Psalm
91
Lent
1
March
10, 2019
William G. Carter
You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide
in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress;
my God, in whom I trust.”
For he will deliver you from the snare of the
fowler and from the deadly pestilence;
he will cover you with his pinions, and under
his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
or the
pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand
at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
You will only look with your eyes and see the
punishment of the wicked.
Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most
High your dwelling place,
no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near
your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up, so that
you will not dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder, the
young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
Those who love me, I will deliver; I will
protect those who know my name.
When they call to me, I will answer them; I
will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them.
With long life I will satisfy them, and show
them my salvation.
Some
years ago, my wife and I were toodling around the western isles of Scotland. We
stopped to tour a Blackhouse,[1] a
traditional home structure that had been restored for tourists like us. It was
a visual reminder of how people have lived on one of the most inhospitable
environments on earth.
The
winds off the Atlantic Ocean are fierce, so the Blackhouse is build close to
the ground. The massive walls are made from fieldstone. Thatched roofs are held
down by ropes and stones, and cover the timbers and turf in the ceiling. The doors are large
enough to let the animals in. The friendly beasts help to keep the home warm.
My
wife went over to explore a large loom, where one of the guides was weaving a
Harris tweed cloth. As for me, I was taken by smell of pungent smoke. It resembled
the aroma of my favorite barley beverages and came from a fire fueled by peat.
What
is peat? It’s a thousand years of decayed vegetation. Traditional farmers in
the Celtic isles dig it up in furrows, dry it out, and then burn it as fuel. The
peat fire burns hot, it smolders a long time, and it chases away all the bugs –
especially the midges, those nasty blood sucking flies that swarm for the
warmest six months of the year.
The
fire dries out the roof which is pelted by rain for most of the year. It is the
hearth where the food is prepared and the meeting place where the family
gathers. Symbolically, the fire is considered “the soul of the household.” This
is why the peat fire is never allowed to go out.
So
I’m thinking about this at the beginning of Lent. As a miserable winter lingers
on, I trust our souls are still burning. Or at least smoldering. There is
nothing more important than to keep our fires burning.
That
seems to be a primary concern for Psalm 91, our text for today. Within the
first two verses, the psalm speaks of inhabiting the presence of God: “You who
live in the shelter of Most High, who abide in the
shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress.”
Those four words - shelter, abide, refuge, fortress – are hunker-down words.
The life of faith is a kind of settling-in for the long winter.
It’s not about a quick flash of spiritual success, or getting
your prayers answered every time on cue, or buying into the American myth that things
are always going to improve, increase, and advance in the future. No, this is
about a sustainable faith, about persevering and sticking it out over time.
That’s the Celtic way.
In Thomas Cahill’s modestly titled book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, he describes the implosion of the
Roman Empire in 410 AD. It came as the German barbarians “immigrated” from the
north and as Roman culture came unraveled within. Christianity had been
declared a legal religion in the previous century, but just because something
is legal doesn’t mean it’s going to turn around an empire that built on a much
different foundation.
What’s fascinating is that, as the Roman Empire was falling
apart, the Christian faith was beginning to take root in Ireland. Ireland was
very much a tribal land of small settlements. Yet clusters of Christian believers
joined together. They built monasteries with huts in the shape of beehives. The
small Christian communities kept the lights on, teaching people to read, studying Biblical Greek and
Hebrew, translating the scriptures, teaching the faith, doing
works of kindness, and praying constantly.
Eight hundred years later, when the rest of Europe began to wake
up from a bad dream, the Irish were ready to share the faith again with those
who had forgotten it. They kept the fires burning.
The people in the Blackhouse had a term for that. They called it
“smooring the fire.” In the evening, before you go to bed, you pull the hot
embers together. You bank them and cover them with ash. The fire continues
through the night without tending.
In the morning, you open it back up, add more peat, perhaps blow
on it a bit, and let the fire continue. A Celtic family would take pride in
never letting the fire go out. Indeed, in the Blackhouse we visited, which was
set up for tourists and administered by non-resident volunteers, the kitchen
fire had been burning for over ten years.
