The Jesus Song-Book: God's Complaint Department

 Preached on Sunday, September 2, 2012 

Scripture readings: Psalm 13:1-6; Mark 9:14-29

 

When I ask someone, “How are things going?” there are some people who will always answer this way: “Can’t complain!” The classic long answer of this type is: “Can’t complain. It wouldn’t do me any good if I did.”



Butterfly in the Oregano

So, in the battle of wits (in which I am often caught unarmed), when someone gives me the short answer, “Can’t complain,” I ask them, “Do you mean; it wouldn’t do you any good if you did?” But I know someone who outwits me every time, and he always says, “No I just can’t complain.”

That’s a good answer. But it’s not true, I think, for most of us. And so the Lord has something to say to us about our complaints. This psalm (Psalm Thirteen) forms part of the Lord’s answer.

For all the complaining we do (whether do it out loud or in a suffering silence) something in our very nature warns us about it. At least we know this when we hear other people complain. We don’t like it.

Parents hate to hear their kids complain. Parents usually make a deliberate effort to teach their children not to complain, although some parents don’t use the best teaching methods. They don’t teach by their own example.

It’s like the five-year-old who was riding in the car while his mom was driving on errands in the city. The traffic was bad, and his mother was quietly doing her best to get through it. The little boy noticed this and he asked his mother, “Mom, why do the idiots only come out when Dad drives?”

The Bible gives us a lot of warnings against complaining. Sometimes the Scriptures call complaining “murmuring” and tells us that it is very dangerous. (1 Corinthians 10:10)



There is a beautiful warning that comes from Paul in his letter to the Philippians. (Philippians 2:14-16a) I love this warning because it is so loving and positive, and it tells us why it is so much better not to complain. “Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life….” (Oh Paul writes such long, complicated sentences!)



How can complainers ever look like children of God?  How can they shine as lights in the world? How can complainers ever hold out to others the word of life?

On the other hand, Psalm Thirteen is a complaint. Technically, scholars call it a “psalm of lamentation”. It’s a fancy word but it adds up to the same thing. Nearly a third of the all psalms are psalms of lamentation; psalms of complaint.

Looking down the gravel road above Washtucna Cemetery

Four times David in a row pounds away at God with the same phrase, over and over again. “How long O Lord! How long? How long? How long?”



This isn’t a complaint, it’s a rant! Eugene Peterson paraphrases the opening line like this: “Long enough God – you’ve ignored me long enough.”

One third of the psalms are psalms of complaint. It is as if God wanted to teach us how to complain.

The truth is that this psalm is a complaint of faith. This complaint believes in the faithfulness of God: “But I trust in your unfailing love.” (Psalm 13:5) “Unfailing love” here is a translation of that single, special word in Hebrew for the covenant love (the promise love) of God. It is steadfast love; absolutely steady love: unceasing, unchanging.

In this psalm everything seems wrong. The writer, David, feels forgotten. “How long will you hide your face from me?” Peterson puts it this way: “I’ve looked at the back of your head long enough!” Has someone ever turned their back on you when you tried to talk to them, or refused to shake your hand when you held it out to them? I have; it makes you feel terrible. That is how David felt.



“How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and, every day, have sorrow in my heart?” This sorrow, this struggle closes in on people suffering from depression.



And then it made me think of another kind of depression. During the Great Depression, my grandparents, on both sides of my family, had a hard time. They worked hard when they could. When they weren’t working, they worked hard to find work. Sometimes they traveled across the country in search of work. My grandpa Evans took his family from New York to Washington in search of a job on the Grand Coulee Dam project, but the waiting line for jobs was too long; so they went back to New York. When my grandparents worked steady and hard their cupboards were still often empty before the next paycheck.



Washtucna Pioneer Memorial Cemeter

This went on for years; from 1929 until the 1940’s. They knew that they were better off than many other people, but they also knew they were living on the edge. They were thankful for what they had, but they always had the question of survival on their minds. To have thought about prosperity would have seemed like a luxury.



My grandparents had their lives to live and their families to feed, and they never knew if, tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year, their jobs would disappear. The whole country was like this. The whole world was like this.

There were good reasons to fear and worry. It was a problem that had no end in sight. They must have often asked the question, “How long?” And they yet got through it.

They had families to provide for. They had children to raise, feed, and clothe. If they ever complained wasn’t because they were complainers. It was because they didn’t want to fail.

There were needs hanging upon their shoulders that required caring, and caring can be hard work. There were needs that begged for their unfailing love. Sometimes our complaining can be a form of that caring and unfailing love. Sometimes complaining can be holy.

So it is not surprising that the Lord, himself, complains. Jesus grew up singing that song that cried “how long”. Jesus used the words of that song in his own life.

