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

Song for a Sabbath Day

Psalm 92 (click here to read)
August 9, 2026
Series: Dwelling in the Psalms
William G. Carter

We are seven weeks into our series on the psalms. It should be clear we have a diversity of material. We have heard praises and complaints. We have encountered both memories and hopes. There are prayers that are very personal, and instruction that directs large groups of people. In commenting on the Psalms, John Calvin declared, “They offer the anatomy of the human soul.”

Today, Psalm 92 is unlike all others. It offers thanks, like many others. It warns of enemies, as a great number of psalms do. It is unsigned, as most of the psalms should be. Even if it says at the top, “A psalm of David,” old King David was probably too busy to write a lot of poetry. He had a staff to do that. They wrote the psalms; he took credit for them. That’s what kings do.

What makes Psalm 92 stand out are the fingerprints left at the top of the page. After the poem was written down, an editor added a few words in Hebrew as a matter of description. This is “a Song for the Sabbath Day.” No other Psalm gets that description. No other Psalm is pinned to a particular day of the week, much less the Sabbath.

You can hum the first stanza of this Psalm. It resounds of singing, music, and melody. The Sabbath is not intended to be silent. No, it’s a time for joyful noise, for declaring the saving grace of God by day and night. We declare with our lips and strum our stringed instruments. It’s all there in the first stanza: to say thanks, to sing praises. Sabbath is music that gladdens our hearts and sets us free to sing.

The second stanza reminds us that our singing is contested. God makes us a musical world, but some folks don’t seem to pick up the tune. Mostly they are of two types. The poet calls one group “The Evildoers.” They sprout up like weeds. For a time, they appear to get their own wicked way. The Evildoers announce with their deeds that they have no need for God. Oh no, they are a world unto themselves. They stomp along and think that whatever they do will last forever. The Eternal God looks at them and groans.

Then there’s the other group that cannot sing.  The Psalmist simply calls them “stupid.” The Hebrew word is translated “dullard” or “dolt.” These are the people who just don’t get it. This has nothing to do with their intelligence; it’s something far worse. God puts a rainbow in front of them, and they look down at their watches. God gives them a world of intricate design, and they believe it’s flat, stale, and tasteless. God creates whales that leap, sparrows that sing, seas that split in two, and the dullards yawn. The Hebrew Bible smirks at such people and calls them fools.

Because, you see, our lives are about God. God gives us breath, first to receive, then to exhale in praise. God surrounds us with wonders, glorious gifts of sense and sound, some of them with saving power. Yet it’s possible to ignore all of this. The Evildoers go their own way, indifferent to God’s holy purposes.

As for the Stupid Dolts – well, maybe we shouldn’t dismiss them so quickly. One of my favorite places in the world is Banff Park in the Canadian Rockies. My wife and I have been there twice. Both times it was too much beauty to take in. By the fifth day of each trip, I distinctly remember saying, “Ho hum, another 10,000-foot-high mountain. No big deal.” I was overwhelmed. Any sense of wonder was shut down; that was the evidence of my sin.

So, Psalm 92 is our Song for the Sabbath Day. Sabbath is the time we take to awaken from our boredom, shrug off our neglect, and open our hearts to God’s holy extravagance. It’s the time we take to move ourselves out of the supposed center of the universe and to let God rule gently and firmly, especially over those situations that we cannot control.

The Quaker mystic Howard Thurman encouraged this in his writings. In one book he writes,

How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!

The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic:

Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,

while something deep within hungers and thirsts

for the still moments and the resting lull.

With full intensity we seek, ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;

a direction, a strong sure purpose

that will structure our confusion and bring meaning to our chaos.[1]

This desire to “turn on the quiet” points us to the last stanza of the psalm. There are three remarkable verbs: flourish, grow, planted. The well-balanced life is compared to three trees.

• The righteous flourish like a palm tree. Ever see the lushness of a tropical palm? They are so full of life they have to be trimmed so they can flourish even more.
• The righteous grow like the cedars of Lebanon. These cedars were the legendary trees of antiquity. They grew tall and straight, were reported to have medicinal powers, and were cut for the great temple of Solomon.
• Then there is the tree laden with fruit, described as still productive in its old age. Old age in the time of this Psalm, by the way, was somewhere after fifty. If you were fifty, you were old – but you could still be productive, still green, still full of sap, and still pointing to the Lord, the source of all life.

Psalm 92 pushes us to ask ourselves what it will take to flourish, to grow, to stay planted and to remain productive. These are the Sabbath tasks, the Sabbatical tasks. The poet of Psalm 92 believes that Sabbath rest makes room for us to flourish and be fruitful. 

Now you’re not going to hear that from the Evildoers or the Dullards, especially in our culture. We live in driven times, with 24-7 accessibility and demand. How many times have you heard it? I called you on your phone, why didn’t you answer?

Or the friends that try to schedule a lunch date. They pull out their phones, look at their calendars, and say, “What do you have available in the second week of November?”

