A Song of Trust
Psalm 131
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
May 15, 2022
We are engaging for a few weeks a few songs that are labeled Psalms of ascent. Psalm 120-134 these 15 psalms are a collection of songs that ancient Israelites would have sung as they made their way to Jerusalem at annual feasts, three times a year they would make their journey up there as pilgrims to Jerusalem and these are songs that they sang along the road.
Jesus himself would sing these songs as he made his way to Jerusalem with his family. The songs of the pilgrims and as it turns out, you and I are in a pilgrimage of our own, it’s called life. That metaphor is used in a number of times in Scripture that we are on this journey, this pilgrimage toward God that is our lives, so it is possible, these songs could be helpful for us to sing as well, for us to know the tunes and to know the lyrics and to know the message that they have to say to us about how we successfully make ourselves together toward our God in this journey.
One of the things that is certainly true about our journey is that we make our journey through a very noisy, noisy, world.
It is filled with freeways and jet ways, jet planes music blurting in restaurants, droning news on TV and the constant hum of crowds. It seems like constantly; our lives are filled with noise.
Even for folks who live out in the country, eighteen wheelers make their way grinding their gears, revving their engines in their way to the oilfields and they interrupt the quiet of that area. I see and hear this as I drive to Wiggins. In some places there are motocross parks and on weekends it can sound like a chainsaw convention.
Sylvia is learning how to drive- her mother takes her on a driving lesson as she has opportunity. A couple of days ago, Sylvia arrived from her lesson and sat quietly in the living room. Lanetta asked, “What’s wrong?” Sylvia: “I was honked, not for a moment for about five seconds. The man was angry that I was driving too slow!” I was eavesdropping and suggested, “Perhaps you may want to turn on the emergency lights as you’re driving.” Wrong response, this was no consolation to Sylvia.
Quaker faith theologian Richard Foster suggested that there are three of the biggest enemies of life with God, “Three of the devils,” he said are “Noise, hurry, and crowds” and I think he’s right on all three counts. I know that noise can certainly do it. But you know, not all the noise that distract us is external.
A good amount of noise takes place right between the ears, in takes place in our heads, it’s a racket that we deal with as we journey and it arises from within. Things like deadlines and commitments and activities and schedules make as much noise as a shouting crowd sometimes in our heads.
Our fears, our uncertainties, the things that we’re insecure about, our guilt, our self-doubt, they clamor in our heads like a rock concert sometimes and drown out everything else that God may want to speak to us.
Quietness does not come easily in this noisy, demanding, threatening world that we live in. We may have struggled with that in our noise, and never really put our finger on the source as much. If we can find the source maybe we can find the volume control and turn it down a bit so that we don’t have to live with all that noise within our head. At least some of that inner clamor comes in our heads is something that the Scripture calls our ambitions.
This Christ-following journey that we’re on takes place not only in a noisy world but it takes place in a culture of ambition, a culture that tells us constantly, that we have to accomplish and prosper, apparently without any noise at all.
We are supposed to be valuable only if we ambitiously strive for our next promotion or if we’re in a place of power, position or possession.
We’re worthy if we’re achieving and succeeding. We’re worthy if we’re turning up number one, if we’re always winning, that’s when we’re acceptable. This culture of ambition drives us and as a consequence, fills our heads with this noise that keeps us from hearing from God. That kind of selfish ambition is the root of the things that we fret over, the noise that we hear in our head. We hear the “what if’s” and “if only’s” in our head, the “could of’s” and the “should of’s,” all of those things that we use to judge ourselves with, accusing us of not doing enough or not being enough, it’s all part of this culture, the noise that is in our head.
We need some kind of volume control. We need some way to turn it down. If we want it quieter inside than we have to go to the root and deal with the culture of ambition and our relationship to it.
One of the songs for our journey that might help us with this is Psalm 131. It is only three verses long, why don’t we read it together aloud.
“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and to marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forever more.”
This culture of ambition is not new, it’s been around for a long, long time and the Psalmist rejects this in the first verse,
“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and to marvelous for me.”
Most commentators on this psalm assume this is more a testimony than it is anything. That the psalmist knows what he’s talking about because he’s been there. That there was a time in life when these were the very things that he pursued and he found the noise and the frustration just too much for him as he encountered the limitations that are inherent to being human, but now he’s experienced a kind of change in his life and he says, “no longer is my heart lifted up,” You hear these body parts, “My ear, my eyes…” and even the lines, “I do not occupy myself with…,” literally, “I do not walk with…”
“My life is no longer caught us in haughtiness, in arrogance, in ambition, in things too marvelous for me.” Ambition, eyes raised too high, pride lifted up, are partners, they work together. Selfish desires are usually fueled in our lives by a sense of self-importance and dependence on ourselves. We think of ourselves more highly than we should. We depend on ourselves rather than God and we have ambitions for things that are outside the bounds that would give us life.
The results are this kind of noisy striving that we’re engaging in to achieve and succeed in all these ambitions. But eventually, because we are human, we have to crash into our limitations. We realize that these things are too high and marvelous for us and we find ourselves experiencing deep frustration. Not being able to achieve that very thing that we want to achieve. We depend on ourselves rather than God and this noisy striving fills our lives up. This is the human experience, its’ not just 21st century culture, it’s ancient Israel as well.
Our arrogance about ourselves grows out of a sense of insecurity, insignificance. We have to bolster our image with our haughtiness, our eyes lifted up, our hearts lifted up. We puff ourselves up with pride. We have to run our own personal ad campaign all the time to let everyone know how important we are and all of those things to prove our worth and that arrogance increases our internal noise level. Our heads fill up with that because arrogance and quietness can’t occupy the same space.
To be quiet, inside, is to surrender that kind of arrogance. But humility and quietness make very good roommates and Dallas Willard describes this practice of humility. How do you get this humility? It is such as slippery virtue.
Just in the moment that you think you got it, you become aware of how humble you are and you lose it. Dallas Willard says that it is a matter of practice; that we do certain things and, in the process, humility begins to grown within us. He suggests three practices for achieving humility.
One is, never presume privilege, never presume that you’ve got a right to something, don’t assume that privileges are yours and look for ways to let go of privilege. A second practice is never pretend to be something or someone you’re not. Be transparent, be honest with folks about who you really are and what you really do and third, he says, “Never push to have your own way,” Ambition wants to have its own way. Humility says I don’t have to have it my own way.
Richard Foster describes the discipline of submission as the ability to be happy without getting your own way and that’s a difficult one for most of us.
This is the calling of Christ, this call to humility. Philippians chapter two verses three through five says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition, but think of others as more important than yourselves. Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus and then he describes Christ’s servanthood and his death on the cross and how God rewarded that with resurrection and rule.”
Ambition has no place in our lives. There is an alternative, however, and the psalmist takes a different posture, He says, “I do not occupy myself with these things anymore, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not proud. But something has changed within me.
What he has done is replace ambition with aspiration. Aspiration is a good thing; it is wanting to be what God wants us to be. Paul, in Philippians chapter three says, “One thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind and pressing on to that which lies ahead, I give myself to following the high calling of Christ Jesus.” That’s not ambition. Ambition is selfish and personal. Aspiration is more God’s call on our lives and beginning to serve him. The Psalms has let aspiration replace ambition. He lets faithfulness replace the desire for fame. Ambition wants to be famous; aspiration wants to be faithful.
That’s the call to take those gifts and abilities and opportunities that are ours and use them fully in the kingdom of God. That’s not a sinful desire, that is a desire to be faithful with what we have but ambition wants to be famous.
He learned to replace trust in God with independence from God. He lets humility replace his pride. He has replaced hoping in God and supplants his need for constant achievement and striving. He lets satisfaction and contentment take the place of frustrations he felt over his limitations.
This is change that he’s testifying to. In verse two he’s not only rejected the culture of ambition, but he’s chosen this life of resting in God. That’s evidence in the second verse,
“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.”
The nursing child lives in a kind of dependence on his mother for nourishment and unless her belly is adequately full, she may not be calm and quieting, but demanding.
The three-year-old child, however, is in a different place. It is now possible to being weaned, to be with mom because you love your mom and your mom loves you. You can be quieted and you can be calm and being delighted by resting in her love.
Our God, who is called in this Psalm, the father to the fatherless is here portrayed as the mother to the motherless. It is God to whom we turn for this care and comfort. That’s the posture that the psalmist has learned to adopt with God. God is to the psalmist like a loving, caring, protective mother with whom he’s learned to rely and trust and lean, find hope in.
He’s able to live with a sense of contentment and not in frustration because he’s abandoned this ambitious living for a life of rest and trust in God and it is this resting, trusting posture, that has turned the noise level down inside. “I have calmed and quieted my soul.”
