Do you see what I see?

Today, I preached on Psalm 8. It's largely regarded as a psalm of creation, although there are good arguments about why it could be considered a psalm of royalty--one devoted to extolling the vocation of Israel's ancient king for the entire world.

The psalmist is able to proclaim the majesty of the Lord's name throughout the earth based on what he has seen in creation. "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in place..." The psalmist sees a BIG God behind a BIG creation, and that God just happens to be the same One who has rescued Israel from its slavery dilemma. This God behind creation is their God, and that God's name is majestic in all the earth.

At the same time that the psalmist recognizes the splendor of creation, he also recognizes his own insignificance in the face of everything. "What is man that you are mindful of him/the son of man that you care for him?" Who are we in the midst in relationship to this God who can create planets many times the size of ours AND enzymes/proteins/atoms that make everything work? We're nothing from our point of view.

But from God's point of view, we are the crown of creation, set in creation for a purpose: to be caretakers of the work of God's "fingers." The psalm is full of praise for what God has been doing in creation and how God pays special attention to us in this creation. "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth."

...

Truth be told, I haven't felt like proclaiming the Lord's majesty lately by proof of his creation. It seems, from the perspective of our global community, that creation is running amok and out to get us. A cyclone in Myanmar blew away tens of thousands. (An NPR reporter interviewed a man from an outlying village. He said that 9 in 10 of his villager were gone. Can we even fathom that?) A week later, an earthquake in China topples homes and buildings on families, schoolchildren, and workers. More people are lost. Even here in the states, tornadoes have been wiping out whole towns and killing some. A woman from Picher, OK, said this about God's creation when a tornado destroyed her entire town: "It felt evil...it didn't feel like Mother Nature. It felt personal."

Truth be told, I feel more like Peter who has to distrub a sleeping Jesus as a storm ravages their tiny boat on the sea and ask the question: "Do you not care that we are perishing?"

...

Perhaps Psalm 8 really isn't the psalm that we need at this time, however, it is the psalm appointed for the church to consider this weekend. Can we do that realistically in the midst of everything the global community has faced over the last few years in respect to creation? I think we can.

I struggled in prayer with this psalm over the last two weeks. I asked God why he stuck us in this kind of creation that is running out of control. The suffering we cause on each other...I get that. But this kind of indiscriminate suffering...I don't get. Through prayer and lots of conversation with others, I received two words of comfort and truth.

Truth #1) We belong to nature, and nature belongs to God. Our God is BIG enough to handle the vastness of creation. From end to end of universe, places we haven't even discovered, God handles it all. Yet, God is not caught with the BIG problems of creation, God is concerned about the details. God is concerened about the enzymes and proteins and atoms that make everything BIG work in the first place. We belong in the midst of this and under the care of the God who owns nature.

But if we stay with this truth alone, we run into a problem. Nature doesn't work with us at times, and if all we have is nature to infer the kind of God to whom we belong--we have a problem. Nature doesn't always lead us to the kind, caring, concerned God whom we see in Jesus and our Scriptures. That takes us to Truth #2).

Truth #deuce) God is mindful of us. This is at the heart of Psalm 8...it's the psalmist asking deeply, why are you mindful of us? From our very beginnings, God has been revealing himself to us to show us how valued we are in this creation. To Adam and Eve, they walk with the presence of God. Abraham is visited by God through three strangers. The Israelites are led by pillars of fire and clouds as God leads them into the promised land. Job sees God in a whirlwind, Ezekiel finds him in absolute silence of the night. God has been popping up all the time to remind us that we belong to him and we are specially loved.

Even though this is nice of God to show up in this way, we're still left in this creation that isn't so concerned about our value. That's where the true force of this psalm comes into play. "You have given him dominion over the works of your hands."

This psalm is about Jesus. And Jesus is God's final revelation of just how much we are loved and valued and known in the midst of this creation that causes us to suffer. Jesus is God-becoming-flesh, joining himself with creation and putting creation to rights for all the ways that it has gone awry.

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, a new creation is raised up by God through this old one. Jesus' victory over death secures him the rightful place as the one who truly has dominion/authority/and rule over all of creation. And it's through this unique act of God that we can truly proclaim the majesty of the Lord's name throughout all the earth.

Nature and all its works fail us. Jesus doesn't. Thanks be to God that all God's glory is found fully in Jesus and not just in some pretty landscape scenes that we witness every once in a while.

Did Jesus have to die for this sermon?

...That was a question often posed to us at seminary as we trodged our way through the world of composing sermons. One professor, it is rumored, would follow student preachers back to the sacristy after daily chapel and confront them with this question if he felt that it didn't bring the hearer to the critical answer of relying on Jesus' encompassing sacrifice on the cross. The question has been set up through the ages as a kind of standard by which to measure the effectiveness of a sermon. (And it seems, it's been a particularly Lutheran question to ask.)

Many of us would-be preachers, to avoid the professor-ial confrontation, inserted quick notes on Jesus' death in our sermons, hoping against hope that a mention of his death would suffice as an answer to this standard bearing question.

The question is built in such a way that it helps preachers discern whether their words are simply self-help or true gospel--that is, that the words we preach bring hearers to the place where they must cling to the hope of the cross or face eternal peril. Did Jesus have to die for this sermon? Or did Oprah help you with your research? The question has a good deal of merit.

But where I begin to sweat coldly is in the venture of preaching through the Old Testament. It's much easier to mention the death of Jesus when you're talking about him as explicity as the New Testament does. In the Old Testament, it's a much harder deal to help hearers appreciate the good news of Jesus' death.

Yet, it's precisely in the Old Testament where Jesus gets his good news in the first place. In the Psalms, buried in the codes of Leviticus, under the sub-text of Abraham, Jesus discerns the message that will become his life -- the kingdom of God is at hand. And wasn't it this message that led Jesus to his death? Wouldn't a more fitting question be asked: did your sermon show people the kingdom of God in our world?

After all, that's what is happening in Jesus' death. God is reigning. That's what is happening in Jesus' miracles. God is reigning. That's what's happening in Jesus' teachings. God is reigning. And wouldn't it be a fuller standard if we pushed people to ask the question of their sermons: did your hearers see more of God's kingdom in our world?

My biggest beef with the "did Jesus have to die for your sermon" question is its narrow focus on the atoning work of Jesus. While this is huge (don't get me wrong, it's very huge!), its narrow focus drives us only to see part of the story. The whole story is that God reigns with Jesus, and his death and resurrection are confirmation of that fact.

What say y'all? Is the question a helpful one for preachers to continue to lift up as a standard for measuring effectiveness in preaching? Are there others? What about this kingdom of God question?