While We Have Breath
Psalm 90; Matthew 22:34–46
When preaching I see one of my many tasks is to get out of the way of great texts. And I hope to do that tonight with our Psalm and Gospel. Don’t worry, I’m not going to preach two sermons; but one sermon with one application, which I rarely offer. But instead of closing with my application point, I’d like to begin with it so that you can begin thinking over how the Holy Spirit might invite you to respond today’s good news:
What might God be inviting you to lay down or take up so that you may number your days, to be satisfied by the steadfast love of God, and to love God, self and neighbor?
It’s appropriate that we have Psalm 90 appointed for us tonight since we heard read the text describing the death of Moses. It is the most often selected Psalm from our Burial Rite.
The Hebrew in the superscription of Psalm 90 literally reads “a prayer to Moses, man of God.” More than likely, this does not refer to Moses as the author, but a desire to connect the life of Moses with the psalm’s theme of asking for wisdom in light of the brevity and difficulty of human life, as well as the story of Moses, who was not allowed to enter the promised land.
Can you see it in your mind’s eye? Moses standing on top of Mount Pisgah looking into the land promised by God. I wonder what moments of reminiscence or regret filled his mind from his 120 years? His time as a boy in Pharaoh’s palace. Killing the Egyptian. Wedding feast with Zipporah. Surely he thought about the burning bush, and and arguing with God about his stutter. He may have recalled how scared he was going back to Pharaoh. And then the first Passover. I wonder if his old heart skipped a beat remembering walking through the Red Sea or that first morning of manna and quail. I wonder if he, like me, was still beating himself up over his faults and failures. Or was he simply grateful for the chapter he played in God’s story?
Psalm 90 takes us back to a time when God’s people were without a king, without a temple, without land or barrios. Prayer was their sword and God was their refuge.
Based on the Psalm, tonight I have the privilege and joy to declare this good news over us:
In the face of life’s brevity that often seems filled with difficulties, God is our refuge; and while we still have breath God empowers us to love.
Our Psalm begins with a Hymn of Praise in verses 1–2; then transitions to Laments of the brevity and difficulty of human life in verses 3–12; and concludes with Pleas for mercy and restoration in verses 13–17.
Several Old Testament scholars have written about preferring the translation “home” instead of “dwelling place” or “refuge” because the notion of home indicates the provision of protection, community, and stability. But for me, like many of you, “there’s no place like home” not because of protection, community or stability; rather home was not a shelter from the storm, but the storm itself.
One night, before Emily and I were married, we talked about the importance of family, and our desires and longings for our life together. I mentioned that I hate packing and moving, so I’d like to be in a pastorate or her in the academy for a long time, in order to have our household grow deep roots and be invested in one place for the long haul.
We both benefited from being in one town from middle school through high school graduation. But where we differ is that I moved eight times in the seven years from middle through high school. From apartments, to roach-infested trailers, to my aunt’s fold-out couch. We had extended family nearby so we were never un-housed. But we were often without a home, without a refuge. It was the first semester of my senior year of high school when my mom and abusive step-dad finally separated permanently and divorced. And it was just after my graduation that we packed up what was left and we moved to another rental property.
Maya Angelou was right: “The ache for home lives in all of us.” I know this is true from experience. Thankfully, even without a proper, settled home, I did have a refuge, a safe place to run to.
Mamma Hannah presided over that refuge. She was the mother of one of my good friends, Brandon, from church and the football team. Mamma Hannah’s house was a place of security, warmth, and protection. Even as a single mom living on one income, she always had food for me to eat and place for me to nap. After our summer football practices (or two-a-days), I would drive Brandon home after our first practice and we would eat and then I would lay face down on their living room carpet and sleep. It was a place of peace, protection, and community that allowed me, in the midst of all my trouble, to rest—my face smashed into Mamma Hannah’s plush beige carpet.
That is the kind of “refuge” or “dwelling place” that our psalmist is praising God for. In spite of the difficulties of life, in spite of the brevity of this human life, God is our refuge. In God we are safe. In God we are home. In God we are stable.
Even before there was… God was there. God’s Spirit hovering over the formless, chaotic void. Calling forth light and life. The Creator, Lord, and Deliverer has given his people refuge throughout the generations.
The stability of God contrasts with the brevity of human life.
The Lord is the one who is…
“Our refuge in all generations”
The Creator since “before the mountains were brought forth”
Who has been God “from everlasting to everlasting”
And for whom “a thousand years are…like yesterday…or like a watch in the night”
Human beings, on the other hand, are those who…
“Turn back to dust” at a single word from God
“Are like a dream” in the night
Spring up like grass fed by morning dew, but who fade and wither before evening
And have a lifespan that is “seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong”
Compared to God, we are dust and vapor, dreams and grass.
This is reminiscent of the Preacher who authored Ecclesiastes, who reminds us, “Absolute futility. Everything is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” And “Humanity’s fate is no different from animals: both die and go to the same place. All that lives comes from dust and to dust all that lives returns.” We simply cannot escape the hopelessness of human extinction.
Still, the psalmist, like the Preacher, prays against any futile arguments like carpe diem or “just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Listen to the prayer in verse 12: “Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.”
A wise heart might be one that turns away from human attempts at self-deception or self-justification; one that, paradoxically, implores the very God who says to us, “turn back to dust” (v. 3) to “Turn… Be gracious [have compassion] on your servants!” (v. 13).
The psalmist then returns to the theme of time and pleads with God, if not to wind back the hands of time, then at least to reverse some of the more deflating and discouraging effects of human mortality. The burdensome sense that a mortal life is without purpose; the debilitating sense that nothing we do matters because death comes for all; the horrible fear that there is nothing that can satisfy us or give us joy.
The psalmist prays for God to “satisfy us by your steadfast love in the morning” and “make us glad by the measure of the day that you afflicted us, and the years in which we suffered adversity.” The testimony here is that grace, satisfaction, joy, and gladness are not marketable or manufacturable goods that can be seized. Rather, they are gifts made freely available by God; they are extended without condition by the Creator and Deliverer who has been our refuge from ages past.
In this light, even the psalm’s doubly repeated closing plea to “prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work of our hands” is not just a plea, but a kind of promise. The promise is that the work done by mortal hands here on earth can make a lasting difference—when the Eternal One blesses it.
O God, you are our refuge, so teach us to number our days, satisfy us with your steadfast love, and prosper the work of our hands.
The first part of our good news is that in the face of life’s brevity that often seems only filled with difficulties, God is our refuge…
And I close our time together with the second portion of our good news: as long as we still breath God empowers us to love.
When the Pharisees come to ask Jesus a question about which is the greatest commandments, he answers them out of the Torah with Deuteronomy 6:5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all that you have.”
Jesus’ response would have found resounding affirmation from his Jewish contemporaries. In synagogues to this day, Deuteronomy 6:5 is recited as part of the Shema—the daily prayer that begins with the preceding verse: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deut. 6:4).
But Jesus gives the lawyer even more than he asked for. He continues: “And a second is equal to it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Lev. 19:18).
A famous story preserved in the Babylonian Talmud (circa 600 CE) states that the renowned first-century sage Hillel once paraphrased Leviticus 19:18 for a non-Jew, saying, “Whatever is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is all the Torah, the rest is commentary. Go, study.”
“On these two commandments hang all the Torah and the Prophets,” Jesus says.
Again, back to our question: What might God be inviting you to lay down or take up so that you may number your days, to be satisfied by the steadfast love of God, and to love God, love yourself, and love your neighbor? As you consider your answer, remember a couple things about love:
First, love dispels the notion that our neighbor is a stranger; that our neighbor is an other in our midst. Remember the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The “neighbor,” Jesus says, was the one who helped the man in need. We are to go and do likewise.
Second, we cannot love others if we refuse to love and care for ourselves. Jesus exhorts us to love others as we love ourselves. If you do not love yourself, though, what kind of love can you offer your neighbor?
Compared to God we are dust and vapor, dreams and grass. And, at the same time, we are deeply loved by God our Creator and Deliverer.
O Lord! Have compassion on your servants!
Satisfy us with your steadfast love, and make us glad all our days.
May the favor of the Lord our God be upon us… while we still have breath!
May God prosper the work of our hands… while we still have breath;
—to Love God, self, and neighbor with all of who we are—
O prosper the work of our hands… while we still have breath!