How do we calm and quiet our soul? It must be something done intentionally. The psalmist doesn’t say that God came and quieted his soul, he said, “I did it!”
How do you do that? I am not entirely sure, but it might look like, first, just unknowing the noise and saying to God, “I feel anxious, I feel afraid, I feel insecure, I feel overwhelmed, I feel angry.” It might look like naming the noise in prayer and saying, “God, this is what’s going on in my head as you well know because you know my thoughts before they are formed in my head.”
It might look like recalling the truth of scripture and realigning the heart with what it’s true rather than succumbing to the lies of the ambitious culture. It might be saying, “Lord, this is what’s going on in me and you said, to cite one of those beautiful promises from the psalms, the prophets or Jesus words, “You told me to cast all my cares upon you because you care for me” and then just to ask for what we need: God I need the noise to go down, I need the volume to go down, I need to let go of the values of this ambition world and culture and rest in you; help me to do that.
“I have calmed and quieted my soul,” and that kind of quietness becomes possible because we hear Gods love as Paul says in Romans 8:38-39, that passage that there is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from the love of God. We can rest secure in the love of God, not matter what’s going on in our heads.
We know that all that we do to serve Christ in the world, whether it looks successful in the eyes of the world or not, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “We know that our labor is not in vain in the Lord.” It is not empty, it matters, God uses it. We can relax in knowing that God is working in our lives, in our circumstances, working all things together for good, for his glory, for the good of the kingdom, and for ours.
And so, this quietness and humility become this compatible roommate. We quiet down and we trust in God and we rest in him. The natural movement from arrogance and ambition to humility and trust in God’s maternal care for us and the next move is one of ministry.
He turns, the psalmist who has been speaking in the first person about his own life with God, He turns to his brothers and sisters who are in this pilgrimage with him and he speaks to them, he speaks to the community of the faithful traveling through this anxious, ambitious, noisy world and he calls on all of God’s people to put our hope in God.
“O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore.”
It’s worth it, place your trust and hope in him. It is a common call of the psalmist to God’s people, in fact the psalm just before, ended with the same call:
“O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.”
This call to hope in God, hoping in the Lord, is a posture and a proper attitude for those who are in this pilgrim journey, following Christ though life, hoping in the Lord is the turning away from our self-sufficient, frantic, ambitious living and placing our faith in quiet dependent on God, in God’s constant unfailing God, that’s what hoping in the Lord is.
Hoping in the Lord is the confidence that God holds our future and that no matter what future this journey takes us to, that God is already there, waiting for us, and God has already provided for that.
Nothing will separate us from his love, nothing we encounter along the way. And we will encounter nothing that He is incapable of working for his glory and for our good and for the good of his kingdom.
Hoping in the Lord, is not just a practice for individual pilgrims either, it’s for the community of faith who are journey together.
“O Israel,” he says, he could have said, “O church hope in the Lord.” He could have said, “O St. John’s UCC hope in the Lord. Your future is in the hands of the same God who brought you this far in your journey. Hope in the Lord.”
The God of hope, as Paul calls him in Romans 15 awaits the church in every moment of his future. We journey together toward God and toward God’s purposes and we encounter nothing along the way as the people of God, that God is incapable of meeting with his love and his provision and his providence and his goodness. He will provide as we demonstrate in our love and living with each other and with Him and in serving this world. He will follow us and walk before us and walk beside us. He will provide as we surrender our selfish ambition for a life of godly aspiration, our arrogance for humility and service to one another and our world and our striving for trust.
As we make those exchanges, God is the God of hope who awaits us, who provides for us,
O St. John’s UCC trust in the Lord. Our memories of Gods work in our past are powerful, but what memory is to the past, hope is to the future. It is the way we sort of remember the future, it’s the way we think about God is taking us and believe in God’s presence even as he has been present with us in the past.
Author and church consultant Kennon Callahan wrote, “Hope is stronger than memory. Salvation is stronger than sin. Forgiveness is stronger than bitterness. Reconciliation is stronger than hatred. Resurrection is stronger than crucifixion. Light is stronger than darkness… Hope is stronger than memory.”
It is hope that takes us forward. It is what God calls us into, a life that trusts in him, surrendering our ambition, hope in Him as we walk along this path together.
Let’s read this this song together again.
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and to marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forever more.