Only he addressed those words to us. He cried, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” (Mark 9:19) It was the complaint of caring; the complaint of the unfailing love of the Lord.



Jesus had taken part in what was literally a “mountain-top-experience”. Jesus had taken his favorite disciples, Peter, James, and John, up to the top of whatever they considered to be a mountain, and he was changed before their eyes so that they had a glimpse of his true glory.

Washtucna School:
Football field, with the Church peeking over the school roof

When this experience of glory passed Jesus insisted on getting through to them that this glory included his death on the cross and his rising from the dead. These favorite disciples didn’t complain, but they were confused and full of questions. They didn’t like what they heard.



Then they came down from the mountain top, and they found confusion among the other disciples. They found a crowd waiting for Jesus. They found a big argument going on, and a big complaint. The disciples had failed to heal a demon-possessed boy.

When Jesus asked the crowd, “What are you arguing about?” he was opening the door to the complaint of the boy’s father. Jesus asked for the complaint of someone who cared with an unfailing love.

When he heard the complaint, Jesus uncovered the father’s need for faith, and gave him that faith. When his own disciples complained of their embarrassing failure, Jesus uncovered their prayerless prayers, and answered their prayer.

When it seemed (though the failure of his own people) that he had failed, Jesus proved his unfailing love. The real answer of Jesus to the complaints was that he overlooked the weakness of peoples’ faith. He worked in spite of the prayerlessness of his own disciples. He kept on his road to the cross, where all the unfailing love of God’s works its power.

If Jesus can complain; so can we. The psalms teach us how to complain. Our problem is that our complaints are not holy. They are not pretty. They don’t come from faith and love. We can’t complain and shine. We can’t complain and hold out the word of life as people who have clearly been made alive by that word.

I am tempted to say that we are not good enough to complain; at least not good enough to complain well. Jesus’ complaints are the complaints of God in all his caring and unfailing love. His complaints are holy. Often, our complaints are not.



High School Football Practice in Washtucna

One third of the psalms are psalms of complaint. God has taken them up into his word. They are his word to us. Partly they are cautionary, it’s true. But they also teach us how to live in an honest relationship with God. They help us to journey from where we really are, to the place where God has called us and created us to live. The complaints of the psalm are like the prayer of the boy’s father in the gospel, “I believe; help my unbelief.” This is what all holy complaints are looking for.

In fact (you will have to trust me on this) the good that the Lord does for David, at the end of the psalm, tells us something about this. David prays: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.” (Psalm 13:6) This is a very odd thing to say, when he has been ranting at God: “How long O Lord; how long; how long; how long?”

But the good that God has given David is not the ordinary Hebrew word for good. It is good in the form of an answer (see the NEB); but David has been giving the Lord this long rant that doesn’t seem to deserve an answer.



What the Lord gives is like a process of goodness; a journey of goodness. It is like the ripening of fruit. It is like the weaning of a child from its mother’s milk to solid food. (“Analytical Hebrew and Chaldean Lexicon”, p. 138) It is a goodness that has taken David from a bad place to a better place; from a complaining faith to a trusting and loving faith. This is a goodness that is possible because David has been honest.

Christians often believe that God requires them to be dishonest and to live a lie; or at least to live up to a lie, or to live up to a pious fiction. The truth is that God knows us through and through and pretending to be happy does no good. God does not reward play-acting among his children. Play-acting only makes them likely to fool themselves, and to teach others to do the same.

Psalm Thirteen has complaint and faith going hand in hand. This is honest. Martin Luther was able to put these together. Luther said: “Hope itself despairs, and despair yet hopes; and only that unspeakable groaning is heard with which the Holy Sprit, who moves over the waters covered with darkness, intercedes for us [prays for us].”



It seems schizophrenic. Christians do have split personalities. We have our old self; the self we are without Christ, without God. We have our new self; where we are in Christ and Christ is in us, full of the hope of glory. That sounds both honest and crazy, but there it is. This is what it means to say, “I believe; help my unbelief.”



Jesus told his disciples that they could not heal the boy because such a healing requires prayer. I see this as a joke. I mean that Jesus was joking with his disciples. Of course they prayed, especially when the boy was not instantly healed before their eyes.  They had done this before, and it had always worked. This is the kind of faith they had, to pray for the thing that had never gone wrong before.



Geranium

I am sure they remembered to pray; but some prayers may not deserve to be called prayers. And, yet, what did Jesus do about this? He answered their prayerless prayers. He healed the boy.

This psalm rants its complaints; but it knows, in its heart, that none of its complaints are true. We are not forgotten. God has not turned his face away. We are full of worry but we know we are only being foolish because we also know that God will take care of us. It doesn’t matter if our enemies see us shaken and stumbling all over ourselves. It doesn’t matter who laughs at us, or how often.

There is another healing, in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John. (John 5:1-15) There was a man who needed a miracle and so he had gone to live in a place where there were periodic miracles. It was at a place called Bethesda, where there were springs and pools of healing.

It was like some places in the world, today, where people go on pilgrimage because they have a reputation as healing places. But the man lived in that healing place for thirty eight years without being able to get to the water at the healing time. He must have often prayed, “How long?” And then he must have stopped praying at all.

Jesus came to that place. He saw the man, and learned how long he had waited. Then Jesus walked up to him and asked him a strange and revealing question. “Do you want to be healed?”

The man did not ask for healing. All he could do was to tell Jesus his long, long, sad story. It was as if he were a broken recording repeating his unending complaint. Jesus healed him anyway, without his asking to be healed.

Afterwards, the man was pressured by the authorities to tell them who gave him this healing, and he didn’t know. He would have heard of Jesus; but Jesus had must have come to him anonymously, suddenly appearing before him out of the crowd. He didn’t know that his healer was Jesus.

So the man couldn’t report Jesus to the authorities. He went his way and the authorities let him go.

Then Jesus met him again, suddenly appearing to him out of the crowd, and gave him a mysterious warning. It was a warning not to sin unless he wanted something worse to happen.



Cross above Kahlotus WA

Now the man knew who had healed him, and so we can see what Jesus had warned him against. He responded to Jesus by becoming a tattle tale.

The authorities were expert complainers about the faults of others. They had many complaints about Jesus, and the man (knowing their power) played into their culture of complaint. He joined their club. He rejoined his place in the complainer’s club.



There is this danger; that even the apparent grace of God may not cure us from being complainers. There is a complaining nature that stops being honest.

Complaining becomes an addiction. It stops caring about answers. It stops caring about believing. It stops seeking, and finding, and sharing the unfailing love of God. It only wants to hear itself. That is the danger and curse of complaining, when it stops being honest and becomes unholy.

God save us from that! Psalm Thirteen teaches us to rant and then to stop and give it up; to trust and to love. Then we will sing to the Lord, because we know he has been good to us.



The Jesus Song-Book: A Righteous Vanishing Act

Preached on Sunday, August 26, 2012

The Jesus Song-Book: A Righteous Vanishing Act”

Scripture readings: Psalm 12:1-8; Matthew 6:19-24

Years ago, when the school day always began with the pledge of allegiance to the flag, it was the first day of kindergarten, and the teacher began by teaching her class how they would begin every day. She said, “Now, boys and girls, put your hand on your heart and repeat these words after me.”

A mantis in prayer at the church door

One little boy put his hand on his bottom. The other kids laughed, and the teacher saw what was going on. She said, “Johnny! that is not your heart.” And Johnny said, “It is too my heart! When my grandma sees me, she picks me up and pats my bottom and she says, ‘Bless your little heart’ and my grandma would never lie.”

Psalm number twelve is about hearts and about truth. David felt as if he were the only one left in the world with a heart that truly loved the truth.

The psalm, by itself, doesn’t give us any clues about the events behind it. We are told that David wrote it. It could come from the time of a great and terrible change in his life.

When David was loved by King Saul, and married to the king’s daughter, everyone he knew seemed to be his friend. Everyone seemed to care about whatever it was that David cared about.

When the king turned against him, this changed. All those friends disappeared. Perhaps they didn’t disappear instantly. Perhaps they stayed just long enough to come to David privately, and say something kind and supportive. Then they disappeared. Most of the people on whom David depended did a vanishing act, and they were gone.



A view of the cemetery
On the hill high above Washtucna WA

It was this great disappearance that inspired the cry for help at the beginning of this psalm. David was mourning the loss of his friends. They were not lost in death. They were lost through their unfaithfulness. They were lost because their friendship had turned out to be a lie. Their friendship had been nothing more than the flattery that people pay to the popular; but only for as long as that person remains popular.

So David sang this song to the Lord, “Help, Lord, for the godly are no more; the faithful have vanished from among men. Everyone lies to his neighbor; their flattering lips speak with deception.” (Psalm 1:1-2)

If David’s false friends had heard his new song and realized that it was all about them, they would have objected. They would have insisted that David was going too hard on them. David was being unfair.

Didn’t he know first hand what was happening to the King and the kingdom? The King was insane. The King was demented. The King was dangerous. There was no telling what he might do next. Wasn’t one of David’s most important jobs singing and playing the harp to calm the King when he fell into one of his black moods?

If David had to run for his life, at least (if he could get far enough away) he would be safe. But what about them! Poor them! They had to stay with the King and see to the business of the kingdom. They had to stay and risk those famous black moods. They had to hope they could escape the royal spear in the chest that the King nearly gave to David. David owed them pity, not blame. Poor them!

On my walk, looking back to church and school in Washtucna

The irony is that the loyalty of these false friends to the King was just as much a lie as their friendship to David had been. The irony is that David was always a better friend to the king than they were. David was marked by the King for death, but he went on protecting the frontiers and, whenever the King came within David’s reach, within his grasp, David always protected him and gave him another chance.

What David gave the King was what he had also given to these friends of his, until he saw them for what they were. What David gave the King was true loyalty and true friendship, even when the King marked him as his enemy. What David gave so truly, was what he looked for in others.



The “godly” and the “faithful” did their vanishing act right before David’s eyes. They were not what they had seemed to be. David had been deceived and he did not think himself wrong to blame them for it.

Do you know that we are supposed to be the godly and the faithful for each other? We need this from others and they need if from us: or, if not from us, then from whom?

This is what we were created for. This is our calling and our job. Godly and faithful are qualities that have their root in God. They represent, in human form, what God is. They are the qualities that belong to us as creations of God; created “in his image”.



Mr. and Mrs. Grasshopper and Grasshopper Jr.

The word translated as “godly” almost defies definition. When you say that a person moves “slowly”, you describe them as tending toward “slowness”. When you say that a person is “godly”, you describe them as tending toward God. That is the way that English grammar works



Godliness describes a person moving in the direction of God. But the direction of this godliness has a special quality about it. Godly, here, translates a word that describes the steadfast love of God for those to whom he commits himself. It is a love that is unalterable and unchanging. Godliness means moving in the direction of giving to God and to your fellow humans the steadfast love of God.

Those who are godly embody this love. Their actions and their words are one with, and inseparable from, this steadfast love.



Some of the grain elevators at Washtucna WA

Faithful is the quality of trustworthiness. It is what you can absolutely rely on. It is the essence of motherhood and fatherhood at their best. Parenthood is what God is, and it is what we are supposed to be; as creatures who are made in his image. We are created to be caregivers and nurturers for our world and for our fellow creatures, including human beings.



Steadfast love and faithfulness are the qualities that are abundant in God. When Moses asked to see God’s glory, this is what he saw. The Lord came to Moses and declared what he called his name, or his nature. “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness….” (Exodus 34:5-7)



David’s false friends used their talk to portray themselves as “godly and faithful” when they were not. Maybe this is being too hard on them. Maybe they really wanted to be David’s friends, but they also wanted to live with the King, and eat his food, and have all the nice things that went along with this, no matter how unstable and dangerous the King might be.

They wanted too many things and, as they say, “You can’t have everything.” It was a matter of the heart. Their heart was in the right place, but it was also trying to be in too many other places at the same time. There was no reliable way to tell where they really stood. It made them into liars.



A dog on the road to the cemetery above Washtucna WA

In the Bible the heart is not the center of  the emotions. The heart is the center of the will. The heart is what makes the crucial choice. It is the center of your desire. It is the part of you that considers everything and then it says, “This is what I want. This is how I will think. This is what I will do. This is what I will be. This is where I will stand.”

What David says about these false friends is that they have double hearts. The New International Version says, “Everyone lies to his neighbor; their flattering lips speak deception.” It should say, “They speak with flattering lips and double hearts.” That would be a more literal translation. “They speak with flattering lips and double hearts.”

Their hearts were divided. They wanted things that couldn’t exist together. It would be like wanting your chocolate milk hot and cold at the same time and in the same cup.

Some things are really hard to keep together. It would be like wanting to be an honest person, and also wanting to run for high public office at the same time.  It would be like wanting to be popular and wanting to have integrity at the same time. It would be like wanting to be unselfish and also wanting to get your own way at the same time. It is dangerous work to be double hearted.



A crow on the gate above the cemetery at Washtucna WA

There can be a real difference between wanting people to like you and wanting people to love and trust you. There can be a difference between being cool, and being good parents; unless you can prove that the real definition of the coolness of a parent is being a good parent.



There can be a difference between being smart and being wise. Wisdom often deals with knowing what it is that you don’t know. And being smart or being wise can both get you into a lot of trouble; only they get you into completely different kinds of trouble.

If you are double hearted, then you have at least twice as many hearts as you can keep track of, and you cannot know yourself. You will have no idea of who you really are. Others will have to learn from experience (perhaps the hard way) what it is that your two hearts really want, and which of your two hearts is the stronger one, and how to deal with you accordingly, or how to let you alone.

The psalm tells us that double hearted people are what most of us are, or what we are without God. Double hearted is what even the godly and the faithful become when they forget God. The psalm tells us about what God thinks about all this.



God speaks up in this psalm and makes a promise. “Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise”, says the Lord, “I will protect them from those who malign them.” (Psalm 12:5)

Remember that this is God’s answer to David. In David’s life the godly and the faithful had ceased to exist. They were exposed as liars. Between their two hearts, their life was an emptiness and a lie.

As the crow flies...

David was impoverished by this. He was maligned by them as if they had slapped him in the face. When you think you know where you stand with people who seem to treat you kindly, and seem to be people you can trust, waking up to reality is horrible. It makes you sick. You feel weak. You feel like you have been robbed. Your soul groans.

The Lord says, “I will now arise.” This is what the Lord has done in Jesus. In a world where love is often not steadfast, where the faithful are unfaithful, God comes, in Jesus, to embody steadfast love and faithfulness.

He comes in Jesus to be this for us, when steadfast love and faithfulness seem to have disappeared. He comes in Jesus so that we can become for others what Jesus is for us.



God came in Jesus and grew up singing this song about the lives that are injured by the vanishing act of those who are supposed to be godly and faithful. God came in Jesus and grew up singing this song about keeping his promise to arise, and to help us in our great need. He sang this song about his promise to bring steadfast love and faithfulness back to the world, and back to the human hearts that have grown tired of their double lives.

That is who we are. When we see God as he truly is, in Jesus, we see the emptiness of our double hearts, and we want a new heart. God came in Jesus to make us single hearted, through the work of his love for us and for this world that he created.

God came in Jesus to suffer the penalty of our double heartedness on the cross, and he defeated the power of that double heartedness through his resurrection.

This is how he makes us whole. Through Jesus, and his cross, and his resurrection, we see the beauty of the single hearted love of God, and we receive the power of God to have one single heart, like his heart, beating within us.

His power makes us able to give that heart back to him. Then we are able to give ourselves to others who need us to be godly and faithful, and we will not do a vanishing act in the end.

The Jesus Song-Book: Don't Panic

Preached on Sunday, August 19, 2012

Scripture readings:  Psalm 11:1-7; Matthew 7:24-27 

There is a saying that goes like this: “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on!” This came to mind while I was thinking about this psalm. ‘In the Lord I take refuge. How can you say to me, “Flee like a bird to your mountain”?’ “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:1-3)

There were people around David telling him to give up. But it was much more dramatic than that. It was a warning. It was urgent. Run for your life. Let go of the rope. Fly away! It was all in the spirit of panic.

Stormy Summer Sky, Washtucna WA

There are no clues in this Psalm telling us the situation behind the fears and the warnings. The truth is that David did a lot of running in his life.

David became a successful king of his people, but he was a very unsuccessful father of his own children. He seemed not to know what to do with them. He ignored horrible things done by his children to each other when they grew older, including rape and murder.



His failure as a father created some monsters, like his son Absalom. Absalom grew up in the chaos, and grew bitter, and staged a coup that brought down the government for a while. He essentially out maneuvered his father, and David had to go on the run. He had to run for his life.

The foundations of his life and everything he had built seemed on the verge of destruction. And David ran away.

He ran away in order to fight back. This was a hard battle for him to face, but he decided to resist and fight; if not for himself, at least to resist and fight for those who had served him; for those who had befriended him along the way, for those whose lives depended on him.

Here David was not the one who wanted to tie a knot at the end of his rope and hold on. It was his friends who were telling him not to fly away (at least not too far); and not to run but to stand his ground.

It was earlier in his life that David had learned to be a strategic runner. As a teenager, with a slingshot, he had killed the gigantic enemy soldier named Goliath, in a duel to the death. It was a duel fought to decide a stalemated battle.

David’s victory was a victory for his people. Because of his surprising success, he became a favorite warrior of King Saul.

He won Saul’s heart. He won the hand of the King’s daughter in marriage. He won a high commission in the army. He won the friendship of the Crown Prince Jonathan, the heir to the throne. He won the affection of his people.

My Garden "Early Girl" (Variety) Tomato

David seemed to live a charmed life, a blessed life. He was a good man who came out of nowhere and was given life’s gifts on a silver platter.

Then he won the suspicion of the king. He won the status of being marked for death. In spite of David’s loyalty, Saul saw him as a dangerous rival.

David had to become a runner; a strategic runner. He actually continued to serve the king and his people. He continued to fight against their enemies. He defended the frontier. More than once, he protected the king’s life who continued to mark him for death.

