“Gateways of Grace”
Psalm 65 and Matthew 6:28-33
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
10/15/23
God of Zion, to you even silence is praise.
Promises made to you are kept—
2 you listen to prayer—
and all living things come to you.
3 When wrongdoings become too much for me,
you forgive our sins.
4 How happy is the one you choose to bring close,
the one who lives in your courtyards!
We are filled full by the goodness of your house,
by the holiness of your temple.
5 In righteousness you answer us,
by your awesome deeds,
God of our salvation—
you, who are the security
of all the far edges of the earth,
even the distant seas.
6 You establish the mountains by your strength;
you are dressed in raw power.
7 You calm the roaring seas;
calm the roaring waves,
calm the noise of the nations.
8 Those who dwell on the far edges
stand in awe of your acts.
You make the gateways
of morning and evening sing for joy.
9 You visit the earth and make it abundant,
enriching it greatly
by God’s stream, full of water.
You provide people with grain
because that is what you’ve decided.
10 Drenching the earth’s furrows,
leveling its ridges,
you soften it with rain showers;
you bless its growth.
11 You crown the year with your goodness;
your paths overflow with rich food.
12 Even the desert pastures drip with it,
and the hills are dressed in pure joy.
13 The meadowlands are covered with flocks,
the valleys decked out in grain—
they shout for joy;
they break out in song!
(Psalm 65 – CEB)
28And why do you worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. 29But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. 30If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith?
31Therefore, don’t worry and say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ 32Gentiles long for all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
33Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:28-33 – CEB)
Late in these fall afternoons, as Marianne is shuffling pots and pans while cooking, or as I am shuffling pots and pans while washing dishes, one of us often hollers at the other from our west-facing living room. “Come look at this!” we say. When all the playful ingredients of physics come together just right, we stand at the window in awe of the brilliant fires of sunset.
Sunrise and sunset happen every day. And some days the colors are more vivid and varied than others. Still, both sunset and sunrise can be hypnotizing wonders, experiences to enter rather than mere sights to behold.
So, with the psalmist we declare: “You make the gateways of the morning and the evening sing for joy.”
To imagine sunrise and sunset as joyful gateways calls our attention to them as holy moments. And while their bright, lava-lamp magic isn’t a unique occurrence, each event is kind of like seeing a new painting by the same artist.
There’s never even a moment when those gateways are not singing for joy, because just as it’s always “five o’clock somewhere,” the sun is always rising somewhere and setting somewhere else. Even when it’s noon or midnight for us, at some far edge, someone stands at the gateway of the morning and someone else at the gateway of the evening. Like grace itself, these numinous gateways are a continuous presence on the earth.
The psalmist’s reference to those who dwell on the far edges asks us to think not only of those who live far away, but those who lived before us, and those who lie many generations beyond us—citizens of a future we can’t imagine, but to whom we are responsible. How we live on this earth, the steps we take to treasure it and care for it right now, these are our shouts of joy and songs of praise. They’re signs of our love for ancestors, for neighbors, for descendants, and thus, for God.
Praise is itself a kind of gateway. And while songs of thanksgiving can express human gratitude for God’s generosity, praise is about far more than the giddiness of getting or the happiness of having. Whether spoken or embodied, true praise acknowledges the limits of human understanding. The only certainty declared by praise is the incomprehensible fact of existence itself. How did we get here if not by some ineffable love? Beneath and beyond all the terrifying turmoil, life is a breathtaking wonder! Like music, awe is a universal language, and it opens portals to new ways of seeing the world, of knowing and being known, and of loving God.
Water is another central symbol of Psalm 65—God’s stream, full of water. And along with sunlight and earth, the holy flow of water creates the life-giving vibrancy and the life-sustaining abundance on which all things depend. When reading this psalm, one begins to see that the source of the earth’s life and liveliness doesn’t hover in the heavens but churns deep within the earth herself. The hills are dressed in pure joy, says the psalmist. The meadowlands are covered with flocks, the valleys decked out in grain—they shout for joy; they break out in song.
The affirmations of sun and water, coastline and mountain, meadow and forest invite us to see God’s incarnate presence in the very earth from which all life arises and to which all life returns.
When we allow ourselves to embrace the Creation as Incarnation, how can we possibly allow ourselves to take the earth for granted? A megachurch pastor once declared that God “intended” for the earth to be a “disposable planet.”1 It seems to me that the writer of Psalm 65 would weep and gnash his teeth at such ingratitude for and desecration of God’s immediate presence through the Creation. A disposable planet does not dress itself with flocks. It doesn’t deck itself with grain. It doesn’t shout and sing for joy. That pastor’s awelessness leads to more than poor stewardship. It becomes the cancer of selfish apathy that consumes the Creation by allowing us to turn blind eyes toward injustice, poverty, war, and humankind’s wanton abuse of the environment. The earth may have a life cycle, but if it’s disposable, then so are we. And no lives matter. And that is contrary to the witness of scripture.
Psalm 65 presents a vision not unlike Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom in which“The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat…[and] They won’t hurt or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain. [And the] earth will surely be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, just as the water covers the sea.” (From Isaiah 11:6-9 - CEB)
The psalmist is convinced of the God-purposed goodness of the Creation, the very same goodness affirmed in the stories of Genesis 1 and 2, and reaffirmed in Revelation 21 with the prophecy of “a new heaven and a new earth.”
In no way is the psalmist unaware of the challenges to that vision or to the arguments that question the Creation’s fundamental goodness. He might be grieved by the horrific violence in the Middle East and in Ukraine right now, but he would not be surprised by it. That’s why confesses human iniquity and transgression. His song of praise is his impassioned Nonetheless. Psalm 65 is his declaration of faith that “God’s stream” will continue to flow and to bless to the earth. It’s also his vow to live in faithfulness to God who calms the roaring waves and the noise of the nations, and who redeems the Creation so that the earth may sing and shout for joy, again.
Psalm 65 calls us to live, individually and corporately, as visible and tangible signs of God’s presence. When we pledge ourselves to lives of grateful praise, we can become gateways of grace, witnesses to God’s desire and power to fill deserts with rain, hopelessness with hope, and brokenness with wholeness.
As Christians reading this ancient Jewish text, we claim that Jesus is the unique incarnation of the same God incarnated in the Creation as a whole. As God Incarnate, Jesus enters the world as an expression of God’s own praise, of God’s own delight in and pledge to the Creation. As the body of Christ, then, we are called to be a place where every Friday finds its Sunday.
Today is the first Sunday of our stewardship month, and when we commit ourselves to God through a particular congregation, we pledge more than money. We pledge ourselves to living as gateways of grace. The praises we sing, the missions we do, the care we offer each other, the study, laughter, tears, and meals we share—all of this is praise.
Whatever the constraints and challenges of any given moment, we are called and equipped to be a fertile field, an overflowing pasture, a meadow clothed in flocks, and a valley decked out with an abundance of grain. Even when the tumult around us is loud and violent, God calls and equips us to live in grateful wonder, to “shout and sing together for joy.”
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