in the newspaper: CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He must have gotten his teeth fixed, yet there was no evidence he had straightened out his soul. In the words of another psalm, Psalm 73: “Why do the wicked prosper?”

Or another memory, which could have only happened in Lackawanna County. Right after I arrived in town, one of our congressmen was arrested on federal charges: conspiracy, racketeering, accepting illegal bribes.[1] The grand jury said it was an open and shut case. In response to the allegations, the city of Scranton threw a parade on Lackawanna Avenue to show their support. That night, Channel 16 interviewed an exuberant paradegoer, who said on camera, “He may be a crook, but he’s our crook.” I remember thinking, “Where did I move?”

You know the stories are all around us. Every day, somewhere, another story comes to light. We are flooded by them. They dull our spirit. So, to counter this dullness, the Psalmist speaks up with moral clarity. “This or that.”

^“I do not sit with the worthless…” The Hebrew word for “worthless” is the same word we translate as “vain,” as in “Don’t speak the Lord’s name in vain.” The commandment has nothing to do with cursing. It has to do with using God’s name for “empty purposes.” Like calling on the name of Jesus so you can do things Jesus would never approve of.

“I do not consort with hypocrites…” I knew a church elder who called an absent member to say, “We miss you.” The absentee said, “I stopped going because of all the hypocrites in the pews.” Lois said, “There’s always room for one more.” True enough; but the word here is not the “play acting hypocrites“ that Jesus criticized. These people are hiding and scheming. They refuse to step into the light and be accountable.

And then, “I hate the company of evildoers and will not sit with the wicked.” Oops – here is the thing: they are sitting in the same place the psalmist is. They are part of the same company, the same congregation. Can you believe it? That there might be sinners in the sanctuary of God?

You know, I thought this was getting clearer but it’s not. The poet of Psalm 26 says he washes his hands in innocence and dances around God’s altar. He sings the hymns and tells the holy stories. And yet there are cracks in his perception of perfection. He professes his trust in God. He distinguishes himself from those who are corrupt and violent. In the same breath, he adds, “Vindicate me, O Lord. Test me, prove me, redeem me, be gracious to me.” Could it be that he’s not as innocent as he says?

In the commentaries, one of the scholars says this poet sounds a bit self-righteous, as if he’s saying, “What a good boy am I!” (Limburg, p. 84) He stands on one foot to defend himself, to boast of how he’s always going to worship. “You and me are good buddies, Lord. You know who I am and what I am.” 

But then he says, “Please cut me a break.”

As Eugene Peterson translates verses nine, ten, and eleven, “Lord, when it’s time for spring cleaning, don’t sweep me out with the quacks and crooks, men with bags of dirty tricks, women with purses stuffed with bribe money. You know I’ve been aboveboard with you, now be aboveboard with me.”[2] He says it because he knows God is the only one who sees every soul with absolute clarity. 

So, twice in the psalm, we have the word “integrity.” For us, integrity usually means sticking to our principles, standing up for our values. But here, integrity is re-aligning ourselves with the purposes of God. Integrity is ‘fessing up where we fall short and need forgiveness and then doing what we can to improve. Integrity is practical righteousness, in the deepest sense that God is the One who declares us righteous. Integrity is not a matter of defending ourselves, because that would make it all about us.

Instead, in the words of the Psalm, integrity is “loving the house” where God dwells. We live with God, continually instructed by God’s values, waking each day to realign ourselves with the Holy One and his ways.

All of us know some people get it, some people don’t. Most of us are on a long journey somewhere in between. I just think of two examples.

One is a man who is running for national office in another state. He’s been in trouble with the law over and over again. He has been credibly accused of real estate scams, taking bribes, making back room deals to benefit himself. His wife wants a divorce, and he’s stalling until after the election. In a most surreal revelation, he was caught on camera of stealing a $1000 ink pen and not giving it back. His opponent’s latest ad says with a smile, “Vote for our guy. He won’t steal your pen.” His own political party defends him by saying, “He is the best candidate we can find.” They may be right.

