Proper 16B
1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69
If I were to ask you what your favorite psalm is, many of you would have a ready answer. Even without trying it seems, we come to know the psalms and cherish them.
Some of you would undoubtedly name the twenty-third psalm as a favorite. Beyond that, you might be a little foggy on the numbers, but you remember the words. Psalm 121: “I lift up mine eyes until the hills, from whence cometh my help.” Or Psalm 139: “Lord you have searched me out and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up…”
I don’t know if any of you would list today’s psalm, Psalm 84, among your favorites. But I bet the words sounded a little bit familiar. Something I read this week said that this psalm is one of the most frequently set to music. I knew it first, I think from a setting on an old Sherrill Milnes record (!) I’ve had at least since high school. Today’s communion hymn is another setting. Some of you may know one of the beautiful, lyrical choruses in Brahms German requiem is a setting of part of Psalm 84 (albeit in German).
At first reading it conjures up an image of beauty and peace… conveys a general pastoral setting.
But there is a bit more to it. Scholars clump the psalms into various descriptive categories. I found several different names assigned to this one. One commentator called it a holiday psalm, assuming that it was written for use on the holy feast day of Tabernacles. Or another calls it a psalm of Zion. Others label it one of the Pilgrim psalms.
I like pilgrim best. The psalm is filled with longing. Yearning. Even desire. “My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.” Happy are those people who actually dwell in the house of the Lord. O, how I long to be one of them. I desire just one day in the courts of the Lord. That would be better than a thousand days elsewhere. The psalmist gives voice to powerful longing, yearning, desire.
I don’t know how often you associate those sorts of feelings with faithful living… feelings of longing or yearning.
I tried to think of some of the feelings that are a part of the life of faith. There’s hope. But that’s really a bit different than longing. Hope is more of a promise, an assurance. If we are honest most of us probably know feelings of fear, apprehension, and uncertainty as we reflect on the presence or absence of faith in our lives. Today’s epistle calls us be strong, to claim fortitude in light of the threats ad temptations that assault Christians. Hopefully, you have experiences some feeling of fulfillment… known at least a bit of the peace that passes understanding… tasted the joy of God’s abiding presence.
A feeling of longing or yearning is different from all of these. Some of the Christian mystics speak of a physical desire for God’s presence with them. But here is the same feeling voiced by the psalmist thousands of years earlier.
There is a difference, though. The psalmist is not really longing for a mystical union with God. The psalmist longs for an actual place. The temple in Jerusalem. The psalmist wants to be there. The temple was special, of course, largely because of the strong sense that God was truly present there. It is a place where God surely dwells. The early Hebrew people had a strong sense of themselves as God’s own, and of God’s abiding presence with them wherever they were. But there was also, as we heard in today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, a powerful sense of God’s awesome presence and glory residing within the actual building that was and is the temple. Those are the courts of Lord for which the psalmist longs so deeply.
One of the more vivid lines in Psalm 84 is this one. “The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young.”
In a new translation and commentary on the Psalter, Robert Alter writes about this line:
This image provides the most poignant focus for the speaker’s longing. Small birds such as swallows may well have nested in the little crevices of the roughly dressed stones that constituted the temple façade.. The speaker, yearning for the sacred zone of the temple, is envious of these small creatures happy in the temple precincts, whereas he, like an unrequited lover, only dreams of this place of intimacy with the divine.The psalmist envies even the sparrows and swallows because of their physical proximity to God in the temple.
He goes on to say, “Happy are those whose hearts are set on the pilgrim way.” The words “pilgrim” and “pilgrimage” get quite a lot of use in Christianity. “Pilgrimming” may not be a real world, but it is seen as a positive thing for Christians. We value the pilgrimage in a sort of general, ontological way. And this sense of being “on the way” is good, especially when our pilgrimages are paths of spiritual growth and discovery.
But, again, the psalmist is quite literal here. In contrast to a current automobile ad, for the psalmist, the journey is not the destination. It’s all about the destination. The only thing exciting about being a pilgrim is being on the way to the temple. But the excited and eager longing that come from being on that particular road bring joy and refreshment and energy to climb from height to height. Again, these heights are literal heights. Jerusalem is in the mountains.
God surely dwells in the temple. God’s glory fills the temple. Pilgrims come to the temple to worship. The psalmist’s destination is worship. The eager yearning and longing that the psalmist feels is for the experience of offering praise.
This is a psalm we should say as we rise from our beds on Sunday mornings. The psalmist is really saying, “Yippee! I really, really can’t wait to get to church. I can’t get there fast enough.”
The psalm is rich metaphorically, too, of course. It speaks of a yearning for the presence of the living God, as well as a desire to reach the altars and stones of the temple. But I think it’s neat to hang onto that literal meaning. And to be reminded that longing and yearning are a part of the life of faith.
There are holy places and holy times where God surely dwells for us, too. Here in the sacred space among the bricks and altar of this particular house of the Lord. And, of course, (as we continue to hear about the bread of life in John) the Sacraments are one place for us where absolutely without any exception or qualification we meet the living God.
Like the psalmist we might sing our deep longing and desire as we move closer and closer to participating in Holy Communion.
Longing, yearning, desire… these are feelings. More than once I’ve preached that faithful living is more about choices than feelings. And, of course, feelings cannot be commanded or summoned. We cannot make ourselves feel yearning for Sunday worship in the Lord’s house.
Feelings cannot be commanded, but they are often contagious. Feelings are often contagious. We can catch them from one another. Maybe we can catch a little yearning from the psalmist as we hear and say Psalm 84. Maybe we can catch a bit of the psalmist’s powerful desire, excitement and longing as he walked the pilgrim’s road. Step by step drawing closer and closer to the courts of the Lord in the sacred temple in Jerusalem.
