There's a Psalm For That -- Psalm 2

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer, Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Full disclosure—in preparation for this sermon, I believe, was the first time I ever read Psalm 2. I’ve nothing against the psalter, don’t get me wrong. I’m hip to other psalms like 8, 13, 16, 23, 24, 34 and even some triple digit ones like 100, 105, 118, ultra-lengthy 119, 139, 142. (Shout out any numbers you love that I missed. I mean numbers of psalms, not just like, numbers. Cool, a lot of psalm fans out there today.)

Well, because the world is great, I’ve figured out a way to, once again, tell the story of the Old Testament project that Gretchen and Maria and I did, first year. It was an obviously amazing infomercial that played off the Apple marketing campaign “there’s an app for that”—but, rather, there was a psalm for that. There’s a psalm for your sorrow, your revenge fantasy, for gentleness, for you the oppressed or you the oppressor, for justice, for celebration, for anguish, for fear, for joy.

Sojourners contributor Kari Jo Verhulst writes that “the poetry of the psalms preserves the immediacy of human experience…void of the broader perspective that we get well after the moment has passed….the psalms preserve the heart’s cries in language, images, and movements spacious enough to find our own experiences.”

And John Calvin, guy I don’t usually quote in sermons, called the Psalms “the anthology of all the parts of the soul.” And he meant all parts.

David Tuesday Adamo, a religion professor in Nigeria, classifies Psalm 2 as a therapeutic psalm—specifically for stomach pain. I have to admit that yesterday, when I realized I was preaching the day after Jim Lobdell, I had some stomach pain. The African Indigenous Churches, Adamo explains, regard these words as “potent” when read as part of a healing ritual, which includes the drinking of water made holy by these words.

While we wouldn’t classify our baptism as cure for stomachache necessarily, we do know a little something about water made holy by word. While you may be a better biblical scholar than I am and have included Psalm 2 in your life before now, you may have just recognized the words “You are my Son, today I have begotten you” as bearing a striking resemblance to the words that thunder from heaven during Jesus’ baptism.

We as Christians have a specific understanding of the term “God’s son” and we mean Jesus, the Christ, when we say that. But we’ve also learned, probably from Steed Davidson, that earthly kings often claimed to be the son of a particular god, in order to lend themselves that god’s authority. Some interpreters say that this psalm could have, liturgically, been used in royal rituals—and it makes perfect sense that it would appear in the story of the baptism of Jesus, as told by Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. Matthew, greatly concerned with the establishment of Jesus’ authority, and Luke, greatly concerned with social location, would have called upon this familiar, royal phrase to underscore the baptism of Jesus.

And Jesus has more power than any earthly king—and he hasn’t amassed an army or oppressed a people. Rather, he has emptied himself of that power through “suffering, humiliation, despair” and death on the cross.

In Psalm 2, it’s written that God has established a king to bring order to the world, but that all the other kings are running away with it. God has established a rule of law, a coming kingdom, and humans who would even claim the best of intentions are failing miserably to fulfill it.

When we hear the words of this psalm in our world—big and messy—we may wonder if God can really make order out of our chaos. If you read or watched any news today, you’ve been long-distance witnesses to the upheaval in Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, Uganda, Mexico, the Central African Republic, Somalia…

There are death tolls in the dozens and the capture of a drug kingpin and re-imprisonment of musicians and anti-gay legislation and drone strikes and civil wars and disappearances and protests and crackdowns and unchecked abuse of power.

And, in the midst of it all, there’s a psalm for that.

I told a non-religious friend of mine I was going to preach today, and he asked what I was planning to say, and so I, sort of flippantly, said that I was going to talk about how everything is awful and the only reason we don’t give up is because God has promised to make order out of our chaos. He just sort of said, “oh” and we moved on to talking about something else -- but isn’t that the thing? Isn’t it just that the world is constantly in uproar—with earthly kings plotting against that which will engender the kingdom of God—and yet somehow, here we are, week after week, being read to about that chaos, and responding, “Thanks be to God.”

