Between a Rock and Our Redeemer

¹The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

²Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.

³There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;

⁴yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,

⁵which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

⁶Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and nothing is hid from its heat.

⁷The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;

⁸the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes;

⁹the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

¹⁰More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.

¹¹Moreover by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

¹²But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults.

¹³Keep back your servant also from the insolent; do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.

¹⁴Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

(Psalm 19 NRSV)

In this Lenten season the economy dominates the headlines. People are losing jobs and houses and investments. Politicians and experts suggest various solutions, take decisive action. But no end is in sight. Companies that seemed impregnable a short while ago have suddenly collapsed like a house of cards. Where there was faith in the wisdom of markets to ensure our prosperity and secure our posterity, there is now fear and distrust. The Psalmist speaks to the angst of our burst bubble with words of reassurance. Not with the false hope that happy days will soon be here again. Rather with the testimony that our lives have always been in God’s hands. Nature itself declares and speaks and proclaims this oft unheeded message to the ends of the earth. The exuberance of the rising sun is a daily witness: Our lives are in God’s hands. This reference also bears a faint echo of the ancient belief in the sun as a divine symbol of justice: “nothing is hid from its heat.” For the Psalmist, the text of the created world is in harmony with the creating word. The attributes of divine instruction (Torah!) reinforce the message. Torah is perfect, sure, right, clear, pure and true. It is more desirable than market gold; sweeter than the sweetest deal. The benefits of its instruction will not appear in your bank account, but in the depth of this confession: Our lives are in God’s hands. The metaphors of rock and redeemer with which the Psalmist concludes reverberate with the very things we long for. As we prepare to reenact the coming of the incarnate Word into the world, with the rising of the sun, with the attributes of Torah, we lean away from the despair proclaimed in the headlines, towards the security of the Rock and the hands of the Redeemer.

Temple Trash

¹³The Passover of the Judeans was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” ¹⁷His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” ¹⁸The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” ¹⁹Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” ²⁰The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” ²¹But he was speaking of the temple of his body. ²²After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.  (John 2:13-22 NRSV)

I have a friend who is a song writer/singer.  He wrote a song about this very thing.  He describes Jesus clearing the temple and turning it back over to God.  According to the Gospel of John, Jesus used a whipcord during his demonstration at the Jerusalem temple. The temple had become a marketplace for cattle and currency. To use today’s political rhetoric, the church and Wall Street collided — as if big business bailouts and stingy stimulus packages were being signed within the temple. Jesus upended the tables and embarrassed the religious authorities. Check. Who gave you the authority to do this, the Jews quipped. Check. With his typical wit, Jesus challenged them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Checkmate. There he goes again — Jesus and his double entendres. The double meaning of the temple as a literal house of worship and the figurative temple of his divinely incarnate body is clear to readers of John. But for God’s listeners, its full meaning wasn’t revealed until Jesus’ death and resurrection three days later. God’s people had again lost their vision. They abandoned God’s vision of the temple as a “house of prayer,” as proclaimed in Isaiah 56:7. The Israelites rejected God’s house and would soon destroy God’s body. But we know that Jesus was raised from the dead, three days later, just as he foreshadowed. As followers of the risen Jesus Christ, may we humbly place our cattle and currency in the hands of God. And may we re-orient our zealous temple worship toward God, our rock and redeemer.  Remember my friend the song writer?  The rest of the song talks about cleaning out the trash from your own temple.  Have you cleaned your temple trash?

Our Lives Are In Your Hands

Then will all your people be righteous
and they will possess the land forever.
They are the shoot I have planted,
the work of my hands,
for the display of my splendor. (Isaiah 60:21 NIV)

Our lives are in your hands… A trusting metaphor, unless the hands extend from a suspicious stranger. A restful picture, unless the hands force their will and oppress those they get their hands on. A sense of security, unless it is from the latest corporate giant to collapse. A comforting image, unless the hands belong to a murderer. What have been your “hand images” and how have they informed your own posture? I remember well those of two hands clasped together in prayer, two hands palms-up as an open gesture of invitation and two hands holding a resting newborn. What does it mean for us to place ourselves into the hands of a God who offers rest, comfort, challenge and encouragement with a posture of sacredness? Are you willing to place your lives in such hands?

