Psalm 29
“God’s Voice”
January 9, 2011 - First Sunday after Epiphany

         The boom came at the same time as the flash. With no delay between light and sound, it meant the lightening was almost on top of us. Then the rain began to wash across, pelting down through the trees in huge drops that quickly puddled and sagged the rain fly under which we stood. I was one of a group of Boy Scouts backpacking in the New Mexico mountains at the Philmont Scout Ranch. We were taking shelter during a Southwest afternoon thunderstorm.

         As I huddled there with the thunder crashing in my ears and the wind whipping rain under the tarp to soak my clothing, I felt myself absolutely convinced that I was in the presence of God Almighty. Those flashes were His glory. Those crashes were His voice. It’s one of the deep spiritual experiences of my life.

         You can imagine David as a young shepherd boy watching storms roll across fields and hillsides as he and his sheep sought shelter. All those experiences combine in Psalm 29’s celebration of God’s glory and splendor revealed in the awesome majesty of lightning and thunder. In the first verse, he is so awestruck by it all that he calls even the angels, the “heavenly beings,” to join him in giving glory to the Lord.

         David heard the thunder as “the voice of the Lord.” That phrase is repeated to magnificent effect seven times as the psalmist lists off for us the various natural arenas in which thunder and lightning appear: to the west over the sea, to the north in the forested mountains of Lebanon, to the south and east in the desert of Kadesh. In every place, in every direction, he heard God’s voice.

         We don’t hear thunder very often here in western Oregon. Our weather patterns tend more toward gentle and long drawn out showers rather than sudden and dramatic advents of thunder clouds and torrents pouring down from the skies. Yet whether you’ve watched a storm sweep in at the coast as David envisions in verse 3 or felt one shake or even strike and split the trees around you in the mountains as in verse 5, I’m guessing you have some experience of the kind of natural power that Psalm 29 is about.

         You might even be inclined to think that one can hear God speaking more clearly out there at the coast or up in the mountains than you can here in a building gathered for worship. The songs and hymns we sing are nice, but they lack the amazing force of the sound of thunder. Our candles are cozy, but their light is a far cry from the flashes God sends across dark skies on stormy summer afternoons.

         In fact, more than one person in our church has told me their very best worship experiences happen out of doors, in the presence of the kind of divine glory that this psalm celebrates. “Pastor, I feel closest to God listening to waves crashing on the sand at Heceta Head,” or “standing at the top of South Sister,” or “snow-shoeing under fir trees by Gold Lake,” or “walking through a field of desert wild flowers near Steens Mountain.”

         Hiking, bicycling, fishing, hunting, camping—all those ways in which we love getting out into the gorgeous natural landscape we enjoy here in Oregon—have also become for many of us acts of worship. We hear God’s voice in the sound of a waterfall, in the murmur of a breeze through pine needles, in the song of birds. God is speaking in His creation and we are ready to listen, even on Sunday mornings in lieu of sitting in yet another quiet, dull church service.

         I love where we live. I love being in our lovely green valley sandwiched an hour or so from the coast and an hour or so from the mountains. You know I love standing in one of our beautiful rivers listening for God speaking in the flow of water over rocks and the quiet sip of a trout taking a dry fly. It’s all good and beautiful and it all displays God’s glory and sounds God’s voice, just like David wrote here in Psalm 29. Yet I have to ask—we have to ask—what are we hearing God say if we only listen to nature?

         Psalm 29 is actually a rare sort of passage in Scripture. It’s hard for us who live in the shadow of the great romantic poets of the nineteenth century to grasp, but the Bible just doesn’t talk all that much about the beauty of creation and God speaking through it. Flip through the other psalms. They mention creation, but they’re about God’s rescuing His people from Egypt, about forgiveness for sin and changed hearts, about calling out to God in the midst of life’s troubles, about God’s glory as King of all people, about deliverance from enemies, about praising God for His salvation. Psalm 19 is the only other psalm that comes close to Psalm 29 in looking for God in the natural world, as it begins, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” But that’s only half of Psalm 19. The rest of it turns to thanksgiving for God’s Law, for the gift of His commandments.

         So in the Scripture lessons assigned by the Christian Church for this day, Psalm 29 is offered as an accompaniment to a reading about another, more clear way in which the voice of God was heard. We read from Matthew 3 how Jesus was baptized by John. When Jesus came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit came down on Him like a dove, and a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.”

         That Gospel story picks up verse 3, “The voice of the Lord is over the waters,” and transforms it from the crashing sound of thunder over the ocean into the gentle voice of a Father speaking love for His child over the waters of baptism. We need to make that same kind of move in our understanding of this psalm and in our own experience of God’s voice in nature.

         The thing is that what God says to us through creation—through the glory of the stars through the majesty of the mountains, through the chirping of birds—is not all that plain. Yes, it’s all magnificent. A receptive mind and heart can hear the message that God exists, that God is powerful, even that God is beautiful and good. But that’s it.

         If we only listen for God’s voice in the rumbling clouds, then there’s a great deal about Him we are not going to hear. What has He got to say about our sins, about all that guilt we carry around in our hearts for the ways we’ve failed others and ourselves? What has God spoken about the darkness of death that shows up all through the natural world? What message of hope for the future will we read in a lightning flash or hear in the thunder? We’re going to miss a lot unless God’s voice is more than just a thunderstorm.