Or listen to the retired person who says, “I am busier now than when I was working.” Well, I’m starting to listen, and I wonder what’s that about? If retirement is about flourishing, growing, staying planted and productive -- good for you. That is the blessing of God!

But lest we fall into the obsessions and addictions of our culture, we need the word that God speaks in the Ten Commandments: “Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy . . . Remember you were slaves in Egypt, and God brought you out of there.” That is why we rest from labor – to show that we belong to God, and not to our labor. It is proof of our freedom from slavery.

This is especially important if we enjoy our work. Some of us have that blessing; I love the work that I do, and I love the people that I work around. Most days, I can’t wait to get to it. Most nights, I have a hard time shutting down. It’s a blessing to love your work. But God invites us to take Sabbath, so that we can realign our loves. We take the time to love God more than our work.

The truth of the matter is, as good as our work can be, it can wear us out. You know it, I know it. To stay focused, to keep going, to still believe there is a sun in the sky, we need to keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath is time, time that is full of spaciousness. As John Calvin wrote, Sabbath is time to rest from our work so that God can work in us. Or in the words of Psalm 92, “To stay green and full of sap.”

Isn’t that what we want? To get through life alive! For our souls to be free to sing! To know deep in our bones that God is the Rock upon which we stand! To keep doing the work God gives us to do with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love!

You see, God is concerned for our well-being. God gave us these lives and wants us to flourish. That’s why Sabbath was not given as an obligation, but as a gift. It is commanded of us because we forget how good God is. Yet Sabbath is always a gift. It is a gift of time for us to rest from what consumes us, a time to receive the Spirit that God wants us to have.

So, take a moment, grab a pen or pencil, and answer this question in the margin of your worship bulletin. Ready? What is it that is going to keep you green and full of sap? What will make your soul sing? Aye, there is a worthy question. And I hope it nips your heels every single day until you are overflowing with the joy of God.

May this day be for you such a time of blessed Sabbath that you wish to repeat it over and over. And may God make you to flourish, body and soul, in all the time that you are given. Be gentle with yourself and I will see you again soon.

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

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[1] Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart (Boston: Beacon Press, 2023) 93-94.

Come and See! Come and Hear!

Psalm 66  (read it here)
August 2, 2026
Series: Dwelling in the Psalms
William G. Carter

There is a rumor going around that I announced my retirement last Tuesday. That’s true. I plan to wind up my pastoral work in the middle of next April. If you are hearing this for the first time, I apologize. We tried to get out the word to everybody at the same time by e-mail, postal letter, and personal announcement. Nothing was posted on the internet until we heard many folks had received the letter.

As the news spread, I had a decision to make. We have been working through the Psalms this summer. Most of them were selected in a haphazard way – let’s try this one, or that one, or here’s a psalm they have never heard. When it comes to the Bible, I love a good challenge. And the text that had been randomly selected for today was Psalm 88.

Do you know what it says in Psalm 88? Everything is going to fall apart. Nothing will turn out well. Life is terrible. We are full of sickness and about to die. It is the only psalm of lament that does not make a positive turn at the end. It leaves us in complete despair. Yes, I know there are those days. The emotions are real. The feelings are mixed. Yet that’s not the message that I want to impart today.

So, I randomly flipped back a few pages and landed on Psalm 66. Come and see what the Lord has done! Come and here what God has done for me. I didn’t need to dig any further. So, what follows is a bit of reflection on this ancient poem and a few very personal reflections on where the psalm may narrate our own lives.

Come and see. Come and hear. Faith always grows by invitation. A Voice summons us. A companion calls to us.  And we are invited to see and hear for ourselves what God has been up to. Admittedly, that’s a slippery invitation. God may be busy, but God is not always obvious. We have to lean in, look around, listen deeply, and pay attention. Even then, the holy work may require a wide view.

What is remarkable about Psalm 66 is how it is shaped by memory. The invitation is here and now, but the evidence is what has been accomplished. “God parted the sea and we walked through on dry land.” Remember that one? Yes, it was three thousand years ago. According to the book of Exodus, it happened. Didn’t happen for us, but for Moses and a multitude of escaping slaves. Yet the psalm calls us to claim that old story for ourselves, then see our own lives through that lens.

So, when has God done that for us? When has God opened a way when there was no way? I have my stories. Maybe you do, too. Some of you have found your way back to church when you had all but given up on church. Some of you have been challenged to step forward to grow when you had gotten stuck. That old crossing-the-Red-Sea story is more than an ancient miracle. It’s a metaphor for how God opens up the new future. You and I have to hang onto that one.

I’ve been here long enough to begin a lot of my stories, “Years ago.” Classic beginning of an old duffer. Years ago, our elders were considering a request for building use. A local A.A. group wanted to start meeting here. It prompted a bit of conversation. Who are they? “Can’t tell.” Can we trust them with a key to the building? “We have a hundred keys to the building, don’t even know who has them.” So forth and so. It was an easy vote, only a couple of folks needed to talk themselves into it.