But David did this on the run. He often just barely escaped the king’s raids and traps. Those who wanted the king’s favor would report to him on David’s movements and whereabouts. David survived by making himself a moving target; a running target.

David seemed to live a charmed life in reverse. He was a good man who was marked as a bad man. The hand that had given him everything now took everything away. David’s gifts as a commander in the king’s army now made him a chief of the outlaws.

His good motives where not honored. His good work was not rewarded. His family ties betrayed him. The way his country was supposed to work, didn’t work for him. This went on for years; for years. The foundations of his good life had been destroyed, and what could the righteous do?

Apparently David had friends who advised him to give it all up and walk away from a bad game. Just walk off the field; or else run. Fly away as fast and as far as you can.

David did not follow their advice. He was a disciplined and strategic runner. He worked his running into the game. He might run and run, but he would never leave the field. He refused to go away.

During the American Revolution, our army was never a match for the British army. We lost most of our major battles against the British. General George Washington learned, the hard way, not to fight the British on their terms. Washington really won the war by effectively running away, but also (most importantly) by never going away. He never stopped.



My Garden "Cubanelle" (Variety) Pepper

I remember, one time after I had grown up, arguing with my dad. I feel foolish telling you what the argument was about. It wasn’t about anything important. It was this. My dad believed that the pyramids of Egypt were built by aliens from outer space. I politely disagreed.

Every now and then he would bring this up. One day he did it again, and something snapped, and I couldn’t take it any more. So I argued with him.

We just went on, and on, and on, and on, and on. Finally, my dad said, “You don’t know when to stop.” If he had only thought about this, he would realize that I had learned this from him. Once my dad made up his mind about something, he would never give it up. He would never stop.

There is a great power that comes from not having enough sense to stop. Sometimes we can call this faith.

David had friends who wanted him to stop. They had arguments that made perfect sense. David was in an impossible situation. His position was completely unwinnable. David was completely outmatched, but he tied a knot on the end of his rope and he held on.

Actually it was a knot that was there all along. It was God. There is a saying that goes like this: “When you get to your wit’s end you will find God lives there.”

For a long time the question in this psalm has fascinated me: “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The answer, as I see it, comes at the end of the psalm: “The Lord is righteous, he loves justice; the upright will see his face.”

David knew that he had a choice. It was a choice of either looking at the crumbling foundations or looking at God. Righteousness, here, is about doing what is right, saying what is right, thinking what is right, believing what is right, and never stopping.

David’s friends were looking at the foundations being destroyed and they were dismayed. They were on the verge of panic, and they wanted to involve David in their panic.

David was looking at something completely different. He was looking at who the Lord is, and what the Lord loves. David saw the Lord’s face, and he saw nothing there to dismay him; and he saw no reason there for panic.

David and his friends had different foundations. David’s foundation was the Lord.

My Garden: A Cucumber

David had the gift of making friends, and he was often very good at choosing good friends. David’s friends were just as much God’s people as he was, but these friends seemed to live in a different mental world.

They had so much in common with our own world today. They lived, and we live, in a world of a contagious selective amnesia. We forget that the Lord is our way: “the way, and the truth, and the life”. And we forget that the Lord is the real foundation of everything.



After all, the Lord made the heavens, and the earth, and all things visible and invisible. God still makes everything. The Lord still is King. The Lord rules!

The mental world we live in exists in a continual state of crisis and panic; and it is contagious. Even God’s people catch the contagion and spread it among themselves. Election time is the worst time for this.



A Praying Mantis on the Church Door

If we look at the politics of our own nation we can see the contagion of panic. Both sides seem to tell us that this November will either bring the salvation or the doom of the nation.

When we look at the culture and the spiritual state of our nation, we also see the crumbling of the foundations. As God’s people, we think that one of the most important foundations of our heritage is faith, and we see the decline of the value and the unity of faith.

But faith is not our foundation. Faith was not the foundation of the colonists who came to the original colonies, even when they came here for the freedom of living their faith. Their foundation was not their faith. Their foundation was God.

Faith was not their heritage. Faith was the gift of God who was the ground that fed their roots. God was the rock that supported them as their real foundation. Their faith was created by God, and they trusted in God to continually recreate and renew their faith.

If they and their communities lost their faith, they trusted God to bring them to faith again, in his own time. They would be concerned for this. They would work for this. They would pray for this. But they would not panic over this, because they remembered to focus on the foundation that never changes. They remembered to see the face of the Lord who does not know when to stop.

This is true of everything we hold dear: in our church, in our small communities, in our nation. This is true of every relationship we treasure and value; our loved ones, our work, our way of life, and everything that shapes us.

