View Archived Sermons

Listen to this Sermon

What is Sweeter than Honey?

by Marilyn Zehr

January 27, 2013

Texts: Psalm 19, Luke 4:14-21

Today I begin with a riddle,

What is sweeter than honey,
revives the soul,
makes a person wise,
gives joy to the heart
and enlightens the eyes?
What is perfect, sure, right, clear and true and righteous altogether?

According to Psalm 19 the answer to this riddle is: the law of the Lord.

The Psalmist uses other words to describe the law of the Lord or different facets of the law such as;
precepts, commandments, the decrees and the ordinances or YHWH.

In this Psalm all of these words together describe the Torah or the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses: Genesis through Deuteronomy.

The Psalmist recognizes Holy Scripture in this form as a love gift from God, sweeter than honey, and something to be prized more than gold.

I will share with you another version of this Psalm – from a book called Psalms for Praying that captures this love language.

The word love in this version is capitalized denoting a name.

The law of Love is perfect,
reviving the soul;
The testimony of Love is sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of Love are right,
rejoicing the heart;
The authority of Love is pure,
enlightening the eyes
The spirit of Love is glorious,
enduring forever
The rites of Love are true,
awakening compassion.

More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey
than the drippings of the honeycomb

Moreover, by them are the loving guided;
in keeping them there is great reward.


Our Pauline influenced ears might have developed calluses towards this description of the law, however, I have met Jewish people for whom Psalm 19 accurately captures their relationship with Torah – this supreme gift of God to God’s People.  I have met Christians for whom the same passion for the whole Bible applies.

Is it true of us?  Could it be true for us?

All three of our scripture texts today illumine the relationship between God’s people and Scripture, and by so doing invite us to wonder about our own relationship with scripture.
We started with Psalm 19, which in this case is love poetry.
Nehemiah and Luke, the other two scriptures for today are definitely stories about the people of God and their sacred texts.
We heard the story in Nehemiah in our Call to worship this morning when Doreen provided us with an opportunity to be participants in the story.
In a brief review, first, the context:  a remnant of restored Israelites after exile in Babylon, gather before the Water Gate in Jerusalem on the 1st day of the 7th month.  Though the verses before this, tell us that there were 42,360 people plus slaves who made up the population of this remnant, I imagine a slightly less numerous crowd gathered at the Water Gate.   In any case, probably quite a large crowd of women and men together, all who could hear with understanding, gathered to listen.  It is this gathered crowd of people who ask the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the Law of Moses. It fascinates me that the request came from the people.  When Ezra opened the book they all stood up.  Then Ezra blessed God, all the people answered, “Amen and Amen,” and then bowed in worship to YHWH with their faces to the earth, a worship practice we are more familiar with among our contemporaries who worship in the Islamic faith.
Going on with the story – the reading of the book of Moses went from early morning until mid-day.  I’m trying to imagine any of us standing and listening attentively to anything for that long, at a concert or sporting event maybe? Then the Levites, all those named, who were standing with Ezra during this reading gave an interpretation – the plain sense of the words – so that everyone could understand.
So began the tradition of scripture reading and interpretation eventually a core practice of synagogue and church worship.  These were a people who gathered around the Word of God as regularly heard and experienced through the words of this book.    I am also amazed at the next part of the story.  When the people heard and understood what they heard.  They wept.  The scripture and its interpretation evoked a visceral response.  The text doesn’t tell us whether these were tears of joy, or relief or sorrow, but Nehemiah, Ezra and the Levites assured the people that on this day holy to YHWH they should not weep, but rather should rejoice.  They should eat the fat, drink sweet wine and send portions of this to those for whom nothing had been prepared.  Translation?  Feast and drink and prepare enough to share. For on this day, Holy to YHWH, the joy of the LORD would be their strength.

Now fast forward to the passage in Luke that was also read for us today.  Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee, in the synagogues of that region, and then he returns to his hometown of Nazaret
h.  When he enters the synagogue to worship, as was his habit, the people hand him the scroll to read.  He stands, reads Isaiah’s prophecy that captives will be freed, the blind will see and the lame will walk.  All eyes are fixed on him as he rolls up the scroll, hands it back, and says, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  The people are amazed.   Once again their reaction is visceral.  First, they hear what has been read to them, then slowly they begin to understand and then Jesus pokes and prods their understanding (the sermon part?) by telling them that a prophet will not be welcome in his hometown.  Their visceral reactions to the words of Jesus’ sermon cause them to drag him to the edge of a cliff.  Miraculously he walks out of their midst.  I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not that none of my sermons have caused the kind of visceral reaction that has caused anyone to drag me to the edge of the Scarborough bluffs.   Getting back to this story, again, I’m amazed.  In this story, the words of scripture and their interpretation have caused profoundly visceral reactions.  What do we do with this?  Are we familiar with these kinds of gut-level emotional reactions to certain interpretations of the text?

