Hidden and Concealed in the Love of God (A Sermon on Psalm 27)

This is a transcript of a sermon I preached in late January at a local retirement community. It's based on Psalm 27, which is copied below. One of the things I love about this scripture is its invitation to us to find ourselves, especially in the midst of distress, "hidden" in the love of God. That's what the "shelter" of God entails - it's a sense of divine love, an affection and promise of loyalty and protection no matter what storms life may throw at us. I hope the following message is encouraging to you no matter what season of life you find yourself in.

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Psalm 27

1 The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold[a] of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

2 When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh— my adversaries and foes— they shall stumble and fall.

3 Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.

4 One thing I asked of the Lord; this I seek: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

5 For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.

6 Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

7 Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me! 8 “Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!” Your face, Lord, do I seek. 9 Do not hide your face from me.

Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off; do not forsake me, O God of my salvation! 10 If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.

11 Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. 12 Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence.

13 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 14 Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Good afternoon, friends! My name is Matt Heisler. I am so pleased to worship with you today and so grateful I get to share a word with you. Today’s reading is from the lectionary and comes from Psalm 27. I don’t know how many of you follow the lectionary or grew up reading from the lectionary, but my childhood tradition did not. As an adult, I find it absolutely beautiful that Christians all around the world are listening for God’s voice in this passage today.

Now, Psalm 27 may not be a familiar one to many of us. It’s far less famous than Psalm 23 with its beautiful imagery of green pastures and still waters, yet these two psalms have a lot in common. Both are psalms of David. Both start with a declaration about who God is. In Psalm 23, the Lord is David’s shepherd. In Psalm 27, God is David’s light and salvation. In both, the fact of who God is has immediate implications for how David should act. Because God is David’s shepherd, he won’t go without what he needs. He “shall not want,” because God is enough. Likewise, in Psalm 27, because God is David’s light and salvation, there is no one David should fear. Instead, he should have the utmost confidence in the midst of danger, enemies, and any other type of trouble. The same goes for us. If God is our shepherd, light, and salvation, we don’t need to worry; there’s no need to be afraid. But, this is so much easier said than done isn’t it? Worrying, fearing, anxiety - these are aspects of all of our lives, though some of us might experience them more than others.

I’ll admit that I struggle at times with worry, overthinking, and a lack of trust. In fact, I have a sign in my office that says “Hold on. Let me overthink this.” Maybe you can relate. Fear is at the root of a lot of different behaviors, and it's honestly not all bad. I was just at the zoo with my 2 year old and, as we rolled up to each animal area, I would watch my daughter’s reaction to see how close was too close to get to the fence. We got to the goats and she was happy to get as close as we could to see them. But, when we got to the sea otters, she did not like the look of them splashing around in the tank and insisted that I keep the stroller at least ten feet away from the glass. She’s right to have some caution - she doesn’t know these animals. They’re not as cute and cuddly as our puppy back home. As adults, a healthy dose of fear is what keeps us from shaking hands with a grizzly bear or taking needless risks on the freeway. However, what happens when our fear becomes over-active and keeps us from trusting each other or even keeps us from trusting God?

For my college internship, I worked in a group home with at-risk teenage boys, many of whom got into a lot of trouble with the law. When one of the boys would get agitated, they might scream, try to destroy walls and furniture, or try to attack the other boys or staff at the house. While it often looked like an angry teenager raging about, what became clear over time was that there were layers of trauma and fear beneath their behaviors. These boys were doing what they knew how to do and what they had grown up seeing - they were trying to control the out of control elements in their lives. They were trying to vanquish their own fears of abandonment, hurt, and betrayal. In these moments, I would find my own nervous system activating, my body and mind trying to make quick and thoughtful decisions other than fighting, flighting, or freezing. For those like the boys I worked with who had histories of abuse and neglect, it can be very, very hard to carry a calm confidence in the world, to trust that things will be ok or that, even if things aren’t ok, that God still loves them and is with them. All of us learn early on how to survive and thrive in the world and, if our homes were not the most stable and supportive places, we find ourselves expecting the worst even when things are going well, and jumping to extreme measures to try to regain a sense of control. We make decisions based on the world we’ve seen, and we may even harm those who are trying to help us.

In this Psalm, the author invites us to imagine with him all the worst things happening. David is facing enemies, war, hardship - in fact, bible scholars think this poem is inspired by a time when David was king and was facing rebellion. Enemies on all sides around him, the stress level was high. Yet, amidst the fears and the opposition, David keeps coming back to the light, the stronghold, the shelter of God. The lectionary reading ends with David pleading with God - don’t turn away, don’t abandon me!

