In the Shelter of the Most High
A sermon shared at the Suttons Bay Congregational Church
January 17, 2021
Len Niehoff
Scripture: Psalm 91
The pandemic has led many of us to return to old and familiar hobbies or to take up new ones. Last year, I built Lisa her first raised garden bed so she could try her hand at growing vegetables. She went at it with her characteristic zeal, and as a result we can now tell you all the things you can do with a crop of several hundred cherry tomatoes.
I’m an enthusiastic amateur carpenter, so I’ve spent lots of time constructing boardwalks, potting benches, grilling tables, woodsheds, and the like. Lisa is a dedicated knitter, so she’s been hard at work on endless numbers of hats, mittens, cowls, and socks. At one point, we were so busily laboring at these two activities that I worried we’d get mixed up and I’d build a sweater made of cedar and she’d knit an addition onto the house.
In the isolation of the pandemic, we also found ourselves watching much more television than we normally do. We started by bingeing on a show called Outlander, which attracted Lisa because of the knitted shawls and capelets worn by Claire, the protagonist. The show appealed to me because it is largely set in Scotland and I am a member of the Gordon clan on my mother’s side.
The Gordons had a habit of fighting in the losing battles for Scottish independence from the English, and Outlander rather graphically depicts some of those skirmishes, including the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the show, as the Scottish soldiers prepare for that battle, a woman begins to recite those inspiring words of Psalm 91. “He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler … He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge … You will not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day … For he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.”
Alas, although the Battle of Culloden lasted only about an hour, it went very badly for the Scots. They suffered massive casualties and found their uprising summarily repressed. The words of Psalm 91 offered inspiration to the warriors—but those stirring phrases did not play out in the reality of the fight.
Psalm 91 is one of my favorite passages in the Hebrew Bible. Over the years, I have turned to it countless times for comfort and encouragement. But I fear that we cannot read it or hear it without sensing the deep theological problem it embodies: its words, beautiful as they are, can feel disconcertingly disconnected from our lived experience.
If we read Psalm 91 in a superficial manner, then we might take it to offer the following message: “Here’s how it works. If you believe and trust in God, then He will shield you from bad things, protect you from bad people, and rescue you from bad circumstances.” That sounds like a great arrangement, but it doesn’t always align very well with what actually happens on the ground. To the contrary, life teaches us that bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, the innocent die young, the guilty die old, and so on and so on.
Edward Abbey famously declared that “Life is unfair. And it’s not fair that life is unfair.” On many days, that diagnosis may seem more consistent with life as we muddle through it than do those lines of Psalm 91. And this leaves us with a serious theological dilemma: Is Psalm 91 simply a collection of false promises? Or does it have meaning for us after all—perhaps even a meaning that can bring us into a place of great courage and to a peace that passes all understanding?
Now, the problem I describe here is not limited to Psalm 91. To the contrary, it is in many ways the central dilemma of our faith. How can we believe in a loving and compassionate God when our world is burdened by so much pain, suffering, violence, cruelty, unfairness, and death?
People have been trying to answer this question for so long that the effort to do so has its own name—"theodicy.” And that project has occupied such intellectual giants as Plotinus, St. Augustine, St. Irenaeus, John Milton, and Gottfried Leibniz. Indeed, Leibniz came up with the word “theodicy” when he wasn’t busy inventing calculus and refining the binary number system in ways that ultimately made computers possible.
It can be hard to find a factual proposition with which all of the members of any given congregation will agree, but here’s an easy one for all of you: those guys that I just mentioned are smarter than I am. So, spoiler alert: if they couldn’t come up with a completely satisfactory answer to that question, neither can I. If John Milton, one of the greatest minds of the 17th century, could not achieve his goal “to justify the ways of God to man” in the ten-thousand lines of verse in his epic poem Paradise Lost, then it’s unlikely I’m going to pull it off this morning in Suttons Bay, Michigan, even after three cups of coffee.
My modest goal for today is therefore to make two points about Psalm 91 that I think might help direct us toward an answer, even if they don’t give us a definitive one. The first is a point about the language of Psalm 91. And the second is a point about what that language tells us about the nature of God and our relationship with Him.
