He asked me if I attended the concert, and I said, yes I did. Wasn’t it great, he said, I said it was marvelous. Yeah, he said. I just wished they played my favorite song. They played my favorite, said his companion, as we walked through the parking lot. And then she began to sing a little bit of it. That’s when I realized we weren’t talking about the same concert. They were coming from Reardon Auditorium on the campus of Anderson University where they and a few thousand other folks were coming out of a Casting Crowns concert and feeling the love. I know they were feeling the love, because they came up behind me while I was giving a good friend a farewell hug. And he wanted one too. This Casting Crowns concert stranger, so I obliged. Hugged him there in the parking lot of the Park Place Church of God, where I had attended the 64th Annual Sacred Music Concert put on by Epworth Forest Choir School. It was a glorious concert, over a hundred voices singing together songs of praise and celebration to God and gratitude for life in all its fulness. I was pleased some members of Southport UMC made the journey up to hear the concert too.
For over twenty years I was chaplain to that community, the choir school community. They sang and I preached and we grew together in those years. I was a part of them, sort of, not really, because I was never confident enough in my singing to join the choir, but they kept me anyway. Let me stay a part of them, until it seemed time to leave because of clouds in my life that seemed overwhelming. I wasn’t sure I could help them anymore, so thought they needed someone else in that role. So with tears I left that group of friends to do other things. Yet, when I come back to listen to them sing, they welcome me as if I still belong. As if they have kept me.
Psalm 121:1-8 I lift up my eyes to the hills-- from where will my help come? 2 My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. 3 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. 4 He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade at your right hand.6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. 8 The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.
The Lord is your keeper. It must be an important thought, because the psalmist uses it six times in eight verses. The Lord will keep you, and doesn’t doze off in the midst of the job. The Lord will keep you and give you shade on blistering days. The Lord will keep you from evil, from all evil. The Lord will keep you, as you go out and come in. And go out and come in. And go out. And come in. The Lord will keep you.
It’s nice to be kept. Nice to belong. To be connected. To be loved. To be protected. But how does that work, exactly? What does it mean that God will keep us? Keep us safe? Keep us alive? Keep us from harm? We’re not sure that we trust in the Lord like we trust in our own resources.
That’s the genesis of this sermon, by the way. It was a question about security. About safety and specifically about guns we use for protection. Where do we stand on guns? That’s a pretty broad question, I realize, which is why I chose to address the larger issue of safety. The Lord is your keeper. What does that mean for us who live in a dangerous world? How do we trust in the Lord?
In some ways it would be easier to address the gun issue. The book of Resolutions, which is where the United Methodist Church presents our positions on social issues in detail, declares that every United Methodist Church is a weapon free zone. In addition the Book of Discipline has a statement about gun violence which includes words about responsible gun ownership and the recommendations on the sale and purchase of guns. It is not a ban, but an emphasis on safety. And it reads to me as a sensible statement about an out of control social problem. But, I suspect others might read it differently. (See Social Principles ¶162)
But I believe the issue is larger than that. As significant as that is, and in our gun crazy society, a statement on gun violence and responsible ownership of guns and limiting access to some types of weapons is very significant, but it isn’t the whole issue.
From where does our help come? That’s the question. What do we rely on for our security, our safety and sense of self? Do we believe that security is in our own hands? Whether it is guns or walls or laws or locks and prisons; are we trusting in our own power to provide our sense of peace of mind and heart? Or is there something to this idea that the Lord is our keeper? It seems naive at best to believe that God will put a bubble around us and keep us from harm when we walk the mean streets of our home towns. It seems wrong somehow to put God to the test by walking through dark alleys and battle zones protected by nothing but our confident faith in the Almighty.
So what does the psalmist mean then, when it says that the Lord is our keeper? What does God keep? Or how are we kept by God? We could say that God has a longer view than we do. That when we are kept by God we are kept into eternity. And this life and this world is but a moment in that eternity. So, even if something goes wrong, even if there is pain and suffering and death in this life, we are kept by God into eternity. And however we transition from this world to the next, we can trust that God will keep us there. And I get that, I do. But in the meantime? We’re on our own? God only keeps us ready for the next world? What about this one? What about keeping me alive, my family alive, my community, my nation, my world? If we want that are we on our own?
Do you know what it's like to be alone in this world / When you're down and out on your luck and you're a failure / Wake up screaming in the middle of the night / You think it's all been a waste of time / It's been a bad year / You start believing everything's gonna be alright / Next minute you're down and you're flat on your back / A brand new day is beginning / Get that sunny feeling and you're on your way (way) / Just believe - just keep passing the open windows / Just believe - just keep passing the open windows
Any Queen fans out there? In the 80's, Queen released an album called The Works and there was a song on it called “Just Keep Passing the Open Windows.” It’s a song about faith, essentially. No, Queen wasn’t a Christian band, but they sometimes had some profound things to say. (Like – Scaramouch, scaramouch, will you do the fandango / Thunderbolt and lightning, / very, very frightening me ... jk) Like keep passing open windows. Which might be something like what the psalmist is telling us. It might be something like how God keeps us.
No, God isn’t going to throw a protective shell around us so that nothing will hurt us in this life. But God might just help us keep finding the open windows, the opportunities, the options, the ways to live life more fully, more alive, despite the risks. The Lord will keep you from all evil, not by a magic force-field, but by the wisdom to recognize evil when it looks enticing to us. The Lord will keep a shade over us in the hot sun, not by an invulnerable shield or invisibility cape, but by helping us hold on to truth in an age of lying as a matter of course.
The Lord will keep our going out and our coming in, not by forcing us to stay when we think we should go or to go when we think we should stay, but the ability to experience the presence of the Spirit as we walk through this life, and knowing that we can’t go so far that God has lost touch with us. And that no matter how far we may have gone there is always someplace to call home, someplace that will welcome us back, no matter what.
I never told my Casting Crowns stranger that I was at a different concert. And I took the risk of calling his bluff and giving him a hug because maybe we had more in common that either of us knew. We listened to the praise of the Lord who is our keeper and left knowing that we could trust in that. Stranger danger? Sure, take care out there. But maybe if we trusted in God’s goodness, rather than feared the other and hiding behind walls packing guns, we might find that the world is alive with the Spirit in surprising places.
Shalom,
Derek
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