Leaving Meshech

4th Sunday of Pentecost   July 7, 2025

The texts for this sermon are Luke 10:1-11 and Psalm 120

Lament plays an essential part in the life of faith. It has an essential place in prayer. It has an essential role to play in drawing us into and keeping us in right relationship with God. Sorrow and difficulties are a part of life and putting words to the sorrow and acknowledging the difficulties is healthy. Lament can actually move us to a better place.

Who of us hasn’t experienced distress or felt deeply troubled, or had all the good things we were trying to do met with nothing but opposition? Yes?

So it isn’t too much of a leap for us to relate to this Psalm.

In my distress

I cried.

I cried to the Lord

The Psalmist is in distress and is asking for deliverance; deliverance from lies, from deceit.

Upon first reading, the poet seems to be talking about the people around him; deceitful people, lying people, people completely foreign to him who are barbaric, warmongering. He says he’s traveled to Meshech, an outpost to the far North and East & that he’s dwelling in Kedar a place far to the south among a wandering Bedouin tribe of barbaric reputation. He’s been all over the place.

He’s telling us that he lives far outside the Promised Land in a hostile place among hostile people with no reference to or knowledge of peace or of God’s Promise; a place of contention and disruption.

We don’t live with deceitful, lying people, people with no regard for the wellbeing of others or who seek out and do harm to others. Or do we?

Alas, this Psalm could be written today, right here in this self-named Christian nation. And folks of sincere faith might be lamenting: “I live in Meshech; with people like the Tribe of Kedar, 
O God, deliver us!”

There’s another way to read this Psalm; it is a poem after all. We are complex beings, we humans. We have layers of nuance; our personalities & ways of being are complex. We can be good people, yet under the smooth waters of our surface, lurk snags and sharp-edged litter. As long as everything’s quiet, all is well.

But then something moves. Something shifts and we awaken to one of these messes down below.  We see it for what it is. It’s not a safe harbor for good little fish. No, it’s a toxic soup. It’s Meshech. It’s Kedar; it’s something that disrupts and opposes peace, contentment. And we awaken to the need to be rid of it for good.

And then, there’s yet another way to read this Psalm. It is the first psalm in a collection of psalms within the Book of Psalms. This collection is called the Psalms of Ascent. And it’s a song-book if you will, meant to be sung by the People of God as they traveled from their homes to observe Passover in Jerusalem. They were to see themselves as ascending to the City on a hill, the City of Zion, the City of God. And they were to prepare themselves for that arrival, that holy observance.

Now, as a community of faith we don’t physically travel to be in a holy place, but are we not a people who are to be traveling spiritually? People who say we desire to move ever closer to the heart of God, who are willing to acknowledge there’s always more spiritual ground to cover? This psalmist puts the question to us: Do we see ourselves in company with the Chosen of God moving toward Zion? Are we willing to make a clear-eyed examination of our community as did that psalmist. In what ways do we, as a group, feel distress and need to lament? In what ways are we distant from living out the Promised Land kind of life God calls all of us to?

Now, I want to say that I hear you awakening to the fact that you, as a congregation, feel beleaguered. I’ve heard you speak of your weariness and your desire for the balm and peace of God.

And as it happens AWAKENING is the theme of this Psalm. For, if we read it more carefully, 
we see that the Psalmist is not talking about life outside himself. He’s talking about himself. It’s his tongue that has been deceitful to himself if not to others. It is his own soul that has wandered far away to an unsettled, uncertain, distressful state.

And he sees this now. 

Woe is me, he says. I desire peace, he says, but I am not at peace. 

Folks, we all have personal, spiritual work to do. We all have aspects of Meshech and Kedar in us, and, congregations of the faithful do as well, and can we truly say we are the exception?

The good news is this: There is a movement in you, and in your life together that tells us that we are awakening. We are starting to acknowledge our distress and sorrow and uncertainty which is leading us to pray for deliverance and to grasp at the hope that God will answer.

We’re going to spend some time with these Psalms of Ascent because they move in a trajectory. They each speak to an aspect of the spiritual journey that culminates in the joyous embrace of Passing Over; the moving away from the distress of Kedar and upward into God’s grounding peace.

It’s my prayer that you will find them not only inspiring but helpful as you continue to move forward as a congregation.

As a first step, ponder this psalm this week. Pray this psalm this week. Make space for God to speak to you through this psalm this week.

L Quanstrom, Pastor 

Cornelius UMC