Pilgrimage Through the Psalms Psalm 34: Seek Peace and Pursue It!

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1 Pilgrimage Through the Psalms Psalm 34: Seek Peace and Pursue It! I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad! O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together. I sought the LORD, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor soul cried, and was heard by the LORD, and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. O taste and see that the LORD is good; happy are those who take refuge in him. O fear the LORD, you his holy ones, for those who fear him have no want. The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing. Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. Which of you desires life, and covets many days to enjoy good? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry. The face of the LORD is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears, and rescues them from all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD rescues them from them all. He keeps all their bones; not one of them will be broken. Evil brings death to the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. You may have heard of Clarence Jordan and his Cottonpatch version of the New Testament, a paraphrase made back in the 1960s which put the Gospel into the vernacular of the deep South. Jordan organized Koinonia Christian Farm in Georgia back in the 1940's to model how blacks and whites could work and live and worship together. Koinonia Farms, later Koinonia Partners, was a highly controversial for decades because, in a deeply segregated South, it modeled how blacks and whites could live closely together. This year is the 100 th anniversary of Clarence Jordan=s birthday. I read this week the story of Clarence Jordan=s concern for his daughter, who was being mistreated at school. It was a lot easier for Clarence to deal with the prejudice and

2 2 hatred that was flung his way than to deal with what came at his daughter. One day, Clarence=s daughter came home from school in tears. He asked, >Honey, what=s wrong?= She said, >Oh, dad, a lot of the kids are mean, but there=s this one boy named Bob Speck. Every time Bob sees me coming down the hallway, he comes up and knocks me down. He throws my books down the hallway. He says the ugliest words to me.= Jordan said, >Jan, you=ve got long fingernails. Why don=t you scratch his eyes out?= And she said, >Well, I thought about that, daddy, but I heard you say in your sermon that Jesus said we=re supposed to love our enemy, so I thought I shouldn=t scratch his eyes out.= Jordan said, >Well, I=ll tell you what I=m going to do: tomorrow I=ll go to the school, and I=m going to ask Jesus to excuse me from being a Christian for about 15 minutes while I beat the daylights out of Bob Speck.= But then Jan said, >Daddy, you can=t do that.= He said, >Why not?= She said, >You can=t be excused from being a Christian for 15 minutes.=@ i As a person who was deeply committed to peaceable living, I suspect that Clarence Jordan was subtly helping his daughter think through the implications of her commitment to Christ and what it means to follow Christ=s teaching. But let=s suppose that he was not and that he was angry as all get-out at young Bob Speck. Even if that were the case, his daughter Jan came to the right conclusion, didn=t she? You can=t be excused from being a Christian for 15 minutes. Or an hour. Or two years. You can=t be AWOL when following God. To follow God is to seek peace and earnestly pursue it. This 34 th Psalm is a tidy little example of drawing together the essence of Wisdom Literature. You can see this psalm clearly on your bulletin cover. And after the service you can stretch your neck to see it in the third clerestory window high on the east side. In the left bay of this window, we read the words AThe Lord delivereth them of their troubles@ and a group of people with empty bowls are looking up to God who is delivering loaves of bread to them. And at the bottom we have a lion and a lamb lying together. In the right bay are the words AHe is nigh unto them of a broken heart@ and a lone person is seen kneeling at a cross which clearly marks a grave, with a row of crosses in the background B a cemetery B while from the hands of the Lord comes a steam of living water. And then there is the image and core theme in the center panel with words which seem so disconnected from the sentiment of the side sections: ASeek peace and pursue it!@ The image is of a winged angel B the angel who Aencamps around those who fear God@ B an angel who is climbing up, with right hand out-reached, stretched upwards, yearning to touch a yet higher symbol. And of what is that image? It is a strangely contemporary one when compared to the other iconography. We see the depiction of a man in a modern tie, uniting the hands of two people, seemingly a woman and a man, in a clasp of unity and peace.