The Truth Will Set You Free

¹⁸For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” ²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (1 Corinthians 1:18-25  New Revised Standard Verson)

Wisdom does not always accompany good grades. Walker Percy once said, “You can get all A’s, and still flunk life.” I can testify to the truth of that statement, and you probably can too. Wisdom often does not correlate with financial or political success either. Newspapers are full of stories about wealthy and powerful people who were perceived to be wise, but turned out to be foolish. The core Christian belief that a crucified Christ is the Savior of the world seems like utter foolishness to many. But to us who believe, the “foolishness” of a crucified and risen Christ has the power to transform our sad and lost lives with amazing grace. Like an M.C. Escher drawing, where birds morph into fish before our eyes, Jesus the foolish stumbling block morphs into Jesus the Son of God, the window into the mind and heart of our Creator. How much faith does it take to grasp this true wisdom of God? Just a mustard seed. Plant it in your heart and God will make it grow. Just a baby step. Put one foot forward into the darkness and God’s light will show the way.

Sin Starts with Me

¹⁸For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, ²⁰who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. ²¹And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²²who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.  (1 Peter 3:18-22 NRSV)

During Lent, I plan to think about my own sins a lot. But I don’t really want to; it could get messy. And I’d really rather talk about someone else’s issues. Several weeks ago, I was listening to an interview with former preacher and president of the National Association of Evangelicals Ted Haggard, who was brought down from his position of power and fame by a sex and drug scandal. It seems that he knows a lot more about sin today than several years ago when he was actually preaching about it. The problem with sin is that it is so much easier to focus on it in relation to others, and not enough time is spent repenting for my own actions. No wonder Jesus said, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). Sin has often been used as an excuse for self-righteous judgmentalism, for shaming those who need grace and love and for forgetting that no one is without sin in their own lives, even if they use their power to condemn others. What would happen if we took a collective break as Christians from being judgmental of others? I think we might find our pews a bit fuller, our relationships stronger and our connection with the only one who should be passing judgment a bit deeper. After we work at this, we may learn that there is room in a loving faith community for pointing out the sins of our brothers and sisters in a way that offers accountability with grace. Remind me of my unrighteousness, oh God, and teach me your paths.

Waiting Paired with Practice

¹When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. ²And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” ³Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him,  ⁴“As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁵No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁶I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.  ⁷I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. ¹⁵God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”  (Genesis 17:1-7; 15-16, NRSV)

We are often encouraged to give something up for Lent to help us prepare and reflect during this season.  I have had mixed success with this effort (as I have been doing this since I was kid who was raised Roman Catholic). Sometimes my choices of Lenten focus have been selfish, sometimes I’ve cheated and sometimes Lent has been an excuse to do something that I should be doing anyway. Usually, it’s a combination of all three. I’m not very good at Lent. But it doesn’t matter. Because there is something essentially important about living into this time, believing that God will be present and working in whatever is to come. What I choose as a discipline for the 40-day period that culminates in the joy of Easter morning is really less important than the place and belief I am trusting to God. Abram and Sarai enter into an everlasting covenant with God that changes them. They become different people, Abraham and Sarah. Likewise giving up unhealthy foods or technology and active engagement in spiritual practices changes us. We live into Lent with the same faith that Abraham and Sarah eventually claim (following a 99-year-old’s laughter at the idea of finally becoming a father). And God dwells in our midst.

Spring Ahead with God

I like this time of the year; it means it stays lighter longer and, God willing, we see the sun in the sky for more hours of the day. Christ led a perfect life and died FOR YOU, so believe him when he says “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 NIV This little task of clock setting got me to thinking about our spiritual situation. How has your day been going so far? Have you had more darkness? Has the thought of your sins or how you have treated those around you left you cold like the March air? Well then Easter is a great time for us to “fall back”—fall back not on your own accomplishments but fall back on the blood of Jesus. It is there that we receive total and complete forgiveness. Knowing that we are forgiven, that motivates us to “spring ahead.” We spring ahead into our lives with the warmth of gospel in our hearts, with a fresh outlook, a 2nd chance, a new life as Paul tells us Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV) During this clock setting ritual some will say it’s a good time to check your batteries and make sure they are charged up. Again, I don’t know what your spiritual situation is…but I ask, how are your spiritual batteries? Maybe you are feeling drained with financial problems, maybe the stress at work, school or home is getting to you. Maybe it’s time to recharge our spiritual batteries. We do that by staying plugged into God’s Word. If we are feeling distant from God, whom do you think has moved? God? Or Us? It’s the Word that is your physical and spiritual life source:  I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. (Romans 1:16 NIV) As I stated before, it is lighter longer, and the sun will shine more, as we celebrate the gift of a new life that God has given us. Fall back on GOD, let the gospel motivate you to SPRING AHEAD and look to the SON for warmth. God bless you.

