The Lord Is my Light, my Light and Salvation
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on the Second Sunday in Lent, March 13th, 2022.
Psalm 27
The Lord is my light and salvation; whom shall I fear? Psalm 27
We are living in such a strange, dysphoric time. We have all of the accumulated stresses of the last 2 years of pandemic. We’re trying to move on but we ‘re not sure how. And we can’t even seem to think more than a week ahead because everything is such a state of flux. Then we add in the general sense of helplessness we feel about the atrocities being committed in Ukraine, not to mention the stresses in our individual lives and in our families. And it all just feels like more than we can handle. We just kind of look around some days and think, “what is happening here? The world seems to be falling apart.” We want to be hopeful. We know we are supposed to be hopeful. That is at the core of our faith, but it’s hard to be hopeful when everything around us speaks to the contrary.
The psalmist has the same dilemma. He oscillates back and forth between trust in God and fear about what the future holds. He begins with a statement of faith “The Lord is my light and salvation; whom shall I fear?” but then confronts the very real threats that are all around him. “Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries..they are breathing out violence.” The psalmist is trying to believe that God truly is his light and salvation but he is very honest about how hard it is the believe in the light when darkness is encircling him.
That’s why the psalms are so great. They are great because they are real. They cover every human emotion possible- from fear, lonliness, and even hate, to love, connection and exhuberant joy. They express a profound and deep, abiding relationship with God, not a “pie in the sky, everything is perfect” statement of belief, but an authentic relationship between the psalmist and God, a God who can handle questions, a God who can handle doubts, a God who can handle the deepest questions of human life. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does evil exist? Where is God in the midst of uncertainty? Does life really have to be so hard? All those unanswerable questions that people have asked over the milennia. The ancient Israelites asked them as they wandered in the wilderness wondering where their next meal was coming from. The early Christians asked them as they worshipped in secret, wondering when the Roman soldiers were going to haul them off to the coliseum to be eaten by wild animals. Faithful people in the Middle Ages wondered as people they loved died from horrible plaques. And this morning, I have no doubt that there are people huddled in bomb shelters in Ukraine praying the psalms.
“The Lord is my light, my light and salvation; in God I trust, in God I trust.”
When the bottom falls out, when it seems like our whole life is falling apart, when all seems dark, when we need salvation, where do we turn? We turn to God who is our light and our salvation. And the psalms are a wonderful way of connecting with God, a way that has stood the test of time. We cling to the psalms as a way of clinging to God and seeing the light in the darkness.
The psalms are timeless. They are written by a specific poet in a specific time and place, but they give voice to universal themes. They were written over the course of 500 years and have been part of Jewish and Christian prayer and worship for thousands of years. Jesus quoted the psalms extensively in the Gospels. The psalter was his prayer book. He probably had all 150 psalms memorized. They were part of his daily prayer. They were part of him, from repeating them over and over and over again. He could pull them out of his memory at any time from the deep reservoir of spiritual strength that he had built up over time. And they can do that for us too.
In today’s psalm, Psalm 27, the poet longs to see God’s beauty in the temple, gathered with others who are seeking God’s face. We say/sing the psalm each Sunday in worship too and we can reinforce that in our daily prayer, just as Jesus did. We can read through the psalm each morning and pick one line or phrase to use as a mantra. When things get stressful during the day, we can repeat the mantra to re-center ourselves and be reminded of God’s presence with us. We can also have a sung mantra. And lucky for me, it doesn’t require a beautiful singing voice. Chanting is a practice that takes us into the center of our being, that quiet place where God dwells, the temple within each of us. It is an ancient practice known to every major religious tradition. This repetitive singing gets us into a meditative state and decreases stress and anxiety. The beginning of today’s psalm is an awesome mantra. It has been set to many different psalm tones, but one of the easiest for people who aren’t musically trained is probably a Taize chant.
“The Lord is my light, my light and salvation; in God I trust, in God I trust.” (sing together)
If you have fears today, take heart. If you have doubts, fear not. God can calm our fears and God can handle our doubts. Come to church every Sunday. Pray every day. Chant the psalms. It’s good for our spiritual health. It’s good for our physical health. It’s good for our mental health. These practices change us so that we can be the change we want to see in the world. “The Lord is my light, my light and salvation. In God I trust, in God I trust.”