"What Does Your Soul Long For?" a sermon on Psalm 42-43

Psalm 42 - 43
“What Does Your Soul Long For?”
Preached Sunday, June 19, 2022

What does your soul long for?

Asking yourself this question is part of adopting a breath prayer, as it was taught to me. A breath prayer is a way of praying through breathing. There are many ways to go about doing a breath prayer and the way I was first taught was something like this:

Shut your eyes or still your mind.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Picture yourself in a safe and sacred place. For me it would be Camp Asbury, perhaps for many of you it is right where you are, the shores of Lake Erie, or maybe curled up in a favorite chair in your home - wherever it is, bring that place into mind and the safety, comfort, and sacredness it brings with it.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Hear God saying your name. Hear the voice of God, ringing in your ears, your heart, mind, and soul - calling you by name.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Now hear God’s voice saying to you, asking you by name, “What do you want? What does your soul long for?”
“Allison, what do you want? What does your soul long for?”

Breathe in, breathe out.

Let the answer well up within you, perhaps from a place that feels tender, vulnerable, a place beneath all the noise of this world - what, beneath it all, in the depths of your soul, what do you want?

Breathe in, breathe out.

Now, think of your favorite or go to name for God, say that name as you breathe in…and as you breathe out, pray for the deep longing of your soul.

Lord, give me peace.
God, help me feel your love.
Jesus, make me whole.

Whatever your prayer is, pray it in rhythm with your breath…breathing in and breathing out…

Breathe in, breathe out.

Let’s gather our attention back to the present, pulling it back out from deep within us and focusing on the present and our surroundings. This method that we shared is one of the ways to form a breath prayer. Once you have a breath prayer you can always carry it with you. You can do it in the middle of a work day, in a crowded space, at the breakfast table over coffee or tea. You can do it walking or hiking, at night right before you fall asleep - any time and everytime you find yourself paying attention to your breath, you can turn that breathing into prayer. You can pray the same prayer as long as it feels right or true - until one day, you may find that prayer was answered or you may find your soul is now longing for something else that needs named before God.

So what is it that your soul longs for? I asked this question on social media this week and the replies came pouring in. Now, first of all, I think some people mistook their stomach for their souls as funyuns and pizza were among the answers…But as for the soul, here’s what the more serious answers were: What does your soul long for?

Calm
Order
Creativity
Rest
Peace
Security
Warmth
Novelty
Engagement
Stillness
Connection
Wholeness
Goodness
Shalom
Justice
Balance
Love
Community
Unity
Belonging
Forgiveness
Mutuality
Deep breaths
Strength
Hope

So those here worshiping with us today, what does your soul long for? Did you hear the desire of your soul on that list? Or is yours something else, calling out from within you? When I read what people wanted, what they longed for, beneath everything else: I heard God. It all boils down to the God who is Love. The God who accepts us. The God who brings us into relationship and community. The God who gives us rest. The God who is the Prince of Peace. The God who calms the storms of the sea and our hearts. Every answer that was given boils down to that our souls long for God and all that God is.

The Psalmist, mostly likely King David as it’s from his point of view, the Psalmist says as much in the opening lines of our Psalm from this morning:

“As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”

I can’t say or read that line from Scripture without thinking of the hymn: “As the deer longs for the water so my soul longs after you. You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship you.”

“You alone are my heart’s desire.” You alone. We had a long list of things that our heart’s and soul’s desire - and they all come down to God. The God of peace, community, safety, wholeness…The God of Love.

And I want to point out that to say that God is the desire of our souls is far from a trite platitude. It’s not a happy face Christian-ese saying that attempts to brush the reality of our pain and the pain of this world under the rug. The next lines in the Psalm are “When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “where is your God?”

Other lines in the psalm include “Why are you cast down, O my soul and why are you disquieted within me?” and “I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?”
The Psalmist is wrestling with tears, sadness, enemies, fear, violence, feeling forsaken - adversaries from within and without.

Maybe we can relate to that. In our world today there is tragedy, evil, violence, injustice…It’s easy to look around and wonder where God is. Perhaps we’ve been asked by those in our lives who wonder how or why we believe in God, asked the same question King David was asked, “Where is your God?”

And then inside of us, there is depression and anxiety. Doubt and fear. Reacting to the world around us. Depression and anxiety are at extremely high levels in our society - both studies and anecdotal evidence shows that anxiety is setting in at younger and younger ages in our children. Elementary school aged children are having panic attacks. And it makes sense when they practice active shooter drills, being told their lives depend on a locked door and not making any noise. When they see a virus rip through families and communities. When they hear our hateful and divided rhetoric in our country and world. We see the anxiety in our children and in ourselves and we may ask, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

To say that God is the only desire of our souls is not to dismiss this - it is a life vest in a sea of storms, rest in a busy world, a steady light as the darkness tries to overcome. Even as the Psalmist says he is subsisting, surviving off of tears and looking for God, he is reminding himself of God’s goodness and God’s promise.

“Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”
“By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me.”
“O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.
Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

To say that God is the desire of our souls, among all the strife within and without, is to give us an anchor, a stronghold. It is an invitation to breathe, to center ourselves, and let our breath be a prayer.

To remember that in our baptismal vows in which God claimed us as God’s children, we vowed to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. That through the gift of the Holy Spirit, our efforts for good and against evil are not futile. With God’s help, we are a force of Good in this world.

And it is also a call to care for ourselves, including seeking mental health care for our anxiety and depression and whatever else ails our hearts, mind, and souls - just as we seek care for our bodies. To love God and neighbor as self includes loving self. God is all our souls long for…and we can have Jesus and a therapist. Amen to that? Amen. Part of finding the wholeness in God that we long for involves holistic care of our lives.

To say that the desire of our souls is God is also an invitation to remember God’s glory and all that God has already done for us - all the ways that God has met and is actively meeting the desires of our souls - as King David remembers how he poured himself out to God with glad shouts and thanksgivings and dancing as the arc was brought into the temple.

To stop and breathe, to acknowledge the longings of our souls before God, is a protection against helplessness. It keeps us from being stuck in a downward spiral of cynicism and hopelessness - one that so many in our world fall into.

So today and every day, let us breathe and let us pray.
Even if our prayers are tears. Even if our prayers are saying to God ‘Why have you forsaken me?”
Or even if your prayers are only your breath because you just can’t bring yourself to talk to God - those are all still prayers heard by God.
God is there in our breath, God is there, meeting the desires of our soul with God’s holy presence, God is there. So let us breathe and say, “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you. You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship you.”

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Amen.

"How Majestic is Your Name" a sermon on Psalm 8

Psalm 8
“How Majestic Is Your Name”
Preached Sunday, June 12, 2022

At Grace we have 4 named values, of course we have many things that we hold close to our hearts that we share with one another, flames that we kindle as we seek to live out our Christian faith together. AND, we have four named values as a church, those which we share and lift up together. And one of those values, our most esoteric value is “Beauty through Wonder.” We define this value as “We worship and praise Christ in God’s earthly creation.” This value has its roots in how fundamental Worship by the Water is for us, our identity, and our faith, here at Vermilion Grace.

But of course, as I said, it’s also kind of esoteric, kind of “woo,” out there, hard to pin down - AND today is Trinity Sunday - which is perhaps the most, uhh, esoteric, kind of “woo,” out there, hard to pin down piece of doctrine that we hold as Christians. The joke that preachers tell each other every year as Trinity Sunday approaches is that maybe we should just do a hymn sing - cause preaching on Trinity Sunday can be a heresy minefield. I seriously thought about a hymn sing…but here I am preaching. But I’ll do my best to not commit any heresies while preaching…

Because the Trinity isn't meant to be explained. It’s a mystery. It’s something beautiful and divine and “woo” and out there and beyond logical explanation and it’s meant to be wondered, marveled, contemplated, and awed at. Not explained away or diagrammed. So in that Spirit, let’s turn to our Scripture for today:

Today’s Psalm is a song of wonder at God for the beauty and love imbued in God’s creation. The refrain for the Psalm is “O Lord, Our Sovereign, how majestic is Your Name in all the Earth!” The Psalmist wonders at how God is reflected through the natural world. God, who is the Creator of the universe, has left God’s fingerprints everywhere over all creation. I think of it like God as the potter, creation is the clay, and God has left fingerprints over all of us - but it’s not an imperfection - the pot, God’s creation, is even more beautiful for having been created and shaped by God.

