Psalm 91

May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Do you remember how total the darkness felt on the night of September 27th last year?

How it looked to walk down a road after sundown without streetlights And see

every house shuttered and silent and dark,

How sound traveled differently across those roads Without the constant humming

of our appliances How early we went to bed without television or cell phones

or bedside lamps falling asleep as soon as the stars appeared,

the waning crescent moon, sleeping with the windows open.

Maybe you remember later seeing that image that Noah captured of the southeast

United States that night, the image that showed the way city lights show up

at nighttime from space,

and how there was that deep swath of darkness on the map across the nine states that had lost power.

For a moment, we had an inkling of what it must have felt like to live before

electricity lit the world,

before the distractions of moving pictures and the comfort of twinkle lights

and the ever-present flashlight on a cell phone.

For most of human history, darkness felt different, disorienting, dangerous.

And for most of human history, Jews and Christians have chosen to enter the

darkness, chanting Psalm 91, which our choir chanted so beautifully for us today.

Today, the most well-known psalm is almost certainly Psalm 23,

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. If you know any psalm at all,

you probably know Psalm 23.

But for centuries, that wasn't the case.

The one psalm that everyone clung to for comfort was Psalm 91,

with its confident proclamation of God's salvation from every single terror that might arise.

Psalm 23 speaks of God's guidance through the valley of the shadow of death,

but Psalm 91 gets abundantly more specific.

In Psalm 91, God is protecting us from plagues and pestilence,

war and wild animals, evil spirits, and enemies.

Perhaps in recent centuries, we've lost our sense of our vulnerability to these things.

Plague and pestilence While we have Tylenol for a fever now Wild animals Our

houses are built of brick walls The darkness Electricity,

We generally feel ourselves to be in control And we've lost a sense that people

had in centuries past Of an unseen spiritual world around us Filled with demons and angels emails.

But when Helene visited us, we learned vulnerability again.

We couldn't turn on the lights or the faucets. Our credit cards didn't work.

We feared looters were coming to siphon our gas and raid our abandoned homes.

We couldn't get medicine to those who were stranded in the mountains except by mule.

We couldn't call each other on the phone.

For a moment, we really understood what it means to need help.

In centuries past, this was the psalm people turned to in these moments,

and they found in it some guard against whatever it was they feared.

Translation choices shifted the meaning somewhat dramatically over the centuries.

In some years, it was mostly read as a safeguard against plague.

In other years, as an incantation against demons, later as a warning against

heresy, or as a purely messianic psalm in which Jesus is the one who is spoken

of as fully protected by God.

At other times, including recent times, it has been read primarily as a prayer

of protection during battle.

In my favorite translation, Wycliffe's 14th century translation,

You shall not be afraid of any terror by night, became,

You shall not dread a goblin going in darkness.

If anyone ever asks you if goblins are in the Bible, now you can say yes.

The words of the psalm have always adorned material objects in Christians' lives

and Jews' lives, as if to imbue them with special power.

Before literacy was widespread, words and letters were often believed to carry

some kind of special, almost magical force,

and often lines of this psalm were

carved into amulets or even sewn into clothes as a form of protection.

One Jewish amulet designed to protect women during childbirth carried what at

first to archaeologists appeared to be just a random jumble of letters.

In fact, those letters were the first letter of every verse of this psalm.

Other Jewish amulets alternated the words of this psalm with the words of the

Shema, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

A braiding of these words together made for nonsensical reading,

but somehow indicated that the confession of faith in the Shema and the protection

of the psalm were linked.

In the 5th and 6th centuries, especially across Egypt,

it was not uncommon to find in Christian homes a small earthenware lamp that

was printed with images or texts from the Christian tradition.

Verse 13 of this psalm, which was omitted from our reading, promises,

You will tread on the lion and the cobra.

You will trample on the great lion and the serpent.

And one of the common designs for these earthenware lamps showed Christ trampling

on a lion and a snake, referencing this verse.

Sometimes they would also include in the design a dragon and a basilisk,

which was a mythical creature whose breath was deadly.

Christ trampled on all of it if you want to see one of these lamps they have

it at the Met Museum in New York next time you go.

Remembering that Christ has trampled these terrifying beasts,

Egyptians would light the lamp as darkness fell and find their fears calmed

as the glow filled the room.

Jews and Christians in these early centuries both agreed that Psalm 91 ought to be chanted daily.

And in the 6th century, when St. Benedict introduced the end-of-day prayer we

now call Compline into the church, Psalm 91 was one of the three psalms appointed for that service.

You can find this service, which Christians have been chanting for 1,500 years,

in your prayer book. It's on page 127.

And if you send your kids to Camp Henry in the summer, they end every day praying these words.

We pray it as the day ends. We also pray it as life ends.

In fact, it was the principal deathbed prayer for Christians until well into

the 19th century, and in the Jewish funeral service, it's said seven times over

the course of the whole service.

These are words that carry us.

On the second night after Helene At my house, we built a fire in the backyard,

And we drank the last of our cans of sparkling water,

And we listened to NPR while cranking our radio So it would keep playing And

we watched the stars come out,

Before we went in to go to bed that night Unsure of what was going to come and

what all was even unfolding around us, we did something that we rarely do as

a family together at home. We prayed Compline.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High abides under the shadow of the Almighty.

Helene was a tragedy that continues to unfold.

But one of its gifts was this reminder of our frailty A reminder that there

are forces beyond our control A reminder that we need each other,

A reminder that we need to learn to find shelter in God.

Today is September 28th, and there are 94 days left in this year.

Along with amulets and lamps and monastic prayers, another practice Christians

have taken up at various points across the centuries is the practice of praying

Psalm 91 for 91 days in a row.

We could do that. We could start Wednesday And pray it for the last 91 days of 2025.

We could carve it into our bed frames And we could embroider it onto our undershirts,

Not because doing these things Makes God look on us more favorably Not because

we can control some outcome By saying magic words or wearing a talisman But because doing so,

It might be like carrying a small earthenware lamp through the darkness that

still threatens to swallow us.

It might remind us of Mary crushing the head of the snake, of Jesus conquering

death and evil, and bringing us into a kingdom where no disease or calamity,

earthly or spiritual, can touch us.

Praying psalm 91 might help us learn to imagine ourselves and our world differently,

as filled with devils and angels snares and plagues but also as never without

shelter and shade and soft wings.

It might help us to imagine, as darkness falls, that we are gathered under the

wings of God every night.

That we are gathered under the wings of a God who took on all this frailty in

order to protect us, in order to gather us safely home.

Thanks for listening to 60 Church Street, a podcast of Trinity Episcopal Church

in Asheville, North Carolina.

Now, go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

The homily was offered by the Rev. Amy Peterson. Musical contributions were performed by Dr.

Kevin Seal Introduction and closing reflections were shared by the Rev.

Amy Peterson Sermon audio was prepared by Nanette Popa Production was guided

by Karen Marie Frederiksen