Old South Sermons:

Do Not Forget
 
by Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, Senior Minister

Based on Psalm 103

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Listen to this sermon

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My heart is crowded this morning.
 
It is crowded with the fresh memory of the Dow Jones’ worst week, ever … and with words like depression, tailspin, crisis and chaos.
 
My heart is crowded with images of elders whose retirement benefits are evaporating … almost as if they had never existed.
 
My heart is crowded with a letter-to-the editor written by a Wall Street businessman who is anxious to point out that most of those who work on the Street are middle class; that they are good people, upright and honest;
 
It is crowded with all the accusations of these past weeks and days, the finger-pointing, the scape-goating, the name calling, the blaming, because, well, isn’t it possible that all of us bear some responsibility for the financial fix we are in? … for we have all been on this ride.
 
My heart is crowded with memories of other national crises where there was rubble to sort through and ways to come together to mourn and to rebuild. This crisis has about it an amorphous quality. It seems to have scattered us, rather than gathered us … sending us scurrying, each of us out for ourselves.
 
My heart is crowded with the words of a woman at a campaign event accusing Obama of being an Arab. What haunts my heart is not that she is so misinformed. What haunts my heart is that no one challenged the profound racism imbedded in her complaint.
 
My heart is crowded by ruminations that Democracy and the financial markets will forever reflect our own sins and complications, our human excesses and failures.
 
As a Trustee of a mutual fund, my heart is crowded with thoughts of our employees, our portfolio managers, and those shareholders whose life-savings are in our care.
 
My heart is crowded with the thought that what Wall Street most needs at this very moment is actually something we possess in spades: faith!  I am wondering how we might loan some of our faith … on favorable terms, of course: interest free!
 
My heart is crowded by a conversation I had this week with a member of Old South who told me on Friday that she was going to purchase stock … not to buy at a low price, but as symbol of her commitment to the common good, as an anti-panic demonstration.
 
My heart is crowded as I know your hearts are as well. But if our hearts are crowded, imagine how God’s heart is faring. Imagine how God is feeling about the news from planet earth, about the news from the campaign trail, about the news from our centers of finance, here and across the world. Imagine how God is feeling about just how much faith and hope we have stored up in our earthly treasures.
 
My heart is filled by the words of the psalmist, who in the very midst of life’s trials and tribulations and heartaches – in circumstances not so very different from ours – raises his voice above all the wailing, to sing a song of praise and thanksgiving:
 
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless God’s holy name.
 
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all God’s benefits …
 
It is a psalm of incredulity and of ecstasy. The hymn arises from an arrow-in-the-heart existential experience of the goodness of God. Imagine his surprise when, having been knocked to the ground by life’s vicissitudes, the psalmist finds God right there: on the ground beside him, tending to him, lifting him up.
 
He didn’t see it coming. His song is a burst of relief, for he is forgiven; a song of utter joy for he has been healed; a cry of reprieve, for he has been rescued.
 
Until this moment, he had no idea how amazing God is, how good God is, how faithful, how patient, how tender.
 
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless God’s holy name.
 
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all God’s benefits …
 
Benefits! In the work-a-day world benefits are what we earn. They are carefully negotiated, calculated on a percentage basis, for doing our job. You do this, you get that. They are, in other words, what we are owed.
 
Here is the surprise the psalmist springs on us: God does not work this way. We do not receive what we are due. Thank God! Nor are we paid what we have earned. Thank God! We get much better than that. God’s arithmetic is in our favor!
 
The psalmist confesses to getting so caught up in the world and its ways that he forgets God’s ways! Distracted and in despair over the world’s arithmetic, he had completely forgotten that God calculates on an utterly different basis.
 
Psalm 103 is a song of remembering. It is a string tied around the psalmist’s finger.  In this song we find him coaching himself, talking to himself, singing to himself, reminding himself about that which he, and we, are prone to forget: that the ways of God are different than the ways of the world.
 
The credit crisis is terrifying … but fear not: God’s arithmetic is in our favor.
 
The psalmist sings about what remains when savings accounts have dried up, when there are no parachutes left and the plane’s engine is failing. In the world, those circumstances mean disaster … but not with God.
 
God’s arithmetic is in our favor.
 
The psalmist sings of a God who is as much a guardian of each star in the night sky as of each homeless man, woman and child in the dark streets of our city. They may have been abandoned in the hearts of their fellow humans, but they are all accounted for in the heart of God.
 
God’s arithmetic is in our favor.
 
Tomorrow is Columbus Day. In our United Church of Christ calendars it bears another designation as well: Indigenous People’s Day. Similarly, our UCC calendars designate today as Access Sunday.  In the arithmetic of the world, Indigenous people have not fared very well. They  have barely been left a crumb, let alone a slice of the pie. In the arithmetic of the world persons with disabilities are forever coming up against barriers: barriers of difference and indifference  But here, in God’s house, we are taught a geometry of inclusivity.
 
Psalm 103 is over the top with praise. It is twelve trumpets when four would have done the trick. It a hundred-voice choir when a small ensemble could have filled the space. It is our E.M. Skinner organ when a lesser instrument could have sufficed. The psalm is extravagant and fulsome … but even so, it barely hints at the majesty, the grandeur, the goodness of our God.
 
Welcome to God’s house, where doing arithmetic is amazing.
 

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless God’s holy name.

 

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all God’s benefits …

 

 

 

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