God’s fingerprints are everywhere in creation and the Psalmist sings about this - in the heavens, the moon and the stars, in the oxen and beasts of the field, the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea - even human beings.

And today, outside, here at Worship by the Water, on the beautiful shores of Lake Erie, we join the Psalmist in marveling at God’s fingerprints all over our creation - at the clouds and the skies - the birds, Robins and Herons and bald eagles, perhaps you will see some fish jumping out the lake, the breeze as it rustles through the trees - what a beautiful world, thank you God!

“O Lord how Majestic is your name in all the Earth!”

…And what is that name? The name of God, as far as we can know it, is the name of Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the fingerprints of God are the presence of the Trinity in our world.

We are used to thinking of just God the Father (or Mother or Parent, the Godhead), as the Creator - we’re used to this imagery of God the Father, the Sovereign King, the Creator of the Universe.

The God who spoke and it was.
The God who formed humanity out of dirt and breathed into us the breath of life - gracing us with the fingerprints of God.

I think of one of my favorite hymns, “This Is My Father’s World.”

“This is my Father's world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
his hand the wonders wrought.”

Truly - God the Father’s fingerprints are all over creation. Our God, Our Sovereign, Our Father, our Creator, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

AND, the other persons of the Trinity are also all over creation - their fingerprints showing from their hand in creation. All members of the Trinity were active in creating and they are reflected back to us through it.

Consider the prologue of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” The Word here is Jesus. In the Beginning was Jesus and Jesus was with God and Jesus was God. Jesus was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Jesus, and without Jesus not one thing came into being.

Jesus is at the center of creation AND all things came into being through him, including us. And we also have a belief in our faith called “imago dei” - it means, the image of God. Think of Genesis where God says “Let us make them in our image.” And I’m not saying that God has a body like ours, two eyes, and two ears, and a nose and mouth and all that…What I am saying is there is something inside of us, something innate to how we were made and who we are - many call it a soul or our capacity for love - that reflects God, the God who is Love, in us.

And God in Jesus DID come and take on flesh, the Divine as fully human, the one who through all things came into being, was and is one of us, Emmanuel, God-With-Us. Jesus had hands and feet…and now we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to be God to each other - to reflect the God inside of us to the world.

Can we marvel at that? Can we see the beauty of God in each other? After all, we are God’s creation too - we were created by God and called very good, the crown of God’s creation!

O God, Jesus, The Word, our Brother, Creator, how majestic is your name in all the Earth!

And then there is the Spirit. One of my favorite images in all of Scripture comes from the first chapter in Genesis where it says that God’s wind swept across the darkness and chaos and creation began. I’ve said before that one of my sacred places is Camp Asbury. And at Camp there is a small lake there, Lake Hibbard, and early in the morning, while the air is cool but the lake is warmer, mist hovers over the water. Have any of you ever seen something like that before? To me, that mist represents the same Spirit that hovered over the deep as one of the first acts of creation.

So too in the act of Creation when God breathed the breath of life into us, that breath was the Holy Spirit. We are always with the very God who is our breath.

And at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came in the form of tongues of fire.

Let us marvel and wonder at the Holy Spirit! Wind and mist and breathe and fire - the Holy Spirit is a force of Divine nature within and around us, her fingerprints over us and all of creation.

Our God, Holy Spirit, Breath and Mist and Wind and Fire and Creator - How majestic is your name in all the earth!

Yes, we marvel and wonder at the mystery of Trinity and how we see it displayed and all around us in the beauty of creation. And what isn’t a mystery, is our call to be God stewards of God’s creation. If God’s fingerprints are all over this earthly world and over each other and all of humanity, we are called to loving stewardship and loving care for our world. As God cares for us, we are called to care for all that God has created. This is not a harsh dominion or subjugation of the created world - as many have taken it and abused our place in the ordered creation - but to be good, faithful stewards of our world for the wonder and glory of all. So that all creation may continue to wonder at the beautiful mystery of the Divine Creator - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - in all creation.