Let’s turn first to the language of Psalm 91. I invite you to notice that the words and phrases used in the psalm are overwhelmingly and highly poetic. Indeed, the psalm deploys an abundance of rich and evocative images.
It talks about living in the “shelter of the Most High,” abiding in the “shadow of the almighty,” being delivered from the “snare of the fowler,” finding refuge “under [the] wings” of the Lord, discovering a “shield” in his faithfulness, taking up a “dwelling place” with the Almighty, and knowing that God himself has commanded His angels to worry after us and lift us up. Little wonder we find so much poetry here: the psalms are, of course, songs, and it is their sound and their imagery that make them meaningful and memorable.
Indeed, if we try to reduce the glory of any psalm to simple declarative propositions, then we drain it of its central meaning. Consider those moving opening lines of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.” We miss the beauty of the psalm—and, I would argue, we miss the point—if we recast that poetry as: “God makes me nap in my backyard and walk next to drainage ditches.”
By the same token, we don’t want to reduce the rich and imaginative poetry of Psalm 91 to something that sounds like an advertisement for a lottery ticket. “Believe in God now and you may already have won a victory over someone or something bad! But remember—you have to play to win!” No, we can put aside the poetry of a psalm only at the expense of putting aside everything important that it is trying to tell us.
The great translator of ancient texts, Paul Roche, once made this point in connection with the Greek word “Thalassa.” “Thalassa” is a word dense in significance in Greek mythology and invokes images of the primeval spirit of the sea. Roche noted that a clueless translator could mess things up entirely by rendering the word as: “a vast expanse of salt water.” That translation might be accurate in some strictly literal sense, but much of the depth and complexity of the word “Thalassa” would fall away with it.
The theologian David Tracy argues that the Bible often uses this sort of poetic language for a specific reason. After all, the Bible is not a travel guidebook or an instruction manual or an ancient version of Google Maps. Rather, the Bible seeks to shed light on things that lie at the very limits of human experience and understanding: life; death; creation; redemption; rebirth; and, most fundamentally, the nature of God and the essence of our relationship with Him.
Tracy points out that we do not have the capacity to describe these things directly. We therefore must use what he calls “limit language”—things like parables, metaphors, and poetry—to gesture toward a Truth that we cannot convey outright. One of my favorite examples of this comes when Paul writes in First Corinthians that in this life we see only “through a glass, darkly”—using a bit of poetry because he does not even know enough to describe in straightforward terms what he does not know.
Paul expresses a lot of his theology through poetic, imagistic language. Just consider that famous passage in the sixth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, where Paul urges us to “put on the full armor of God,” including the “belt of truth,” the “breastplate of righteousness,” the “shield of faith,” the “helmet of salvation,” and the “sword of the spirit.” Like the 91st Psalm, these lines clothe us for the battles of life in an array of metaphors.
Throughout the gospels, Jesus too uses this sort of “limit language,” often answering direct questions with metaphors, images, or stories. Who are we? We are “the light of the world.” Why shouldn’t I judge other people? Because I have a log in my eye. How does the word of God spread? Like seeds that land in differing soil. What is the kingdom of heaven like? It’s like a mustard seed. And it’s like yeast. And it’s like a treasure hidden in a field. And it’s like a pearl of great price.
We even use such language in attempting to describe Jesus. Who is he? He is the lamb. The shepherd. The prince of peace. The alpha and the omega. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once observed that our language does not even allow us to describe fully the aroma of coffee; how, then, could we expect it to describe perfect love, grace, and compassion made incarnate?
The Bible therefore uses the tools of poetry. The text overflows with metaphors and similes and symbols and parables and all those other devices we learned about in English class but didn’t fully appreciate because we didn’t yet know that this is the language of the prophets, and the saints, and the apostles, and a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth. It is the language of Truth and Mystery—and, for those subjects, it is the only language we have, except maybe for the music of Bach.
