Sermon for May 27th, 2018

Psalm 27

A Psalm of David.

1 The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

2 When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh—
my adversaries and foes—they shall stumble and fall.

3 Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.

4 One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

5 For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.

6 Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me,
and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

7 Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!
8 “Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!” Your face, Lord, do I seek.

9 Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help.
  Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!
10 If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.

11 Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
12 Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me,
    and they are breathing out violence.

13 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
14 Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Psummer of Psalms - Psalm 27

Most of us are familiar with the biblical image of David the Giantslayer, who challenged and triumphed over the giant Goliath. You may even remember David the Outlaw, who lived in a cave and led a band of rebels in exile. And of course, later in the story we remember David the King, who led his armies into battle against the enemies of Israel.

But I bet you didn't know that long before the Walking Dead or Night of the Living Dead, David was actually the first person to face the terrible onslaught of a Zombie Apocalypse? Psalm 27 is evidence of this, particularly verse 2, where we read of David's enemies, who seek to devour his flesh, and have a tendency to stumble and fall down.

You know, I've always believed that in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse, we as Presbyterians would be the first ones to die. We're a pretty brainy bunch, and zombies like brains. But in a whole different way. Probably our church handbell choir would be the first to succumb. Then they'd be a bunch of dead ringers.

As Zombies, we'd probably still eat the communion bread with our fingers...first the communion bread, and then the fingers. Wait, is that groaning I hear? Maybe the apocalypse has already started.

But Pastor Neal, you say...Zombies don't really exist, do they? Of corpse not. I mean, of course not. I just wanted to give you something to chew on, just something to flesh out a little bit.

Ok, no more. I'll be serious now. Dead serious.

Two years ago, I preached a very short sermon series on some of the most well-known, well-loved Psalms in the book of Psalms--Psalm 23 (the Lord is my Shepherd), Psalm 121 (I lift my eyes to the hills) and a few others. I received a lot of positive feedback from that series, and I personally learned a lot in preparation for those sermons, so I've always wanted to come back to Psalms.

That's what we're going to do this summer--and perhaps for the next several summers, as we slowly work our way through the entire book, one Psalm at a time. This makes sense for us to do in the summer, the season when we turn our attention to prayer, and the commitment each of us made when we joined this church to pray for each other and with each other.

The Psalms are the original prayer book for the church--both for the ancient Jewish people and for the earliest Christians. In fact, Jesus himself, in the New Testament, quotes the book of Psalms more than any other book of the Bible, most often in prayer.

John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian movement, wrote that the Psalms were the "anatomy of the soul" because more than any other book, the Psalms display the full range of human emotions, crying out to God in prayer.

I've said on several occasions that 2018 is a year of going "back to the basics" for us here at First Presbyterian Church, and exploring the Psalms is a great way to do that. In the 16th century, when Calvin and Knox wanted to reform the worship of the church and go back to the basics, they used the psalms to do that, eliminating all music, all musicians, and all instruments except for the a capella singing of Psalms by the congregation. While instruments and musicians eventually found their way back into worship, the practice of singing psalms exclusively continued for several centuries in Presbyterian churches in Europe and America.

The very first book of any kind published in America was the Bay Psalm Book, a collection of psalms for singing in colonial-era puritan worship services. And in 1882, when the First Presbyterian Church of El Paso began to hold its very first worship services, they did not sing any of the classic hymns we are most familiar with today--they sang the Psalms, and the Psalms alone.

So if we want to use the Psalms to help us go "back to the basics" of worship, or if you want to use the Psalms to help you develop a greater personal understanding of prayer, where do you begin? The last sermon series I did on the Psalms, I started with Psalm 1. That made sense, and it's not a bad place to start. But really, if you know what to look for, every Psalm has wisdom and beauty to offer, so any place is a good place to start. If you take your Bible and just open it right up to the very middle...chances are you'll land in a Psalm.

Or you could take the approach I took in choosing today's Psalm, Psalm 27. Why this Psalm? What's today? It's May the 27th, so we're reading the 27th Psalm. If you follow that approach for awhile, it will at least get you through the first 30 Psalms. If you want to spend an entire year focusing on just one Psalm, learning it and maybe even memorizing it...pick the Psalm that corresponds to your age.

If you want a family psalm to focus on for a year, add together everyone's age and use that one (this stops working once you have two people over the age of 75).

Psalm 27 has special meaning for me, not just because today is May 27th, but because May 27th (of every year) is my birthday. Most psalms have at least 12 verses, so if you let the day of your birth determine the psalm, and the month of your birth determine the verse, you might come up with a really special, really personal Bible verse to call your own: So for me, that's Psalm 27, verse 5: "For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock."

As any of my friends will tell you, that's a pretty good prayer...for a troublemaker.

Now I've given you enough ideas that several of you are flipping through the pages of the psalms trying to find your own birthday verses, and it may be hard to get your attention back again for the rest of the sermon--but if you're reading the psalms and making them your own, that's not entirely a bad thing.

Psalm 27 can be divided roughly into two halves: