Psalm 16 – a Miktam of David (a song of lament, praise, or reflection)
Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. I said to the LORD,
"You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing." As for the
saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all
my delight. The sorrows of those will increase who run after other
gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names
on my lips. LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you
have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in
pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart
instructs me. I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at
my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my
tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not
abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in
your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.


Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed
the crowd: "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man
accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God
did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was
handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you,
with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the
cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony
of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.
“David said about him: 'I saw the Lord always before me. Because he
is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and
my tongue rejoices; my body also will live in hope, because you will not
abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in
your presence.'”

“Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and
was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and
knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of
his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of
the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave,
nor did his body see decay.
“God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.”

~+~

“Hail to the Lord’s Anointed” is an Advent hymn that appears in a lot of
older hymnals. I’m sad to say, but some of you may be relieved to
know, that it is not in the hymnal we use. Otherwise, we would have
sung it today.
It was one of some 400 hymns written by James Montgomery –
a British minister and newspaper editor in the late 18 th and early 19 th
centuries.
It begins with the words, “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed, great David’s
greater Son.” The power of this hymn is that it so clearly links the life
of our Lord Jesus and His earthly ancestor – King David – on both
sides of His earthly family. Both Joseph and Mary were descendants
of David. You can read Joseph’s family genealogy in Matthew 1 and
Mary’s in Luke 3.
You may recall from two Sundays ago the Gospel reading about Jesus
and His entry into Jerusalem. The crowds shouted, “Hosanna to the
Son of David.” They were historically right in that He was descended
from David – and they were spiritually right in the same way. And the
song of David known as Psalm 16 could have been sung by Jesus
after entering Jerusalem:
“Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my
heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your
Holy One see decay.”

David had an unshakeable sense of security because – in spite of his
human failings – he always had God in the forefront of his mind.
Likewise, Jesus was always intimately connected with God the Father
and God the Spirit.
Even though Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why
have You forsaken me?” – He was not forsaken. God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Spirit always have been, always are, and
always will be inseparable.
But Jesus – the human body that contained God the Son – could feel
forsaken. He could feel abandoned. The excruciating pain He
endured could certainly have caused Him to feel that God the Father
had turned away from Him. And those very human feelings were
perhaps the most painful part of His suffering.
On top of that, the spiritual weight of the sin of the whole world that
was on His shoulders could certainly have made Him feel abandoned
and alone. But the reality is that He was neither abandoned nor alone.
And His body did not experience decay. Of course, the women who
went to the tomb on that first Easter morning didn’t know that. They
came equipped with spices and perfumes to put on His graveclothes to
delay the process of decomposition – not realizing that He had already
come back to life.
And forty days later – on what we will celebrate as Ascension Sunday
this May 17 th – Jesus rose into Heaven in His new and perfected
human body. There, He sits at the right hand of His Father, and is
interceding for us right now.
That means that He is not here with us physically. And because no
one has seen Jesus face-to-face on Earth in almost two-thousand
years – a lot of the faithful have experienced decay. Including a lot of
people we have loved – and whom will still miss.
And it will be that way for while to come. Paul put it this way in his
second letter to the Corinthian Christians:

“… we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing
power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every
side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but
not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry
around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may
also be revealed in our body.”
But His promise is that He will come back some day. He will raise our
bodies that most likely will have experienced decay by then – as we
carry in our bodies the death of Jesus – but He will make them new
and perfect – so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our
bodies. And we will live joyfully in His presence forever.
And we can live with more joy in this life – because we know that will
never be abandoned – and any decay will be only temporary.
As the 17 th -century poet John Donne wrote:
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
That’s just another way of saying,
“Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my
heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your
Holy One see decay.”
May that be our hope now and always.
Amen.