Epiphany 5/Ordinary Time 5
Preaching
Hear My Voice
Preaching The Lectionary Psalms for Cycles A, B, C
(For an alternative approach to vv. 12-20, see Christmas 2, Cycle A.)
This is our second encounter with Psalm 147 in recent weeks. Verses 12-20 comprised the Psalm Reading for the Second Sunday After Christmas. There we noted that this psalm was likely written for the people of Jerusalem after their return from exile (see vv. 2-3) and that it is intended to remind the hearers that the same God who runs the cosmos also cares for Israel. That theme continues in these verses as well.
We can imagine this psalm being sung as Zerubbabel's temple was dedicated (see Ezra 6:16-22), especially when we're told that as part of that dedication, the people "with joy ... celebrated the festival of unleavened bread seven days; for the Lord had made them joyful ..." (Ezra 6:22).
A sermon might be built on verse 4, which tells us that God determines the number of the stars and names them. The longer we study the skies, the more we realize that both the numbering and the naming of the stars are beyond human capability. As recently as January 1996, scientists discovered, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, that our universe was at least forty billion galaxies larger than previously known. The psalmist, of course, couldn't have known about all that, but even the sky he saw with his naked eye was stunningly large and amazingly star-filled.
One direction such a sermon could go is emphasizing that we worship a God so much bigger than the foolishness of astrology, which claims that a few named and relatively close stars determine our destiny.
While God can name the stars and name us, we cannot name God. We use names to refer to the Creator, but none of them succeed very well. When the current United Methodist Hymnal was being assembled, the hymnal revision committee extended an invitation to thirteen writers for lyrics using alternative metaphors and descriptions of God, just as the Bible itself does. The resulting hymn, "Source And Sovereign, Rock And Cloud," contains 39 different terms for God -- and the songwriter started with a list of over 200, all drawn from scripture! No one of the 39, or of the 200, or the sum total of them all is adequate for all that God is; but by using several, we at least give some sense of how much greater God is than any name -- or all names -- can contain.
-- S. P.
This is our second encounter with Psalm 147 in recent weeks. Verses 12-20 comprised the Psalm Reading for the Second Sunday After Christmas. There we noted that this psalm was likely written for the people of Jerusalem after their return from exile (see vv. 2-3) and that it is intended to remind the hearers that the same God who runs the cosmos also cares for Israel. That theme continues in these verses as well.
We can imagine this psalm being sung as Zerubbabel's temple was dedicated (see Ezra 6:16-22), especially when we're told that as part of that dedication, the people "with joy ... celebrated the festival of unleavened bread seven days; for the Lord had made them joyful ..." (Ezra 6:22).
A sermon might be built on verse 4, which tells us that God determines the number of the stars and names them. The longer we study the skies, the more we realize that both the numbering and the naming of the stars are beyond human capability. As recently as January 1996, scientists discovered, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, that our universe was at least forty billion galaxies larger than previously known. The psalmist, of course, couldn't have known about all that, but even the sky he saw with his naked eye was stunningly large and amazingly star-filled.
One direction such a sermon could go is emphasizing that we worship a God so much bigger than the foolishness of astrology, which claims that a few named and relatively close stars determine our destiny.
While God can name the stars and name us, we cannot name God. We use names to refer to the Creator, but none of them succeed very well. When the current United Methodist Hymnal was being assembled, the hymnal revision committee extended an invitation to thirteen writers for lyrics using alternative metaphors and descriptions of God, just as the Bible itself does. The resulting hymn, "Source And Sovereign, Rock And Cloud," contains 39 different terms for God -- and the songwriter started with a list of over 200, all drawn from scripture! No one of the 39, or of the 200, or the sum total of them all is adequate for all that God is; but by using several, we at least give some sense of how much greater God is than any name -- or all names -- can contain.
-- S. P.
