Psalm Meditation 1110 Proper 21 September 26, 2021 Psalm 122 1 I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” 2 Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. 3 Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together. 4 To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord. 5 For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David. 6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May they prosper who love you. 7 Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.” 8 For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, “Peace be within you.” 9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good. (NRSV) ¶A place is made sacred by the ones who have an experience of God at that place. One of my favorite holy places is a room made of hand stacked stones housing an altar and a simple bench. Another is not a building but a place with woods, lakeshore, marsh, and developed housing among other things. For some people the room is a small, dark, claustrophobic place housing a meaningless stone box surrounded by symbols that mean nothing to them. The outdoor space is a place of swarms of mosquitos, sweaty teenagers, and noise. The places they hold sacred may, in turn, mean very little to me. ¶Because we find holiness in different places, due to differing needs and experiences, it is a good idea to treat every space as sacred. The psalmist reminds pilgrims to pray for the peace of Jerusalem as they enter the city. The hope and prayer is that each person will feel some sense of the presence of God within its walls. As we experience God, we feel God’s peace rest within and among us. To be at peace in the presence of God makes the space in which we find ourselves sacred space. It may last for the moment, and it may be a feeling we carry in our hearts for the rest of our lives. ¶We may have experienced the annoyance of someone treating our sacred space as if it is simply space. We may have experienced the annoyance of someone having a holy experience in a way that does not seem holy to us. Which one of us is wrong? Of course it is the ‘other.’ In reality, it is the expectation that everyone’s experience is a perfect match to my own. If I enter a space expecting quiet reverence, and you are active and noisy, I know that you are ruining my experience. If I enter with expressive exuberance and you expect me to be quiet, you have sucked the joy out of the space for me. When we treat each place as if it were sacred to someone, when we recognize that we experience God with different expressions, we will find we can share space in our differences. “For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.” ¶September 21, 2021 LCM lcrsmanifold@att.net http://psalmmeditations.blogspot.com/