Voices (Sermon - A Story)

“Voices”

Psalm 29

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/11/15

         I’m realizing something about psalmists, and it’s something not just to know but to love about them: Many psalmists have no interest in imposing heavy theology on their readers – no doctrines or laws. Psalmists are poets, you see. And poets, like all artists, don’t tell. They show. They reveal. They open doors and windows to experiences of holy wonder, experiences of God. Homiletics professor Dave Bland says that the writer of Psalm 29 is doing exactly that. He takes us into a thunderstorm so that we might experience not the storm, but Yahweh.¹

         As I read Psalm 29, follow along in a Bible if you like. Or close your eyes and imagine yourself in some place where you hear, see, feel, smell, and even taste the storm as it forms in the distance, as it sweeps over you, then passes, leaving you in that splendid, electric freshness that follows a thunderstorm.

Psalm 29

Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,

ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name;

worship the Lord in holy splendor.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;

the God of glory thunders,

the Lord, over mighty waters.

The voice of the Lord is powerful;

the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;

the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.

He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,

and Sirion like a young wild ox.

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;

the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl,     

and strips the forest bare;

and in his temple all say, “Glory!”

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;

the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.

May the Lord give strength to his people!

May the Lord bless his people with peace!

         Nothing I can say about Psalm 29 can improve on the way the psalmist shares his encounter with God. With your indulgence, though, I will share an experience of my own.

~~~~~~~~~~~

         Some doctor scheduled our first child’s arrival for September 17. Since babies don’t feel compelled to cooperate with such things, the child waited. (Boy or girl? We chose to be surprised.) Four days later there was a storm, but not a thunderstorm. It was a massive low-pressure system called Hurricane Hugo.

When it became clear that baby and storm would make landfall together, there was a flurry of phone calls between our home in Statesboro, GA and my parent’s home in Augusta. Our plan, you see, had been to go to a birthing center in the little town of Rincon, GA about 20 miles northwest of Savannah. We’d gone through all the birthing classes there. Marianne was in love with the midwives and with their philosophy of childbirth.

         “I do not want to have my baby in a hospital,” she said. “I am not sick. I’m pregnant!” Nurse Nancy and Nurse Margaret agreed, and they treated their patients accordingly.

         But just offshore, Hugo’s ravenous 140-mile-per-hour winds were clawing their way toward Savannah. We weighed our two options: Go to a nice, safe hospital in Augusta; or, literally, throw caution to the wind, and like Odysseus, face the Cyclops.

         It wasn’t as heroic as all that, of course. We had talked with the midwife.

“We’re going to be here,” said Nancy. “Our families will be here. The doctor is here. If necessary, he can do an emergency C-section. We have a generator. I feel good about you being here.”

         Believing herself to represent the voice of reason, my mom weighed in. “I will come to get you,” she said. “I’ll send a helicopter, or the national guard. Just don’t have my first grandchild in some hippie barn during that hurricane!”

“I…am not…sick,” said Marianne.

The voice of intent and faith had spoken.

         If you live near the southeast coast of the United States, and you see dark clouds churning, unnaturally, from east-to-west, a knot will form in the pit of your stomach. It will stir and kick. It can make you queasy. In sighs too deep for words, I breathed my prayers. My anxious voice mingled with countless other voices, and with the Voice, the Voice behind, before, and within all things – the Voice that creates, rearranges, and reunites.

In a way that I will never understand, Marianne and that Voice had begun a profoundly intimate conversation. My wife and I would speak some, but until the storms had passed, I was little more than a weather satellite. I might keep watch and collect some data, but overall I just stayed in my little orbit. I felt rather helpless to do much more.

I did pack the car and secured the brand new car seat in the back. Marianne walked around inside the tiny, green house we rented from the kind old couple next door. With motherhood approaching, Marianne kept her eyes closed. She breathed deeply. The life within her churned like the clouds outside.

When it was time to go, I walked her to the car, and helped her into the front seat. As we drove toward Rincon, ours was the only vehicle heading east. In our eyes shined a seamless stream of headlights – coastal residents evacuating to storm shelters in Statesboro.

I glanced at Marianne. Like the blue sky that shimmers unseen above even the most violent storm, she was at peace with the world above, beneath, and within her. She was at one with the forces of creation that have been, for untold billions of years, shaping and reshaping all that our eyes may see and our minds may know. She was a part of a sacred and eternal process of imagination, hope, and Love. Mothers may know this as others do not. To the extent of its humility, and to its willingness to be vulnerable and to suffer, the artist within us may know it, too. Outside of that, we simply receive their blessings, and we bless them as we are able.

In Rincon, Marianne walked into the birthing center like a caterpillar surrendering to its body’s impulse to create a cocoon. Surrounding herself with deep breath, she continued to pace and to live beyond the bounds of her own life.

After we had been in Rincon for about two hours, news came. It was welcome news – for us. Hugo had turned slightly north. The eye of that powerful storm now glared at Charleston, SC. But even for us, there would be no mistaking the sound of Hugo’s voice.

Late than night, as the storm surge crested, in some places as high as 20 feet, Marianne’s water broke. A little later the midwife spoke, her calm and breezy voice suddenly an urgent gust.

“Okay, Marianne, it’s time to push!”

Live oaks along the coast bent at steep, westward angles as the storm made landfall. Branches and trees that were strained beyond their strength snapped like twigs. Homes, old and new, swayed in the wind. Siding peeled off of walls as easily as one would peel bark from a river birch. Pine cones, sticks, trash cans, luckless birds, anything that had not been secured became dangerous projectiles in Hugo’s roar. Storm waters overwhelmed the sewersand flipped manhole covers like bottle caps in the surf.

Through much of the night, the storm howled and imposed its transforming will on the land. Life would be forever different for this part of creation. Some losses were permanent, and even that which could be rebuilt had been re-storied by the storm, and so would never be quite the same.

September 21, 1989. Marianne and I named the change who stormed into our lives, Benjamin.

When the wind had calmed and the rain had eased, Marianne, who had not slept, awoke, nonetheless. She awoke to a new world and a new life. She stayed awake all night holding, beholding, nursing and welcoming the wondrous new voice that God – that Imagination, Hope, and Love – had spoken into her arms.

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood…

May the Lord give strength to his people!

May the Lord bless his people with peace!

¹Dave Bland, Psalm 29: Homiletical Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Westminster/John Knox Press, Atlanta, GA, 2008. p. 225.