That brings me to the second point about Psalm 91: through the very use of this sort of language, the text signals to us that the ways of God are, and must, remain deeply mysterious. Psalm 91 does not provide us with detailed information about how or when or in what manner God will embrace us, shelter us, fight for us, and deliver us. It just assures us that God will do so, perhaps in ways we cannot even recognize, let alone fully comprehend or appreciate.
The confidence that this is so constitutes the very essence of our faith. But, you will notice that this faith does not require us to believe many things. Instead, it asks us to subscribe to just one central idea: that God loves us. If we accept that single principle, then all sorts of things logically and necessarily follow from it.
Those include believing that God will provide for us, although in His own manner and time and not always in ways we understand. He will serve as our refuge and our fortress; He will cover us with His pinions and take us underneath His wings; He will command his legions of angels concerning us. How do we know this? Because a loving and compassionate God could not do otherwise.
This promise does not make anything inevitable. It does not mean that we will enjoy economic prosperity, or good health, or unalloyed happiness. It does not mean that people will respect us, honor us, love us, or even like us. And it certainly does not mean that we will be spared our hours in the valley of the shadow of death.
But it does mean that anything is possible. It means that even in that darkest of valleys we will have the most loving force in the universe at our side. It means that even in the midst of loss, or grief, or suffering, or despair, or depression we can experience the intimate presence of the Living God. “With man,” Jesus says in the 19th chapter of Matthew, such things are impossible. “But with God everything is possible.”
*
I am a long-time boxing fan and so was very excited several years ago to have the opportunity to visit the Muhammad Ali Museum in Lexington, Kentucky. By coincidence, today is Muhammad Ali’s birthday. Later today I’ll celebrate with a little root beer, his favorite drink.
Ali said many memorable things in the course of his life, and a number of them are quoted in the museum’s displays and on its walls. But, during my visit, I was particularly struck by the following words, which seem to me resonant with our scripture for today. Ali once said:
“Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion.
“Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare.
“Impossible is potential.
“Impossible is temporary.
“Impossible is nothing.”
*
Ours is a faith of impossibilities made possible. A God who sent his beloved Son to redeem us. A messiah born in a manger. A healed leper. A calmed storm. A walking paralytic. The blind given sight. The mute given speech. Thousands fed with a few loaves and fishes. The dead raised. An empty tomb. A resurrected Christ waiting on the shore to have a little breakfast with the disciples he taught and loved.
And our own lives become witnesses to this truth. Think of all the things that have become possible for us just when we had concluded that they were not: A sense of strength, when we had none left. A feeling of peace, when we felt overwhelmed. A gift of care or kindness or currency, when we had given up on generosity. An occasion to smile or laugh, when sadness threatened to overtake us. Calm in the storm, quiet in the cacophony, light in the dark, a still small voice comforting us in the chambers of the indifferent silence, a warm blanketing presence in our coldest and loneliest hours.
The theologian Howard Thurman wrote:
“God knows the heart’s secrets and deals with us at the level of the heart’s profoundest hunger. Where there is fear or anxiety, these take precedence over the ebb and flow of the inward tides. In order for the deepest things in us to be touched and kindled, both fear and anxiety must be wiped away. This we can do for ourselves, sometimes, but not often. The one thing that they cannot abide is conscious exposure to the Love of God.”
If we look around us, and within us, we see so much evidence of grace. Resorting yet again to poetic language, the scriptures in several places compare God to a “thief who comes in the night.” Granted, in these our lives we may never catch Him in the act. But, make no mistake about it, He leaves fingerprints.
*
Psalm 91 does not offer us easy answers. The psalmist knew that, if you’re looking for those in human existence, you came to the wrong place. Instead, the psalm offers us something better—a poetic expression of the Truth that necessarily follows from belief in a loving and compassionate God, even if for now we can grasp that Truth only through a glass, darkly.
Oh, sisters and brothers in Christ, rejoice this good day, rejoice. Rejoice, despite everything, rejoice. Rejoice, even in these difficult times, rejoice.
For you do indeed live in the shelter of the Most High. You abide in the shadow of the almighty. You will find refuge under the wings of God. You need not fear in the night, for you have made the Most High your dwelling place. And he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. He will be with you in your times of trouble. And he will show you his salvation.
And the people said: Amen.
