God is my rock, by Greg

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

A part of me is up in eastern Washington state today ... later today members of the church I grew up in, along with most of the members of my own family, will be gathering to celebrate the life of a man who was the father of my best friend during my teen years.

Skip Arnold was a Rhode Island native who drifted West like so many others. He and his wife Shirley set up shop in the valleys east of Spokane, joined a church, started a family, made a life. It was midway through that story, in the early 70’s, that my family moved to Spokane Valley, joined the American Baptist church there, and met the Arnold family. It wasn’t long before Skip Jr., or “Skippy” as we always knew him, was one of my closest friends. I cannot even fathom the number of days and hours we spent together at his home or mine.

Big Skip, as Skip Sr. was always known, was a short, heavy barrel of a man, with a big heart, but a clear mind and a quick tongue. You really wanted to stay on Big Skip’s good side if you, as a squirrely young teenager, didn’t want a swift quick on the backside. He was a good and loving man, but he knew right from wrong and he wasn’t a bit shy to let you know what side of that equation he thought you were on. After my own father, I believe it would be fair to say that Big Skip was the most influential man of my teenage years.

Big Skip married a good hearted Rhode Island girl named Shirley and she became like a mother to me. She was as loving, sweet and kind as Skip was brusque. Until just a couple of years ago, we would always receive a long, kindly, hand-written Christmas card from Shirley telling how they were and asking how we were. It was that dreaded lung disease, pulmonary fibrosis, that robbed Big Skip of Shirley two years ago and not long after that, Big Skip suffered a stroke that made him a virtual prisoner in his own body ... and only last week was he finally granted an eternal parole from that dreaded confinement.

I’ve been mingling thoughts, this week, of Big Skip and the Psalmist’s deep, deep words of faith ... and I find myself wondering if anyone ever thought to read Psalm 62 to Skip as he lay in his bed ... wondering ... wondering what lay ahead ... wondering what his life meant ... wondering what his soul stood on in that “time between times”. Did anyone read these words to Skip and if they did, could he identify with the psalmist and did he find comfort and hope in these words from the psalmist’s heart?

For God alone my soul waits in silence,

for my hope is from God.

God alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my deliverance and my honor;

my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

Skip was never a man of “flowery” faith ... he was a bull of a man who worked with his hands and his sweat and the strength of his broad back. As with so many families, Shirley was the more spiritually effusive of the two. Skip’s faith was sunk deeper, you might say ... buried deep in the bedrock of his person. It might help to know that Skip was a “driller and blaster” ... it was his vocation to operate mighty pneumatic drills that bored into solid rock where charges of dynamite could be planted so that a way could be made for roads. There probably aren’t many men alive, except for Skippy who is also a driller and blaster, who’ve worked their way into more acreage of solid rock than Big Skip. If ever there was a metaphor for the solid, grounding reality of the heart of the universe, a metaphor for God’s own being, it was “rock” and I think it was in that “rock” that Skip found his footing and his grounding. And I have to think that in these last few years when his earthly soul had little else in which to find joy or meaning, that the God who was in his soul’s bedrock never let him down, was a firm and reliable place to live and, finally, to die.

On God rests my deliverance and my honor;

my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

The potential deep comfort of these words to someone at the end of their rope seems obvious. When there is nothing left to hold on to, we can at least hold on to God ... and in that time between times we are graced to discover that God is enough. (HWS)

If you are here this morning, it is because you have thus far been spared the horror and indignity of being bedridden and incapable of self-care. To one degree or another, we who are present today continue to enjoy a good measure of independence and health—all in all, life is still good.

But we live in uncertain times in an uncertain world. And who among us will bet the family farm on that “uncertainty” changing in any foreseeable future? As long as this planet’s population keeps growing, and as long as this planet’s resources remain finite, and as long as this planet’s wealthier and more powerful inhabitants refuse to invest their best energies and thinking and resources in creating a world where children are no longer born into hunger and fear ... as long as these things remain true, uncertainty will be our truest certainty. That’s the world I was born into ... that’s the world I live in now.

That is not to say that I have or we have given up on the world and given up our hope for the world. Not by a long, long shot. Not while I have breath and, I hope, not while you have breath. But it is to say that we perceive the world and our lives within it with few delusions, which is, I think, the healthiest and most honest way to live within the world ... if not the craziest. But we also live within the world as followers of Jesus, another clear-eyed soul who loved the world he lived in. And if we wish not to be crushed by the concerns of the world while working hopefully on behalf of the needs of the world ... well ... we’d better be grounded in some pretty solid stuff. We’d better know where to stand and on whom to stand.

God alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

So ... what are you standing on?

What are you grounded in?

What gives you strength?

What gives you hope?

Where do you stand when storms come and storms blow?

What is saving you now?

What does it mean to bore down into the rock? What does it mean to be “anchored” in that which is undeniably deep and firm and trustworthy?

Last week we spoke of the din and distractions of the holiday season and so much of life that makes it hard to “hear” the still small voice that can whisper our true name and speak peace to our souls. It is a parallel thought to say that that same holiday season that also symbolizes materialism at its worst ... the avalanche of stuff that buries us ... preoccupies us ... impoverishes us ... and whets our appetites for even MORE stuff. It seems to me that the shallower the human soul and spirit gets, the greater the need for stuff to make up for the lack of depth and meaning that stuff just can’t provide. There is a hunger and anxiety that seems palpable in our world and in people who surround us that is easily exploited for a profit.

I was with my pastor friend, Katie Choy-Wong recently, and she told of her recent sabbatical travels to China, to the village from her family came to this country several generations ago. She said that the region where her family came from use to be all farms, nothing but farmland ... and now, she says, it is only factories as far as the eye can see ... factories that churn out the junk that you and I are so desperate to have. I know that when I get home, I’m going to hear a wail of woe and despair from my lifemate.

At their worst, our human lives become littered on the surface with such a depth of debris and detritus and distractions that there’s little hope of finding anything solid underneath on which to stand. All this, you understand, from someone whose desktop, at its worse, can look like the county landfill.

When the earth shakes us ... when changing life circumstances shake us ... when crumbling economies shake us ... when failure of family or friends shake us ... when our health or lack thereof shakes us ... where do you stand? Can you find the rock of your salvation? Have you got a firm place to put your feet ... and your faith?

And if a thick layer of “stuff” can keep us from finding firm footing, from finding the rock of our salvation ... what does anxiety and fear about the future do for our rock-finding?

I am of the age when AARP starts stuffing your mailbox with their repulsive membership cards and come-ons for their magazine. Come on, I say, I still think of myself as a somewhat older, but still young, young adult. Retirement and all that that entails is still off on some impossibly far off horizon ... isn’t it? Isn’t it???

Well OK ... so it isn’t. A recent evening found us sitting with Dana Murphy at a teacher’s retirement seminar ... at Ruth’s Chris steak house of all places—but it was a lovely dinner ... and hosted by an insurance company who wants to help you buy ... assurance ... freedom from anxiety and fear, right? ...

One of the most remarkable changes in our culture is the emergence of the whole world and culture of retirement. And it is, at its root, grounded in the specters of anxiety and uncertainty and fear. For those who will soon plunge headlong into retirement ... how much is enough? How long will I live? Have I saved enough? Will I have healthcare? Will I be a burden to my children? Will I be alone?

There’s really something here terrifically at odds with what used to be conventional thinking about facing the future. Now we face the future with faith ... aaaaand a WHOLE LOT MORE ... Our whole culture is obsessed with “securing the future” ... selling our souls, nearly, to make sure we are comfortably and predictably ushered into our infirm years and, finally, into the grave. No shocks ... no surprises ... nothing but safety and security. I’m having trouble putting my finger on this, but there seems to be something almost nihilistic about this. It’s like slowly increasing the level of barbiturate until we gently fade from the scene. I think we should acknowledge that there is a whole massive industry whose sole purpose, nearly, is to terrify us with haunting visions of impoverished golden years where you are kept alive with food stamps and the E.R. room of the county hospital. “Dear friend,” the retirement counselor says to you with a heavy hand on your sagging shoulder, “no price is too high to avoid such a specter.”

But ... but ... my hope is from God.

God alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress;

I absolutely know that our stuff cannot give us life or save us ... and I doubt the ability of even the best “securities” portfolio to give us the security and peace that our souls most crave in uncertain times ... a security and peace that cannot be shaken by a shaky world economy.

So ... what are you standing on?

What are you grounded in?

What gives you strength?

What gives you hope?

Where do you stand when storms come and storms blow?

What is saving you now?

What does it mean to bore down into the rock? What does it mean to be “anchored” in that which is undeniably deep and firm and trustworthy?

Skippy—my friend Skip Jr.—said on the phone last night about his mom—who died two years ago—that she’d spent her whole life getting ready for the place he now imagines her in. That’s not an articulation or understanding of what’s beyond this life that all of us here would use or share—though some would ... but in this life while she lived it, that simple, sturdy, resilient faith of Shirley’s never failed her, never let her down, always upheld her even as her health failed and the end of her life on this earth drew near. And I trust and pray the same was true for Big Skip, may he rest in God’s good peace. Simple faith ... and .... simple trust.

For God alone my soul waits in silence,

for my hope is from God.

God alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my deliverance and my honor;

my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

Perhaps it should be said that this sense of grounding ourselves in God’s bedrock is not for everyone ... perhaps not even everyone here—whether it is that we doubt the nature of the rock, or doubt ourselves to be able drill into it—our strength or our ability or our “faith”. Or perhaps such an understanding of God smacks of a simple-minded piety that you have spent the bulk of your adult life evolving beyond ... or fleeing. Maybe we’ve just become too sophisticated and urbane to do anything more than wistfully wish we still had our drills and the faithful courage to use them.

