Psalm 27
January 23, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Apart from the 15 years that I have been with you living in the Bay Area and sheltered under the tent of this church, I have lived most of my life, 47 years in areas of the country that snowed in the winter. When the first snowfall comes, everyone gets excited and giddy as we reflect about how beautiful and white everything is. We recall childhood memories of building a snowman and having a snowball fight. But this nostalgia quickly changes into the challenges of shoveling the white stuff off the sidewalks and trying to drive to where you need to be. I am always amused when I receive Christmas cards from some of you with snow scenes. Perhaps you are trying to remind me of where I originally came from.
One of the special attractions of going to the church sponsored Yosemite Trip in late April this year is to see the snow banks along the road as you enter into Yosemite Valley. When we hike along the trails to Yosemite Falls, the cold mountain streams are often banked with snow packs ready to scoop up with your hands to play. If you lived in the East Coast, you wouldn’t have to drive 4 hours to see snow.
There was a man named, Wilson Alwyn Bentley who lived from 1865 to 1931 in Vermont where there was a lot of snow in the winter. He was fascinated by snow. He found a way to put snowflakes on black velvet and photographed them; testing the hypothesis that no two are exactly the same. He photographed and published more than 5,000 individual snowflakes, and today you can see his work at the Buffalo Museum of Science.
Because of his obsession, Bentley was given a nickname—“Snowflake or Flaky.”
Bentley examined snowflakes under a microscope and discovered that they were all miracles of beauty. “Every crystal was a masterpiece of design, and no one design was ever repeated,” he wrote. “When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.” I have personally experienced this miracle many times in my life—seeing a snowflake land on my coat and the intricate design that it had. If I tried to catch the snowflake on my hand, it would melt right away.
Looking at Bentley’s snowflake collection, a writer named Morgan Meis found that he was especially fond of snowflake number 892. Roughly stellar in category, it’s a bit irregular. The top left arm doesn’t have a cap like the other five do. Irregular but nonetheless beautiful.
We Are Flaky
Bentley isn’t the only person who should be given the nickname—“Snowflake or Flaky.” We all should. Each of us is a miracle of beauty, a masterpiece of design, and no one design is ever repeated. Are we irregular and a bit flaky? Of course! All kinds of irregularities—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, you name it and we are irregular in that. Just look at the person sitting neat to you. We are irregular human beings but still miracles of beauty, shaped in utter uniqueness by a loving and creative Creator.
Our Lord is the God of the snowflakes and flaky people like us.
Psalm 27 begins with the words, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (v.1). If we are, in fact, God’s snowflakes—precious, unique and transient—then we need a Lord to preserve us and act as a stronghold for us. Otherwise, we’re going to melt, disappear and be lost forever.
Faith or Fear
The first verse of Psalm 27 captures and summarizes the entire psalm. It challenges us to make a choice between faith or fear. Either we make the faith choice, seeing God as “my light and my salvation,” or we make a fear choice, looking for the answer to the question, “whom shall I fear?”
As snowflakes, we don’t have to go far to find something to fear. We know we’re vulnerable to physical illnesses, emotional distresses, relational breakdowns, economic stresses and spiritual crises. It’s no wonder that at times of death and dying, we hear from people we haven’t heard from for a long time. It’s no surprise that when great tragedies happen in the world, we have more people streaming into church. It’s not unusual when one is sick in the hospital that you want a prayer of comfort and healing miracles from the pastor. Sometimes we feel as delicate and transient as snowflakes—quick to melt down and disappear forever.
But if we make the faith choice, our future looks very different. We aren’t so vulnerable if we put our trust in God because we discover that the Lord is our light, our salvation and the stronghold of our life. The key is to put our trust in the Almighty God, not in ourselves.
When we live in God’s light, we’re living in the Lord’s presence. God’s face often appears as light, or shines upon his people, such as in the Old Testament blessing: “The Lord makes his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:25). So when the Lord is our light, we are living close to God just like when we pull the desk light closer to what we are doing to see. In Psalm 27:8-9, we read, “Your face, Lord, do I seek. Do not hide your face from me.”
The faith choice also reveals to us that the Lord is our salvation and the stronghold of our life. After the Israelites were saved from the Egyptians, Moses and his people sang out, “The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation” (Exodus 15:2).
Later, the writers of the psalms spoke of God repeatedly as a stronghold or refuge, such as in Psalm 28, “The Lord is the strength of his people; he is the saving refuge of his anointed” (v. 8). God is our salvation, saving us from disaster. The Lord is our stronghold, the saving refuge of all who trust in him.
That’s good news for snowflakes. It’s good news for each flaky person like us.
Faith Over Fear
When we choose faith over fear, we receive the assurance of God’s power and presence through all the challenges of life. This is expressed in Psalm 27, when the psalm-writer says that he wants “to live in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life” (v. 4). In Bible times, God was thought to live in the temple in Jerusalem; so to live in the house of the Lord was to live in God’s presence.