Maybe you, like David, are carrying fears and trouble with you now. Maybe these fears are your own - your health, your future, a relationship that is causing you pain. Or maybe you are worried for others - your son or daughter is struggling, your friend is in trouble, health issues, work stress, the state of the larger world - war, houselessness, the economy. In the midst of all the things we face today, maybe a calm confidence is something we just don’t have. Perhaps the pleading, anxious voice we hear in verses 7-9 is more relatable. Maybe we find ourselves crying aloud, pleading with God to rescue us, to be with us, to keep us safe.

The hope we have, the good news that has come to us, is that God has not left us. Instead, God invites us to be hidden in his shelter, to be concealed in his house. This psalm itself is set up as an invitation. You see, we’re not just peeking into David’s journal and going, “wow, David really had a rough time back there. Glad I’m doing ok!” No, this Psalm is your invitation to come and seek the One who created you, who loves you, who, like a parent bending to scoop up their little one, wants to receive you. Psalms were not meant to be simply read and studied, but to be prayed, mumbled, and sung. We’re supposed to find ourselves in this Psalm - to even feel the anxiousness of the situation, of feeling surrounded and in big trouble - and then, with David, to seek God in it.

What if the anxiety we feel, the worrying we do, are actually hidden invitations to seek God? When we find ourselves wandering into troubled places of our hearts, what if, even in the trouble, our hearts are prompting us - “Come, seek God’s face!” Where might that invitation be in your own life these days? Where in your week, in your day, are you being prompted to come away and to seek who Henri Nouwen calls “the voice of love.”

The Scriptures are full of these invitations - they’re full of the wrestling through difficult emotions and experiences and the still, small voice that says “Come.” As our daughter has gotten older, she’s started to boss us around and tell us what to do. One of my favorites right now is when she gets into an activity she likes. If Grace or I are busy at the moment, she’ll come find us and just say “mommy, daddy, come!” If we linger, she’ll keep saying it, “come, come!” Usually, there’s something delightful waiting on the other end of her invitation, whether it’s a tea party, a train set, or her box of toy tools in front of her plastic kitchen - where she wants to fix the sink like daddy does! These interruptions, these invitations are normal parts of our day now and we find ourselves breaking away from our tasks to come and spend time with our little one.

How do we start to have a tender, warm relationship with God? One where we feel comfortable inviting God into our activities throughout the day; one where we are able to listen for the voice of love saying “come” to us. Amidst busyness, fear, stress, loneliness, despair, how can we seek the shelter of God? Jesus issues an invitation for us to come in the Gospel of John. Here’s the Message translation of John 15:9-10: “I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done - kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.” In verse 4, he says, “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you.” In other translations, the word “abide” is used. Abide in me, Jesus says.

This process of abiding, of finding ourselves sheltered by God, is a journey. It’s not something we learn in a day, but something we gradually learn over a lifetime. And, it’s learned in the middle of the stuff of life. Each moment is an invitation to make ourselves at home in the love of God.

At our Wednesday night youth group, we sometimes talk about different ways of dealing with stress and anxiety, different ways of inviting God into all the areas of our lives. One way that we’ve been teaching our teens about this is through breath prayers. Breath prayers are wonderful, and so simple, and you can do them anywhere. Here’s how they work: You take a short scripture passage and you practice syncing it with your breaths. Let’s try it with Psalm 27:1.

Breathe in. The Lord is my light.

Breathe out. Whom shall I fear?

Breathe in. The Lord is my salvation.

Breathe out. Of whom shall I be afraid?

Several years ago, I read a book called The Ragamuffin Gospel. Its subtitle is “good news for the bedraggled, beat-up, and burnt out.” Near the end of the book, Brennan Manning, the author who was a Catholic priest for years, shared a simple practice of finding a quiet place and repeating the words “the Lord is my shepherd.” Contemplative practices were new to me at the time, and I wasn’t expecting to start crying, but there I was, about 10 “the Lord is my shepherd’s” in, and tears starting to roll down my face. I did not even realize how much I was carrying at the time, but there I was, finding myself deeply comforted by the fact that God cares for me and watches over me. I knew this intellectually from a long history of Christian education, but there weren’t practices in my life to help all that head knowledge sink down into my heart.

The invitation is here for you, my friends, and will continue to be here for you. Come, make your home in God’s love. You don’t have to travel for it; the table is already set. God isn’t confined to a temple somewhere, but has come to us, promised his Spirit will be with us, and invites us to abide in him. In the turbulence and vulnerability of life, may we seek one thing: to make our home the love of God. May we listen for the invitation to come and be hidden and concealed in the love of God. Amen.