Neill Morgan
Sermon Delivered April 28, 2007
1The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
3he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
4Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.
5You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
Sabbath, Sanctuary, and Stewardship
Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary
Pure and holy, tried and true
With thanksgiving I’ll be a living
Sanctuary for you.
Where is your holy space?
Tradition places the original setting for the 23rd psalm as the temple of God, on the lips of David, as he is seeking a safe place of protection from his enemies. All around him, those who would do him harm threaten, but in the temple of God, he enjoys the privilege of sanctuary. It is a holy place, so nobody is allowed to spill his blood or to force him out. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies,” he says.
In our own reading and recitation of the psalm, it can create for us a sanctuary, a holy space, set aside for our spiritual connection with God. All around us, the world works against our spirit – the psalm says that since God is my shepherd, I want nothing. The world around us tells us just the opposite – to want everything, and not to be happy until we have satisfied our own wants.
The world around us does not always feel like a holy place, like a sanctuary. The slaughter at Virginia Tech last week, and the continued killing in Iraq, remind us that the world is not a safe place. No matter how much we learn about mental illness on the one hand, and sectarian differences among Iraqis on the other, knowledge does not relieve the anxiety. Even if we can find a way to make sense of it, it is still senseless.
Psalm 23 offers a holy space, a sanctuary, for us in times of deepest grief. At the time of death, or in deep illness, this psalm is a favorite, carving out a memory, connecting us to the faith we began to learn as we learned this psalm. Deep within us, the words of the psalm steady our heart beat and remind us that when all our own emotional resources are drained, God is waiting with enough to make our cup overflow.
Where is your holy space? In the gospels, Jesus often went off to a quiet place to pray. His ministry was a balance between ministering among the disciples and crowds, and then seeking out his place by himself for prayer. In addition to the church sanctuary, where can you find the freedom from distraction to listen for God in prayer? It may be a room in your home, or if you live in the college dorm, some corner of the campus, or if you drive by yourself every day, your car can become a sanctuary. There are, of course, holy vegetable gardens and orchards, maybe even a holy table in a corner of a coffee shop. The world is full of holy space, spaces waiting for us to find it and open our eyes to the fact that God has already prepared it for our time of conversation and prayer and listening. So, where is your holy space?
Second, when is your holy time?
With the increasing secularization of our culture, the whole notion of Sabbath seems strange. The traditional Sabbath of one day a week set aside from all the rest for rest, Bible study, meditation, and worship and prayer does not fit with our seven-day-a-week twenty-four hour schedule. The whole idea of a fast food restaurant staying closed every Sunday so that all employees may have a day of Sabbath strikes the world as silly. But, Chick-fil-A does exactly that, causing puzzlement from the world.
For the psalmist, Sabbath was a welcome rest. “He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.”
Setting aside time away from work is a start, but the idea of Sabbath is more than that – it is setting aside time for the disciplines of spiritual growth, prayer, service to others, reading Scripture. As the idea that rest is wasteful has infected our society, it has even spread into the church.
We often design our church life around the idea that church health comes about as a result of thinking up good ministry programs, recruiting the leadership and volunteers to get them going, and then working as hard as we can to keep them going. If we do that, so the theory goes, our ministry will bring about spiritual growth in our members and attract financial resources and new people as disciples as well.
Sometimes that’s true. But just as often, those programs of ministry wear us out instead of nurturing our spiritual growth, and sometimes they attract new financial resources and new people and sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they attract new people, but not enough financial support to sustain it, the program eventually collapses and the people who came for it wander away.
This psalm, and the witness of the gospel suggest that church health is developed from the opposite direction. When a group of people, any group, commits to the spiritual disciplines of Sabbath keeping, prayer, serving others, and tithing, then ministry emerges around the gifts of the disciples. Instead of wearing them out, they find joy in the use of their gifts, rest in their Sabbath keeping, and new disciples come not for programs, but for relationships with people who are finding so much joy together.
So, the psalm gives us the challenge to set aside space, and set aside time, sanctuary and Sabbath. Then, the psalm challenges us to stewardship. In that second phrase, David says, “I want nothing.” Other translations say, “I have everything I need.” The radical statement is a way of throwing off the shackles of the desire for things that would drive us away from God.
That’s the opposite of how we usually think of stewardship as a church program. But the bible isn’t much interested in stewardship as a church program, rather as a spiritual discipline. We usually go about the whole idea of stewardship as a campaign to lift up the ministry of the church as the motivating factor for giving.
The psalmist goes at it from the opposite direction. David lifts up a vision of complete dependence upon God, especially when it seems there is no hope:
4Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.
The psalms, the prophets, and Jesus, however, go at it from the opposite direction. Giving for programs is great for radio stations and civic clubs. But giving as part of the Christian faith is as much a part of our lives as prayer and service. We tithe not because of what it will do for others or the church, but because of what it will do for our own spiritual growth. It will throw off the yoke of desire and reject the world’s power to own us, to drive us away from God.
When we do that, we can be sure that the church will move toward greater health and stewardship as well because, as Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.” When we tithe as a spiritual discipline, we will put our hearts into using those tithes through the church as faithfully as possible.
Sanctuary, Sabbath, and Stewardship: With those three essentials of spiritual growth, the psalmist calls us into an ever deeper relationship with God. Where does it start, if we want to begin anew, to jump start our spiritual lives?
Here’s another great reversal. I don’t know if I picked this up in seminary or just absorbed it from our church culture, but I have always assumed this is the way things are: if you can get people engaged in Bible study, they will be challenged to lives of service, loving God and loving neighbor.
As I look back over more than 21 years of ministry, I realize that that is only sometimes true. More often, when people get engaged in joyful service, using their gifts to love God and love neighbor in relationship with other people, then they develop a thirst for learning the Bible. It’s just the opposite of what I thought, even though it has been working that way right in front of me all my life.
It is as the song says about Sanctuary: we become that holy place where God works. We begin each day praying, “Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary;” and by evening, we find our home, our settled rest:
The sure provisions of my God
Attend me all my days;
O may Your House be my abode,
And all my work be praise.
There would I find a settled rest,
While others go and come;
No more a stranger, or a guest,
But like a child at home.
Amen.