Fasting for Confidence: Psalm 27
Second Sunday of Lent
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear? / The Lord is the
stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When evildoers assail
me
to devour my flesh— / my adversaries and foes—
they shall stumble and fall.
3 Though an army encamp
against me,
my heart shall not fear; / though war rise up against
me,
yet I will be confident.
4 One thing I asked of
the Lord,
that will I seek after: / to live in the house of
the Lord
all the days of my life, / to behold the beauty of
the Lord,
and to inquire in his temple.
5 For he will hide me in
his shelter
in the day of trouble; / he will conceal me under the
cover of his tent;
he will set me high on a rock.
6 Now my head is lifted
up
above my enemies all around me, / and I will offer in
his tent
sacrifices with shouts of joy; / I will sing and make
melody to the Lord.
7 Hear, O Lord,
when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
8 “Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!”
Your face, Lord, do I seek.
9 Do not hide your face from me.
/ Do not turn your servant away in anger,
you who have been my help. / Do not cast me off, do not
forsake me,
O God of my salvation!
10 If my father and mother forsake me,
the Lord will take me up.
11 Teach me your way,
O Lord,
and lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
12 Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they are breathing out violence.
13 I
believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
14 Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord! (NRSV)
When I was small,
there was a growth chart on the back of the door of my closet in the
bedroom. I have no memory of where it
came from or why it was necessary to hang it on that door. I remember vividly that it was in the shape
of a giraffe on a green and blue felt background, and that it scared the
daylights out of me.
I could not
tell you why. I have nothing against
giraffes, and to my knowledge never have, but for some reason that felt giraffe
was one of the most terrifying things in the world to my little child
self. I was four; there is no
requirement for fear to be rational at that age, so all I remember is that I
was convinced that giraffe was a monster and it made going to sleep a very
difficult thing when I knew it was watching me, ready to strike.
I did not, of
course, die by felt giraffe, but I can still feel the intensity of that fear,
even thirty years later. It may be a
similar intensity—if not at all the same cause—of what the psalmist expresses
in this cry for reassurance: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall
I fear?” If I have God, I need fear no
giraffes, right?
But there are
plenty of things in the world that are much, much less dismissible than a
childhood growth chart. This week marked
the second anniversary of the Center for Disease Control formally naming
COVID-19 as a global pandemic. In those
two years, 6,062,019 people around the world have died.[1] To put that in perspective, the 2021
population of the state of Indiana was 6.8 million.[2] Here in the U.S., 967,158 people have died,
which is nearly the population of the state of Delaware.[3]
That is much
more frightening than a giraffe.
“Though an
army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.” Mine would.
I would not like to spend any time at all with an army encamped against
me, or evildoers assailing me, or war rising up against me. I would not like any of that at all, and all
of it would frighten me terribly because I’m rather attached to the concept of
being alive, thank you. Perhaps giraffes
aren’t all that problematic, but COVID?
War? School shootings, violence
against people of color, the tightening noose around the existence of LGBT
people, the way my denomination is falling apart? I know exactly whom I fear, and why, and my
heart and my lungs and several other organs are also plenty afraid of what the
world is, what my world is right now.
Making such bold statements about trust means either the psalmist is lying,
clearly, or he is unbearably naïve.
“Look how the
psalmist begins in verse 1,” writes Lutheran pastor Jane Strohl, “’The Lord is
my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my
life; of whom shall I be afraid?’ This is no general statement about the nature
of God. It is a strong declaration of a very personal relationship. As Martin
Luther insisted, theologizing about who or what God is will not sustain the
heart in times of trouble. It is the confession that this God is ‘for me’ — the
stronghold of my life — that is crucial.
“…Yet even as he pleads, [the psalmist]
offers a challenge to his God. Remember who you are, you who
have been my help, you who are my salvation. The psalmist concludes not with
another plea, but with a pronouncement, perhaps even a challenge. ‘If my father
and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up’ (verse 10). To take a child in
your arms and raise him up is to claim that child as your own before the world.
