SETTING THE CONTEXT

Scholars believe that Psalm 107 was written about the time the Babylonian exiles were returning home to Israel. It is a song of praise for the Lord’s hesed which means loyal love shown through God’s marvelous works of rescue and deliverance. There are four illustrations in the psalm of people’s dire need and God’s deliverance of them. We will read the first one only today. The hymn we often sing at Thanksgiving, #102 “Now Thank We All Our God” captures the spirit of the psalm. The mariners hymn, “Eternal Father Strong to Save”, found in our supplemental hymnal The Faith We Sing is based on verses 23-32 of this psalm. So we sing this psalm more than we think.

Read Psalm 107:1-9, 43

THE SERMON

We, westerners especially have a value of self-sufficiency. You remember those old movies with the strong silent type who won’t accept “no charity from no one.” We value not bothering others with our troubles and picking ourselves up by our bootstraps. Today’s culture has taken this self-sufficiency even further through reality TV; now we are not only self-sufficient but we compete with everyone else and let the world watch us as we do it. Today’s psalm and film challenges that notion.

Based on some comments I’ve already received, I want to say that I do not believe Bambi is about hunting. The hunters portrayed in the movie are hunting out of season and are irresponsible. Let’s also look at what was going on in the world when Bambi was made. Bambi premiered in 1942 in London. The world was in the depths of World War II. London had just survived the Blitz, the terrible bombardment by Hitler’s forces that ended in May 1941. Some people close to the man Walt Disney said this was his favorite film. Bambi is a very realistic film. Most everyone, I think, knows that Bambi’s mother dies in the film and there is no magic dust or fairy godmother to bring her back. She is gone. I think the power of this film comes because most of us know and certainly the Londoners at the premiere knew the experience of hardship, of grief and we long for hope and restoration.

The movie opens with a song that says, “Love is a song that never ends.” Bambi’s story begins with his birth and the protective love of his mother.  Throughout the beginning of the movie we watch Bambi learn to walk and make friends. Who can forget his friend Thumper and his statement that parents have taught their children ever since. Come on and say it with me, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Bambi learned to speak and learned about the dangers of humankind all under the protective love and care of his mother. She teaches him how to live in a world that is not always safe. The harsh, painful realities of life are not glossed over as they move through the seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter. You’d better get out your Kleenex boxes.

SHOW FILM CLIP 1 FROM BAMBI^[i]. (Start as Mother pulls of bark from tree to feed Bambi End as Bambi & father walk into snow after he says ”Come, my son.”)

There are times when the façade of self-sufficiency shatters. We see that we can’t make it alone. It is at this most painful moment that Bambi hears the sure strong voice of his father, “come my son.”

Throughout Scripture we see God’s hesed or loyal, steadfast love as God leads people out of their valleys of shadow and pain into new life. We see it in the great story of Moses and the Exodus and in the story of the exiles returning home from Babylon. We see it in the story of Jesus. Jesus in his own life, generations later, parallels the four illustrations of God’s response to people in need found in Psalm 107. He provides eternal food which we will partake of in Holy Communion today. He released the captive and healed the sick and he even calmed the raging sea. The steadfast love of God was expressed again generations later in the person and work of Jesus the Christ.

After the scene we just saw from Bambi, spring comes to the world and new growth and new life are restored, as it is every year. Bambi and his friends get a lesson from the owl about another feature of spring, getting “tweeterpated”. I wish there was time to show you this section because it made me laugh out loud, to watch Flower the skunk, Thumper the rabbit and Bambi fall in love with females. Bambi has grown up. As the Londoners watching the premiere knew and as we know suffering and life-changing ordeals are not one-time events, it can happen again and again over the course of a life. The hunters return as Bambi and his mate, Faline enjoy the meadow. Bambi is shot and an untended campfire sets the forest ablaze. Wounded and broken, Bambi is ready to give up, but again his father comes and calls him back to life. “Get up. You must get up. Get up. Now, come with me.” The Father again leads him through the destruction.

SHOW FILM CLIP 2 FROM BAMBI. (Start as father leads thru fire at waterfall End as Bambi & father are shown together on rock after words sung “Love is a song that never ends.”)

Love is a song that never ends. It is a song that God sings to us through eternity. In our own times of suffering when we cry out to God, God meets us where we lay and urges us “Come with me.” And then God leads us through the wreckage and devastation to a new life. It’s not necessarily the life we’ve known before, but it is a new life from the remnants of the old. It is a life that will have joys of its own and fulfillment of its own. Generations of people of God have learned this through their own experiences and so must we. And we don’t need to wait for a travesty to learn the lesson. As Biblical scholar Clinton McCann, Jr said, “Crying out to God, living in dependence upon God is not simply a emergency measure but a way of life.”^[ii]  It is a way of life captured in that old hymn “I Surrender All.” “All to Jesus I surrender; all to him I freely give; I will ever love and trust him, in his presence daily live.”^[iii] I know that this goes against our grain, but we can freely embrace this dependence because God has shown us over and over again in nature, in the lives of those who have gone before us and those around us even now that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. Take God’s invitation to wholeness, leave any façade of self-sufficiency aside and say yes to Jesus’ call “come with me and be saved.” Amen.

Sermon delived by Rev. Nancy Cushman on August 8, 2007.