Yet in a world of moral compromise, this week we honor another kind of person. She grew up in poverty in east Tennessee, one of twelve children. Her father could not read or write. The family struggled but spent a lot of time in church where her grandfather was the preacher. Against all odds, she started writing songs, three thousand of them. If you write that many tunes, some of them are bound to be heard. When Dolly Parton died this week after a brief illness, people praised her unanimously. Not just for her music, which came from an honest heart, but for the kind of life she led.

In honor of her father, she created a literacy program that mails books to 850,000 children each month. She created jobs in the depressed area where she was from, funded vaccinations and medical research, and offered a high school scholarship program that reduced the regional drop-out rate from 35% to 6%. She donated millions to flood victims, rebuilt communities destroyed by hurricanes, and advocated for those excluded – all while keeping a sense of humor about herself and a deep concern for all in need.

Someone summed it up this way, “Every time I was with her, I always went away feeling better about myself and more optimistic about the world.”

What’s the word? Integrity, that’s the word. Integrity with the love of God. Integrity with God’s purposes for the world.

Could I end it this way? In a world of morally empty public figures, be a Dolly Parton.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/2016/03/11/150-people-who-made-scranton-great-us-rep-joseph-m-mcdade/

[2] Eugene H. Peterson, The Message, Psalm 26:9-11.

Holy Hospitality

Psalm 84 (click here to read)
August 23, 2026
Series: Dwelling in the Psalms

William G. Carter  

Psalm 84 reminds me of the first time I ever walked into this sanctuary. My hostess had said, “Wait until you see it!” The room was dimly lit, but I could tell … the walls needed a coat of paint. Clearly, the harvest gold carpet was well-loved. By that point, it was about twenty-five years old. I leaned against the Danish-looking communion table, discovering it wobbled from side to side. Fortunately, somebody screwed two metal braces to stabilize it. My hostess said, “Isn’t it great?” 

I heard her say it, but I was busy looking behind the pulpit. The little shelf had all the things that get stashed inside a pulpit: breath mints, cough drops, a couple of broken pencils, a used Kleenex or two, and a half-full glass of last week’s water. But then I saw the piano, a small brown piano. You know I had to give it a try, so I sat down and played a few licks by Thelonious Monk – and the piano was almost in tune!

By far the most prominent feature was the array of white organ pipes, front and center. One of them had a visible dent, about eight feet up, but it still looked impressive. I didn’t yet know those pipes were only for show and weren’t connected to the organ. Meanwhile, my hostess was so excited for me to see this sanctuary for the very first time. She gushed, “Isn’t it wonderful?”

I should have been more careful when I replied, “It has a lot of potential.” That wasn’t the response she was looking for. So, I stepped back, took a breath, and gave it all a second look. I said, “I love the natural wood. This looks like an alpine chapel. There’s a simplicity to this room.”

“Yes,” she responded, “but it’s what happens here that matters the most.”

That was a long time ago, about thirty-six years ago this week. The old carpet is long gone, the fake pipes were removed, and the piano has been replaced twice. And what she said still lingers in the air: what happens here is what matters the most.

Now, I have minister friends who love to boast about their sanctuaries. “It has a marble pulpit. There are comfortable pews. The stained-glass windows actually have pictures on them.” All good, I suppose, and aesthetically pleasing. Some churches are so beautiful they are overwhelming. You’ve probably been to some of them. St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in New York. St. Nicholas Anglican in Galway, Ireland.

One of the most impressive structures in Presbyterian Land is the East Liberty Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. Built with millions of dollars from the Mellon family, founders of Mellon Bank, it is opulent, even over the top. Mr. and Mrs. Mellon are buried in the wing of the sanctuary. This had led some in Pittsburgh to sarcastically call it “Mellon’s Fire Escape.” The locals figure it was old Mr. Mellon’s attempt to make up for the excesses of greedy capitalism.[1] The excesses are obvious. On most days, it resembles a museum, not a living congregation. We certainly don’t want that. Give me a modest Alpine chapel any day!

