James 24:7

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The Psalms remind us that we can bring everything before God.

In his book, The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud wrote: "We hide our moral arrears in the breeches of respectability."  The story of the Fall tells us as much.  After the Great Rebellion, Adam and Eve, covered themselves in fig leaves and hid in the brush. 

No one wants to stand in the presence of God with his pants down.

We not only hide our "moral arrears", we hide our fears, doubts and questions behind veils of piety.  As a former professor of mine used to put it: "We would rather offer God our dignity than our selves."

Perhaps we think God will not notice our drooping drawers or will not call the roll and note our absence.  Maybe we think that when we are out of sight, skulking in the bushes, we are out of mind.  Maybe we think God is as easily duped by a plastic smile as our all-too-willing friends and neighbors are.

The Psalmists teach us that we can bring our sins, our failures, our doubts, our rage and even our faithlessness before God.  They remind us that God is always open.  They assume a vision of God as One who leans forward with an ear cocked to catch the slightest nuance of every gasp, groan, and growl we utter.

The Psalms teach us that we can- no, that we must- come before God "just we are without one plea". 

Naked.

The Psalms teach us to surrender our dignity and offer our briar-scratched selves to God.

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The Psalms speak for us when we cannot speak for ourselves.

Not long ago a friend dropped me an email and told me that he was so low he could not pray.  His world lay in pieces at his feet. His thoughts raced.  The words would not come.  He asked me what he could do.

I told him to pray the Psalms.

The Psalms speak for us when we cannot speak for ourselves.  Written by people lost in joy and mired in despair, the Psalms express almost every emotion there is.  The poetry of the Psalms articulates our fears, anxieties, and worries. 

The Psalms are authentic.  Nothing raw is concealed in dignity; no pain is hidden in piety.  The Psalmist falls on his face before God in sadness.  He shakes his fist in rage and pleads for God to open heaven's bolted doors.  He curses his neighbor and begs God for forgiveness and mercy.

We fear our feelings.  We ingest, digest, suppress and repress them.  We wear the false face.   As the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote in his poem...

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn, and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

 

Why must the world be overwise

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

 

We smile, but, O Great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but O, the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

 

We forgot how to speak our pain.

Yet sometimes the world is simply too much.  Like Job's friends we are stunned by the sight of so much sorrow and we sit for seven days in shocked silence. 

When we cannot find our voice.  When the pain within us is too great to be expressed in the company of the pious or when our mouths are shut by horror, let us turn to the Psalms.

They speak for us when we cannot speak for ourselves.   

This past summer I conducted a Bible study on the Psalms for the good folks from North River Community Church and West Gwinnett Christian Church.  I'm no expert on the Psalms (I'm not expert on anything!) but I have found the Psalms to be of tremendous benefit in helping shape my prayers.  For the next several days, I thought I would share these thoughts on the Psalms with you.

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The Psalms teach us about the nature of God.

While all of scripture tells us things about the nature of God, I believe the Psalms teach us at least three things that figure heavily into our prayers.  The Psalms teach us (1) that God is righteous, (2) that God is faithful and (3) that God is free.

Because God is faithful, we can rest assured that God will "never leave us nor forsake us."  God has been faithful to us, God is faithful to us and God will be faithful to us.  Over and over the Psalmist speaks of the "loving kindness" of God, or of God's "covenant love".  Over and over the Psalmist recalls God's acts in the history of Israel, to testify to God's faithfulness. Because God is faithful, God can be "depended upon".

Because God is righteous, we can trust that God will do what is right.  God will act out of righteous judgment and do the right thing.  God can do nothing but the right thing because God is righteous.

However, God is also free.  Just as we can count on God to always do the right thing we can also count on God to act out of God's own freedom.  I believe that is why we often read the Pslamist crying out, "When, O Lord?" Or, "How long, O Lord?"  Or, "Where are You, Lord?"

The Psalmist knows that God is faithful and that God is righteous.  However, the Psalmist also knows that God is free.  The awareness of the freedom of God, to my mind, is what drives the Pslamist to  make promises or bargain with God.  The Psalmist is trying to get God to make a move.

I often put it this way: "Our problem is not in wondering whether God exists or whether God loves us or whether God will be faithful to us or whether God will do the right thing or not.  Our problem is the anxiety of wondering whether God will show up by Friday at 3."

We pray in light of the faithfulness of God, the righteousness of God and the freedom of God.  While we are willing to grant faithfulness and righteousness to God (after all that is in our interest!) we sometimes struggle with granting God the freedom that is due God. 

We want to depend upon God to do the right thing when we want God to do it.  "Lord, I trust that You are faithful and that You, in your infinite righteousness, will act justly but I also trust that You will do so by the end of the business day Tuesday, September 5th.  Amen."

It seems to me that if we are willing to grant God (what a funny phrase!) God's faithfulness and God's righteousness, that we ought to be willing to grant  God's freedom. 

After all, God is free.

The question is whether we are capable of such trust.

There is room for

beauty-ing mysteries and

loving faith-in-spite-of ...

Hush!

------------

the Spirit

li(v)es

between

us

-----------

and knowing that

draws down deep

the is that is not

measured

dark faith

and doubt

its twin

(the future-

being what it is-

is not)

we cannot

make the world

our world

We only live

completely

out

of

control...

though not of Someone's…

I believe it was Erich Fromm who reminded us that we can go through life loving things and using people rather than using things and loving people.  A quick glance at the world around us provides all the evidence we need to convince us of the truthfulness of his words.   Everywhere we see the image of men and women being used to sell products or to simply stir the passions. 

The images are only that: shiny surfaces that speak a "truth" that is only as thick as the ink on the cover of a magazine, as ephemeral as a pixel on a TV screen or computer monitor. There is no one there.  There is no there there. 

If we are not careful our minds can be shaped by the images.  Before long the people around us become to us as thin as those images.  People around us can present themselves as little more than image.

All surface.

I was re-reading Colossians 3:5 this morning:  "Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and greed (which is idolatry)."  I puzzled over those words last week as I prepared for Sunday's sermon. I am still thinking about them.

Paul has just finished writing to those Colossian Christians that they had died with Christ. He encouraged them them to set their minds upon things related to the victorious Jesus.

He told them to "put to death whatever was in them that was still bound to the earth'" (and its way of being and thinking left to itself).  In other words, he seems to be saying, "You died (to your earth bound way of being) with Christ now act like people who died (to their earth bound way of being) with Christ."

That's when he wrote to them about sexual immorality, about impurity, lusts, evil desires and greed (which is idolatry).  Someone I read last week suggested that it is helpful to read Paul's word from back to front.  In other words, begin with idolatry.

What is idolatry?  Idolatry occurs when anything from the created order is used to attain that which only God can provide.  When someone bows down to an idol they seek from that object (or maybe "through" that object) that which only God can provide.  Idols are used to obtain outcomes be they good crops or good feelings.

Idolatry is the use of an object to obtain that which only God can provide.  

Idolatry is a form of technology. Idols are always under the control of the user.  The end of such technology is some state of affairs deemed better than the state of affairs one had before the idol was used.

I want more of "X" in my life.  I will use this object to obtain more of "X" where X is any emotional state (peace, security, a heightened sense of well-being, promise of a better future, a rejuvenated sense of meaning and purpose, place or power) I desire.

Idolatry is the use of an object to obtain that which only God can provide.

If you think of idolatry in that way it is easy to see why Paul would link greed to idolatry.  The satisfaction of selfish desire is the essence of idolatry. I want "X" and my use of this idol will give it to me.

Evil, self-centered, self-aggrandizing desire and passionate lust are the fuel of such greed, the motive power that drives idolatry.   Such fuel is often tapped through illicit sexual practices.

Paul is suggesting that there is a connection between idolatry and sexual immorality.  What is that connection?  Think about that definition: "Idolatry is the use of an object to obtain that which only God can provide."

Sexual immorality finds its grounding in the "objectification" of other people.  (Think "sex object."  Think of the use of image, the manipulation of surfaces, the airbrushed ephemera, the pixilated ghost on a screen.)

We make others into objects to obtain that which only God can provide. We love objects and use people. We use people as objects.

And what is it we hope to gain?  Perhaps the restoration of certain emotional ends such as a renewed sense of security or peace or power or place or assurance?

What drives this rampant lust, this objectifying idolatry, this need to devour others in the quest for one's own sense of peace?

I suggest that, at its deepest level, such sexual idolatry is driven by what drives all idolatry: restlessness.

Restlessness.

Rest-less-ness.

Rest-less.

Without rest.

Augustine put it this way in his Confessions:  "Our hearts are restless until they find their perfect rest in Thee."

Idolatry. whether in the form of sexual immorality or in other forms,  is the mad, frenzied rush to obtain a rest that only God can provide.

And, like all idolatries, such forms of immorality are at bottom spiritual problems.

I have been preaching for the past 7 weeks about how Christians are the "community of the resurrection" and how we ought to live our lives in the living Jesus and what that might look like.  

During the process, I have spent a good bit of time walking with the good folks of North River through the book of Colossians.  The more I read and think and meditate on Paul's way of expressing Jesus the more I understand his tendency on occassion to just lose himself in expressions of praise. 

It makes me wanna holler!

Lose yourself in contemplating (and that means slowly, meditatively, as if you are savoring each thought) words like these:

"He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers- all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might have first place in everything.  For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross." (1:15-20)

Or chew on this:

"As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk about in him." (2:6)

Or this:

"For in him the whole fullness of God dwells (goes on dwelling)  bodily and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority." (2:9)

Or this:

"Since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above..." (3:1)

Amazing words.

The One through whom and by whom and for whom all things were created...the One in whom everything holds together...the One who is the image of the invisible God...in whom the fullness of God dwells completely- that One is our head...the living One in whom we walk about...the One with whom we are raised to this resurrected life- a life that is not a life of our making....

When you read words like that and then think about how we settle for a little bit of religious duty fitted neatly into a life of our own making... or how we satisfy ourselves with a show of piety here and there.... or how we consign ourselves to churchy programs, bells and whistles and petty debates over music and carpet and hurt feelings....well...you just have to shake your head.

I am coming to believe that part of our problem is that we just do not read the Bible. We may read Christian books and listen to Christian preachers on the radio and watch TV prophets but we just don't read the Bible....and I mean really sit down and take a passage like those I listed above and chew on them, meditate on them, and ingest them.

If we don't take the time to read the Word, we certainly do not make time for the Word to read us!  I mean...really...how often do you sit before the Word and let it read you?  In the past 6 months, how many times have you found the Bible opening up your life for examination?

Even when we read the Word or study the Word we sit "over it."  We analyze it, study each word, look at the passage in context.  All of that is good.  But what about this: What if in that process we opened our lives to the Living Word and invited it to read us?

For example, take that passage..."As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk about in him..." (2:6).   You can study that as if you sit "over" the Word and you should.  But what happens when you sit "under" that Word?

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Have I really welcomed Christ Jesus the Lord and how would I know if I had?  How would other people know that I had?

2.  Do I truly walk about in Him?  What would that look like if I did? 

3.  How do I really understand Jesus and my relationship with Him?  How do I see Him?  As a figure in history?  A good moral teacher from the past whose teachings are "relevant" somehow to the present?  What happens to Jesus when I try to make Him relevant anyway?

4.  Is Paul suggesting that Jesus is somehow "expansive"?  Is that how I understand Him...as someone I could spend a life exploring?  Do I even think of Jesus in that way?

5.  Is Paul suggesting that I walk through my life in Jesus?  How would my life be transformed if I even pretended that that was the case?

See what I mean?  Those 5 questions are just a few that come to my mind when I read those 15 words from Colossians 2:6.

I know....who has time for that way of reading scripture? 

Hmmmm....maybe that question is worth pondering too.

Wye Huxford, Executive Director of the European Evangelistic Society, recently published the following devotional through the EES email newsletter.  I have known Wye for over 30 years.  He is pastor and scholar.  This particular devotional caught my eye because I have been thinking (and preaching) a lot lately about how we tend to want to distill the Bible down to workable principles rather than to allow scripture to open us up to a more expansive way of seeing the purposes of God.  

We live in a fast food society.  We like to whizz through the drive-through and pick up some "nuggets" and be on our way.  Perhaps that way of eating is shaping our ways of reading.  We whip into scripture, snatch up some "nuggets, and then drive out into our hectic lives.

That's not good.  We need to take time to savor the meal.  In this little essay, Wye teaches us a little bit about savoring the love of Christ, an opportunity that requires time and attention.

You can learn more about the European Evangelistic Society here.   My appreciation to Wye for giving us all something to chew on!

