Sermon 06.23.2024: The Great Unwinding

A concerted band of doomsayers bind us with their messages: the world is ending, we're all gonna die, the sky has fallen and we just haven't noticed yet. God's Word tells us of an alternative plan: The Great Unwinding. Shed your funereal outlook! Rewrite your story! Let's dance! 

Scripture

Psalm 30

A Psalm. A Song at the dedication of the temple. Of David.

I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up,

  and did not let my foes rejoice over me.

O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,

  and you have healed me.

O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol,

  restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones,

  and give thanks to his holy name.

For his anger is but for a moment;

  his favour is for a lifetime.

Weeping may linger for the night,

  but joy comes with the morning.

As for me, I said in my prosperity,

  ‘I shall never be moved.’

By your favour, O Lord,

  you had established me as a strong mountain;

you hid your face;

  I was dismayed.

To you, O Lord, I cried,

  and to the Lord I made supplication:

‘What profit is there in my death,

  if I go down to the Pit?

Will the dust praise you?

  Will it tell of your faithfulness?

Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me!

  O Lord, be my helper!’

You have turned my mourning into dancing;

  you have taken off my sackcloth

  and clothed me with joy,

so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.

  O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever.

Sermon Text

UNWINDING PSALM 30 

The Bibles in our pews state plainly that Psalm 30 (aka, Song #30) is of David—by David. King David is the direct ancestor of Jesus. David is an essential forebear to the Anointed One (Messiah). David is required by the prophets. Jesus is born “in Bethlehem, the city of David”[6]. Here’s where it gets interesting. The inscription also states that Psalm 30 is for the dedication of the Temple. King David did not dedicate, build or even see the Temple. His son, Solomon did the Temple. David’s inscription here is aspirational. He prayed for and dreamed of a Temple. 

Deep in this song dwells under the expressions of defeat and terror, fear and weeping during the night—emotions all of us will experience if we live long enough. But cling to verse 4: 

Weeping may linger for the night, 

but joy comes with the morning. 

Whatever you’re going through—it will not last. Yes, Eeyore, might get worse, but most often in my experience, it gets better. It gets way better. God did not make you to punish you. It will get better. 

UNWINDING OURSELVES, LIVING SANCTUARIES 

Psalm 30 invites us to unwind all the complications, to discover the equilibrium that balances ego with humility, the intellectual mind with the eternal soul, to reconnect our lives—sackcloth, warts and all—with God and God’s plans for us. Psalm 30’s inscription runs deep and has nothing to do with dedicating a new building. It calls us to realize that we are living sanctuaries, vessels dedicated to God. 

Lord prepare me, to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true, 

And with thanksgiving, I’ll be a living sanctuary, Lord, for you. [7] 

DAVID’S ECSTATIC PG-13 DANCE 

You have turned my mourning into dancing (Psalm 30:11). King David knew about dancing. He is notorious for stripping off his robe and shaking his money maker down Main Street Jerusalem as the ark of the covenant was returned to the Holy City. Both Second Samuel and First Chronicles describe how David unwound his robe. He disrobed enough to make Michal—one of his wives—decry him as “vulgar” and “shameless”. Michal even accuses David of “uncovering himself.” And this is from Jesus’ family tree. We all have relatives like this. 

I share these biblical truths to describe the kind of ecstatic dancing David is sings of in the Psalms. And to prepare us for the Pride March next Sunday. The following is my personal testimony on Psalm 30. (Take what speaks to you and leave the rest.) 

MOURNING TO DANCING: PRIDE 2013 

It was June 28, 2013. Lou and I had tickets for a Pride concert, by the SF Gay Men’s Chorus. We were at home getting ready to go out, discussing what to have for dinner before the concert when his phone rang. Our friends Val and Suzanne asked how fast we could get to City Hall and if I still wanted to perform their marriage ceremony. We told them that the court ruling wasn’t out yet. Poor things, they must be mistaken. The announcement was scheduled for later. 

I could hear Val’s voice increase and grow more animated, telling us to turn on the television, and we saw it happening. People were getting married at City Hall, same-sex couples getting married. It had happened before, but never like this. The Court had just dismissed the appeal to disallow same-gender-loving people to get married. No one expected it when it happened. So, I threw on a lavender clergy collar, and off we popped. 