Whatever damage one’s adversaries inflict, they cannot destroy this act of
divine adoption. God is not only my light and my salvation; God is the parent
who remains faithful.”[4]
Ah; so it is not a matter of naivete,
after all. “One thing I asked of the
Lord…for He will hide me in His shelter.”
The psalmist is not some bizarre accident of change who does not feel
fear; he is one who is deliberately calling on God to fulfill the promise that
there will always be protection from that fear.
The Lord is my light—shine, then, God, on the dark moments when the army
encamps around, on the ticker tape scrolls of yet more dead from COVID, on the
long nights with the harmless giraffe who is nonetheless terrifying. Be the light, the parent, the fortress
against the things that shake our human foundations. “Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud”—in all of
the ways You have promised Your presence, Holy One, deliver. Deliver on Your promises. Be present when the world is scary. The psalmist offers this prayer not in
foolishness but in faith so strong that it teaches us, thousands of years
later, that we are allowed to cry out to God and be heard when the false witnesses
rise up against us, when fear seems all-encompassing.
“Teach me Your
way, O Lord.” Rev. Alan Brehm calls this
psalm a “curious back and forth” between confidence and fear, but it is also a
back and forth between the psalmist’s expectations of God and the recognition
that all relationships are two ways—even, maybe especially, relationships with
the Divine.[5] For each time he calls out to God to uphold
God’s promise, to present safety and shelter and protection, to be the light
and the salvation, the psalmist recognizes that there is work for him to
do. There is a path to walk, and at the
end of this psalm there is the declaration by the speaker that “I believe that
I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” God will do God’s part and we will do ours
and there will be deliverance, salvation in the very specific sense of salve,
of healing, of a place without fear.
This affirmation of faith is followed
by the exhortation to “wait for the Lord.”
Qaw-weh[6]
is the Hebrew verb here, a word tied to the connotations of endurance—this
isn’t hanging out at the bus stop for God but deliberately, knowingly being in
the world that is sometimes frightening and not running away from it, not
giving up all that God is calling you to do because it is too scary. Yes, the psalmist tells us, God will protect
us, will guide us, but we have to follow.
We have to choose to stay in the light that is this God.
“When it got
dark in biblical times, they lit lamps,” points out Rev. James Howell, “not the
brilliant LED lanterns you can purchase today, but simple pottery lamps, with a
single wick and flame, casting just enough light to see a short ways ahead.
Psalm 119:105 says, ‘Your Word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path.’ If we follow God’s will, we do not know what
the road will look like in a few miles or years. God gives us just a pottery
lamp’s worth of light, just enough to take a few more steps. You have to trust
God with that kind of light.”[7]
Is COVID still
a problem, and a frightening one for all that we yet don’t understand about
it? Yes—though thankfully numbers are
slowing, cases are dropping, the vaccines are working, we are finding a
way. Are there wars and encamped armies
and enemies in our families and workplaces and general lives who alarm us such
that we very much want to hide in some form of shelter? Sure, and it is our work in the world to
speak out against all the ways we humans tear each other apart.
But in the midst of that, we wait on
the Lord; we endure, not stoically with a forceful erasure of how we feel, but
in the trust that we cry out to God and God hears. We speak our fear and God does not belittle
it, does not dismiss it. We follow in
the little pool of light and it does not go out, the darkness does not overcome
it, we shall not fear.
We are in the
second week of Lent, wending our way toward Easter with all the thorny complications
of the wilderness. We’re talking about
fasting—will you, Church, fast from timidity?
Will you fast for the sake of confidence, choosing over and over the faith
that God will not, has not, shall not abandon you to the menacing things of the
world, to the shadows and the giraffes that threaten in the night? Do you choose to wait for the Lord, your
light and your salvation? In this, we
choose not to fear—not a life of never being afraid, but not to fear,
not to be engulfed by it, not to forget that God pulls us into God’s shelter,
into the house of the Lord where our heads are lifted up.
May we have
the strength to follow where God leads, the courage to cry out to God for what
we need, and the faith to wait for the One Who promises presence. Amen.
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