The last line of this psalm made me laugh. Its contrast to the rest of the psalm is so typical. Wrath, fear, trembling, wicked, perishing, warning—people are going to be dashed to pieces like pottery, it says!—but happy are they who take refuge in him.

Mic drop.

As though that’s it. And as though all the folks who are going to be broken with a rod of iron are simply unhappy. I think they’re probably more than unhappy. I think they’re probably dead.

But the thing is, the people of God know who has the last word. The people of God know that this king—earthly or otherwise—is from God and will, therefore, lead them toward happiness.

And since I’m so fond of bringing my horrible jokes full circle, there is, in fact, an app for your happiness! I stumbled upon it earlier this week and am interested to see how I’m able to use it, going forward. The app is called “happier” and basically is an electronic journal of moments of happiness, gratitude, etc. So like, on Monday when I went to Café Yesterday to read like a million pages for homework, Josh, the guy who runs it, put my coffee in the giant Disney Princess mug, knowing without knowing that that would make me happier. I posted a picture of it to the app, and got notifications that it had made other users smile—the “happier” version of the Facebook like.

What I like about “happier” is not just that I post little positive things that occur in my life, but I peruse the moments that have made strangers happy. For other folks, it’s a visit to their horse’s stable, a great grade on an assignment, managing to be on time to yoga class, noticing blooming trees on their way to work. Knowing that people out there in the world are experiencing little bursts of happiness helps me know that there’s a way out of our chaos. In the midst of the trauma and terror of human life, there is also happiness. There is goodness, and there is love, and there is life.

The words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu have been made into a song that we’re going to sing in just a moment, because their simplicity is built on the same confidence as Psalm 2:

“Goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than darkness, life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, victory is ours, through God who loves us.”

Amen.

What do you want?

I don't know that I've ever gone this long without posting something here, especially since I've been incredibly busy with amazing things worth sharing! However, this isn't really going to be much of anything, because I'm just stopping by to post something I wrote months ago that I found on my phone.

I was in Colorado and it was cold and I was missing my people and my places and my life in Berkeley very much. I was trading emails with a dear friend who wrote, rather frankly, "Well, Case, what do you want?" And I didn't respond with these words in that email, but I wrote them in response to that question and just kept them.

I just want to make a venti gin and tonic and get a sunburn in the Dels courtyard while Paul messes around on the guitar and Maria and Gretchen just laugh and laugh until Tony finally comes down the stairs with his kindle and "does homework" alongside us.

I just want to walk to the bus stop and ride to the GTU and scarf Urbann Turbann before the wind cools it off and then jaywalk to Brewed Awakening for not good coffee or pretty good tea but most importantly a place to sit and cram reading before class begins. And then hike up the slope to CDSP, backpack lurching, for another bouncing Jerome Baggett 'Religion and Politics in the United States' lecture.

I just want to swing by Fellini for a beautiful vanilla soy latte even though I'm already late, and then drive up the Grizzly Peak switchbacks because mishing straight up Marin is bad for my car even though it's the only way I'd come close to making it to 8am class, listening to music at full volume, trying to dance myself alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic.

I just want to crack open a Downtown Brown and BBQ in the courtyard until it gets cold enough to go get a sweatshirt but also maybe shoes would have helped in the first place because the asphalt is so rough but it's fine, just hop hop hop.

That's all.

Publicly Accountable Note-to-Self

Hi. A few stories, confessions, and revelations and stuff to put on "paper" for when I forget my commitments.

In high school, I was like "I want to be a youth director" because I loved BLCYM and Jonathan (our youth director) and so, naturally, wanted to keep that forever. It's where I met my best friend, and so obviously it was the best thing out there. Typical.

Then, sophomore year of college, I met the CLU Campus Ministry, and the CLU Religion Department, (and then the Secular Student Alliance the next year) and the world of interfaith dialogue swept me off my feet. Somehow, I forgot about the life of youth ministry I'd loved. Going to seminary for the express purpose of cruising on to a PhD and being a professor and activist and all-around brainiac took center-stage. With it, the idea of parish ministry and youth, in particular, got shunted to the back burner as "less than" my newfound academic pursuits. That kind of thing was for people without higher education, I'm sure I said.

