For the Glory

Early one New Years morning I received a call from the chaplain of the hospital in the next town asking me to come quickly to the trauma center. I navigated the quiet streets that chilly morning and found myself sitting with a family facing a terrible tragedy. Our church hosted an all-night New Year’s Eve lock-in, culminating in the sacrament of communion as one year ended and another began. After attempting to “require” everyone to get some sleep, my youth pastor served breakfast and pronounced benediction on the event and sent them all home. Along the way, one of the older youth lost control of the car and he and his sister crashed into a telephone poll a few miles from their home. The young man was pronounced dead at the scene and his sister was driven to the nearby trauma center as they tried desperately to help her cling to life. I was there with the family as the machines finally gave up and she too was pronounced dead while her mother wept and patted her face calling her name over and over.

In a lecture titled “Preaching Your Way Through an Apocalypse,” theologian Cody Sanders of Luther Seminary in Minneapolis said, “the world is always ending for someone.” (Festival of Homiletics, May 2023). The world of one family ended in a devastating way that New Years morning. Like the writer of Psalm 79, they stood in the rubble of what was once a happy family and wondered why. They felt abandoned, broken, hurt and angry. In days to come they would look for someone to blame, a reason behind the ruin.

Was God really angry? Was their sin the source of their disaster? Does it really matter? We ask these questions in difficult moments. We blame others, we blame ourselves. We even blame God, because we think that will bring us peace. Or that it will change the circumstances. If we could only figure out who to blame, all would be well. Who is our enemy, or what is my sin that caused this to happen? Where should I direct my anger? Who is to blame? That is one of those lies we tell ourselves. That’s one of the practices human communities have engaged in since the beginning of time. The scapegoat who carries our sins into the desert to die. Psalm 79 is raw, visceral stuff, maybe too much for worship. The lectionary framers think so, and attempted to soften it by cutting the psalm in half. Do we dare read the whole psalm? Or is the vengeance called for too much for modern congregations raised on being nice as the ultimate witness of faith?

Perhaps that is unfair. While we may have trouble dealing with some extreme emotional experiences, we still seek to be the church to the whole person, don’t we? And crying out to God, is a part of the experience of hurting people. Calling for vengeance is a part of our culture, as well as deep within the humanness of each of us. We shouldn’t be shocked or offended by it. Neither should we attempt to defend God. God is capable of provide all the defense needed. God meets us where we are. Always.

But wait. What about glory? The psalmist asks God for deliverance for God’s own glory. This is not how we usually understand glory, is it? Glory is seen in power, right? It is seen in miracles, in the supernatural. We want to see the glory that takes our breath away. Instead, Psalm 79 says we the glory – God’s own glory – we need is that which helps us. It is that which delivers and forgives. When God acts like God, in other words. When God reveals God’s self to us in the small but transformative ways that bring us back from the edge, that stand with us in the rubble, even the rubble that we caused ourselves God’s glory is seen and known. We can be confident that God will always act in a way that is true to God’s nature. And that nature is glorious.

What is incredible about this psalm is that in the end there is praise in sight. There is gratitude on the horizon. Granted it is a far horizon and a conditional one at that. But still, there is the acknowledgement that that is our destination, or maybe our purpose: to praise God and enjoy – live in gratitude with this divine. That in the rubble, with the bodies still in sight, even a conditional praise seems better than nothing, doesn’t it?

What is the thrust of the sermon then? That depends, it seems, on whether you are standing in the rubble or viewing it from afar. Empathy would be the heart and the invitation to lament offered. With a little distance, it might be possible to reflect on the nature of God and what is felt as anger might be presence in difficult circumstance. The God to whom we call upon is a God who walks with us through the rubble of this existence, even when we don’t sense that presence. Even when it seems like that presence is anything but supportive. Even when it feels angry at us. Or the world. Still, we will call upon the Lord.