The A.A. group and other affiliate groups have been meeting here ever since. That might seem like a small scheduling thing, but hundreds of people have found help and healing by those groups. They found a way through the sea. When we redesigned our meeting space in 1994, we designated a room to be adopted by the recovery groups we host. Some of them have outgrown the room. Come and see what God has done.

The psalm says, “Bless the Lord who has kept up among the living and not let our feet slip.” We can claim that verse too, as congregations struggle, church buildings become a burden, and leadership is hard to come by. This congregation is among the living. Our feet can slip at any moment, but we are doing God’s work together. We are blessed to have a congregation where retired ministers come to worship, a church family that welcomes others who don’t feel welcome where they had been, and an outreach to the community that is a model for everybody around.

It’s because this church is strong that I feel confident about retiring next spring. I suppose I could stay and run you into the ground, but there’s no sign that you are slowing down or pulling back. Attendance is good, the offerings are generous, and the activity level is vital. You have a promising future because you are alive and your feet aren’t slipping. Please hear that. I’m going to be 67 in February, so it will be time for me to back off and do other things while I still can. I’m going to be fine – and you are going to keep flourishing. As the psalm says it, “We are among the living; bless the Lord!”

And the psalm speaks of worship, and singing, and paying our offerings, and making our prayers. That is the central work that happens in this room. “Years ago,” (there I go again), the sanctuary was stuffed to the gills; I do remember that. I also remember how a lot of the local companies relocated their employees after they landed here for a few years. The scene is much more stable. As a lot of us have aged together, we have also deepened what we do in worship.

And the music! Always a valued asset here, and a gift from God that attracts people to the church. The first major decision that we made after I arrived was to buy a new hymnal. Other churches talked about piping in a soundtrack or hiring a band they could watch. You said, “No, we make our own music here. Music is how we praise the Lord.” That understanding grew. When the organ died in the late’90’s, you dug deep to rebuild it. We pulled up the old harvest gold carpet and suddenly the songs could resonate. Then the arts series began. That was 25 years or ago, when a Celtic band was looking for a place to play on March 17. Now, this has become a friendly place for the creative arts. Regional choirs, blues bands, and chamber musicians want to play here.

Some of those friends are well-known. Steve Gilmore is a jazz bassist who played on three Grammy Award winning albums. He and his wife joined our congregation and now live in Florida. They tune in when they can and read our sermons online. Donny McCaslin is a Grammy-nominated saxophonist who played here for jazz vespers. He organized the band for David Bowie’s final album. And if you catch me downstairs during coffee hour, I can tell you about the night John Legend brought a gospel choir in our sanctuary. You have welcomed them all and so many others.

In the words of the psalm, “Come and hear what God has done for us.” The poet looks back as a way of engaging the present. Will there be challenges? There are always challenges. Yet if we sense that somehow God is present in the challenges, elusive as that may be, God will lead us through fire and water. That’s the promise, and God will keep it.

There are so many great moments in the photo gallery that we share. Over the next eight months, we will flip through the pages, remember some of the highlights, but perceive that God is always leading us to the place where we can flourish. Like the psalmist says, “You have brought us out to a spacious place.” Spacious, open, a wide landscape.

In 1991, some believed we should move out of the village, build a bigger facility, and provide a lot more parking. After a couple years of discernment, no, we weren’t going to do that – even though we could always use more parking. Rather, the spacious place for us became the tomato fields of Newton Township. Back then, our community had guests who picked vegetables for local farms. A few spoke Creole, most spoke Spanish. Over more than twenty years, we built friendships with these seasonal farm workers. We shared meals and sang Hank Williams songs with them on Sunday nights. It enlarged our hearts. Truly, a spacious place.

That initiative led to other wide-open adventures: mission trips to Appalachia, to Haiti, and to regions ravaged by hurricanes. Some of our folks spun off a new initiative called the Gathering Place, which provides creativity and community education for an otherwise sterile suburban town. That started here. When Met Life imported computer programmers from India for a few years, many of them joined up with us. They had visited other congregations who would not speak with them – but here, they were welcome. They were included. We ordained one young woman as a deacon – all because God had widened our hearts. A spacious place.

These days, we have leaders who are taking seriously the true hunger of our neighbors. In a town like this which has so much, basic needs are often hidden. Yet there are hungry people all around us. Over forty households come to our monthly food pantry. You volunteer and make that possible. We engage in this spacious work because our hearts cracked open by God.

“Come and see what God has done. Come and hear what God has done for us.” We worship an amazing God who desires that we flourish. He calls us to reach out to others. He leads us into open spaces where we can engage with others who will transform our lives. These are the invitations that are always set before us, and I am so proud that you continue to take them up.

We have so much to celebrate over the next eight months, yet we aren’t going to spend that time looking back. Forward is forward, and it’s the only direction there is. Together we will take the time to savor what we have, even as we begin to step into the separate futures that God has for us. For today, it’s enough to bless the Lord for God’s steadfast love. We thank God for all that has been, and for all that will be. And I will see you again next week.

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