It is true that everything is a potential source of panic if it goes wrong. Everything we know could come crashing down, and bring us down with it. This is true.



A Rabbit on my Driveway

But Jesus is the Lord who came down to us with a faithfulness that does not stop. This is where we can see his face. Nothing is more foundational to God than his own faithfulness.

His faithfulness is wrapped up in his holiness. His faithfulness goes hand in hand with his love of righteousness and justice. His faithfulness is a thing that refuses to stop, even in the face of death itself. His faithfulness is a foundation that never stops, even on a cross.

God’s faithfulness is the foundation that cannot be destroyed. Those who truly build upon that foundation will not panic.

The Jesus Song-Book: The King's Justice

Preached on Sunday, August 12, 2012

Scripture readings: Psalm 9:1-20; Psalm 10:1-11; Luke 6:20-23

An elderly lady was driving a big, expensive car, and she went to back into a parallel parking space. Before she could do it, a young man in a small sports car whipped into her spot.



Seagull on Santa Monica Pier

She was so mad that she actually got out of her car and demanded to know why he had done this when it was clear that she was in the process of parking there. He said, “Because I am young and quick.”

He went in to do his shopping and came out to find the older woman using her big car as a battering ram on his car. He yelled, “Why are you doing this?” And the lady said, “Because I am old and rich!” (No source available; “Parables, Etc., Apr ’84)

The news is full of stories of people who do outrageous and horrible things because they can. The Bible is also full of such stories. The people in them are like this. Here is how they think: ‘He says to himself, “Nothing will shake me; I will always be happy and never have trouble.”’ (Psalm 10:6) It’s the justification (or the illusion) of the invulnerable (or of those who think they are invulnerable).

There are stories like this in families, and in big and little towns. There are stories like this in business, and politics, and religion. There are stories like this in every social class; and on the level of governments and nations. The motivation is this: “I will do it because I want to; and because I can; and because I think I can get away with it.” This is how injustice happens, person against person, group against group.



Santa Monica Pier, southern California


It makes me want to shout. It makes me want to weep. Then I ask myself this question: “Have I ever done something I am ashamed of because I wanted to, and because I could, and because I though I could get away with it?” A further question is: “Have I ever been caught? And, has justice been dealt out to me?”

My answer to the first question is: “Yes.” At first thought, my answer to this last question is, “Sometimes.” The real answer is, “Always.” If I haven’t been dealt justice yet, it is still a work in process. I am still waiting for that letter, that phone call, or that knock on the door: you know; about that library book, or some other issue.

A century and more ago, parents were known to hang a certain picture in their children’s room. It was a picture of an eye. It was the eye of God. And it had a verse from the book of Genesis that says, “Thou, God, seest me.” “God, you see me.” (Genesis 16:13)

It comes from the story of Hagar and her child Ishmael, after they were driven away from their home, and God brought water to them in the desert. It is a verse about God seeing in order to take care of us.

But, if you are a child, the idea of God watching you when you think you are alone (or not under your parents’ supervision) in your room would be a scary thing. What if God saw what I said to my sister, or my cousin, or my friend?



View north from Santa Monica Pier.
 

But the question of what God sees goes far beyond the issues of kids’ stuff. It becomes a much bigger question in the world of adults. There are people who have a good reason to fear what God sees in our world of adults. This is about betrayal, and deception. This is about injury, abuse, and injustice. There are people who don’t want to be seen

We have an even greater reason to want God to see. We agonize (in hope and in prayer) that God will indeed see: see and respond. If only God would see and respond to human acts of injustice; person against person, group against group.

The writer of Psalms nine and ten looks at his nation and the need for God to see what goes on there and respond. There are individuals, and groups, and whole patterns and systems that steal, or trick, or lie, in order to victimize the innocent.

They do this because they want to, and because they can, and because they think that they can get away with it. Isn’t it the purpose of the news to tell us about this every day, and make sure we don’t forget it, and never give us a moment’s peace?

The writer of these psalms looks beyond his own nation. He sees such patterns among the nations of the world, as far as he can see. Does God see?

Tanker off the coast at Santa Monica

The psalms teach us to pray our way through this question. Psalm Nine and Psalm Ten help us pray our way through both sides of this question.

In some ancient manuscripts these two psalms are written as one. That is a story in itself (and it is a story that goes back two or three centuries before the time of Christ), and that is one of the reasons why the two psalms are written as one in Catholic Bibles, though not in ours.

The Psalms state a principle of one of the things we believe by faith. Psalm Nine says, “The Lord is known by his justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.” (Psalm 9:16) This is the message of faith. But the word of God, the way we find it in the Book of Psalms, teaches us to work through this message the long way, from doubt to faith.



Driving up the California Coast toward Malibu

So Psalm Ten starts by saying, “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1) It takes its time to look at the horrible thought in some detail. And then it says, “But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you…” (Psalm 10:14)

Jesus grew up singing all these verses as hymns of worship, with his family, and friends, and neighbors, in the synagogue. And, as Jesus sang, somehow his heart told him that this message was all about him. It was truly his job to see trouble and grief. It was his job to consider it, and to take it in hand: like the psalms said.

Jesus grew to see the sort of self deceit with which humans cover themselves; the self deceit that makes the injustice in these psalms possible. He saw that it was like a disease that filled the world with hurt. It needed to be dealt with. It needed to be taken in hand. It needed healing.

The Psalms cried for God to reach out to a hurting world: “Have mercy and lift me up from the gates of death.” (Psalm 10:13) So Jesus grew up and found his heart telling him to reach out in mercy and lift us up from the gates of death.

Jesus did this in a way that is totally different from the ways of this world, where authorities and agencies reach in to bring a solution from the outside. Jesus dealt with the injustice of this world from the inside; from inside the world of the human heart and mind.

Jesus traveled to the gates of death to lift us out of there. Jesus took the injustices of the world into his nail-pierced hands on cross. From the cross, he came very near to saying what the Psalm says, “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” He came close to this though the words of another psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1 and Matthew 27:46)



Driving up the California Coast toward Malibu

He came very close to saying, with the psalm, “The victim commits himself to you.” He said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46) These psalms told Jesus who he was, and how he would lift us from the gates of death.

Jesus is the Word of God made flesh; made human. (John 1:1-18) In the song book that Jesus knew so well, the written Word of God told Jesus, the living Word of God, all about himself: who he was when he came down from heaven to Bethlehem; who he was as he grew up in the village of Nazareth. The Word of God told the Word of God what he had come to do for us; to lift us from the gates of death.

On the cross, Jesus takes a world of hurt and injustice in hand. He brings together a heart wracked with questions, and pain, and injustice and, at the same time, a heart full of trust that knows how to be at rest.

He came to take upon himself the poverty of the cross. He took upon himself the poverty of a world of injustice. And he could tell us to believe that we could trust him and what he had come to do for us: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” It takes faith to say this with integrity.

Jesus could say, “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.” (Luke 6:20-23) He could say this because he knew it, and because it was his work to make it possible. He told us to live in trust and hope, believing in the power of what he would do for the world through his cross and his resurrection.

Backward glance of the ocean, Decker Canyon, CA

If you have ever been the object of injustice, if you have ever been innocent and found yourself attacked, or victimized, or betrayed, then you know how deadly the affect of this is on your heart, and mind; upon your whole life. The Psalms tells us that it is as deadly for those who do the injustice as it is for those on the receiving end of injustice.

It is not the cross alone that saves us. It is the power of the resurrection, along with the cross, that saves us, and sets us free, and makes us new. The power of Jesus, in his resurrection from the dead, lifts us “up from the gates of death.”

Psalm Ten, which begins with agony, tells us about a kind of faith we can have when the justice of God; even when that justice is still unseen and unfelt. It says, “The victim commits himself to you.”

You don’t yet see how the Lord will take the injustice in hand, but you can see yourself in his hands. You can put yourself there. You can leave yourself there. And then you are able to go forth and leave that darkness and deadliness of spirit behind you.

Maybe you could get a sense of this by using the kind of prayer that puts you on your knees, or even face down on the floor or the ground. Pray, and give up to God everything that agonizes you. Give it to God.

View in Decker Canyon

Imagine it as a kind of residue, or a grease stain, that you leave behind you (there on the floor, there on the ground) when you get up and go forth from your prayer. Look behind you and see that you have left it there. I was about twenty years old when I first leaned to do this. I have to do it again and again.

The Presbyterian minister Timothy Keller, in his book “The Reason for God”, quotes the old Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky who wrote about the effects of the work of God to lift us up into a life of hope: “I believe, like a child, that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small…mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they have shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.” (“The Brothers Karamazov”; Chapter 34; or Part 5, Chapter 3, Ivan speaking to Alyosha)

View of Decker Canyon, CA

That is what these psalms tell us. It is what they know by faith. They do not explain how it happens, but they put it into words that are like music for the heart.

They tell us that, if only we will listen, and pray through it the long way, from doubt to trust, we will learn the faith of these psalms. We will learn to say, as they say: “I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders. I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.” (Psalm 9:1-2) These psalms sing this way about the hurt and injustice of the world because they know the truth that, “You, O God do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand.”

Jesus came, in his own way, to take it all in hand. In faith, we commit ourselves to him.