         As one commentator put it, pairing this Psalm with the Gospel lesson about Jesus’ baptism shows us Scripture’s movement from the cosmic to the personal. God speaks to us on two different levels. “The storm says, ‘This is my cosmos’; the baptism, ‘This is my Christ.’ The two go inseparably together.”[1] God, who thunders at us in creation, speaks comfort and peace to us in Jesus.

         Our Oregon coast is wonderful. I often say that we have the most beautiful coastline on either side of the continent because you can travel up and down it and see so much of the ocean and the seashore unencumbered and unmarred by development. It’s God’s creation in all its sheer grandeur.

         Yet there isn’t much of Oregon’s ocean front where you would want to go swimming. The water is too cold and the shore is too rocky. And there are those “sneaker waves” they warn you about, which can roll up the beach farther than the rest and snatch away an unwary wader or sand castle builder. Our coast is glorious, but sometimes you just want some quieter, warmer water in which to paddle about safely and peacefully.

         We don’t want our experience of God to be all crashing waves, roaring thunder, and pelting rainstorm. We want and need quieter, safer, more peaceful spiritual waters in which to dip our souls. That’s why the God of the thunderstorm is even more the God of baptism. Our God is not just a Zeus throwing lightning bolts. In Jesus Christ, He became for us a Man who brought us the good news of peace.

         That’s what Peter said to Cornelius and his family in our lesson from Acts 10 verse 34 today: “You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.” And in the prophecy from Isaiah 42 verse 2 we heard that the Servant in whom God delights, “will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.” Jesus came not as a breaking storm, but gently as one of us, submitting Himself to all our frailties, submitting to a baptism He didn’t need, so that you and I could receive the baptism we really do need, baptism into peace with God.

         Thunder can be hard to understand. In the book of Revelation, chapter 10 verse 3, the apostle John hears the “voices of the seven thunders,” just like the seven repetitions of “the voice of the Lord” in our psalm. But in the very next verse an angel tells John not to write down what the thunder said, to keep it hidden.

         God’s thunder voice keeps Him hidden. He is the shaper of a vast universe, and according to recent physics perhaps a whole multitude of universes. Just ponder the one or two or four hundred billion stars in our galaxy and consider that it’s just one of at least a one or two or four hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Then listen to physicists wax poetic about superstrings and great walls of galaxies spread across millions of light years, as they suggest that there may in fact be many, many more universes fanning out in great membranes of energy and matter.

         All that cosmic expanse is beyond our complete understanding and so is the power of the Voice that said, “Let there be light” and spoke all that unthinkable vastness into existence. How can we possibly understand and know what that Voice is saying?

         Now, though, consider what the writer of our Psalm ultimately wants to say about the voice of the Lord which he hears in the thunder. Verse 10 tells us the power of the Lord is absolute and complete, “The Lord sits enthroned over the flood, the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.” God is King over the stormy waters of the oceans, over the raging floods which sweep across our lands. He is King forever above not just the depths of the seas, but above the depths of the heavens. He sits enthroned over this universe and all the universes there are. But then verse 11 adds this heartfelt prayer to the King of the Universe, “May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!”

         God’s voice is in the thunder and in the vibrations of the fabric of space. Yet God is a Father who chooses to send down His Son into the muddy water of an earthly river. He declares His love in a voice that not only can be heard, it can be understood. God wants us to get to know Him, to be at peace with Him. So He speaks to us through Jesus Christ.

         Ultimately, Jesus is God’s voice. If we want to hear more than thunder, then we must listen to Jesus. To truly understand God we want to hear the Voice that gently says, “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” We listen for that Voice confidently declaring, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Our ears long for His Voice speaking, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” We hear God’s voice speaking peace in Jesus.

         Our psalm today is framed by the Christmas story, by the coming of Jesus into the world and the song of the angels at His birth. As another commentator says, it begins with Gloria in excelsis deo, “Glory to God in the highest,” and ends with et in terra pax, “and on earth, peace.”

         Jesus Christ came into the world to die and rise so that you could be at peace with God. He died so you could have the peace of your sins forgiven and He rose to give you the peace of a new life of peace with God and others. He lives forever so that you can enjoy the peace of hope for a future which goes beyond this life. The best thing you can do this year is listen more carefully for His voice of peace.

         That then raises the question I’d like to reflect on as this service comes to a close. How will you hear God’s voice in the year to come? Where will you place yourself so that the voice of the Lord is audible to you?

         I hope you will have the peace and joy of some days or moments when you can hear God speak through His creation. May you be able to watch from Spencer’s Butte as the sun rise or goes down. May you be able to lay quietly in bed and listen to the rain fall softly on your roof. May you be able to stand on big rock and watch the tide come in at the coast or the clouds pass by beneath you from a mountain top. May you even hear a little thunder cracking with the mighty voice of the Lord.

         Yet where will you hear that clearer, gentler voice with which God speaks to you in Jesus, the voice of forgiveness, the voice of love, the voice hope, the voice of peace? Will you hear that Voice here when we stand for the Gospel in the words of Scripture? Will you be attentive to Jesus’ voice when you gather with friends to read His words and talk about them with each other? Will you listen to Him where people are working together to put His Word into practice through love and service? Will you wait for Him to speak in a few quiet moments you give Him after you are done voicing your own prayers?

         In all those ways and more, let’s do our best to hear God’s voice in the coming months. It’s the voice which said to Jesus, “This is my beloved Son,” but which also says to us, “These are my beloved children.” Let’s keep meeting together, serving together, listening together to hear His Voice, experience His Love, receive His Peace. May the Lord speak to you and to me today. May we hear, and find peace.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj