Psalm 104                                                        Ordinary Time

 Last Sunday morning we Deiberts were bleary-eyed but happy having just returned from a great camping trip to the Canyon country of Arizona and Utah, and Yellowstone National Park. We spent two weeks examining some of the most ruggedly beautiful terrain in this expansive country of ours. We took time to smell the flowers, climb the rocks, look for animals, watch the sunset, view the waterfalls, ride the horses, raft the whitewater, enjoy and struggle with lots of togetherness in trains, cars and tents, and most importantly we had the opportunity to appreciate the glory of our God the Creator of the earth.

 One of the scriptures I read in the 45 hour train trip home was Psalm 104, a celebration of the goodness of God in creating and sustaining the earth and all the creatures which inhabit it. This psalm is not one of our lectionary readings for today, but does come up each year in the three-year cycle, most often at Pentecost, the day we celebrate the Spirit. I have never preached on this psalm and have always thought it was one of those scriptures that simply states the obvious: God created the world and all that is in it. But there’s more to that statement than first appears.

 If God is celebrated as creator and sustainer of all the goodness of earth, if God is elevated then we human beings shrink, as Richard did in this photo by comparison to the rock. And that’s what James Kugel, Hebrew scholar at Harvard, declares is our great need, especially in the Western Hemisphere. In the movie “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” the dad accidently turns his kids into miniature. That’s what needs to happen to all of us in relationship to God. In our mind’s eye, we need to shrink while God gets magnified. That was exactly my feeling standing on the edge of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, looking down at the bottom, one mile below, twenty-seven miles across. How small am I and how majestic is the One who created this! Judi told me the story of a little girl who stood over the Grand Canyon and said, “Wow, something happened here!”

 We are going to read the whole rather expansive psalm, but in small parts with real images of our trip interspersed. (If you are reading this sermon online, I’m sorry the images are not available. It was a visual sermon, in large part.)  My prayer is that the images will enhance your appreciation of God’s glory and not simply be a slide slow of the Deiberts’ vacation, something you could live without. However, if you’re really interested in our trip and have a lot of time, we’ll be happy to bore you with about a thousand pictures.  : )

 Let us say together these words from Psalm 104:

 Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great.
 You are  clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment.

 The words “Bless the Lord” which open and close this psalm and Psalm 103, are unique to these two psalms. The word “Bless” originally meant bend the knee.
O my soul means with everything that I am, my whole self. So “to bless the Lord” is an act of complete homage in recognition of God’s rule over the earth. “You are great” means you are expansive, large, unfathomable, sort of like this canyon.

 You stretch out the heavens like a tent,
 you set the beams of your chambers on the waters,
 you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind,
 you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.

 This psalm reflects the ancient understanding of the cosmos as three-tiered with the watery chaos below, the earth, and the tent of the heavens above. While we understand it differently now I ask: Who has not stretched out in the grass to peer at the stars and not felt that those stars were your ceiling? And if you’ve been to Yellowstone, you know that the Geysers are proof there’s a watery chaos below the ground. There is fire in the earth, stirring up the waters which spew forth approximately every 90 minutes at Old Faithful.

 You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken.
 You cover it with the deep as with a garment;
 the waters stood above the mountains.
 At your rebuke they flee; at the sound of your thunder they take to flight.

 With a little imagination you can see the waters above these mountains when you
hear that there are fossils from sea creatures in the upper sandstone layers of rock.
At God rebuke those waters fled, at the sound of God’s thunder the waters which
carved this canyon ran away.

 Some people feel a need to choose between believing in creation by God and the
scientific dates we find in these rocks. I see no conflict and feel no need to
choose between believing in God and trusting scientific evidence. Science helps
us date these rocks. I still believe God made them.

 They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys
 to the place that you appointed for them.
 You set a boundary that they may not pass,
 so that they might not again cover the earth.

 The power of rushing water in Yellowstone amazed me. Did you know that the
largest waterfall called Lower Falls is taller than Niagra Falls? It’s not as wide
and does not match the volume of Niagra but it is twice as tall with its expanse of
308 feet. God can set a boundary for rushing waters like these, a boundary that
they may not pass. That is power.

 You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
 they flow between the hills, giving drink to every wild animal;
 the wild asses quench their thirst.

 There are some parts of wild west where it is amazing that animals or people
manage to live, but they do because God takes care of them and gives them drink.
How do all the vast number of different animals know instinctively how to
survive? The Spirit of God in them. Have you stopped lately to be amazed?

  By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
  they sing among the branches.
  From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
  the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.

 I was awed by this glorious meadow. I made everyone in the car get out with me
to walk through it. We had to have at least ten family photos taken in the field
with the purple mountain majesty in the backdrop. God has added so much beauty
to this world in the form of flowers. I was astounded at the delicate yellow flower
that grows out of prickly pear cactus plant.

 You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use,
  to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart,
  oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.

 God is actively involved in feeding cattle and people, giving us wine to make us
glad, bread to strengthen us, and oil for our skin. Don’t miss the theological
significance of wine, bread, and anointing, healing oil.

 The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly,
 the cedars of Lebanon that God planted.
 In them the birds build their nests; the stork has its home in the fir trees.
 The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the  coneys.

 As we rafted down the Yellowstone river, a lovely bald eagle circled overhead as if to
bask with us in our enjoyment of the river. To see a tree or flower growing out of
rock, where seems to be no soil and no room for roots was another awe-inspiring sight.

 You have made the moon to mark the seasons;
 the sun knows its time for setting.
 You make darkness, and it is night,
 when all the animals of the forest come creeping out.

 Getting out early was the best time to catch animals like this coyote.

 The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.
 When the sun rises, they withdraw and lie down in their dens.
 People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening.

 I became a roaring mother lion every time we got close to a ledge like this one. The
psalmist sees lions seeking their prey and people going out to work as activities which
are happening under the large umbrella of God’s loving care. We parents must learn
that our children are under God’s umbrella more than our own.

 O LORD, how manifold are your works!
 In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
 Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there,
 living things both small and great.
 There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

 It’s like the psalmist can see God looking upon the earth from a much higher and
lighter perspective. When the mythical water creature Leviathan, a sort of lochness
monster becomes a play toy, as in the movie, “The Water Horse” you know God is in
charge. You know Robert Browning was right to say “God’s in his heaven and all is
right with the world.” When anxieties well up, perhaps imagining God toying with
the sea monster will quell those fears. No evil power can ultimately destroy the world
that God loves.

 These all look to you to give them their food in due season;
 when you give to them, they gather it up;
 when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.

 The horse wanted to join us for breakfast each morning in the KOA Glendale.

 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
 when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
 When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
 and you renew the face of the ground.

 Before we go to the image, here, please notice the parallelism here. Breath and spirit
are the same Hebrew word, ruahk. Without God’s breath, all creation dies. When
God sends forth breath, we live. The Native Americans thought the coyote had taken
the breath out of these stones, turning people into hoodoos.

 May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
 may the LORD rejoice in the Lord’s works –
 who looks on the earth and it trembles,
 who touches the mountains and they smoke.
 I will sing to the LORD as long as I live;
 I will sing praise to my God while I have being.

 When God looks at the earth, it trembles. When God touches the mountains, they
smoke. What a God. What a creation.

 May my meditation be pleasing to the Lord, for I rejoice in God.
 Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more.
 Bless the LORD, O my soul. Praise the LORD!

 The only appropriate response is to bow down, to bless the Lord, and to long for
God’s new creation in Jesus Christ, a perfect heaven and earth, a garden of Eden, in
which there is no evil, no pain, no sorrow, all that remains is good and holy and
beautiful.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.