Dartmouth College Chapel
April 5, 2006
Richard R. Crocker, Ph.D., College Chaplain
Today we are immersed in singing and thinking about Psalm 148. This is
clearly a psalm of praise. It is, as they say, positive and upbeat. It
admonishes everyone and everything to praise the Lord - angels, sun and moon,
heavens and waters above the heavens, sea monsters, fire and hail, snow and
frost and stormy wind, mountains and hills, fruit trees and cedars, wild
animals, cattle, creeping things and flying birds, kings and princes and
rulers, men and women, old and young - all are to praise the Lord for the glory
of creation and for his people Israel.
This is, for us, truly a song of spring-time - like the weather we had last
week - when the whole earth seems glorious and beautiful, when even the air is
our friend, when the trees and flowers blossom, the sky is cloudless, the sun
is bright, and all is well. It captures a spirit of rapture, of joyous praise,
that even the most curmudgeonly of us feel on certain days in certain seasons,
and which some people, especially young ones, seem to feel more often. The mood
it expresses is one that some of us know in passing. others in more constancy.
For some of us it is expresses a rare moment of praise, for others a more
abiding wonder. But it is a rare and sad person who has never felt the
overwhelming joy that it proclaims. Certainly, as one who is healing from a
life-threatening illness, I hear the joy of recovery and confidence in the
goodness of God, echoing throughout these words.
And yet - and yet: certain events of the last year - the tsunami in south
Asia, the earthquakes in Pakistan, the flood in New Orleans, the tornadoes in
Tennessee - mock the confident words of the psalm, which assert that God
established the of the waters, and fixed their bounds which can not be passed.
(v. 6) All is not always joyful. or well-ordered in nature, it seems. The
natural disasters we have seen this year - not to mention the human disasters
of war and poverty - may lead us to conclude that God is either uncaring, or
not powerful enough to prevent catastrophe. So it seems to many thoughtful
people. The mood of praise and joy in this psalm is to them an example either
of wishful thinking or of a lack of attention to the world.
When we, in a mood of joy that assures us that God is in his heaven and all
is right with the world, are confronted with those enormous tragedies that have
occurred, we may struggle briefly to reconcile our faith in God's goodness with
the suffering and death that characterize natural life. We may say, for
example, that human beings are responsible for the suffering. Thus, New Orleans
was flooded and many people lost life and loved ones, we might say, not because
of the hurricane, but because of the errors of engineers who built the faulty
levees, or of disaster workers who were not adequately prepared, or because of
greed and poverty. And in regard to the disasters in Asia, one could say that
the tsunami killed so many because people lived too close to the sea, or built
houses in unsafe, earthquake zones. Sometimes people struggle to preserve a
pristine picture of nature by blaming disaster on human beings. And of course,
sometimes that is right. I do not believe, for example, that God had anything
to do with the death of Americans on 9/ll nor the deaths of thousands of Iraqis
during the American invasion. We can not blame God for those things; human
beings are clearly responsible. But tsunamis? It's hard to fault people for
being on the beach.
So what are we to conclude? Are we to say that psalms like this one, full of
pure praise to God, exhorting all of nature to praise God, are severely flawed?
Are we to say that nature is in fact red in tooth and claw, and that those who
would see in it only harmony and beauty are willfully blind? That is one
response, but I do not believe it is the most adequate and appropriate one.
Rather, I would say that this psalm is to be treasured as the expression of a
mood, a perception, and a faith. Rare days in June (or even March and April)
when the sun warms the earth, bringing flowers out of the ground, bears out of
hibernation, birds to nest-building and Dartmouth students out onto the green -
those perfect joyful days are not a picture of reality as we in fact always
experience it; they are rather a glimpse of a reality that can be. They are
clues to redemption. We do not see, we can not know, how the tragedies of life,
which are undeniably many, can ever be redeemed. The war in Iraq or in Darfur,
the drought in Kenya, the now undeniable fact of global warming, as well as the
tsunami and earthquakes and Katrina are real and disturbing and, for many,
devastating. Our faith teaches us to hope, and to believe, that these events,
in all their destruction, can somehow be redeemed in the mystery of God's
purposes.
We are in the midst of an early spring, which brings joy to the hearts of
northern new Englanders. That joy is a clue to the nature of reality, just as
are the tears of suffering. In Lent, as we approach Holy Week, we think of the
suffering of Christ, which is real. Jesus did not smile all the way through the
via dolorosa - even though, as we now know, the result of his suffering and
death was not that suffering and death defeated him, but rather that he
defeated them. Psalm 148 is a clue - a premonition, and admonition concerning
the triumph of hope and goodness. The exhortation to praise sometimes comes
hard to us; sometimes it comes more easily. The psalm ends by reminding people
that the hope of redemption and joy - the reason for praise - is anchored in
the history of the people Israel, who were redeemed from slavery and brought
into freedom. We Christians believe that the history of Israel includes the
death and resurrection of Jesus - the event which allows us to be hopeful
people, no matter what.
More than that we do not know, and perhaps we can not know, and perhaps we
do not need to know. Amen.
Copyright © 2006 Richard R. Crocker
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