Ps 126

28 March 2004

5th Sunday in Lent

“A Reversal of Fortunes”

            When I lived in Tennessee, I was a member of the Nashville chapter of Bread for the World, which is a group that educates people about world hunger and works within our political system to relieve it.  In 2002, we at Westminster participated in their Offering of Letters.

Anyway, we used to meet at West End United Methodist Church.  Through that group, I found out about a banquet that was going to be held in another church in Nashville (I believe this one was Presbyterian).  This was in May of 1991.  The dinner was being sponsored by the Eritrean community in the Nashville area.  I told a brief version of this story on Wednesday night two or three weeks ago.

            I mentioned Eritrea the Sunday after that during joys and concerns.  I asked that we pray for the church whose members had been arrested.  And for those who’ve forgotten and for everyone who doesn’t love geography as much as I do:  Eritrea is a country in what’s called the horn of Africa, along the Red Sea coast.  For many years, it was occupied by Ethiopia.

            So anyway, I decided to go to this event, not really knowing what to expect.  I was somewhat familiar with the political situation; I knew that the Eritreans had been fighting for their independence for about 30 years.  At the same time, there was a civil war going on among the Ethiopians; both the Eritreans and the Ethiopian rebels were fighting against the Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam.  All this was in my mind as I went to the church.  The event was open to the public, so I figured there must be some speaker or program to go along with the meal.

            But when I arrived, I found that things weren’t quite what I had imagined.  There was a dinner.  And for the first time in my life, I had Eritrean food.  In fact, for the first time in my life, I had African food of any kind!  I tried a little of everything and then decided what I liked the best.  And there was a speaker, but not someone standing behind a podium addressing a quietly listening audience.

            This wasn’t a calm lecture on the social and political events of the day.  This was a communal affair.  This was a time for celebration!  And that was precisely what made me think I was in the wrong place!  I didn’t expect to walk into a scene in which everyone seemed to know everyone else, except me!  I kept thinking, “I know this is open to the public, so why is almost everyone here an Eritrean?”  Out of maybe 200 men, women, boys, girls…and babies, there were about 20 Americans—and they all seemed to be familiar with everyone.  Apparently, I was the lone newcomer!  And I seriously thought about leaving.  I even went into the restroom near the exit, so that I could slip out unnoticed.

            And then I told myself to quit being such an idiot.  So what if I don’t know anyone?  So what if this is turning into a more…intimate setting than I had anticipated?  I didn’t drive all the way out here to spend 15 minutes, and then take off.  And besides, the people were very friendly and welcoming.  So I stayed.

            As I think about the beginning of today’s psalm, I remember that evening in Nashville.  “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.  Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy” (v. 1-2a).  This was most likely written some time—maybe a long time—after 538 B.C., when the Persian king Cyrus declared that the Jews could return home from exile in Babylon.  (This was after the Persians defeated the Babylonians.)  The psalmist is looking back to those golden days, when everything seemed possible, when their good fortune seemed like a beautiful dream.  Some of them may have even thought, “This is too good to be true; maybe we really are dreaming!”

            These scriptures wouldn’t remind me of that night if not for one little piece of news that was relayed to everyone in attendance.  While I was trying to decide which of the dishes I preferred, one of the hosts announced what they had learned that very day:  after three decades of struggle, Eritrea was free.  The war was over.

            There was a reaction of pure joy.  People literally began singing and dancing as the meaning of this historic moment dawned on them.  And there I was, just sitting there, eating my dinner.  I really was happy for them.  Like I said, I knew a little bit about their fight for freedom against the Marxist regime that had now been overthrown.

            But I really had no idea what they were feeling, what they were experiencing.  I had no idea what sacrifices these refugees had endured.  And there was another thing:  very few of them were over the age of 40.  For most of them, war in their homeland was all they had ever known.  I was glad that I didn’t go home; I would have missed the privilege of sharing that moment with them, even if only dimly and remotely.

            In a similar way, I see in Psalm 126 a scene of joy and celebration easily as exuberant as the one that erupted around me in the church gymnasium that night.  One difference, of course, is that the psalmist is recalling something from the past.  One similarity, though, is that like my witnessing the joy of the Eritreans, the nations witness the joy of the returned exiles.  They recognize that “the Lord has done great things for them.”  In verse 3, the psalmist agrees and adds, “and we rejoiced.”

            This is a short psalm, only six verses.  And so far, we’ve looked at what may be considered the first part, a great reversal of fortunes by Yahweh, a reversal so wonderful that it almost seems unreal.  Now we move to the second part, in which the great hopes of the past are beginning to fade, and it’s felt that another great reversal of fortunes is needed.

            The second part begins with verse 4, which puts in the form of a prayer, a request, what verse 1 had as a statement.  “Restore our fortunes, O Lord,” adding, “like the watercourses in the Negeb,” or the Negev.  The Negev is the dry southern region of Israel.

In biblical times, it wasn’t quite the desert it is now; that’s partly due to human mismanagement.  But it was semi-arid, and the “watercourses” or streams, also known as wadis, would often be totally dry.  And I think we know what happens when soil that has been baked by the sun, and is very hard and very dry, suddenly receives water during a downpour.  Flash flood!  The earth is simply unable to receive the moisture that’s so quickly being brought to it.  The water runs through creek beds as though on a raincoat.

