Preached on Mother's Day, May 13, 2018
Scripture readings: Psalm 3:1-8; John 10:11-18
It is said that there are two kinds of people in the world.
There are those who wake up in the morning and say, “Good morning, Lord!” Then
there are those who wake up and say, “Good Lord, it’s morning!”
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| Walking near Crab Creek, north of Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA March, 2018 |
Psalm Three was written by one of those who could go to bed
at night thinking, “O Lord, how many are my foes!” and wake up saying, “I wake
again, because the Lord sustains me.” (Psalm 3:5) That, by the way, is surely
Bible-Talk for saying: “Good morning, Lord!”
It doesn’t seem possible. It doesn’t even seem normal.
According to this Psalm, it is the gift of God to wake up well-rested and well-prepared
in the morning, when life in this world seems to have you surrounded, and out-numbered,
and out-gunned.
We are listening to God speak to us through this Psalm on
Mother’s Day and, in a way, we shouldn’t. This Psalm is a warrior Psalm and we
don’t usually think of mother’s as warriors, but they are: and so are fathers.
Mothers are mama-bears or she-tigers. Their children and
their husbands know this. This Psalm applies to mothers and to all the rest of
any family. The Psalm applies to any warrior, and all the people of God are
warriors.
And this makes me want to go off on a tangent, because, in
some strange way we were created to be warriors. I wonder why, because, if we
were created for perfection in a perfect world, as we were at the beginning,
why would God have made us warriors?
When God set Adam the Human in the Garden of Eden, God’s
mission for humans was to “dress and keep it”. The plan was that we would start
with that garden and spread our mission to the whole planet. The word
translated as “dress” is “abad”, and it means to serve, and then in the odd way
Hebrew has, it also means to be served. Which has a cool farmer’s way of seeing
the land: if you serve the land, it will serve you. “Keeping” (or “shamar”) is
the real warrior word here because it means to guard and protect the earth,
even at the level of fighting for it if necessary.
This tells me that, even when everything is perfect and
everything is right, love is ready to serve, and love is vigilant and ready to
jump, and save, and fight. True love has to carry a tiger in its pocket. Good
marriages, good families, good churches, good communities and nations should
all be like this. And there would be a joy, and a proper pride, and discipline
in this; because true love is not soft.
I know we’re born for this. A little boy walked up to his
mother and said: “I don’t want to be your little lamb anymore. I want to be
your little tiger.” We are all created to be warriors under authority and
discipline of God.
Jesus was a warrior, and so he shows us what God’s love is
like. The tender love of God hides a tiger. Jesus could be really scary;
invading the Temple in Jerusalem with his disciples, making whips out of cords,
attacking the merchants, whose businesses were based in the Temple to supply
animals for sacrifice and the proper currency and coinage for purchases and
offerings, turning over their tables and counters, and driving them out. (John
2:13-16; Mark 11:15-17)
By doing this Jesus stopped the sacrifices that most people
wanted to make in the Temple that day. He didn’t want them to worship the usual
way, because he was there to be the warrior-love who defeated the sins of the world.
Jesus made himself scary to do this.
When Jesus and his disciples did this, you must know that they
were hopelessly outnumbered by the Temple security. Jesus succeeded scared away
the Temples armed police force, because his love was a tiger in his heart. He
was scary because he knew he was doing the right thing for everyone he loved:
for the whole world that he loved. Jesus showed a warrior-passion for this.
He was claiming the people of Israel, and all those who came
from other lands to worship God as his children. He shouted, “Is it not
written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you
have made it a ‘den of robbers’. (Mark
11:17)
Jesus shows us that even men can be mama-bears and
she-tigers. Jesus was completely committed to his children. He was passionately
committed to us; his children to be.
Jesus held nothing back. And yet he was someone whom little children
and their parents would never fear. (Mark 9:36-37; 10:13-16)
Like every Jewish child who went to synagogue every Sabbath
and to Synagogue school during the week, Jesus grew up singing this warrior
Psalm until he knew it by heart. It shaped him, as all the Psalms did. It
shaped Jesus’ own awareness of who he was, and what his mission was, and how he
would accomplish it.
It was a song of the warrior King David. It sang about his
fight to bring order to his kingdom when it was tearing itself apart. There was
corruption, and deception, and hypocrisy, and bitterness tearing the kingdom of
Israel, and David’s own family was at the heart of that destruction. David knew
this, and he hated it, and it devastated him, because he was at the heart of
what was wrong.
David had actually played along with what he hated. He had
made his own contribution to it. You can read about this in Second Samuel,
chapters fourteen through nineteen.
It was David’s failure as a father that caused the crisis,
and this failure surrounded him with enemies lead by his own children. But although
David had failed, he still trusted God to help him to do his best and to set
things right. David had to lay his own life on the line to heal the land.
Part of the song said “Many are saying of me, ‘God will not
deliver him.’” David himself was aware that he had made too many mistakes and
failed too many times to be “delivered” by God.