 

Ephesians 3:14-21 comes to the church, according to long-standing tradition, from the pen of the Apostle Paul. That same tradition says that he wrote these words from prison, most likely in Rome. It is likely that he has now been in jail upwards of four years by the time the words are written. The fact that this former Pharisee, a young man who was rising to the top of the social ladder of his day would end up in jail “for the sake of you Gentiles” (Ephesians 3:1) offers convincing testimony to the details of Paul’s conversion. (Acts 9)

This paragraph is loaded with phrases worthy of serious contemplation, but none are more worthy than verses 18 and 19 which say, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (NRSV)

The word that begs for attention in these verses is “comprehend.” Some translations use “grasp” for the English translation of Paul’s word. This same Greek word is found in John 1:5, but is translated “overcome” (NRSV) or “comprehend” (NASB). In John, the issue is that either darkness did not “overcome the light” or did not “comprehend the light.”

Applying those same definitions to the same word in Ephesians 3, the question becomes something like this. “As Christians, do we “comprehend the love of Christ” or do we “overcome, that is, catch up to, the love of Christ?” Could it be that Paul deliberately chooses a word that is a bit ambiguous, thus forcing his readers to “contemplate” the options?

He cleaves no room that would allow his readers to fail to recognize the rather awesome task before them – he is talking about the “breadth, length, height and depth” of the love of Christ. That love “surpasses knowledge.”

I’m not sure I will ever manage to “comprehend” that love. But it does seem to be a reasonable goal in life to try and “catch up” to that love. Thus while I may not be able to explain why God would love us as He does, I can live out my life trying to love my neighbor as Christ loves me.

Comprehend or catch up to? Both are significant challenges. May this be a week where we choose to accept the challenge and be filled with “the fullness of God.”

    

    

Last night in our Psalm study we finished up with Psalm 73- the one that speaks of the profound dangers of envy and jealousy- and started into Psalm 24.  

To read a Psalm that opens with, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein" seemed like a good idea after contemplating the dangers of envy.   We need to be reminded that even if we get it well.. it's not ours.

Some of us have read that Psalm our whole lives and yet have not been touched by the boldness of its claim.  Think about it: here is this hymn being sung on a regular basis by the Jews.  Here they are making this bold claim about their God and implying that other gods in the neighborhood are nothing like Yahweh who created everything and owns everything in this plane of space and time.

That's one thing and maybe that's enough.  However, there is this one little fact that often goes unnoticed: this claim is made by a people whose history is little but conquest and oppression.  They were enslaved in Egypt, pounded by the Assyrians, hauled off by the Babylonians, beaten by the Persians, conquered by the Greeks, oppressed by the Romans, dispersed to the four corners of the world, despised in many quarters, suspected in others and almost annihlated by the Nazis. 

And all the while they sang, "The earth is Yahweh's and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein."

In the faces of those who sought to destroy them, in the presence of those who towered over them with bloodied sword and heavy shields they sang: "You belong to the God of our Fathers; You and all you claim for yourself belongs to Yahweh."

I can only speak for myself but when I left our study last night I could not escape the thought that this was and is a song sung by those who go on believing, go on asserting, and go on standing for their God even in the face of evidence that seems to contradict their claim.

And, as I drove home, it occurred to me that we ought to practice repeating those lines everyday of our lives. When our crisis emerges and when all the apparent evidence argues against it, will we go on singing?  Will we say in the face of that which would destroy us: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein?"

  

In my last post I wrote that I had "paraphrased" Psalm 71.  That's not accurate.  I am not a Greek or a Hebrew scholar.  I am a pastor who enjoys studying texts of scripture and who relies on real scholars to provide direction.  "Paraphrase" is too strong.  The little riffs I did on Psalm 71 and 73 are just that...my takes on what I take away in my pastoral studies. 

Just wanted to be clear about that. 

Eugene Peterson does paraphrases.  I just 'riff.'

Having said that, here is a little piece I discovered on the Internet after I 'riffed' on Psalm 71. 

Read my riff and then read this.

I thought you might enjoy it.

I had such a good time playing with Psalm 73 (see Hitting Bottom below), I decided to go ahead and paraphrase Psalm 71.  I called it "The Prayer of an Old Man."

You can check it out here.