Ordination Sermon on Psalm 139

I had the honor of preaching for the ordination of Rev. Beth Olker on 11/22/20 in Biscoe, NC. Below is a translation of Psalm 139 that I developed for the service as well as the manuscript of the sermon.

Today’s reading is Psalm 139. Let us listen together.

Of the musician of David- A Psalm of the Holy One.
You examined me and know me.
You, yes you, know my staying down and my rising up.
You discern my purpose from a distance.
My way of living and my lying down,
And the whole of my ways you know deeply.
Because there is not one word on my tongue- no!
            Holy One, you know the whole of it.

Behind me, at the west, and before me, to the east, you have wrapped around me
And set upon me the palm of your hand.
This knowledge is incomprehensible for me,
Inaccessibly high, I cannot manage it.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
And where from your face can I run?
If I ascend to the sky, there you are.
If I lay a bed for myself in the underworld, it’s you.
If I lift up the edges of dawn and settle down at the farthest ends of the sea,
Even there, your hand will lead me
And it will take hold of me, your right hand at the south.
And if I say, “Surely the darkness will crush me.”
Then even the night is light of day around me.
Yes, the darkness will not be darkened because of you,
But, the night becomes light as day.
How alike you and the light of day are.

When you created my body, my emotions,
You wrapped me in the womb of my mother.
I will give thanks on account of you,
Because I am reverently and uniquely made.
Your creations are beyond understanding,
And my whole being knows that exceedingly well.

My power was not hidden on account of you
when I was fashioned in that hiding place
and interwoven with colors in the deepest of earth.
My being saw your vision and upon your book,
has been written the whole of the days you have created for me,
when there was still not yet one of them.
And to me, how valued are your purposes, God.
How vast the heights of them!
If I count them, they are more numerous than sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.

Would that you would kill the god others claim,
the wicked, and the people of blood– turn away from me!
Those who speak against you,
who in purposeful devices take up your name in emptiness,
are your enemies.
Is it not those that hate you, Holy One, that I hate?
And those that rise up against you, that I detest?
In consuming hatred, I hate them.
They have become enemies to me.

Examine me, God,
And know my conscience.
Test me and know my disquieting thoughts.
And see if there is any manner of pain in me,
And guide me on the way of eternity.

Holy Wisdom, Holy Word.
Thanks Be to God.

Good afternoon friends, family, and partners in ministry who have gathered together in person and online to celebrate God’s call to Beth Olker. One of the privileges of the person being ordained is the opportunity to pick scripture passages that are meaningful to your call and to ask your friends to preach on them. When Beth sent me passages that had guided her, they were filled with reminders of God’s love and our call to enact that love. It is not surprising knowing Beth and her ministry that this was the case. As I read through these passages, Psalm 139 stood out as one which speaks particularly to ordination today.

You see, the psalms are all about relationships. They’re the biblical equivalent of finding someone’s middle school notebook full of deep poems trying to sort out what it means to be human. Within the psalms we find ecstatic joy, the most painful of griefs, and under it all the knowledge that we were created to be in relationship with God. We celebrate one of these relationships today, ordaining Beth to serve God and God’s church. We acknowledge that we see in her that she has been uniquely formed for this role. But, in the Presbyterian Church, we also acknowledge that ordination is just one of many calls to serve God. In fact, we affirm that since God has created each of us uniquely, we all have our own gifts to bring in service to our communities, congregations, and God’s creation.

 The psalmist gives thanks for these unique gifts. They write of their gratitude for the deep reverence and care that God has taken in creating each and every one, each and everything. For the psalmist, creation is not a disconnected bit of happenstance, but rather an act embedded with utmost attention. In forming each of our beings, God has carefully crafted who we are and given us all a unique call. But, being so unique can have its challenges. If we take a moment, I suspect we can all think of a time in which our uniqueness left us feeling as though we didn’t belong. Times when we looked around and all we saw were people who were different than us or who didn’t seem to understand us or who made us feel alone. As the psalmist describes the whole and complete sense of being known by God, many of us feel the pang of this desire. We want so badly to be known, to belong, to see our identity reflected and honored around us.