Learning to Wait, Waiting to Learn

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.  ²O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me.  ³Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame; let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.  ⁴Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.  ⁵Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.  ⁶Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.  ⁷Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!  ⁸Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.  ⁹He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.  ¹⁰All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees. (Psalm 25:1-10 NRSV)

Lent is a season of waiting and preparation. For the Psalmist, waiting offers the opportunity to learn. Psalm 25 is an a-b-c-Psalm, an acrostic, meant to be used as a memory device for teaching and learning. Each verse begins with a new letter in the alphabet. In this case, the Psalmist surprisingly adds an additional letter “p” at the end of the alphabetized Psalm, so that the first, middle, and last verses of the Psalm spell the Hebrew word a-l-p, which translated means “to learn” or “to teach.” Throughout the Psalm, the poet repeatedly asks God to teach: teach God’s ways (4), teach the truth that leads to salvation (5), instruct those who sin to do what is good and upright (8) and teach those who humble themselves before God, the right way to live (9). There’s an old French saying, “people count up the faults of those who keep them waiting.” Not so, for the Psalmist. Instead of pointing out God’s faults, waiting “all day long” becomes an opportunity to learn about God’s infinite mercy, God’s great faithfulness and steadfast love. We all experience times of waiting in our lives reflected by the season of Lent. We wait night and day for love, for job satisfaction, for children, for peace, security, forgiveness, healing, hope and much, much more. We wait for Easter, for the resurrection. The Psalmist knows such longing and pleads our case: “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.” But, the Psalmist also turns our waiting into a wonderful opportunity to learn from God our Master Teacher. In waiting, we learn of God’s faithfulness to us through difficult times and God’s steadfast love for us no matter what. Apparently, for the Psalmist, some things worth learning are worth waiting for.

Words of Hope, Not Despair

²³You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!  ²⁴For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.  ²⁵From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.  ²⁶The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever!  ²⁷All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.  ²⁸For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.  ²⁹To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.  ³⁰Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,  ³¹and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it. (Psalm 22:23-31 NRSV)

We wait in faith. But we do not forget what we have known. And we do not forget what sorrows have brought us here. Psalm 22 begins with the last words Jesus cried out on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We hear these as words of despair. But even in despair, the psalmist remembers what God has done and trusts in what will be done. Jesus knew this Psalm. He knew that the last verses contain the great promise of the Messianic age, the kingdom of God when we shall all praise, glorify and stand in awe of God. What Jesus cried out in his last breath would not then have been words of despair, but words of hope. The promise is great. It is not only that God has rescued us from the trials of our days of waiting. The promise is of a new kingdom. The poor shall eat and be satisfied. We hear this again in the Gospel of John, where Jesus referred to himself as the bread of heaven. And it is the promise in Isaiah 55:1f. All the ends of the earth shall turn to the Lord. All dominion will be the Lord’s. We can praise God and know that God is enthroned in our praises. This is our hope. Even as we recall the path that brought us here we have hope. We can even be grateful as we wait in faith.

Faith Is the Key

That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God’s promise at that—you can’t break it. This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father. We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!” Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God. (Romans 4:13-25 The Message)

What is the promise that the author of today’s Scripture speaks about? It is righteousness. But what is righteousness? Webster’s Dictionary defines righteousness as being just, honorable, free from guilt/wrong. How can we obtain righteousness? Can we as mere humans, whose hearts are wicked, become righteous? The Chinese pronounce righteousness as “Yi.” This symbol has two characters that together mean righteousness, but separately mean “lamb” and “me.” This is what righteousness is my friends. It is a right relationship with God by Jesus Christ, who is the lamb. We are made righteous in God’s sight by the price Jesus paid on the cross. This is not by any of our own efforts, quite the contrary, for in verse 16 it is made clear that this promise of righteousness is a free gift that is accepted by faith. Faith is the key. Righteousness is by faith in Christ, not the Law, not academics, not “good living,” not eco-friendly protests, not acceptance by peers and not by works. We can conquer the world, save lives, feed the hungry, clothe the needy and heal the sick…but it would all be a worthless effort and impossible if we did not have faith in God. Faith is the key, and it is the key to everything. Faith is one of the most powerful tools that God has given us. In 1 Corinthians 13 it says that three things will remain: faith, hope, and love. Faith is what kept Abraham strong and brought glory to God. Abraham’s faith was so strong in God, despite the circumstances that he was in. Abraham was a weak old man, his wife was barren, he had no children and God promised him that he would be the father of many nations. He did not even see this promise completely fulfilled, however his faith did not waver, it grew stronger and that brought glory to the heavenly Father. Because of Abraham’s faith God declared him righteous, not because of his works, his good deeds or his wealth, but it was because of his faith. Faith is the key. Faith that God has made us righteous by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Will you accept this gift today? Will you bring glory to God by stepping out in faith like Abraham?