SUNDAY SERMON: All the feelings

By Rev. Stephen Baldwin 

OLD TESTAMENT: Psalm 23

One of my friends was comparing local preachers the other day. I won’t name names to preserve everyone’s…dignity. But I will tell you what he said about them, using fake names. 

He said, “When I want to have a good time like I’m going to a theme park, I go to Barry’s church, because he’s like Walt Disney. When I am in the mood to learn something, I go to Dave’s church, because he preaches like a professor. When I need counseling, I go to Jeremy’s church, because he preaches like a therapist.”

So fair warning. This is going to be a Jeremy sermon. Kind of like counseling. Not the judgmental, tell-you-what-you’re-doing-wrong kind. The touchy/feely/thinky kind. Now, that made the men start squirming already, so let’s just get it over with, ok guys? 

We’re talking about the Psalms today. It is the largest book in the Bible, but it’s often viewed as an afterthought. Don’t skip it; the Psalms have so much to teach us. 

What I love about the Psalms is how emotional they are. To grasp them, you have to feel them. Each one is a little bit different, because each one is a prayer someone offered from the depths of their soul at a particular time in their life. There are psalms of joy, psalms of rage, psalms of contentment, and psalms of grief. 

I remember when I first went off to college. I’d never lived in the city before. That’s actually one of the reasons I chose to go to Queens in Charlotte, I wanted to push myself to see a different side of life. And it was not an easy transition. I didn’t understand all these new people and all these new places and it just all felt wrong. I told my friends I couldn’t figure out what was real. People said things that they didn’t mean and the food didn’t taste like food I was used to and everything just seemed so contrived. One night about three weekly into school, I invited my friends to come with me to Shoneys, because I told them, “We’ll find real people at any Shoneys!” 

Thanks to our college chaplain, I discovered the Psalms. Talk about real? The Psalms are as real as it gets. No sugar-coating, no fluff, just real straightforward talk. And she asked us, “Why do you think all these emotions are in the Bible?” Because they’re part of life, she told us. Because life is filled with ups and downs and God wants us to be able to manage those faithfully. The Psalms provide prayerful, faithful guidance about how to navigate life. 

Psalm 23 is one of the most widely recognized passages of scripture in the whole bible. Many of you know the words by heart. If I asked 100 people what their favorite psalm is, at least 95 would say this one. It’s a good one for sure. Let’s read Psalm 23. 

What emotions do you feel in the 23rd Psalm? “I shall not want.” Contentment. “I walk the darkest valley.” Fear. “You are with me.” Connection. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me.” Hope. 

That’s a rollercoaster of emotions which reflects life. The Psalms teach us that God expects us to be honest about what we’re feeling. Tell God about it! Lay it all on the table. It’s important to remember because we’re not very good at it. Yes, this is the touchy/feely part of the sermon now…

I’ve been reading the book Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown. Highly recommend it! If you’re not a reader and prefer video, there’s even a TV show version of the book on HBO Max. 

She is an emotions researcher–yes, that’s apparently a job. She shares a study of more than 7,000 people, who were asked to identify all the emotions they’ve experienced in their lives. In that study, how many emotions do you think the average person identified? Three! Just three! Happy, sad, and mad. That about sums up America these days, huh? We’re either happy, sad, or mad. 

But human emotions run much deeper than those three alone. Read a dozen Psalms and you’ll identify three dozen emotions. Read the entire book, and you’ll identify more than you can count. 

For the book, she names 87 different human emotions. Everything from dread to awe to resentment to boredom to nostalgia to grief to shame to trust. 

Professor Antonio Damasio says, “We (humans) are not thinking machines; we are feeling machines that sometimes think.” 

Does that ring true to you? It’s different than we’re taught, right? Most people are taught that emotion gets in the way of our true selves. If we can just push emotion aside and use reason, then we can be better humans. Brown and Damasio challenge that idea, and so do the Psalms. 

The Psalms speak to the heart of the human experience, and the heart of the human experience is emotional. What do you feel when you see the sunrise? What do you feel when you learn that a friend lied to you? What do you feel when you see God’s grace in a random act of kindness? What do you feel when someone you care about is in pain? What do you feel when you look at your people, the ones you love more than anything? 

We are feeling machines. And the Psalms speak to all those feelings. They give them names, like admiration, regret, insecurity, compassion, betrayal, and belonging. 

If you read Atlas of the Heart, you will see that the reason Brene Brown wrote the book is to give people language for the emotions they feel. She believes that we feel all these things all the time, but without names for them we don’t understand how to process them in our lives. It’s the same reason God gave us the Psalms and that Psalms is the longest book in the Bible! 

So I have a challenge for you this week. Write a psalm. Lay your heart bare. Tell God what’s going on with you. Keep it real. Don’t say what you’re supposed to say. Say what’s on your heart. And in so doing, you will write your own psalm to help you navigate the road of life. 

Let’s pray: Lord, open our hearts and minds to the good news of your gospel. Let us not become captive to fear. Let us find boldness and courage in our soul. May we always follow the good shepherd no matter where he leads, and in so doing may we know that we are never alone. In your holy name, Amen.