NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

PROPER 22

Psalm 19

The heavens declare the glory of God …

The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul.

In the desert, the degree to which the sun dictates human activity is a measure of its majesty. One must travel before it rises. One must rest when it blazes down at noon.

“Like a bridegroom out of his chamber,” says the psalmist, his eyes squinting as they turn to the golden line of the eastern horizon. “Like a champion to run its course,” he muses, as the fire of a new day spills above the horizon and pierces his eyes. Later in the day, his body wracked by heat and sweat, he will murmur through parched lips. “nothing is hidden from its burning heat.”

Now he links the glory of the heavens to the glory of moral law, “the law of the Lord.” Images tumble into his mind. There is a terrible perfection about the law, just as there is about the heavens. To contemplate either ”revives the soul.” To contemplate the skies - day or night - is to feel ourselves as children before an inexpressible mystery.  A timeless wisdom is given even to a child, as he or she gazes up.  So, with the law of God, there comes mystery and wisdom.

The sun brings the gift of daylight, and we once again can see.  So the law of the Lord gives clarity in our search for direction. The sun cleans the desert as a furnace removes refuse. So the law of God cleanses the soul, sometimes with a discipline as pitiless as the sun. The psalmist dwells on this. “Cleanse me from my secret faults,” he asks, considering those repressed flaws that not even he is aware of.

So, in the mind of the psalmist, the sun and the heavens become a metaphor for the mystery of God and the demands of God on our humanity. The search for metaphors of God will take each one of us in different directions. For some, it may be the canvasses of great art that triggers insights about God. For others, it may be great music. For still others, it may be a liturgical moment when bread becomes more than bread, and wine more than wine.

All of these, and many other things, are capable of becoming for us what the sun and the heavens are for the psalmist. The nature of the metaphor is not important. What matters is that we develop the ability to think in such a way: to look not merely at the world of daily experience but through it and, looking through it, to see the God who blazes at its centre - its true sun.

The question for each of us can be put in terms of the opening verses of the psalm: What for me declares the glory of God? What for me shows God’s handiwork?

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Since all creation finds its source in God, all created things reflect the mind and heart of God. Recall and savour the wonderful things in life that thrill you most. May your love of God’s creation lead you to ever deeper and fuller relationship with God.

Adapted from Herbert O’Driscoll’s

The Psalms for Our Living

Finer Than Gold, Sweeter Than Honey