We talk today about looking for a house in the “best Zip code.” This means living where the schools are good, crime is low and property values are on the rise. The writer of Psalm 27 knows that the best ZIP code is Jerusalem 91491, where God’s presence is felt in a powerful and permanent way. We believe that God’s presence is with us in this church so when you make your spiritual home: 1 Waverly Place, San Francisco, 94108, you will experience God’s presence in a powerful and permanent way.
Most of you already know the tragedies and premature deaths that happened in my nuclear family leaving me today the only surviving member of my family of 6 people. I believe today that if it wasn’t for God’s presence that I felt from my home church in Boston that demonstrated to me that God is my light and my salvation and is the stronghold in my life that I would not be the person I am today. As snowflakes, we cannot afford to live anywhere else but in God’s house.
When we choose faith over fear, Psalm 27 tells us that God “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” (v. 5). This means that God will offer protection and deliverance to all who trust in him, keeping them safe from anything that will destroy them. I can stand here today and say to you that God has kept me safe throughout these many years and that he has protected me from all things that may have threatened my life.
Challenges and Crises
While we know that challenges will still arise; and crises will still come. God’s promise of protection and deliverance means we’ll never be completely destroyed by adversity—will never melt and disappear, like a snowflake in our hands.
There’s a true story of a horrible tragedy that would cause most people to melt down. Patricia Dahlgren’s mother was murdered. But Dahlgren responded with faith instead of fear. Twelve years after the killing, Dahlgren, accompanied by a friend and a minister, spent an entire day in an Oregon prison with the killer. Dahlgren told the killer about her emotional journey after losing her mother, and the killer told her exactly what he had done, admitting that he was sorry for it and ashamed of it.
The meeting led to healing, for victim and offender. Dahlgren told the killer she forgave him, which stunned everybody in the room.
The promise of God’s protection and deliverance doesn’t shield us from suffering or pain. But it does mean the Lord shields and guides us as we move through life’s horrors so that we’ll emerge with unexpected healing and strength. After passing through a time of hardship, the writer of Psalm 27 says, “Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me…I will sing and make melody to the Lord” (v. 6).
That’s probably how Dahlgren was feeling after her day visiting the prison. She sang a melody to the Lord. And that’s how we can feel as well, if we choose faith over fear and trust God to lead us toward healing and new life.
Like Snowflakes
Each of us will feel like a snowflake from time to time, blown around by the wind and in danger of melting. But when storms hit us, as they hit the first disciples, we’ll find that Jesus is sitting right beside us and asking us, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
When illness strikes us, as it struck the people of Galilee, we’re going to feel weakened and discouraged. But if we reach out to Jesus, we’ll receive unexpected wholeness, and Jesus will say, “Your faith has made you well” (Mark 5:34).
Death is going to threaten us, as it threatened the daughter of a man named Jairus. But Jesus will come to us and say, “Do not fear, only believe” (Mark 5:36).
We’ll face enormous personal challenges, as the disciples did when they encountered a crowd of 5,000 hungry people. But Jesus will say to us, as he said to his disciples, “You give them something to eat” (Mark 6:37). If we choose faith over fear, all will eat and be filled.
We need to trust God, instead of ourselves.
Bentley photographed more than 5000 individual snowflakes. Jesus fed 5000 hungry people. Each was a miracle of beauty, a masterpiece of design, and no one design was ever repeated.
As human beings, we are unique miracles and masterpieces while having important things in common—particularly our shared need for God’s protection and deliverance. We can hold onto our individual identities and distinctive characteristics while working together to choose faith over fear.
On Thursday, I’ll be flying to Philadelphia to participate in some American Baptist planning meetings on home missions to Asian Americans and the San Juan Biennial this June. Then on my way to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for a pastors conference, I’ll stop by to visit our son and his family in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. I am hoping that I would see some snowflakes and not a snow blizzard. And if I get the chance to experience snowflakes like I did for 47 years, I will stop and examine each snowflake that lands on my coat and think about each one of you. I will say, “This one is so and so who is going through some difficult times. This one is so and so who is experiencing illness and suffering. This one here is so and so who is overstressed over economic matters. This one is so and so who is going through a difficult marriage. This one there is so and so who is facing a dry spell in faith and seeking for refreshing water.
I will stop and pray for your protection and deliverance because “The Lord is our light and our salvation; whom shall we fear? The Lord is the stronghold of our life; of whom shall we be afraid?”
The God of the snowflakes will not let us down since each of us is a miracle of beauty, a masterpiece of design. And when we do have meltdowns, God in Christ will be there too.
Let us pray.
Dear God, may we rise above our fears to live lives of courage filled with hope. May we draw strength from you and from each other so that we might prophesy against injustice, advocate for those who are weak, restore those who feel lost, and bless those for whom hope is dim. As the light of our salvation and the stronghold of our lives, we thank you for creating each of us as a one of a kind masterpiece and protecting us from the things that threaten us. In Christ, we pray. Amen.