Sociologists have a theory for the way this need impacts our behavior. It is called the Social Identity Theory. It operates in three ways. The first is through Categorization­– the idea that we understand our world by categorizing like things together, including placing people into groups based off of their commonalities. The second part of Social Identity Theory is Social Identification- or the moments in which we say, “Yes! I am like these people. I belong here.” And finally, the third part is Social Comparison. Once we have found our people and we celebrate who they are, we find ourselves trying to maintain our self-esteem by comparing our group to others and deciding that we are better than them.

The need for belonging that is the foundation for Social Identity Theory, plays out in Psalm 139. Most of the psalm is about the author recognizing their uniqueness and finding a deep sense of belonging in their relationship to God, a relationship that celebrates being fully and wholly known. And then something shifts. Perhaps you noticed this when we read the passage earlier. Something strange seems to take place between verses 17 and 19. We hear:

And to me, how valued are your purposes, God.
How vast the heights of them!
If I count them, they are more numerous than sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.

And then:

Would that you would kill the god others claim,
the wicked, and the people of blood– turn away from me!

Many scholars divide the psalm at this point. They see a part one and a part two. The first being a psalm of gratitude for creation and God’s greatness. The second part, a genuine petition to God. A shift in tone from the earlier sense of awe and wonder, but nevertheless a very real request that God act, and act violently, against those the psalmist calls God’s enemies. But notice, this is not God speaking. God does not call these people enemies. In fact, it is almost as though the psalmist is trying to defend their position– to explain to God and justify why it is okay that they hate these people and wish violence upon them. The psalmist says:

 Is it not those that hate you, Holy One, that I hate?
And those that rise up against you, that I detest?

 Social Identity Theory gives us a new way to look at this moment. We have accompanied the psalmist into their deepest need for belonging. We have seen the power in finding relationship with God. And then we see the moment of doubt. The moment of fear and unsettling. Of being confronted by those that are different and finding one’s self falling into the old habit of seeking security by painting others as enemies. The psalmist says they are “consumed” by this hatred. Each of the moments they had seen God before, in their waking up and laying down, are now overtaken by a desire for violence, with the feeling that life would just be easier if God would get rid of these other people who are so different and make things so difficult.

But, the psalmist pauses before they go any farther. The psalmist breathes:

In consuming hatred, I hate them.
They have become enemies to me.
/////////
Examine me, God,
And know my conscience.
Test me and know my disquieting thoughts.
And see if there is any manner of pain in me,
And guide me on the way of eternity.

 This psalm is a call for all of us to pause, to ask God to examine us. To go back and remind ourselves that all things are reverently and uniquely created by God. To remember that the vastness of God’s creation is beyond our understanding and yet, we know all things are called into God’s purpose. The psalmist realizes the challenges identified in the third step of Social Comparison, the problem of deciding that the groups with which we identify are the only groups with which God will side. Instead, the psalmist asks for God to set them on a different way, to guide them on a new path that reflects God’s plan for the kindom God is bringing into being. One of the other scriptures that Beth sent to me was Micah 6:8 and it lays out a clear description of what that path may be. It says:

 And what does the LORD require of you,
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

 This is the wisdom the psalmist seeks. The antidote to our innate desire to see diversity as divisiveness. The call into relationship not in spite of differences, but in celebration of them. To do justice by being in relationship with our communities and doing what is right by them. To love kindness in our interpersonal relationships by seeing the unique call that God has set out specifically for them because of all that they bring and all of who they are. And to walk humbly in our relationship with God, knowing that we will falter and at times be consumed by a hatred and pain that we know isn’t right. But if we are in relationship with God, we may find ourselves examined and reminded of our call. We may find ourselves given the chance to see through God’s eyes, to look at one another with awe and reverence for each carefully created part of our identities. To see the ways in which God is using all of us to bring about a kindom on earth as it is in heaven. And to find in ourselves the audacity to push against our instinct to find belonging by excluding others and instead find belonging as God’s creation together. As God’s children called to serve one another.

Today we celebrate Beth’s ordination. We celebrate the relationship she has been called into as a minister of word and sacrament. And we celebrate that we believe in a God that has called all of us for we are uniquely and reverently made.

May it be so.