3 3 As we translate the Hebrew today, verse 18 reads: AThe Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in And then the second part of verse 14, which in its entirely reads: ADepart from evil, and do good; seek peace and pursue These themes are very different. How are we to tie them together? The answer is in the discernment that comes with wisdom. In the midst of life, the psalmist is saying, we are blind if we do not see that we are caught in affliction and trouble. Where do we find the source of life, the life that is really worth living, the life that is not squandered and wasted, the life that will never die? ACome, O children, and listen to me!@ the wise psalmist writes, AAnd I will teach you!@ The heart of wisdom, the psalmist says, is that we turn to God. Do you know that the large, old Bible, used by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War has survived the past 150 years? It=s true. And those who have held that bible find that it falls open easily to this 34th Psalm. If you examine the page of that psalm, you will find that it is smudged at one spot. A finger evidently marked out one verse time and time again. For one of Lincoln=s most comforting verses was the fourth, the one which reads: AI sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.@ Even presidents seek God=s direction. Some don=t, we know. But whoever you are, if you are wise, you=ll see that the answers aren=t in yourself, peace isn=t in yourself, wisdom isn=t in ourselves. Peace, life, wisdom come from God alone, and when you seek God, you will be delivered from your anxiety and fear. This is wisdom and this psalm quite intentionally sets itself out as a pattern for the wise. If we were all able to read this psalm in the original Hebrew, we would find that it is an acrostic. That is, in Hebrew, when you look at the first letters of every line you will find that they actually spell something. In this case, when we take the letters in order we find, in succession, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And if we take the first letter of the first, middle, and last verses, verses 1, 11 and 22, they spell Aalep@ the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Two different ways, we find initial letters that say, in effect, this is Afirst,@ this is primary. This is the root, this is the heart, of wisdom. This psalmist uses four different Hebrew roots that describe God=s activity on behalf of person who cry out to God in their pain and distress. Each one points to God=s life-giving activity in the midst of our human distress. We have no time for an elaborate word study here, so let me quickly summarize them. First, AO taste and see that the Lord is good!@ Which is telling us, don=t rely on anyone else=s experience, AGet a taste of God yourself, and then you=ll see!@ And the sense of it is, ATry God for yourself@ and God=s value will be proven to you. If you look to God, your face will be radiant. Secondly, AFear the Lord, O you his holy ones, for those who fear him have no want.@ Now, be clear: the word Afear@ in this context does not have to do with fright. It means Ahave reverence for God,@ or Abe in awe of God.@ It means to trust in and depend upon God B in other words, Atake refuge in God.@ Such Afear@ of God leads to life because it leads us to place our lives entirely into God=s care.

4 4 The third theme is ATurn from evil and do I think the idea that we are to turn away from evil, to turn ourselves toward the good, is a no-brainer, right? It=s at the heart of our concept of repentance which simply means Ato turn.@ We turn from evil and we turn toward God=s way of goodness. And the ultimate key to life this psalmist gives us are the words in the center panel of our window: Seek peace and pursue it. We are told that it is not enough for us simply to want peace or wish for peace. The most desirable things are not the easiest to be obtained. The wise know the value of peace. We are to seek it out. We must pursue it. Hence that ever-stretching arm of the angel toward the image of harmony and peace. What is more lovely to the imagination than the tranquillity of peace? But this great blessing does not fall into our lap: it must be sought. How are we to pursue peace? Certainly, in the light of the teaching and example of Christ, at the top of the list has got to be Christ=s teaching that we love our enemies and not to return evil for evil. That means we can=t ask God for a 15 minute reprieve from being a Christian. Only when we resolve not to return evil for evil will we have a basis for reconciliation with others. But we aren=t very willing to do that B we=re quite willing to hate. Part of what happens when we oppose another person, or country, is that we demonize them and believe the worst about them. When we do that, we set the stage for more hatred and violence. Martin Luther King Jr. began his ministry in 1957 in Montgomery with a sermon titled ALoving Your Enemies.@ In it, he voiced wisdom that stayed with him through years when others hated him and did violence to him. AWe must recognize,@ King said, Athat the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in your worst enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. The chain reaction of evil B hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars B must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.@ The pursuit of peace is one of the most persistent themes of the Bible. God means for people to live in peace with one another and with the whole creation. God means for the foundations of peace B righteousness and justice B to fill the earth. God has given us the means to establish peace. God will not rest until the cause of peace captivates the hearts and minds of everyone B all nations. God will never cease working for peace in the world. God=s own son will be called the Prince of Peace. In the meantime, in our time, there is Afghanistan, and the al Qaeda network, and Iran, and Israel and Palestine, North Korea and the Sudan. In the meantime, in our time, as Woody Allen once observed, AOn the day the lion and the lamb lie down together, only the lion is going to get back up.@ The gap between God=s vision of peace and the reality of our world has been there from the beginning. The Bible does not ignore it. The Bible is not naive about peace and our human ways. When the prophets speak of the peaceable kingdom, they begin

5 5 scenes of desolation and devastation, often on battlefields where Israel=s own soldiers were overwhelmed, perhaps the very place where the prophet=s countrymen, his own friends, were killed or captured. Yet this wisdom persisted: that in the worst of desolation, God is not defeated. God is active still. Our scriptures are not glib or shallow about the prospects of peace. But we are told in Old Testament and New: Seek peace and pursue it. Seek peace, for it is God=s will for us. Pursue peace because in it is the life God desires for us. To do otherwise, to abandon the pursuit, is somehow to profoundly abandon God=s vision and will for us. We cannot be AWOL when we follow in the steps of Christ. In this is wisdom for those who seek life. For the psalmist declares AO Children listen to me and I will teach you! Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry.@ May we pray? Great God of all that is, teach us to place our lives in your hands and walk in the path of wisdom. Enlarge our lives by your Spirit as we follow the path of the Prince of Peace. Forgive us for the way we limit ourselves by limiting you, settling for less by playing it safe, risking nothing and gaining nothing. Forgive us for our preoccupation with things that just don=t matter. Although we have learned it isn=t easy; help us to learn there=s nothing better that your wisdom, your peace. So give us the grace again today and tomorrow and the day after that in everything we say and do to follow Jesus. We ask in his name. Amen. i. James Howell, Servants, Misfits and Martyrs: Saints and Their Stories, Upper Room, 1999, pp ,