            We have here an image of very dramatic change.[1]  The psalmist cries out to God for a quick and definite reversal of fortunes.  Just as the barren land can suddenly be deluged and transformed into a place where the thirsty plants and animals can awaken from their dormancy, so God’s people can experience an outpouring that will shake them from their slumber and bring them to life.

            Our God is a God of great reversals.  We see that in the scriptures from start to finish.  Abraham (with help from Sarah and Hagar!) goes from being childless to being the father of three major world faiths.  The Israelites go from being an enslaved people in Egypt to being a liberated people in Canaan.  Jesus goes from being dead and buried to being raised and filled with resurrection life.  The apostle Paul goes from being an avowed enemy of the church to giving his life for the gospel.

There are many more such reversals, though sometimes they work in the opposite direction.  Not only are the lowly raised up, but the high and mighty are brought down a peg or two—or three.  As Jesus says, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Mt 23:12).

            In the last two verses, the psalmist introduces a picture that, to me anyway, seems kind of strange.  He speaks of those who weep while they sow seed and shout for joy while they reap.  I realize that, not having grown up on a farm, there are many things about agriculture I don’t understand.  But I remember visiting, throughout my childhood, some of my relatives in West Virginia who do know about farming, and I honestly don’t recall ever seeing them burst into tears while planting seed—or whooping it up while they harvested the crops.  There must be something else going on here!

In ancient times, there was a saying, “one must not laugh when he sows, lest he weep when he harvests.”[2]  Like many human rituals, this business of sowing in sorrow and reaping in joy has a religious origin.

There once was a belief that the god of fertility would die each year, only to be reborn with the growth of the next year’s crops.  The Egyptians called him Osiris, and it’s been said that “the sowing of the seed and the covering of it with the soil was like the burying of the god Osiris.”[3]  The Greeks referred to him as Adonis, and the Babylonians called him Tammuz, whose Israelite adherents are revealed in a vision to the prophet Ezekiel (8:14).[4]  The time of sowing seed was felt to be a time of death for the god, and weeping was the appropriate response, especially if you wanted your efforts to be blessed.

            I don’t think that the psalmist is promoting the worship of a fertility god; he’s simply mentioning a practice whose origin has largely been forgotten.  We have something similar with our Christmas trees, which are evergreens.  For Christians, the tree represents the eternal life in Christ, while for the ancient Northern European pagans who began the practice of bringing a tree indoors, the tree itself was worshipped.  Or rather, the spirit in the tree that kept it alive during the long, cold winter was worshipped.

            The psalmist expresses the desire that the people, like the one who weeps while planting seed, may, by God’s good graces, be like the one who happily sings at harvest time.  In the words of the old song, which is today’s final hymn, “We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.”  The Lord has reversed our fortunes before, like when the exiles returned home.  We pray that the Lord will do it again.

            Thomas Keating, whose Lenten devotional I’ve mentioned this month, speaks of dying to the false self and allowing the true self to emerge.[5]  This is the ultimate reversal of fortune!  “God has more than one way of bringing us to this point,” he says.  “It can happen early in adult life, but if it does not, the ongoing stages of natural life may contribute to bringing it about.  In the mid-life crisis, even very successful people wonder if they have accomplished anything.”  I wonder, if I were to suddenly show up one day with hair plugs (the kind that look and feel real, of course!) and a hot sports car, would those be signs of mid-life crisis?

            Keating goes on, “Later we experience physical decline, illness, and the infirmities of old age.  What happens in the process of dying may be God’s way of correcting all the mistakes we made and all the opportunities we missed during the earlier part of our lives.  It may also provide the greatest chance of all to consent to God’s gift of ourselves.”

We all sow seeds, in a figurative sense.  What are those seeds?  In our epistle reading (Ph 3:4b-14), the apostle Paul begins with what we might call “credentials.”  Then he says this:  “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.  More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (vv. 7-8).  Take that, mid-life crisis!  The harvest of the seeds he sowed in the past mean nothing to him now.  The seeds that he has sown in Christ are all that matter now.

I’ve mentioned the budget for the past two weeks and our problems in even paying the monthly bills.  Still, despite our need, that’s no reason to be bogged down by despair or discouragement.  What matters are the seeds we continue to sow in Christ.  OK, we’re short on cash!  But that doesn’t mean it’s time to stop ministry, give up, and close shop.  We are God’s people; let’s use our imagination to fulfill the vision God has placed before us.

How about some creative fundraisers!  If we put our heads together, I know we’ll come up with some great ideas!  Can I work at a fundraiser?  Sure!  Can you?  Can you?  Can the Women’s Association and the Westminster Dames get together and have a huge bake sale?  Can the men get together and find ways of raising extra funds for ministry?  How can we involve the kids so that their work will extend to families in our neighborhood?

Friends, again I remind you:  we are God’s holy and chosen people, and if we’re willing to continue to sow the seeds in Christ, God will indeed restore our fortunes, and we will be like those who dream.  Then our mouth will be filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.

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