Give It All To God, Part 5: Trust In God’s Goodness

A Sermon for Sunday, November 12, 2023. Emory Presbyterian Church. Stewardship Season. Psalm 78:1-7

Of all the musicians throughout history, none have had more influence on my life and faith than the legendary singer-songwriter, Paul Simon. When I was a kid, my parents would often put on the vinyl recordings of the 1972 album, Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits and the 1977 album, Paul Simon’s Greatest Hits. Songs like “Mrs. Robinson,” “The Sound of Silence,” “The Boxer,” and “Slip Sliding Away” immediately spoke to my heart and soul. 

My fondness for Paul Simon’s music was fueled as a teenager by my youth group leaders who would strum those tunes countless times on their guitars. I still remember my first Presbyterian summer youth conference when Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound,” was played one evening before a sermon on the parable of the prodigal son. And I witnessed, on my family’s TV, the power music has to bring different cultures and musical styles together with the live performance of Simon’s iconic 1986 album, Graceland.

Ever since those growing up years, I’ve waited with anticipation for the next Paul Simon album—eager to dive into the musician’s stories about everyday people’s lives and his ponderings about spirituality and God . In March of this year, the 82-year-old Simon released Seven Psalms, which he has said is the last album of his six-decade career. 

Seven Psalms is one continuous 33-minute piece with seven movements, recorded entirely with acoustic instruments and it is divinely inspired. In recent interviews, Paul Simon, who suddenly lost his hearing in his left ear while making the album, has explained that the album’s title, lyrics and guitar pieces came to him in a series of dreams, starting in January 2019. An unknown figure appeared in the first dream and said, “You’re supposed to write a piece called Seven Psalms.” This initially was a surprise to the songwriter who thought he was done creating music, but soon he began waking up from the dreams every night at 3 am to write down what he saw and heard. 

But unlike his other work, where he would imagine a verse and then spend hours expanding upon it, everything in Seven Psalms came from his dreams. When Simon tried to add more after transcribing what he dreamt, he couldn’t come up with the next part. He had to wait till the next dream and the next to complete the album. And the result, of course, was heavenly. Ponder for a minute some of the lyrics of Seven Psalms:^[1]

“The Lord is my engineer/The Lord is the earth I ride on/The Lord is the face in the atmosphere/The path I slip, and I slide on. 

The Lord is a virgin forest/The Lord is a forest ranger/The Lord is a meal for the poorest of the poor/A welcome door to the stranger. …

When the cold wind blows/The seeds we gather/From the gardener’s glove/Live forever/Nothing dies of too much love. …

Home, home/Sun on my doorstep/Shocks me to find/I’m a child entwined/In your love, in your light/In your cool summer shade. …

Dip your hand in Heaven’s waters/God’s imagination/Dip your hand in Heaven’s waters/All of life’s abundance in a drop of condensation. …”

The sacred harp/That David played to make his/Songs of praise/We long to hear those strings/That set his heart ablaze/The ringing strings/The thought that God turns music into bliss. …

Paul Simon’s album is an echo of the Book of Psalms, which contains 150 hymns of praise, lament, thanksgiving and wisdom, etc., that are directed toward God, and that also portray the most intimate and moving conversations between God and human beings during ancient biblical times. 

Psalm 78 chronicles the history of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to the beginning of King David’s rule and how God’s good provisions sustain the people through numerous challenges and hardships. 

When reading the Book of Psalms, it is worth noting the superscription at the beginning of each psalm, a brief introduction that typically provides clues for understanding the meaning of the text. Psalm 78’s superscription reads, “A Maskil of Asaph.” The Hebrew root word of “maskil” is sakai, which means “to have insight, to teach,” thus Psalm 78 is a teaching song. And the psalm is ascribed to Asaph who was a singer and musician in the Jerusalem Temple during the reigns of David and Solomon, therefore Psalm 78 is a teaching song from the time of those two kings of Israel. 

That detail is significant because David and Solomon’s monarchies were full of strife, violence and war that had dire effects on Israel and its people. Psalm 78, then, recounts the daring exodus, the harsh wilderness wanderings and the formidable settling of the promised land and epic establishment of the ancient nation of Israel as a reminder to the Israelites—who are once again experiencing calamity under David and Solomon—that God will provide for them now just as God did long ago. 

And the opening verses of Psalm 78 emphasize the importance of telling the story to younger generations so that they too will recall God’s good works and put their trust in the Almighty in both good times and bad. Hear again verses 5-7:

He established a decree in Jacob
    and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
    to teach to their children,

 that the next generation might know them,
    the children yet unborn,
and rise up and tell them to their children,

   so that they should set their hope in God,
and not forget the works of God,
    but keep his commandments.

The Rev. Dr. Nancy L. de-Claisse-Walford, a faculty member of the McAfeee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, says that Psalm 78 is a “teaching of hope in the goodness of God.” She writes further:^[2]

God called our ancestors in the faith out of Egypt into a new life of abundance in the land of promise. The people were called to undertake a difficult journey of faith. When they were afraid, when they were despaired, and when they grumbled, God provided. … God gives each of us a path to travel and God continually provides for our journey. Our choice is to trust God to provide for the journey or to grumble at every turn in the road. Are we allowed to question, to call God to account and confront God with the hard questions of life? Absolutely. …But at some point in the journey we must learn to trust God. God’s ways are not ours; God’s wisdom is not ours.

Those last two sentences get to the heart of the matter that is stewardship—an essential practice in a congregation’s life-long journey of discipleship. During the Stewardship Season, we are reminded of God’s good works in our individual daily experiences and our community of faith. In the midst of a planet that has perpetually been on fire, constantly burdened with sorrow and brokenness, the Book of Psalms and other scriptures, urge us to not be consumed by despair but to put our trust in the goodness of God who invariably provides.

Knowing deeply in our hearts that God’s love and mercy can never be overcome by humanity’s troubles is what propels us to give what we can of our time, resources and gifts to the church and the ministry God calls it to do in the world—locally, nationally and globally. 

The God who spurs Paul Simon—via dreams, to wrap up his journey by expressing praise for the Lord through one final album—is the same God who motivated the writer of Psalm 78 to teach the Israelites to recount God’s goodness, and who assures each and every one of us now that God’s “glorious deeds” will bring hope for current generations and the ones to follow. 

As Paul Simon sings: “The Lord is my engineer/The Lord is the earth I ride on/The Lord is the face in the atmosphere/The path I slip, and I slide on…The Lord is a virgin forest/The Lord is a forest ranger/The Lord is a meal for the poorest of the poor/A welcome door to the stranger.”

Beloved, the Lord, our God, is goodness abounding and whom we give our all as we travel along the path God has given us. This we can trust… always and forever. Amen.

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^[1] https://www.paulsimon.com/news/new-paul-simon-interview/

https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/music/info-2023/paul-simon-seven-psalms.html

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/05/seven-psalms-paul-simon-music-review

^[2] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18-2/commentary-on-psalm-7823-29-2