Psalm Meditation 761
Second Sunday After Epiphany
January 18, 2015

Psalm 87
1 On the holy mount stands the city he founded;
2 the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
3 Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. Selah
4 Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon; Philistia too, and Tyre, with Ethiopia—“This one was born there,” they say.
5 And of Zion it shall be said, “This one and that one were born in it”; for the Most High himself will establish it.
6 The LORD records, as he registers the peoples, “This one was born there.” Selah
7 Singers and dancers alike say, “All my springs are in you.”
(NRSV)

One of the important questions we ask as we get to know each other is, ‘Where are you from?’ Despite the suspect grammar of ending a sentence with a preposition, it is an important bit of information. It gives us a locale, a way to place someone in the world we know. In this mobile society, some of us name an area instead of a city or town while others can tell us where they were born, all the places they have lived and which one feels most like home. No matter how much we may have moved around in our lives, we too long for a place to call home.

For the psalmist, place is very important. To be able to claim Zion as one’s place of birth is to be firmly rooted in God, in body, in spirit and in place. Zion is the mount on which the central city was built. To have been born there gives one a very important place in the life of the community and an identity in the world at large. Zion is a location in geography as well as a location in heritage and ritual. To have been born in Zion is to have been born at the closest place to the heart of God.

Whether our place is one of geography or of some other type of identifier, we each have a place that feels like home. I understand that the Greek word translated as kingdom or realm, can mean a physical place as well as a sense of loyalty. One can thus be a part of the realm of God by being within the set bounds of some geographic limits or one can be a part of the realm of God by having a heart and life that says, “All my springs are in you.”

January 12, 2015
LCM