Psalm 84 celebrates the ancient temple in Jerusalem, the original one, the one they were still rebuilding in the days of Jesus. It was an extraordinary structure, the largest in the land. The temple was the heart of Israel’s faith. There were teams of musicians, as well as a musical school to train the next generation. There were artisans and craftsmen, stone masons and fabric weavers, all on the payroll. The temple was the singular theological center of the nation where faith was taught and the Bible was studied. It was a big operation. There was a lot going on.

And all of it – all of it – had the singular purpose of connecting people with their God.  

The poet says, “God, your house is a lovely place.” It’s not a reference to the furnishings, extravagant as they may have been. “My soul longs, even faints with the desire, to step into your presence.” That’s the language of a life-giving relationship. “Happy are those who live in your house.” Obviously, he’s not quoting one of my daughters, who said at an early age, “Dad, do we have to spend all day in church?” And the Psalm exclaims, “Happy are those whose strength is in you.” Aha – do you hear what’s going on? There is an inner strength at work, nurtured as we come and go from a sanctuary like this.

Please take note, there was a lot of coming and going. Dr. Beth Tanner of New Brunswick Seminary reminds us that many of the temple worshipers did not live close at hand. At best, they may have attended once or maybe twice a year.[2] This psalm may have been their travel song: I long for the temple, I can’t wait to return to your presence. People like that go from strength to strength, says the psalm. As they travel through the valley of Baca, they make it a bubbling spring of living water. They irrigate the landscape with their joy – and other refreshed.

This is a good reminder that some folks may not be able to get here for worship every week or every month, yet they long for the same things that others of us desire. They want a closer connection to the Wisdom that rules the universe. They hunger for a personal knowledge that our lives are part of a deeper purpose. In a time when so many people are isolated, they want to join our hearts and voices to something far greater than ourselves. Again, this is what happens here. The building is more than a building; it’s a temporary container for all the praises.

Picture the composer of this prayer. He or she finally gets to the destination and steps into the sanctuary. The incense is ignited. The prayers are swirling upward. The music begins to build when suddenly there’s another voice joining in. Look up – it’s a sparrow, singing its heart out. Or is it a swallow? The psalmist can’t quite decide. The ushers aren’t going to take down the nest or shoo out the winged creatures.

Now, if you look around today, you may catch a glimpse of such holy hospitality. All God’s creatures are welcome, just like anybody else. In this sanctuary, we have had bees, yellow jackets, and wasps. One Christmas Eve, a bat circled over our heads; one of the children said, “It’s an angel.” (Might have been!) Today on a regular old Sunday, if you look across the aisle, you just might see a few strange birds. God welcomes all.

Reminds me of the Abbey on the Isle of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. There are ferns growing out of the stone wall. Somebody believed they should have been pulled out, but no, in the wisdom of that Christian community they keep them in the wall and water them regularly. As one of their leaders explained, “We are part of God’s creation, not separate from it. God created the ferns, just as God created the rest of us.” And if you listen very closely, you might hear them singing, too.

Inside a building like this, there is vitality. Virtually every day of the week, something is going on. Voice lessons, yoga classes, self-help groups, and Bible studies. Like she said to me: what matters most is what happens here. I have it on good authority that the dent on the old white organ pipe may have been caused by a children’s program, or a stewardship banner, or perhaps someone climbing up to feed a nest of swallows. At this point, who can say?

Even outside the building, there are those who work the door. One of my favorites was a former school principal. When he worked as a principal, he administered justice and sent criminals to detention. When he was here, he stepped outside to have a quick smoke while his wife was praying in her pew. After studying this psalm, Psalm 84, I stepped out to join him one Sunday. I gave him a slip of paper with a verse on it, “Psalm 84, verse 10.”

“What’s this?” he asked. So, I recited the verse, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” He looked back at me and said two words, “Darn right.” 

Such strange birds, all of us. All of us, welcome. Welcome to pray and sing and study and serve. Welcome to ding up the fake organ pipes and keep the ferns lubricated. Welcome to build friendships and enjoy the gift of human community. Welcome to be in the Presence of One who is greater than ourselves. For God is here, somehow, somewhere, in ways both visible and invisible. That can happen anywhere, I suppose, but it certainly happens here.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See, for instance, https://offthebluff.com/history-of-the-fire-escape/

[2] Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014) p. 650