October 19, 2008

Prosperity Gospel

Psalm 90
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

 

            Lord , you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Dwelling place. A refuge. A resting place. A safe haven. A comfort. A home. You have been our home in all generations. In every generation. Even before the mountains came into being, before you formed the earth and shaped the world, you were a home for us. Your embrace of us stretches from everlasting to everlasting. O timeless dwelling place; for our great great grandparents and for our children’s children’s children. In every generation.
But it is more than just the marching of time. Every generation; in all time periods, in every season, in every chapter. In the celebrations and in the suffering. When hearts are joyful and when hearts are broken. In every generation, every permutation, every taste of life, O God. Life at its longest and fullest and most abundant. Life at its most painful, even when it is cut way too short. At the top of the chart, or the index, or the mountain and in the valley of the shadow of death, when the bottom comes crashing up, when the kingdoms of this world totter You have been our dwelling place, O God. You are and you will be our dwelling place, forever.
            And how lovely it is, your dwelling place, Lord God.  The sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself where she can lay her young. Your dwelling place where we can consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and be reminded of your ever present love for us. Your dwelling place where we can let the words of Jesus fall afresh on us like a spring rain shower nourishing the earth—“do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” Your dwelling place, O God, where we abide in you and you abide in us.  
            Yet, as we find our rest in Thee, we come face to face with our mortality, our humanity. With you as our home, we can’t escape the brevity of our life and sinfulness of our being. A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past. Vast doesn’t begin to describe the magnitude of your presence. Intense doesn’t begin to describe the piercing light of your countenance. So our days, our years, our frailties, our fumblings, our sin, the evil that runs rampant in our world, how far we try to run away from you, all of it is like nothing, it’s not even an iota, when compared to you. Your mercy. Your love. Your faithfulness. Your brooding watch over us.
John Calvin taught us that “all the wisdom we possess comes in two parts; the knowledge of you and the knowledge of ourselves.” As we nestle in again and again to the safe keeping of your presence, fill our hearts with that wisdom. O God our refuge and strength, our very present help in trouble, remind us again, that the days of our life are three score and ten, and maybe by reason of strength, fourscore. Teach us to number our days so that in our hearts we might turn to you. That in our hearts we might know how fleeting life is, how uncertain life can be, how unpredictable the powers and principalities of this world. That in our hearts we might be reminded once again of your sure and certain care for us. For you are our dwelling place, Lord.
            Turn around, Lord. Turn toward us. Lean over, come down, come now. Have compassion on us, your servants. Not tomorrow, or the next day. But today. Now. Don’t keep us waiting any longer. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love. Give us each day a nudge to be joyful. Give us the heart and the voice and the generous spirit and the willing hands so that every day we can be glad. Being glad doesn’t quite sum it up, Lord. Help us to live each day as a testament to your goodness and your mercy. Help us to live each day knowing that we belong to you. Help us to start each day remembering that nothing in life or in death can separate us from your love we know in Christ Jesus our Lord. Help us to rise each day determined to work for your kingdom and to love our neighbor and to serve one another and to welcome the stranger. Help us each day to endure and rise above the world’s tumult and turmoil and to fix our eyes on you. Our eyes and our hearts and our lives fixed on you. That’s what it means to be glad.
And we have had more than enough of our eyes and hearts and lives fixed on every thing else. Between us, between all of us, we’ve probably seen it all. And just when we think we have seen or experienced all the world has to offer, another day comes. It’s not that we should be lifted out of the world, or even spared from the challenges of the day and the long suffering of the night. What we ask, Lord, is that when we find our refuge in you, when you bring us into your dwelling place, when you gather us in and spread your wings over the span of all our days, can we at least find a balance, can you give us a chance to get our legs under us, could we hear a song of praise sounding through the crashing cymbals of chaos, can we just soak in your grace and gaze at your beauty and warm our souls by your Spirit, can you stir in us some gratefulness, some joy, can we just be glad? I was glad when they said unto me, “let us go into the house of the Lord.”  It’s not just about a trip to the temple, or walking into church, or going to worship this Sunday or the next. It’s not about a building at all. For we would live and move and have our being in you, in your house. O God. Make us glad in the house!       
