His Love Endures Forever - A Palm Sunday Poem - by Rev. Lucy Flatt
Reading - Psalm 118
This week I got bored.
There was a moment when the children were in bed, Cam was doing - building things and I was left to my own devices.
As I looked about the living room I was struck with a creative idea!
I had just been reading Narnia to the kids and recalled how much I love the sound of good prose… so off to the garage I went.
There on the top shelf, covered in dust was my “I almost have a minor in English - textbooks”. Down they came – Othello, Pride and Prejudice, and the Longman anthology of British literature volume 1B – the early modern period.
I gathered the books again back inside and wiped the clouds of dust away. Eh Othello – I know what happens, pride and Prejudice – the movies faster… the Longman anthology of British literature volume 1B – the early modern period - Ooooo Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Page 1284.
Sonnet 116
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds.
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds….”
This is great! My nerdy poetry heart began to sing and so I did what any wife would do – I ran to share the delight of this sonnet with my husband.
Cam, Cam – listen.
Isn’t it such beautiful prose?
Cam stared back at me blankly, covered in Gib dust - “your just saying words at me.”
This morning’s reading is a bit like Cam just said a whole lot of words at you.
But thankfully it’s a wonderful piece of poetry that will hopefully get your hearts to sing.
What’s more is – this Psalm is not from the early modern period. It forms a piece of the fifth book of the psalms that has been used for prayer and worship throughout the ages.
It is the perfect psalm to gather us here on Palm Sunday.
Psalm 118 begins “O Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;”
Now I chuckle at the Psalmist for beginning the psalm this way “give thanks to the Lord”
For many of us – giving thanks is something we struggle with normally - let alone when we are bound at home on our own, with others, or on our own with others, when we’ve exhausted the board games, completed Netflix, run around the yard, or realised we live with the same people that were here 10 days ago.
Thankfully the psalmist doesn’t say “give thanks when all is well” or “give thanks when you feel like it”. Rather he tells us to “cease our complaining, turn from all selfishness, and give thanks to the Lord. - For he is good.
Which leads us into the second line “his steadfast love endures forever.”
As Shakespeare’s sonnet suggests - love does not alter.
God’s love is solid. Loyal. Constant.
No matter our circumstances.
No matter our fears, our anxieties, our desires, our hopes or our frustrations.
God’s love is steadfast.
Love is not a characteristic we assign to God it is a part of who God says God is. It is present whether we accept it or not.
I was reading an interesting book this week called “God has a name”. It gives the idea that a name is not simply for picking up a coffee or opening the correct letter - but rather a name is “revelatory of the nature of a person”.[1] When God speaks of himself in Exodus 34:6 and 7 he tells us;
“The Lord, the Lord,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,[b]
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
and the children’s children,
to the third and the fourth generation.”
“The best of earthly joys pass away, and even the world itself grows old and hastens to decay, but there is no change in the mercy of God; he was faithful to our forefathers, he is merciful to us, and he will be gracious to our children and our children’s children.”
The psalmist leads us into declaring that God’s love is steadfast.
Let all the chosen people say “his steadfast love endures forever”.
Let all the priests say “his steadfast love endures forever”
Let all those who have realised they are not in control - say “his steadfast love endures forever.”
Out of my distress I called on the Lord.
The psalmist reaches for prayer in his distress. When we are stressed we can call on the Lord.
There are some great articles this week that talk of the rise in prayer because of this global pandemic. We each cry out in our distress – come Lord – come save us from the things that assail us, our worries, our stress, all the uncertainties. Come deliver us from all evil – deliver us from confined spaces, from fears of germs.
Let’s pause for a second and think what can we bring to the Lord in prayer?
(silence)
The Lord listens.
In the case of Psalm118 the Lord answers the call of the psalmist and sets him in a broad place.
Oh what joy this is to hear for those of us in confined spaces.
What might a broad space be?
A field? The Ocean? A forest? Fresh powder on a mountain?
And what might we – who are confined - link these wide spaces to?
Freedom.
The psalmist is set in freedom.
The ESV translates this “The Lord answered me and set me free.”
This freedom gives him strength. It does not mean he will not suffer but rather as he suffers he knows that the Lord is with him. If the Lord is with him then what could he fear?
When I think about this line I have to pause.
How could he not fear?
We are surrounded by fear.
To not fear seems – in this age – unattainable.
The Lord is on my side to help me;
God is not distant or far off.
God did not set the world in motion and bail – like Payley’s watch.
God is personable – he is knowable – he in knowable through Jesus.
Through relationship with Jesus.
The psalmist proclaims that God is with him – God is for him – he does not fear for God is ever present in the midst of troubles.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in mortals
better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.
The Christian life is full of suffering.
In the New Testament we hear Paul tell us “Do not be surprised by your present sufferings as if something strange were happening to you”.
We know this intellectually – but perhaps we haven’t experienced it first hand.
The Psalmist proclaims that in his suffering – when he was surrounded, swarmed at like bees, falling – The Lord helped him.
The Lord is his strength and his song
his salvation.
Humbly the psalmist acknowledges that he is not enough on his own.
He does not defeat his enemies rather In the name of the Lord they are cut off.
His strength is not in what he can do – he cannot simply pull himself up by his bootstraps and get on with it – his strength is in the power of God. In the name of the Lord.
What freedom it is to not to be our own saviours? Not to be our own solutions.
What freedom God brings when we turn to him rather than going alone.
The community then joins the psalmist in praise.
Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous.
Like the psalmist’s community when we meet together we sing. Perhaps awkwardly at home – with some lyrics on a screen, or a guitar nearby. We worship.
When God delivers us out of suffering – our hearts sing.
I shall not die, but I shall live
We follow a suffering saviour.
As we enter Holy week we are reminded of the difficulties Jesus himself suffered as he walked in the way of God. It was not easy and as we reflect we may ask ourselves how could his hope have remained? How could he continue to persevere in the face of such suffering? In the face of death? In the face of the distress of those he loved?
Like the psalmist, we are invited to declare - our salvation is in the Lord.
We are invited into relationship with God.
We are invited into the hope of Jesus, the hope that “if we live, we live to the Lord. If we die, we die to the Lord. So then whether we live or whether we die we are the Lord’s.”
Salvation is not our doing - for we are sinners in great need of God’s mercy, rather it is through God’s grace that we are saved.
The steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.
Jesus went to the cross as the rejected one.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone
The psalmist continues -
This is the day that the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it
It is not an easy journey that we are on.
Like giving God our praise – it’s hard to rejoice in the midst of uncertainty.
Psalm 118 gives us a great invitation.
What would it look like to praise God in the midst of uncertainty?
What would it look like to acknowledge that God’s love is steadfast?
God is here with us now – so we like the crowds who followed Jesus into Jerusalem can cry – save us, save us. “Hosanna, Hosanna”
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Martin Luther from the early modern period called this “my chosen psalm. Nearest to my heart, it has saved me from many a pressing danger. It is my friend dearer to me than all the honours and power of the earth.”
You may not have a heart for poetry, or a love of prose, but I invite you this week to pray Psalm 118.
As we walk a holy week unlike any other let us be encouraged.
God is with us.
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
[1] God has a name page 42