Wonder and Praise (Psalm 104:24-35, the Message) and Li-Young Lee's From Blossoms (As some of your own poets have said . . .)

  

Our poet this week, Li-Young Lee, could not be more aptly nicknamed. In fact, his nickname works for King David himself who wrote so many psalms. He’s called “God’s Hungry Poet.” And Li-Young Lee, a Chinese immigrant to this country, whose father had been Mao Zedong’s physician only to convert to Christianity and become a Presbyterian minister in Pennsylvania, is a Christian poet with an almost “holy madness” for he watches, watches, watches, looks into things, and finds God everywhere – joy everywhere – a holy message everywhere – even in peaches. His poem From Blossoms (you can read the poem or hear it read by clicking HERE)is the perfect doorway into our sermon text this week: Psalm 104:24-35 (you can read Eugene Peterson's translation HERE), which explores and celebrates a “wildly wonderful world” that God has made and oversees with joy. In the same Spirit of that Psalm, I recently read that Li-Young Lee offered a poetry workshop and instructed all of the participants to go out into the day whispering to themselves the phrases O my Love; O my God; Holy, Holy, Holy—in order to explore the poetry of prayer, the prayer that is poetry, and the poetry of nature that is filled with the grandeur and love of God. Both King David and Li-Young Lee believe that poetry helps us see. I want to help you see three things today.

Go outside – curiously eat a peach – have church!

All this week, the children have gone outside and been spiritually curious. We learned that in God’s wisdom an octopus has three hearts, that butterflies can smell and taste with their feet, and that bamboo can grow three feet in a single day. We dissected owl pellets, conducted experiments with water, and practiced botany identification. What I’m trying to tell you, in other words, is that “We had church.” Psalm 104 was not words on a page. It was our practical call to worship, our liturgy, the sermon.

A curious exploration of nature in which we revel in all that God has made will lead us to praise. When David recognizes that the world is a “wildly wonderful place” made with wisdom, it leads him to sing. That’s exactly the experience of Li-Young Lee who is also writing a hymn of sorts. Notice that both writers offer an “O” of song and praise. The Psalmist announces, after all of the exploration and taxonomy, “O, let me sing to God all my life long . . . O, let my song please him . . . O my soul, bless God” and Li-Young Lee will echo: “O, to take what we love inside . . .” To enter a world that God has made, cultivate a sense of wonder, and enjoy it - IS to worship. In fact, to do so is to join with a God who himself enjoys creation (vs. 31).

From the Jerusalem Talmud there is a quote from Rabbi Moshe that says, “Everyone will be called to account for the all the legitimate pleasures which he or she has failed to enjoy.” To joyfully delight in what God has made, what God enjoys, is to worship which makes the opposite also true. To refuse to enter creation with a sense of awe, wonder, and curiosity is a sort of anti-worship. It’s to be, the Psalmist tells us, a sinner. Likewise, to imagine a world that’s only worth is in being exploited is not a Biblical view. The story of redemption told by Scripture is one which spawns from God’s creative delight for all that God has made and NOT its worthlessness.

Do you want to know God and delight in God? Read God’s second book. That was how the late medieval church described the natural world. That it could serve as a means of knowing God and knowing ourselves. Do you want to know yourself and God better? Delight in a peach, pet a dog, go fishing, take a hike. Do you want to encounter the wisdom of God? Curiously attend to an earth overflowing with wonderful creations. That’s a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. To run around the earth screaming, “Look! O wow! Look!” That’s why Jesus will teach us about the love of God while looking at birds and describe the work of the kingdom while talking about plants (Matthew 6:25-33, 13:29, 31-32).

What is the wisdom of creation? That all of creation can be a way of knowing God and ourselves and offering worship. The earth was made to be a healing community created by God. The earth was made to be church and science agrees.  UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science center, supported by rigorous scientific inquiry, promotes “awe walks” to increase people’s health and overall well-being. An “awe walk” is a stroll in which you intentionally shift your attention toward the natural world instead of inward. You pay attention not to an internal conversation or problems but to the sights, sounds, smells, and touch of creation. You go with a child-like wonder and feel the sponginess of wet leaves under your shoes, or look at the dappled shadows of light on the path, or watch the swaying of a tree in the wind. Scientists noted that a 15-minute awe walk per week created a noticeable change in the mental and emotional health of adults – lowering stress hormones, blood pressure, even creating a less-polarized political vision in participants. But researchers were also baffled by an amazing feature. They asked participants to take selfies at the beginning, middle, and end of each walk. Analysis of these photos revealed a visible shift in how participants portrayed themselves. The awe-walk group increasingly made themselves smaller in their photos over the course of the study, preferring to feature the landscapes around them. At the same time, the smiles on participants’ faces grew measurably more intense. They were visibly embodying a posture of humility and wonder akin to worship. It’s what we were made for. To eat a peach, Li-Young Lee announces, and move from joy to joy to joy.”

“All the creatures” are Spirit-filled.

What comes through Psalm 104 so strongly is what is referred to by anthropologists as TEK (traditional ecological knowledge). And a fundamental element of TEK in ancient cultures is that all parts of the natural world fit together. The Psalmist declares that all created realities only have life because we all share God’s living Spirit. In the Psalm we, and by “we” I mean human beings, are humbly connected to all of creation. We don’t so much receive a special role over creation but must take our place with all of creation. We are “all” of us, dependent upon God for food. We are, all of us, given life by God’s own Spirit. And we are, all of us, grown by God “in bloom and blossom.” Without God, the Psalmist declares, we would, all of us, “revert to original mud.”

That deep interdependence is the realization that Li-Young Lee experiences. He has the deeply spiritual insight that the peach which is he holding comes “from hands” that placed them in a bag, hands that painted a sign marked peaches, hands that picked from “laden boughs,” and peaches that, like us, share fellowship, shade, sun and dust.

Science confirms the Psalmist’s theological truth that humans are part of an shared ecosystem. Our bodies are part of nature and respond to nature in beneficial ways. For example, sound waves coming off of streams, and moving bodies of water, activate the vagus nerve and calm us down. There are chemical compounds in nature, like the smell a flower or tree bark, that activate parts of the brain and the immune system. Our bodies are wired to respond in an open and empowering way to all of creation. Science becomes one more piece of evidence supporting ancient Scriptural wisdom that we are a part of nature, connected to it, interdependent on it. And that leads us to the odd discussion of “sinners” in a passage about the beauty of nature, the joy of God, and the mutuality of all of creation. The Psalmist prays, “But clear the ground of sinners – no more godless men and women!” Who are these sinners and how does God “clear the ground” of them?

One of best Old Testament scholars argues that Psalm 104 reveals that the “sinner” is one who doesn’t delight in creation as God’s work nor find within it a shared existence of mutual dependence. It’s someone who refuses to wonder at the world, live in awe, and worship. And so how does God “clear the ground of sinners”? Well, by transforming them through the same love and wisdom that gives life, food, and breath. The love that creates all wonderful things, like peaches, is the same love that seeks to convert people to love God and love others through Jesus Christ. God clears the ground of sinners by sending Jesus who announces the good God of creation come to set us free, who feeds birds and tends to plants out of love. And that’s my invitation to you now.

“Taste and see that the LORD is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

One of the invitations and, I think, perhaps the main invitation of Psalm 104 and this poem, is to go beyond words and ideas and actually come and taste something — since peaches aren’t in season, a strawberry will have to do — and then to recognize the interwoven connections that God is good and that we are all gathered into the taste of this sweetness. Let that taste itself be a poem that you’re living in, an expression of God’s delight and goodness toward you. When you taste the strawberry remember that the love of the Father in the story of the prodigal son is the same love that made these sweet strawberries, the evergreens, and you. We are to experience the physical sensation of delight and to reflect upon the deep recognition of a wonderful God who in the crucifixion and death of Jesus wishes for us to “live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.” The same Jesus, whom we worship, the Apostle Paul declares, created and sustains everything (Col. 1:16).

So we are going to listen to Li-Young Lee’s poem one more time. Hear it as a Psalm of praise to the triune God. Then Harris will sing Creation Song (you can listen to the song by clicking HERE) and, at that time, you are invited to come forward, to take a strawberry, taste it, and give praise and thanks to God.