Smooring the fire was often done as an act of faith. The embers
might be divided into three parts, to represent the Holy Trinity. Peat was
placed between each section in the name of the God of Life, the God of Peace,
and the God of Grace. It was called the Hearth of the Three. The mother of the
home would smoor the fire with a prayer. She would close her eyes, stretch out
her hands, and say,
I save this
fire, as noble Christ saves;
Mary on top of the house and
(Saint) Brigid in its center,
The eight
strongest angels of Heaven
preserving this house and keeping
its people safe.[2]
It was a prayer for protection, an invitation to Christ, his
mother, the saints, and the angels to guard the home through the dark night,
all in order to keep the fire for another day.
As
somebody notes, “The Christian faith is always in need of smooring. The fire
needs to be kindled and rekindled if it is to be there for the next generation.
Hard times that challenge our faith and threaten to extinguish the fire come
and go. If the faith is not preserved today like precious fire, it may not be
there for tomorrow’s children.”[3]
Our
psalm for today tells us what we already know, that the life of faith has its
challenges. There are wicked people out there, and there are marauders who
distort and plunder. There is the ferocious lion and the wily serpent. Terror can
come at night, the arrow can pierce the daylight. Pestilence can stalk in
darkness, uninvited and intrusive.
And
in a striking phrase, there is “destruction that wastes at noonday.” It’s what
some early Christians called the “noonday demon.” This is the destruction that
can come when everything is going well, when the sun is bright above us, the
bank account is full, the success is abundant – and it comes unraveled. Ever
notice that when somebody becomes famous, their life often falls apart? At the
pinnacle of their success, they fall the furthest? That is the temptation of
the noonday demon.
The
antidote is smooring the fire: hunkering down to dwell with Christ, rooting ourselves
in the love of God, and calling on the Holy Spirit’s power to chase away
everything that endangers us. This is the fire that must never go out.
Early
in his work, Jesus was in the desert for forty days, his own personal season of
Lent. As he spent the time praying and meditating of the ways of God, the
noonday demon came to him. “Remember Psalm 91?” said the tempter. “Remember how
it says God will protect you? Remember how it says God will always catch you?”
This is the voice he heard, shortly after he had heard God say, “You are my
beloved son.” The sun was out, it was noon.
And
the voice of temptation took that psalm and twisted it, turning the promise
into a test: “Jesus, jump down from the top of the temple and tell God’s angels
to catch you.” But Jesus said no. Not that he didn’t have the authority, not
that he didn’t have the power – but because he was so rooted in the ways of God
that he knew God would not defy the law of gravity to do a special favor on
demand. God does not exist for us; we exist because of God’s good pleasure. And
God wants us to live, and live abundantly, not perish because we did something
foolish.
If
God is our refuge, our shelter, our fortress, there is no need to dwell
anywhere else.
Lent
is a good time to sink into this promise. These are days to dwell in prayer and
quiet trust, to share our life with others on the same journey, and to take comfort
in remembering that we don’t have to run the world. We can smoor the fire at
night, sleep in peace, get up in the morning and stoke up the fire again. We keep the fire alive through spiritual disciplines, like prayer, fasting, quiet and generous charity, and reflecting on God's ways.
In
the weeks to come, we will welcome the Celtic wisdom that kept the Christian
fire burning while other parts of Europe went dark. We will hear about Patrick,
the saint who spread the Gospel and taught us that faith is a lifelong pilgrimage.
We will have a conversation with Pelagius, denounced as a heretic, but who knew
God created us good and desires we live holy lives.
We
will celebrate God’s work of redemption, embodied in the gift of forgiveness.
We will affirm the Celtic hope that heaven and earth be one. And we will ride
into Holy Week with Jesus, whose courage has led him to win our salvation. All
the while, we will chant the songs and recite the prayers from Scotland,
Ireland, and Wales that have sustained the faithful for a long, long time.
The
message today is that we are on the Christian journey for a lifetime and beyond.
It’s best to prepare for the long haul, to maintain the habits of heart and
mind that will keep us courageous and clear, and to trust that, though unseen,
Christ goes with us.
As
we continue that journey together, let me offer a Celtic blessing:
To the Sacred Three,
To save,
To shield,
To surround the hearth,
The home,
The household,
This eve, this night,
Oh! This eve, this night,
And every night, every single night.
Amen.[4]
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[2] The
tradition is told in many places. This version found in “Smàladh – Smooring the Hearth Fire,” http://www.tairis.co.uk/daily-practices/smaladh/
[3] Deborah K. Cronin, Holy Ground: Celtic Christian Spirituality
(Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1999) p. 76
[4] Esther de Waal, The Celtic Vision (Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s
Publications, 1988) 77.
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