             Let your work be visible to your servants, Holy God of heaven and earth. Let us see your beauty, indeed in the colors of creation, in the crisp air of an October morning, in the radiance of a sun rise, in the expanse of the ocean, and the view from a mountain. Make your work visible to us in the cry of a new born, in the laughter of a child, in the butterflies of new found love, in the squeeze of a grandfather’s hand. Let your work be manifest to us, in us, in the world, O God. As wars come to an end, as dividing walls are torn down, as the hungry are fed, as the oppressed are liberated, as the long silenced find a voice. Give your servants eyes to see, so that we might have hope amid despair, that we might know peace instead of fear, that me might have calm when all that surrounds us seems to churn, that we might point to life even when confronted by death. Help us to see here among us and in our life each day, and in your world, help us to see your work, not just yesterday, not just when the roll is called up yonder, but here and now, today. Right now, O God.
            And for our children, give them some glimpse of your glory and your power; your life-giving, life-sustaining, life-made-meaningful power. It used to be the American dream, that your children would have more, make more, earn more, lean more, do more. Well, the dream’s a bit sketchy right now, Lord. Economists, politicians, scientists, they all are warning us about what life will or will not be like for our children. We lament what we are and what we are not passing on to our children. The legacy is more than a bit fuzzy. But this prayer, this plea never changes, this dream about our children and you. So hear us, O God, and here us now. We who have tasted the goodness of the Lord. We who have traveled this path knowing that “the joy of the Lord is our strength”. We who have been surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses and are running this race set before us with perseverance looking to Jesus aspioneer and perfecter of our faith. We who come to the end of every day and lift our children and grandchildren to you in prayer, we want them to know and to see and to live in your glorious power. Can they just be glad, O God?
            Let your favor, Lord God, be upon us. Like the warmth of a noon day sun that shines down in the middle of winter, like the surrounding embrace of a grandmothers now spindly arms that wrap around a child two or three times, like the dancing that comes after a season of tears, like the gut feeling of assurance that goes far beyond words but comes with the unbridled notion that God will make a way somehow, like the comfort and assurance a child knows when dad falls asleep right there in bed during the bedtime ritual or story and prayer. Sometimes you want the story to never end. Like all of that, O God with us, God for us, let your favor, your countenance, your faithfulness, your steadfast love fall upon us.
            And prosper the work of our hands. O prosper the work of our hands. There’s a word bound to be misunderstood these days. Prosper. Some words can’t escape their connotations anymore. Prosper. Prosperous. Prosperity. Is it even possible to tear the word away from the financial implications, Lord?  There’s no shortage of those who think that be faithful to you entitles them to riches, to profit, to worldly accomplishment, to have nice things. The Prosperity Gospel, they call it. It’s the power of positive thinking with dollar signs added on. Prosper the work of our hands. Lord help us!
            The work of our hands, that which we do with our lives, not just what we make, but how we spend our time, how we relate to others, what we say, who we are, everything that defines us and identifies us, the work of our hands, O God, establish it, shore it up, make it firm within your kingdom. As someone else put it, “take the work of our hands so we can place it all in your hands, O God.”  The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims your handiwork….take our lives and grind it in to the firmament, into your firmament, into your kingdom, so that all that we are, and all that we have, and all that we do, so that the work of our hands is counted as your handiwork. When it comes to your dwelling place, Lord, count us in! The work of our hands, establish thou it, O God.
The mountains may shake. The seas may foam. The kingdoms of this earth may totter. But our lives, the span of our days here on earth and the eternal stretch of our years in the life to come, our lives, our place, our purpose, O God, are part of your very firmament. By your grace, we shall be glad all of our days. For you have been our dwelling place in all generations…..and you are God, forever and ever.  Amen and Amen.

 

 

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