Perhaps we should turn the image around ... perhaps we are the nearly impenetrable rock and God is the gently dripping water that slowly bores God’s way into us ... if we will allow it ... if we will not shield ourselves from God. When I am hiking in the high sierra, one of the phenomena at which I most marvel is where water has run across the high mountainous granite slabs for eons ... carving straight and curving channels, sculpting circular bowls of all sizes, shaping and reshaping the solid bulk of the mountain. Time and persistence make the granite, to the patient water, like clay. And so it is for the one who will simply wait upon God ... for God to do with us and for us what God will do ...

For God alone my soul waits in silence,

for my hope is from God.

God alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my deliverance and my honor;

my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

People of Shell Ridge, wait upon God ... trust in God ... be rooted and grounded in God even as God seeks to be rooted and grounded in you.

Amen.

Listening, by Greg

I have been enjoying introducing Alex to some of Puccini’s great Arias ... including “O Mio Babbino Caro” from one of his less well known operas. It is such an extraordinary thing to close your eyes and allow the passion of this almost painfully beautiful piece of music to cascade down upon your ears and your soul. I know very little about Puccini, but listening to his music almost feels like you’re looking through a window into his soul.

Alex is glad that we’re now listening to Puccini or Bach or anything besides the nearly non-stop onslaught of Christmas music that I’ve subjected my household to for the past couple of months.

We have just come out of a season that is notable for, among other things, its sound ... the nearly non-stop din of seasonal music and bells ringing and general “hubbub”. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about this month ... the month of January ... is the quiet ... the cessation of sound ... the chance to still oneself and to ... simply listen. To this day, our New Year’s day worship of two weeks ago remains a gift for the calm and quiet worship we enjoyed together. During the closing guided meditation, we were told repeatedly to “smile and breathe” ... a simple, but effective spiritual practice.

This past Monday and Tuesday I joined a group of my colleagues for a brief time of retreat ... the theme of the retreat was “Sabbath Keeping” and one of the important “duties”, if you will, of Sabbath Keeping is, simply, listening ... ceasing to speak and slowing your activities and opening up your mind and your heart and your soul to ... whatever is there to be heard. Several times during our retreat we simply sat in silence ... our eyes closed, our bodies relaxed, our minds relaxed, as well, and open ... open to whatever gifts might come to us when we cease activity and speaking for a time.

Our friend Trevor, who preached last Sunday, came out from snowy Vermont to join us at our Sabbath Keeping retreat, because he knows, as I know, that our ministry and our personal spirituality is deepest and most effective when we take time to pause and grow still and listen. After the retreat, Trevor took leave of us for a couple of days and drove to the coast. Wednesday, he told us, he made a “day of silence”, that is ... where he did not speak. He even carried a note with him that explained to people he might encounter that he was observing a day of silence. One young woman at a store said to Trevor, who was speaking again by the time he returned to our home, “I’d love to ask you about your day of silence ... but ... I guess that wouldn’t really work, would it.”

One of the potential hazards of being a human being is that we forget that communication is a two-way process ... we too often get the “speaking” part down, but forget that “listening” is the critical other half of the equation of communication. For as many years as I’ve performed marriages, I’ve always reminded soon-to-be-married couples of the sage advice of the wise old Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, who said “We have two ears and one mouth, so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

Some of us were born as “chatty Kathy’s” and stilling our voices, for a time, does not come easily to us. But whether we are naturally chatty or not, learning to cease speaking and to listen remains a challenge for most of us. No less of a challenge is to turn off the noise and distractions to which we modern creatures seem almost addicted. It would be interesting to observe our neighbors in a number of places ... on the bus, on the street, in their homes ... and see how many have a compulsive need for sound or information ... see how many must have the television running, the ipod playing, the social network buzzing, the smart phone or the home computer chugging out its information. It might be our neighbors ... it might be us. Too often it is only when we lie down in exhaustion to sleep that we let go of these things and allow silence to envelope us.

Silence and stillness can help open what we might call “the ears of our souls” ... that is, while we are in a posture of receptiveness and listening, it is listening at a deeper level that we are seeking ... to deepen our listening opens us to hearing, finally, the gentle voice of God ... the heart of another person ... the world and its “hopes and fears” ... and even the voice of our own hearts.

To “listen” to the voice of another isn’t simply to hear their words, but it is to seek to understand their heart and their purposes and their concerns. Listening is an act of “knowing” ... it is a communion of souls where the “other” becomes more deeply known to you.

Young Samuel, that we’ve heard about this morning in our scripture reading, models for us that simple receptivity to the voice of God. He keeps hearing his name called and once old Eli sets him straight about who’s doing the calling, Samuel demonstrates for us how to find communion with God: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” It is Samuel’s openness and willingness to wait for the voice of God and to listen to the heart of God that helps him play a critically important role in the life of the nation of Israel as a judge and a prophet. It is Samuel’s discernment of God’s heart that allows him to help Israel in the selection of its rulers ... first Saul ... and then David.

Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.