Shine Upon Us – Sixth Sunday of Easter (Psalm 67)
It is good to be here this morning. What a blessing it is to come to worship the Lord together. I am grateful that these summer holidays give us the opportunity to come together as a community, as a congregation, and worship together. Holidays of all kinds give us a chance to mark and remember and celebrate important things in our world. Of course, we just celebrated a big one on the church calendar; Easter gave us the chance to remember and celebrate Christ’s resurrection and the promise of new life that it represents. Coming up in a couple weeks there is another church holiday; Pentecost will give us the chance to celebrate and remember the birth of the church.
Church holidays give us a chance to remember and celebrate quite literal blessings. Such as the birth of the church or the coming of a savior or the promises of God. We can look at our secular holidays as opportunities to celebrate and remember blessings as well. At Thanksgiving we remember that we are blessed with an abundant earth, on which there is enough to share with everyone. On Martin Luther King, Jr Day, we remember the blessing of life and vision of a man who worked for equality and peace. On St. Patrick’s Day or Cinco De Mayo, we celebrate the blessings of immigrant populations and what they bring to our society (There are also people who use these holidays to celebrate the blessing of sharing a drink or two…or three with friends, but we’ll focus on that first part.) And of course, this weekend we have Memorial Day, where we remember the blessings of barbecue, or maybe being out on a boat, or if you were in Indianapolis where I went to seminary, the blessing of really fast cars. Or you remember the blessing of people who have died in service to their country, which is the heart of this holiday.
Such people are one of the many ways that God may bless us or bless a nation. Which brings us to our reading this morning from Psalm 67. Psalm 67 is a song, appropriate for a holiday, that is meant to express praise to God and to ask for further blessings on the community. The people praise God and pray for more prosperity, so that they can praise and honor God even more. The psalm also asks God to bless the nations. Of course, one of the ways God blesses the nations is through the service and sacrifice of others. These are the kind of people we remember on Memorial Day.
Another reason that Psalm 67 might be an appropriate holiday song, is because it is a song that calls out to God for continued blessings. It offers praise to God as acknowledgement of what God has done, because it comes from a community that already feels blessed and prays to God to continue blessing them. It is not just a matter of continued blessing, though, it also a prayer that seeks God’s blessings to find other people, other nations. The prayer is universal and particular. It is particular because it asks God to bless me, us, our community. It is Universal because it prays that God’s blessings will be known throughout the earth. Universal acknowledgement of God is prayed for. That God will bless others, and that they will come to know God through those blessings. Isn’t that true for those of us here this morning? One of the primary ways we have come to know God is through our blessings. So, we celebrate birthdays and anniversaries and graduations because are blessed with life, and a life lived with other people. God blesses us with and through the people in our lives. During Memorial Day we are given the opportunity to remember that this is especially true of the people in our lives who have been called to serve and care for others.
So, to bring it back to Psalm 67’s prayer for a more universal blessing. If we want the universe to recognize God as the one who blesses the people, one of the first ways that can happen is through interaction with people, specifically those of us who believe in God and strive to live our lives in a way that honors that belief. I know this was true for me, maybe it was true for you as well, but I first came to know God’s face shining upon me -as the psalmist says- by first seeing that light shine in the face of others. Parents, pastors, teachers, and friends. This part of the psalm is a prayer for God’s benevolence. A prayer that God answers in many ways, and one of the brightest rays of light that God shines on us is through the light of other people. Are we not called to be that light and shine it for those among us who are in a place where they can’t see through the darkness. It is through the service and sacrifice of others that people can get an idea of what God is doing in the world. We should be mindful of that. We can be someone’s blessing; we can be the reason they celebrate. Or we can contribute to the darkness; a reason they forget God’s universal love.
This psalm is a reminder that God does indeed love the whole world. God intends blessing for all the worlds people. This is also something that we should remember, so that we can make it known to the whole world, because sometimes it is easy to forget. As Charlie Brown teaches us each Christmas, that there are things, such as commercialism at the holidays, that can overwhelm our awareness of the blessings we are given to celebrate. Sometimes we will be asked to give our praise to something or someone other than the God that bestowed these blessings upon us. We can forget what the actual blessing we celebrate is. For instance, at Christmas it is not the material things that bless us, it is God’s gift of the Christ child that provides us with hope. It is a blessing to be given gifts and to give gifts to others, because God first blessed us. And on Memorial Day Weekend, remember, it is not victory in war that blesses us, but the people who have served and sacrificed for the good of others.
No matter where we are in life that is what God calls us to, as we see in the example of Jesus, to service and sacrifice. At this holiday we remember that among other people that we come to know God at work in the world. And that is worth celebrating.
Amen.