City Hall was packed with all kinds of people, most of them trying to hold it together long enough to say, “I do.” The sackcloth, the grave clothes, of fear and self-loathing we had worn since forever—kindergarten, seventh grade gym class, freshman year of college, the “curse” of AIDS, Fred Phelps, Anita Bryant, all of it—was unwinding to reveal how God had already clothed us in wedding clothes. 

The four of us had trouble finding the perfect spot for Val and Suzanne’s ceremony. We ducked behind a big stone column, hearts racing, and I did my best to recall the words of the marriage ceremony that I had left on the train. I remember my trembling hand signing their marriage license. And how the entire staff of City Hall welcomed everyone. 

As I placed the license in an envelope, a deep sonority came from the rotunda. The crowd’s frenzy paused, and an awestruck stillness took its place as the 300 singers of the SF Gay Men’s Chorus, dressed in tuxedos, filled the entire grand staircase and began singing. They had come over from the concert hall to sing for everybody’s weddings. Tears may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. 

The Pride Parade that year was like no other. There could not have been an unworn wedding dress or tuxedo in all of Northern California. People showed up dressed for a wedding. As the gentle tsunami of brides and grooms wended down Market Street atop floats and convertibles, a longtime suppressed feeling of dignity reveled itself in the crowd, queer dignity, strange freedom. I remember describing the scene to Lou, saying, “It’s like everybody’s floating, like a nightmare being replaced with a sweet dream. Let’s remember this.” 

Yes, there were still go-go boys and wacky drag queens and topless motorcyclists and everything that makes SF Pride what it is—as crazy as any family reunion. But that day, the strictures of the past were unwound as we realized that we just might be able to live like everybody else after all. The Bible calls that shalom. Pulled up from the pit of oppression, our foes did not rejoice over us. Not that day. Not today, Satan. 

Can you feel some of what we felt eleven years ago? Can you hear any of your story intersect with mine? Has God ever pulled you or your family or your friends up from the Pit of despair and no foreseeable future? It happens every day, for someone. 

Mourning into dancing. Sickness into healing. Broken hearts repaired and made whole. The deep, deep love of Jesus we sang of at the beginning of the service manifests as relief, healing, joy, justice. No matter how deep you grief, God’s love runs deeper. As in verse 6, I can still feel the community’s pride, how we stood tall, victorious o’er our foes. “Once we were not a people…”[8] Finally we had arrived. “By your favor, O Lord, you had established [us] as a strong mountain.” 

But everything passes. Today, there is a concerted effort to steal our joy, as if love and marriage were commodities that must be rationed. Cleve Jones says that if we take our rights for granted, our foes will come to take them away. In the 1990s, I had believed conservative author Andrew Sullivan who had written [9] that all we needed was the right to marry, and all other rights would fall in place. Nowadays, that feels naive. 

We take our blessings of freedom for granted. Women no longer enjoy the same rights of other adults to determine what happens with their bodies. Black people are no longer legally protected to have the same voting rights as white people. And others claim with a straight face and in public that they are so exceptional the law does not apply to them. Arrogant, ruthless authoritarianism is spreading across the globe. It occupies the sovereign nation of Ukraine. It flexes in Hungary. 

Palestinians in the 1940s were promised their own state and are still waiting. And grieving in the Pit. The biggest tragedy is that we claim to worship the same God, the God of Abraham—the God of David. As faithful children of the Divine, we must reclaim the deep, deep love we are called to share. God’s love is the living sanctuary we must inhabit. It’s underneath the binding, underneath the fear, underneath the grave clothes that we wear. Do not put the sackcloth back on, no matter who tells you. In the name of King David, take it off! Take it all off! 

GOD’S UNIVERSAL LOVE 

Around the year 1200, while the barbarism of the Crusades was still fresh, Islamic theologian Ibn Arabi found a way to forgive, to sink deeper into the reality of unity and God’s universal love. These are his words: 

My heart has become capable of every form: 

It is a pasture for gazelles 

And a monastery for Christian monks, 

And a temple for idols 

And the pilgrim's most sacred mosque, 

And the tablets of the Torah 

And the book of the Quran. 

I follow the religion of Love: 

Whatever way Love's camel takes, 

That is my religion and my faith. 

Amen, amen, it shall be so. 



6 Luke 2 

7 https://gccsatx.com/hymns/lord-prepare-me/  

8 See 1 Peter 2:10. 

9 His primary thesis in Virtually Normal was that marriage equality would serve as the linchpin to unlock equal treatment under the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtually_Normal