{"id":843,"date":"2011-06-30T13:53:09","date_gmt":"2011-06-30T17:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stlydias.org\/blog\/?p=843"},"modified":"2011-07-20T10:58:44","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T14:58:44","slug":"maxs-sermon-on-psalm-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/maxs-sermon-on-psalm-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Max\u2019s Sermon on Psalm 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Summer, St. Lydia’s is welcoming guest preachers to share the Word with us.\u00a0 Reverend Maxwell Grant from Community Church of the Pelhams, UCC in Pelham, NY<\/em> joined us last Sunday, June 26, and shared this sermon on Psalm 8.<\/em><\/p>\n

Part of what I find so wonderful about Psalm 8 is its profound celebration of Creation.\u00a0 Many people make a connection between Psalm 8 and the opening of the Book of Genesis, and it has that same kind of cataloguing quality\u2014that same evocation of divine balance and order in bringing forth Creation.\u00a0 And I can see that.<\/p>\n

Actually, for me, it\u2019s a little bit like the opening shot of the movie \u201cCasablanca.\u201d\u00a0 You may not remember the opening shot of \u201cCasablanca.\u201d\u00a0 Trust me, it\u2019s just like this.\u00a0 \u201cCasablanca\u201d begins with the picture of a slowly turning globe, and then it zooms in to North Africa, and then onto the city of Casablanca, and then it goes closer and closer, further and further down, from the highest minaret until it finally comes to restonto the streets, where, if my memory serves, they are hard at work gathering up the usual suspects and watching for the take-off of the daily plane to Lisbon.\u00a0 Does anyone else remember that?<\/p>\n

If you look closely, Psalm 8 has a kind of analogous structure.\u00a0 An older version reads:\u00a0 \u201cWhat is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou does care for him?\u00a0 Yet thou hast made him a little less than God [some versions say \u201cgods\u201d; some say \u201c a little lower than the angels”] and dost crown him with glory and honor.\u201d\u00a0 You can kind of picture the spinning globe, there, can\u2019t you?\u00a0 \u201cThou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet\u2026\u201d\u00a0 The camera is starting to zoom in, now, \u201call the sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now the camera goes even further:\u00a0 \u201cwhatever passes along the paths of the sea\u2026..\u201d\u00a0 Warner Brothers couldn\u2019t have done it any better.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting about that particular shot in \u201cCasablanca,\u201d of course, is that it reminds us that the drama that will play out, mostly between three people, in a particular caf\u00e9 in a a remote city, is somehow connected to the spinning of the globe itself.\u00a0 At one point in the movie, Rick says to Ilsa that \u201cthe problems of three little people don\u2019t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.\u201d\u00a0 And yet the opening shot has already signalled to us that this isn\u2019t true. Somehow, maybe in ways they cannot entirely fathom, all Creation is somehow implicated in their problems.\u00a0 And so, by extension, all Creation is somehow implicated in their choices. Well, the Psalmist probably didn\u2019t have the chance to check out \u201cCasablanca.\u201d\u00a0 But I think he would have shared some of that sensibility. He evokes the majesty of Creation so powerfully\u2014looking at God\u2019s handiwork and wondering who we can possibly be, given the grandeur of everything around us. But then there is that crucial word right in the heart of the Psalm — right at the hinge, if you will \u2013 where he says: \u201cYet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the rest of Reverend Max’s sermon…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Summer, St. Lydia’s is welcoming guest preachers to share the Word with us.\u00a0 Reverend Maxwell Grant from Community Church of the Pelhams, UCC in Pelham, NY joined us last Sunday, June 26, and shared this sermon on Psalm 8. Part of what I find so wonderful about Psalm 8 is its profound celebration of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":845,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}