I have another riddle.  The words of this one were common when I was a child and it had many different answers.

What is black and white and red all over?

In the context of this sermon, the answer is – our Holy Scripture and too often the results of its interpretations.  You might have guessed that, “red all over,” in this case means the blood shed over differences of scriptural interpretation and practice.  Psalm 19 reminds us that this is not what was intended.  The Word of God as it speaks and lives through the laws and the stories of God were intended to

revive the soul,
make a person wise,
give joy to the heart
and enlighten the eyes?

sweeter than honey, finer than gold,
Moreover, by them are the loving guided;
in keeping them there is great reward.
Let’s examine for a moment how the attitude towards scripture described in Psalm 19 applies to the stories in Nehemiah and Luke and then also to our own context.
In both of these stories the people move beyond visceral reaction to action.  In Nehemiah, after the people have heard the word of the law in a worship context they gathered together again and studied what they had heard.  The fruit of that study led to a reinstatement of the practice of the festival of the booths, the day of Atonement and so on.  The “so on,” included social and religious purification.  They dismantled alternate religious practices that had been set up on the hills around Jerusalem and sent away their foreign wives.  While we may react positively to the resurgence of their festivals, the kind of purity that sends away foreigner wives in their midst (an actual dismantling of families) justifiably makes us squirm because it raises an interpretive dilemma.  How does this kind of purity born out of a powerful reaction to hearing God’s word – how does this – demonstrate the Love, (capital L love) which gave them the law in the first place? And did they just ignore the texts that told them to take care of the sojourner and stranger in their midst?
In Luke, Jesus interprets the Isaiah passage as referring to himself and acts accordingly – by healing and freeing.  The people who resist this interpretation act out their resistance by trying to do away with him.

All of this begs the question, “What happens when we taste a taste that is sweeter than honey, when we know we are in possession of something finer than gold and want to act on what we have heard?”
Psalm 19 helps us again in the very next part of its poem with a bold move towards humility.
I’ll read verses 12 and 13 in two versions.
First, NRSV:
But who can detect their errors?
Clear me from hidden faults.
Keep back your servant also from proud thoughts.
Do not let them have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless
and innocent of great transgression.

Or in the Psalms for Praying version:
But who can discern their own weaknesses?
Cleanse me O Love, from all my hidden faults.
Keep me from boldly acting in error,
let my fears and illusions not have dominion over me!
Then shall I become a beneficial presence,
freely and fully surrendered to your Love.

Where are we now?  Psalm 19 is a powerful interpretive guide for our own engagement with Scripture – even as it interprets the stories around it within Scripture itself.  But even Psalm 19 means nothing until we get a taste for its ultimate goodness, until we are intimately familiar with its powerful provocation, until we realize that the deepest hungers within us are only satiated when we encounter the God contained within its pages.  And we can’t know God through scripture intimately until God has found and knows us in this way, until the Spirit of the words is stronger than the words themselves, until the Black and white gives way to a multitude of colours.

However,  for many who have gathered here, we have heard Scripture’s words since infancy and we may have allowed familiarity to breed contempt – to use a well-known phrase.  And so my question is,
What does it take for this sacred text to renew its hold on us, to reignite the passion it may have once held or to awaken something within us as if for the first time?

First, might I suggest we approach it with reverence.
Standing to hear its words is one possibility.
Handling it regularly within a worship filled context is also helpful and something we have done for a long time.
Letting ourselves be moved when we find it revives our soul.
Rejoicing when it brings wisdom into our
lives
Treasuring it like we do our family heirlooms
Allowing it to be the window through which we see and interpret the world – as it enlightens our eyes.

Second, we need to engage and study it regularly – not to dissect it as the modern scientific worldview has taught us, but to savour its content as we savour a fine wine – love and be loved by the God who speaks through it and know that we can never be truly objective about something or someone we love and surrender to that knowledge.

Third, savour it regularly with others.  We are a community that wrestles, struggles, and moves through to the other side of many things that arise among us.  This text and the God who speaks through it can handle our wrestling and will be more than our match.  When we do this with others we are wise to apply the prayer of humility in Psalm 19.
But who can discern their own weaknesses?
Cleanse me O Love, from all my hidden faults.

Fourth, act on it when we have reached a sense of clarity about the way forward and trust that the God who has spoken will keep speaking and speak again, guiding and correcting as necessary.
Again as with Psalm 19’s prayer of humility – Keep me from boldly acting in error

And Fifth, and let’s try not to kill its prophets.

Psalm 19 has guided this sermon and with Psalm 19 I will close
– with it’s last verse.
And may the words of my/our mouth(s) and the meditations of my/our heart(s) be acceptable in your site, YHWH, my/our rock and my/our redeemer.