"The Lord Will Keep Your Life"

A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett

Preached at Pleasantville United Church of Christ, March 20, 2011

Psalm 121 and John 3:1-17

“The Lord will keep your life;
the Lord will keep your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.”
(Psalm 121)

Images of the recent tsunami in Japan, recorded from the air, continue to replay in my mind: the fearsome white-capped wave stretching for miles, coming in at the speed of a jet; cars and trucks tossed about like toys; miles and miles of houses scattered like so many matchsticks; ocean freighters lifted up and deposited atop docks and on street corners and in neighborhoods as if they had been easy to move and would be easy to move again.

These things seem to go on the ‘hard disk’ of our psyches.  We can see them over and over again when we close our eyes or in quiet moments.  It was the same way after 9/11 watching the towers fall.  It is a terrible and an awe-full thing to watch something like that unfold in real time, and it stays with you – probably and rightly – forever.

The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.[1]

The elderly man lay in a hospital bed.  He had come to the end of his journey; come to the end of a long battle with an illness that had tried to steal his life more than once.  In the past, he had prevailed.  This time, the disease had the upper hand. 

It was time for his family to gather.  The calls had gone out but they hadn’t yet arrived at the hospital.  So the pastor waited with him in those hours of coming to terms with what is and with what cannot be changed.

When he was a little boy going to church with his mother, he had memorized the words of the 121^st Psalm.  And so there, in that hospital room where he would breathe his last, he and his pastor recited them together:

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,

from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the LORD,

which made heaven and earth.[2]

            It wouldn’t be long before the pastor would proclaim those same words again -- this time at the edge of an open grave; this time without the help of her dear friend and beloved parishioner.

There are so many extraordinary experiences that come with being a pastor: the privilege of being invited into people’s lives and spiritual journeys; blessing marriages and baptizing babies; being a presence at times of illness and even at the time of death; rejoicing with folks when they make it safely through a time of trial, and hearing their confessions when they don’t -- because whether our tradition formalizes the confessional or not, it is a deeply human need to want a witness from time to time.

But of all the experiences that come with being a pastor, no one ever told me what it would feel like to stand at the edge of an open grave and utter the words of Psalm 121.  No one ever told me what an awesome responsibility it would be to stare into the face of death and proclaim the hope which is ours in Christ.

The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

 The 121^st Psalm is one of those beautiful texts from our tradition that are commonly read during graveside services.  “Common” isn’t the word really.  None of these texts are common.  But we usually reserve them for times of great need; for times when great hope is and must be proclaimed.  Like this text from 1 Corinthians 15:

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.[3]

Or this one from Romans 8:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will hardship, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
…

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[4]

Or this one from today’s gospel reading:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’”[5]

We proclaim these words of promise regardless of how a person crosses over – whether they have lived a good long life and go gently into the arms of Mercy; or whether they have suffered a hard death.  These are the promises of our faith, and we hold onto them for the truth they reveal about our life with God.

            My sister works in a small school in the San Francisco Bay Area.  The kids have been watching the news, and they are worried.  They know what it’s like to live on a fault line.  They know what it’s like to practice earthquake drills the way most kids practice fire drills.  They know that it took 10 hours for the tsunami waves to hit their coastline. And they are watching the unfolding nuclear nightmare 5,000 miles away and wondering out loud about how much radiation will have dispersed by the time the wind makes it across the Pacific. They are kids.  And while they are full of compassion, that doesn’t stop them from doing the math.

The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
[the Lord] will keep your life.[6]

These are the kinds of days when some will feel that the promises of our faith are being tested. For some, these promises ring hollow in light of the world’s sufferings.  Look at those poor people? they will say.  God didn’t protect them!  Others learn to live into these promises, despite the very real and painful presence of suffering in the world; mindful that there is mystery all around us; trusting in the redemptive power of God’s unfailing love.  Their questions are different: What does it mean to have God ‘keep’ our lives?  What does it mean to be protected from evil, even as we endure great suffering?

Psalm 121 is just eight verses long.  In eight short verses, the psalmist uses the word “keep” six times. The word “keep” has many meanings: “to tend,” “to hold,” “to maintain,” “to be faithful to,” “to watch over,” “to defend,” “to take care of,” “to retain in one’s possession.”  None of these are dramatic or glamorous words.  All are ordinary and unpretentious words.  But they are also sturdy and reliable and trustworthy and durable. “Keep means provision and care and protection.”[7]

The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The metaphor ‘the Lord is your shade at your right hand’ means God’s unfailing protection.  If the Lord is your shade at your right hand, then neither the sun nor the moon can harm you. In ancient times, people not only knew the danger of sunstroke but they also believed that the rays of the moon could cause brain damage – hence the word lunatic.[8]

Psalm 121 is part of a progression of texts – psalms 120, 121, and 122 – all speak to one another.  Psalm 120 is a psalm of lament; a cry of pain and frustration about the world and its darkness, deceitful people and those who desire war.  Psalm 122 celebrates the joy of entering the city of God, and offers a prayer for peace.  And right in the middle of these two psalms, strategically placed, is the psalm that “aims to awaken in us unassailable trust in the Lord’s constant providential protection of our lives.  Its aim is not to opiate us from the pain of human suffering. Rather, it aims to move us from deep tragedy to profound trust.”[9]

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The first time I learned this psalm, I was backpacking in the wilderness in California.  Surrounded by the majestic beauty of the Sierras, I thought this psalm had been written just for me; a psalm to proclaim the great wonder of God’s creation.

And in a way, I was right.

But what I didn’t know at that time was how the mountains figured in the worship life of ancient people.  The mountains were the places where ancient people believed the gods lived, and so the Canaanite people built their altars their on the mountain tops.  It makes sense: if you want to talk to the gods, you need to aim high.

When the psalmist says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills — from where will my help come?” he’s really asking. He is really wondering out loud, where – in the midst of life’s great trials and great sufferings and great uncertainties – where will our help come from?  Will it comes from the gods whose many altars are set up on the mountains? Will it come from the many places where we invest our trust?  Will it come from the many things that lure us away from devotion to the Holy One?

And the answer comes quickly back to him – just as it did this morning in our Call to Worship:  “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

One of the ancient teaching tools of the Reformed Church is called The Heidelberg Catechism.  There are still people in this room who learned the faith by memorizing the 129 questions and answers of the Heidelberg Catechism.  Confirmands, let this be a lesson to you!

The first question, is my favorite:

1 Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A. That I am not my Own,
but belong body and soul, in life and in death-
to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

The Lord is your keeper;
 the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,
 nor the moon by night.

TheLord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.

TheLord will keep your going out and your coming in
from this time on and forevermore.

In times of great uncertainty, it’s good to know. 

Amen.