David knew that he should be beyond help and beyond
redemption. The amazing miracle, the contradiction that seems too good to
believe, was the truth that, “From the Lord comes deliverance.” (Psalm 3:8)
This is what God stands for, for everyone who has no ground to stand on.
When Jesus learned this song, as a boy, he knew where it
came from. He knew that horrible and tragic story behind David’s family and
their battles against each other. And he had himself called the Son of David.
Jesus knew that David’s own life had laid him low and left
him prostrate, belly and face in the dust, unable to stand in his guilt and his
blame, in the presence of the greatest king who is God himself.
“From the Lord comes deliverance.” God was David’s shield
when David had no defenses left. God was David’s glory when David had nothing
to show but his shame. When David felt too weak and unworthy to do more than
lie down in the dirt, God lifted up his head. Jesus came to be the kind of king
who does this.
You need to know that this lifting up of the head business
was part of a king’s mission. This was something that a king did, when he was
faced with a subject, or a servant, or a surrendered enemy, who came to him and
groveled before him, face down, in the dust. A king (if he decided to do so),
in mercy and grace, would put his fingers under the chin of the person sprawled
on the ground, and lift up his head. It was the king’s permission for that
person to rise, to get up, to stand, and to know he was accepted, and free, and
that he or she would receive an answer from the king that was better than
anything they could ask for.
David found this grace from God. It gave him hope and, in
spite of all his troubles and all his enemies, he could rest and wake up,
prepared to meet the day. I had a pastor who recommended praying this prayer as
soon as your eyes open in the morning: “Good morning Lord! What are you up to
today? Let me be part of it.”
Jesus learned this warrior song as a child, and he grew up
to claim the song for himself, as no one else could. Jesus saw that he had come
into this world to have more enemies than anyone could count and, still, lift
up their heads.
Every sin, and evil, and injustice in this world is Jesus’ enemy.
Every action of ours, and every motive of our heart that works at cross
purposes to Jesus, is his enemy. We are his enemies, and Jesus faces us without
fear.
But what he wants to do most is to be the lifter of our
heads. Jesus does all his fighting for this kind of victory.
In this desperate battle, Jesus was ready and willing to lay
down his life for the kingdom. Jesus was willing to have no defenses and no
shield against us. He was willing to have no glory that we could see. He was
willing to have no pride or weapon, except for the nails in his hands and feet,
and the thorns on his head. He was willing to have no shield or glory except
for his death on the cross for our sin, and for the sin of the world.
Jesus knew that, giving up himself to all of this, he would
be able to lift up his own head, and stand up for us as our king. That makes
him the one to lift up our head in his presence.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” “The reason my Father
loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again.” (John 10:11,
17)
Jesus knew that, after carrying our sins on the cross, he
could lie down in death and wake up again. He could go into the world of death
that seems to swallow up everything that is dear to us, and finally to swallow
us up as well. He could sleep that sleep, and wake up and rise again, because
the Father sustained him. (Psalm 3:5) Then he could offer us grace, and
abundant life, and everlasting life.
This was how Jesus claimed that warrior song as his own.
David had written a song that was far better than he had realized. It was a
song that only Jesus could fully claim. Jesus claimed this song for himself so
that he could give it to us; to shape our faith in him.
When I was child there were times when I would get the
chance to see puppies. There is a stage where puppies, just like babies, don’t
have any teeth. You can put your finger in their mouth and they will chew your
finger. They will chew, and chew, and chew; but they can’t bite you. They can’t
hurt you. My dad would say, “Watch out, that puppy will gum you to death!”
Psalm Three tells us of God breaking the teeth of the enemy,
as if our enemies could bite us and tear us apart. Our enemies are our life’s
hurts and injustices. Our enemies are our own sins, and failures, and
foolishness.
These have terrible teeth. The teeth do the worst damage,
but God can break the teeth of our enemies. We are hurt, but we are not torn.
We are crushed, but we can mend. We have consequences to pay, but this does not
kill us. They bring us down, prone in the dust, but we can rise, and stand, and
fight again, because the Lord lifts up our heads.
In Jesus, God lifts us up. God breaks the teeth of our
enemies because the humility and suffering of Jesus give us mercy, and
strength, and healing.
Mothers and fathers have many enemies because they have
children. They fear for their children. They pray for their children. They know
their children will make mistakes. The parents are aware of their own mistakes,
too. Parents pray that God will break the teeth of their own failures and
regrets, for their children’s sakes.
Mothers and fathers pray that the world will only gum their
children and leave them unhurt. But the world is old, and it has long teeth. So,
parents pray that the world’s teeth will be broken and that their children will
rise again, and again; and that they will be strong, and brave; and that they
will be able to rest and wake up prepared for the next day with Jesus, because
Jesus will lift up their heads.
The power of Jesus who lay down in death and rose from the
dead is our power to rise. Parents receive that power from Jesus in the
fellowship of the cross. Parents may often feel crucified for their children.
And the parents who know Jesus pray for their children to have that same power
of Jesus in themselves.
Jesus came to make that warrior song come true for all of us,
as people who take care of others. Jesus came to lift up our heads, to make us
warriors who can rise again.
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