The first two years of seminary kept this ball rolling pretty hard. School is basically my favorite place, y'all, and the idea of staying there forever, reading and writing about the world seemed like the ultimate life. Being in the Bay Area, the crossover between academia and activism is pretty easy. One week, for one class, our homework was to attend an Occupy protest and write a theological reflection about it. I mean, really. Hashtag Berkeley.

And every time a fourth-year said something about, "well, once you've done internship," I just rolled my eyes for hours about how out-of-touch with reality parish ministry had to be, compared to my awesome worldview and stuff. I am so ridiculous sometimes, you guys.

The first few months of internship, I fought tooth and nail to make it reinforce my ideas. I was like "yep this proves this life isn't for me" every time something wasn't the coolest or the most academic or the most liberal or whatever. I AM LITERALLY INSUFFERABLE.

I'm a week away from completing my internship, as I write this. My project (a required part of the intern year) was helping to articulate a budding ministry of advocacy. We met with a cool guy named Brad, the Rocky Mountain Synod's advocacy director for the state of Colorado, who helped us figure out how to be in relationship with our legislators. We met monthly to learn and plan; we attended a legislative prayer breakfast; we attended Faith Advocacy Day for Colorado; I attended Ecumenical Advocacy Days, a long-weekend event in DC; I preached about being advocates for justice; we watched documentaries; we wrote our legislators; we encouraged the congregation to have opinions about things like the death penalty and other issues of criminal justice reform. It RULED.

Simultaneously, in the last 11 months, I have gone on two weekend retreats and two week-long trips (one service, one camp) with the high school and middle school youth here at Holy Trinity. We also had a girls' overnight for Dia de los Muertos, and I taught confirmation once, and I often hung out with the high school kids during their Sunday morning education hour, and I'm the captain (lol) of our "HTLC Heroes" team that's hitting up the ColorVibe 5K this Saturday. They're so cool.

And not only are they so cool, but the camp staff that I met on our trip to Joplin and our week at confirmation camp were so cool. I forgot to mention how much eye rolling I did in college and up until a month ago with regards to camp. Sorry to those I love deeply (in particular Ben and Kelsey) who love camp deeply -- I don't know if you even knew I was such an ass.

And I read Eboo Patel's book Acts of Faith, and dove headlong back into thinking that the way to change the world is through young people. And, especially, by having important conversations and interfaith conversations and serving together and advocating together. That it's definitely important to foster advocacy among adults, but that the damage future generations could do to each other will be much more easily avoided if our young people don't grow up in a world of ignorance and misunderstanding and hate, in the first place. And somehow in the mix I encountered and entered the 99 Collective, a group of young adults who are committed to transforming the world through young people, through the church. Who'da thunk.

So, now, as I go forth into the world in peace, back to my academic Berkeley life for my final year of seminary classes, I'm making some out-loud commitments.

I'm registered for classes that I think will make me a better pastor, advocate, ecumenical and interfaith partner, and innovator in what I see as the future of the Church. And I'm hoping that by putting these words out to you, that, round-a-bout February, when you see me forget myself and roll my eyes about something someone says about youth ministry, that you slap me upside the head and make me read this whole post out loud.

And, after all of that, when I graduate in May, I'm moving to DC because that's where I think the action I want in on is taking place, right now. And I sure hope that the bishop of the Metro DC synod wants to call me--even though what I'm looking for in a call is a little more than the plug-and-play into and existing situation that we see throughout the ELCA. I'm hoping to be multi-vocational, and I'm hoping to help bridge the gap between the church and the rest of the world. I want to be an advocate, and I want to effect change in the lives of young people, and I want to do it from the pulpit, and the hospital room, and other houses of worship, and the steps of the capitol, and the university campus. And maybe even from summer camp.

Because writing a paper full of "the answers" is cool and all, but actually being with people is probably significantly more effective. And follows a lot better in the footsteps of our main man, Jesus. Which, after all, is kind of what I signed up to do three years ago.

Don't let me forget it.