O Triune God, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Amen.

"Children of God" a sermon on Romans 8:14-17

Romans 8:14-17
“Children of God”
Preached Sunday, June 5, 2022

If there is one thing I’d want our confirmands to know.
If there is one thing I’d want my own child to know.
If there is one thing I’d want everyone here to know.
If there is one thing I’d want everyone alive to know…it is this:

You are a child of God.

Turn to the person next to you and tell them: “You are a child of God.”
You are a child of God.

Repeat after me:
I am a child of God.
I am a child of God.

Good. You all know it. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Okay, not quite done yet - but it will be a short sermon today cause we’re going to reaffirm that two young men are children of God through the rite of confirmation today.

And we are going to reaffirm that we are all children of God through the sacrament of Holy Communion.
That these young men and each and every person here is a child of God and if a child of God than heirs WITH Christ, adopted by the Holy Spirit. And it is through that Spirit of Adoption that each of us has the right to to call God, the Creator of all the Universe: Abba! Father! Mother! Divine Parent. And we are loved by God the Creator of the Universe as a parent loves their child.

For today is the day of Pentecost - the traditional day for confirmations in the Church - the day we remember how the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples and to all of us. That, following Jesus’s ascension, the disciples were gathered together and the sound of rush of wind came upon them and tongues of flame landed on them and they went out on the street and preached about Jesus and all that were gathered heard them speaking in their own native tongues and that day many came to know Jesus and accept their adoption as children of God.

And that same Holy Spirit is the Spirit given to us. The Spirit that IS a member of the Divine unbreakable Trinity. Before Jesus ascended he promised he would be with us always: and he is through the gift of the Holy Spirit. God who is wind and fire and presence and breath. We always say that the Spirit is never farther from us than our next breath. God is WITH us always, claiming us as beloved children of God as Paul talks about in our reading from Romans today.

And the 8th Chapter of Romans might just be my favorite chapter in all of Scripture. Later on in the chapter from today’s reading we get this passage of Scripture:

“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.”

God is with us always through the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit gives us a spirit of adoption, making us children of God along with Jesus.
And because we are children of God along with Jesus there is nothing, literally nothing, that can separate us from the love of God.

When we baptize children, we claim the title of Children of God for them.
At confirmation, they claim “Child of God” for themselves.
Today we get to celebrate that, affirm that they are beloved children, and remember our own belovedness as children of God through affirming them and through Holy Communion.

When I give Communion to children I say “God loves you very much” as I give them the bread and the cup.
For adults I say “The Body and Blood of Christ.”
And really, it’s the same thing: when we take Communion, we remember how much Christ loves us. That he gave all of himself for us, and as children of God and joint heirs with Christ, we share in his death and resurrection - Holy Communion being a powerful reminder of that.

So today in multiple ways, we will tell each other and remind ourselves that we are all children of God.

Turn to the person next to you and tell them: “You are a child of God.”
You are a child of God.

Repeat after me:
I am a child of God.
I am a child of God.

Good. You all know it. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Great Thanksgiving for Pentecost, inspired by Romans 8:14-17

The Great Thanksgiving

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.

It is right and a good and joyful thing. Therefore, Almighty God, with thankful hearts we praise you for the amazing love, grace, and forgiveness you gave to us through Jesus Christ. We thank you for giving us a spirit of adoption.

It is by that Spirit that we proclaim that The Christ, God incarnate, came to this earth out of love for us. He died and on the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven. And gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit who is always with us.

And so we remember, on the night before he was betrayed and killed by the state, he was gathered together with his disciples at a table like this, he took bread, gave thanks to you, broke the bread, gave it to his disciples and said:

"Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you,
do this in remembrance of me."

When the supper was over, he took the cup, blessed it, gave it to his disciples and said:

"Drink from this, all of you. This is my blood of the New Covenant,
poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."

Holy, Loving God, pour out your Spirit on us gathered here,
And on these gifts of bread and juice.
Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ
That we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed and reconciling.

Through your Son Jesus Christ,
With the Holy Spirit in your holy church,
All honor and glory is yours, almighty God,
Now and forever, Amen.