…the Lord is your shade at your right hand.  The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.   –Psalm 121:5-6

So here’s a question that did not make it into last Sunday’s sermon, but it is still rattling around within me.  That is, I have been burned by the sun before, but how does one get struck by the light of the moon?

In his reading of Psalm 121, St. Augustine asked it another way: Wherefore shall God shield us? 

As expected from the great theologian, he points to the two precepts upon which the Law and the Prophets hang—the love of God and our neighbor.  The Church is loved for the sake of our neighbor, he said, but God for the sake of God.

In the imaginative mind of this North African Bishop, God is understood as the sun, figuratively, and the Church is understood in the representation of the moon.

Before considering this, I read Psalm 121, thought about the science of moonlight, and wondered what harm it could bring.  But now, the image of Church as the moon requires little explanation.  There it is, held in place by the pull of its own design.  With no source of light of its own, it merely reflects that which shines upon it (to one degree or another). 

In paraphrase, Augustine said. ‘If he has believed anything less in the Son or in the Holy Spirit than in the Father, he has suffered an offense in God; he is scorched by the sun.  Whoever again believes that the (true) Church exists in one province only, and not that she is diffused over the whole world, and whoever believe that those who say, ‘Look here!  Look there!’ is Christ (apart from the truth of Jesus), they are likely to be burned by the moon.

In retrospect, there are times we feel ‘burned’ by God, only to discover that there is a Truth that is simply too bright to be perceived directly by the human eye.  There are also times when we are ‘burned’ by the Church for no good reason and without excuse.  In our failure to understand or reflect Christ completely, repentance and forgiveness are needed.

Despite the misunderstandings and offenses that come with these two relationships, we still have a Keeper; capable and committed.  This is good news.

Lord, keep us from all evil today.  Let my life rest in the shade of your protection.  Keep track of my going out and coming in forever more—all day…and all night.  AMEN.

Whatever it takes,

Darren 



Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash