Bringing Harvest-Building The House: Psalm 126 & 127
THE EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
THE REV. MARQ TOOMBS, Redeemer rockwall
Psalm 126
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then they said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
3 The Lord has done great things for us;
we are glad.
4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like streams in the Negeb!
5 Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!
6 He who goes out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
bringing his sheaves with him.Psalm 127
Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
2 It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
3 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one's youth.
5 Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
Grace and peace be with you.
The fact that a Presbyterian pastor is your homilist today is further proof that desperate times call for desperate measures. (haha!) Whatever the circumstances, I am thankful to pray with you all on this Lord’s.
First of all, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Bishop Sutton for entrusting me to give a homily to his flock. It’s an honor to serve you in this way. Also, I want to express my love and gratitude for Father Michael. He’s the kind of friend we hope to find in this life, although few of us ever do. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to you. Your warmth and kindness to me over the past few years means more than you know. The psalms appointed for today are known as psalms of ascent – or degrees according to Saint Augustine. Either way, they are part of the group of psalms that our Jewish forefathers sang as they went up to Jerusalem, up to the temple, up for the feasts. Not only do they allow the worshiper to lift up their hearts, and lift them up unto the Lord, they allow the Spirit to lift up the worship into heaven, mystically not materially.
These psalms focus on two things – bringing in the harvest and building up the house. One way to read and pray the Psalms is with a view toward your harvest and your house. That’s a natural and practical way to read the Psalms and not without merit. Another way to read these psalms is with a view toward God’s harvest and God’s house. This is a spiritual and sacramental reading. It’s the one I will follow in this homily.
I can recall the first time I really and truly paid attention to Psalm 126. It was 1994. I was watching music videos on MTV or VH1. The post-punk band R.E.M. had released a song called ‘Everybody Hurts’ – and the music video grabbed my attention. In one scene a man stands alone on an overpass, above the grid-lock traffic. Slowly and silently he rips pages from a Bible and lets them fall. A caption flashes on the screen beneath him: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” That nudged me back to the psalter.
Not long after that, my wife and I were attending a missions conference. During one of the sessions we all sang an old missionary hymn: “Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves; we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.” The missional impulse of that hymn was based on the missional impulse of this psalm. I say all that to say this: like the captives in the psalm, like exiles in the world, everybody hurts, everybody cries, and everybody feels alone in this life – sometimes. But Christ the Lord, the Savior of the world, sends his Church on mission to the world – to seek and save the lost; to sow the seeds of God’s word in the fields of God’s world. To weep for the lonely, to cry for the lost, to rejoice that God’s word never ever returns empty.
Do you remember how you felt when you first came to faith in Christ? When you came back to him? When it dawned on you just how much he loves you? When the Spirit of grace washed over you and you felt clean and new? It was like a dream, wasn’t it? Like, pinch me – it’s almost too good to be true. “Why me Lord? What have I ever done To deserve even one Of the pleasures I've known?” Don’t you want other captives to experience all that? Don’t we want other exiles and strangers in the world to feel the love of God burning in their hearts? Don’t you want your family and friends to come (back) home? The Lord does. That’s why he sends us to them and for them. To set free those taken captive by the world, the flesh, and the devil. To restore their fortunes in Christ. To bring in his harvest.
Some of you have had the privilege and the pleasure of building your own house. Even if you never cut a board or laid any brick or painted a wall, you watched someone put together the house of your dreams and your design. Most of us have had the pleasure of building a family – a child or two, even a grandchild or two, at a time. We know that whether we are building a house or a family, it takes a lot of hard work. You must lay the foundation, stand the walls, install the fixtures, cover the roof, and set the capstone. As with all building projects, we start at the bottom, hope to move up and strive to reach the top. Psalm 127 reminds us that “unless the Lord builds the house, or builds the family, all our labor is in vain.” Apart from Jesus, we can do nothing.
Now, the Lord is building a house for his family. A house that provides his children what we want to provide ours – stability, security, and serenity. Stability because his house is built on the cornerstone and foundation of Christ and the apostles which shall never be moved. Security because his house is guarded by angels who always behold the face of the Father, angels who are sent to help and protect us who will inherit eternal salvation. Serenity because his house is free from conflicts and controversies; it is a place where we find rest for our souls and refreshment for our bodies.
Instead of the stale bread of sorrows, he gives us the fresh bread of joys. Where can we get this heavenly bread? At the altar table of the Lord in the house of God. The Father’s house is filled with the happiness of heaven not the sadness of earth. How does God bring in his harvest and build up his house?
“Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit” declares the Lord. The Lord builds his house and brings in his harvest by the promise and power of the Holy Spirit. Before the Spirit came, we were all captives and exiles and orphans without hope and without God in the world. Our hearts were hardened and barren; our toil was fruitless and vain. Pain, sweat, and tears marked all our days. But when the Spirit came, everything changed.
We are the fruit of Christ’s labors and the children of the Father’s love. As it is written: as many of us who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, regardless of our ethnicity, our social position, or our gender. We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. Put another way, as many as have been watered by grace have been brought into God’s harvest as fruit; as many as have been washed in mercy have been built into God’s house as a family. How? “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit” – this is how God brings in his harvest and builds up his house. So do not be deceived: God is not mocked. We reap what we sow. He that soweth to his flesh, shall reap of the flesh; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall reap everlasting life from the Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, let us not grow weary in bringing in the harvest and building up the house but let us labor and love in the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us do good to all – especially those of the household of the faith. As Saint Augustine put it (in his commentary on Psalm 126):
If we have descended,
and have been wounded;
let us ascend, let us sing,
and make progress,
in order that we may arrive.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
