From the Depths of My Soul Joy and Song

Have you ever thought about what a weird thing we've just been doing especially group singing? Sophisticated, ironical New Yorkers, in the capital of Mammon and Power, together each week as an amateur choir singing about God and love and hope? It's powerful, culture/life changing! It's the words, it's the music, yes. But it's more the act. Doing it together, all kinds of people.

Psalms begins in deep thought and pain, with wisdom (1) and lament (3-10 +), but it moves round and round through reflection, penitence, thanksgiving, toward ever more joy and praise (145-150). That is the powerful dynamic of the psalms. We never hide the struggle, doubt, darkness, but we engage it. And Psalms testifies that ultimately we can journey through to live in hope and joy.

The joy is not denial of reality. It is strong affirmation, sometimes through clenched teeth or tears, that God is stronger than death, hope more enduring than pain, love is the foundation of life. The joy and praise is exuberant because we also know lament and penitence, and experience grace.

The NT develops this dynamic of the psalms. The suffering and injustice of the cross is the central sign of God's sacrificial, self-giving love that pervades everything. God enters our laments. But the cross also opens new, resurrection life. We endure but with a new hope, new song, new trust.

Praise that Changes My Life

Ps 33 leads us through the powerful process of praise. It is an invitation to those who want life to be right, to be just and upright/true. The summons is aspirational, hopeful, beginning a journey.

The best support for the journey is all-out joy in Yahweh, expressed in any way you can: roudy shouts, praise, thanksgiving, playing music, singing new songs. Don't hold back. Authenticity!

For... leads to the deep ground of joy is the character and work of God. Yahweh's word ... his steadfast love. God works before we know anything of it. This is where I learn truth, faithfulness, justice, real love. God redeems the slave. God dies for his creatures. Real joy is not a bargain with a needy God. It's the unexpected realization that God's love is deep reality.

The physical creation itself is the manifestation of God's faithfulness, power, love, delight. God's word that teaches me truth and faithfulness also creates oceans and everything else. Creation is continuous. God is in the big bang, supernova, goldilocks earth, evolution, you, etc. Thus God is never narrow! Every human is part of his work and grows through knowing God.

Realizing What's Big and What's Small

We humans see our own stuff as major our politics, things that last for years. We see great power in terms of money and military, the ability to force your way through (vv 10-11). God works on a different scale, the ages and generations. Israel is blessed to be elect for a special role in God's work. But God is always working universally across all peoples and all periods (vv 12-15).

When we see what's at stake in God's work, we realize how misplaced is humanity's continual trust and celebration of violence and force to give hope and real safety (vv 16-17). But humans never learn to trust God's ways, to see the real, transforming power of the cross. So we keep up our trust in violence and vengeance. Praising God puts His alternate, true reality before our eyes.

Living within God's Steadfast Love

Worship flows from knowing the harsh realities that are part of life and realizing how astonishing it is that a God of steadfast, faithful love has shown himself to us in the midst of all that. It's realizing our only hope for anything truly permanent has to lie in trust of that creator.

But God is here. That trust is not false. We live between hope and fulfillment. But because we see God's face in Jesus, our heart is glad in him. We wait and worship, praise and shout for joy!

Overwhelmed by the Enemy Within

In the Psalms the first element of a relationship with God is authenticity. More that correctness or proper theology. The psalmists bring their struggles to God. Thus the many lament psalms. Psalm 1 states how things should be, but the following songs reflect how broken things can be.

Most laments speak of external troubles, sickness, enemies, etc., crying out for help. But some focus on the enemy within, my own sin, the way I destroy my own life; the way a community can ruin its life and hopes. As Israel reflected on its history, as seen in scripture, they saw clearly the disasters they had brought on themselves by rejecting God's instruction (Torah). The exile brought to clarity the prophets' call for repentance and the need for forgiveness (e.g., Dan 9).

The Psalms focus that awareness personally. Troubles can come from outside, but often I honestly know that my own anger, willfulness, selfishness, destructive behavior, greed, sexual betrayal, envy, power hunger, etc., lies at the core of my brokenness. Or I may need help realizing it.

A group of seven psalms have been called The Penitential Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143). These became important in Christian devotion from the 6th cent till today. (See also 25 and 39.) Often used during Lent, these seemed more to fit Christian reflection than the laments.

Honest Self-Awareness and Need for God

As songs for worship, the psalms of penitence are usually generic in describing sins, so that anyone can apply them personally. But they are very vivid in describing the impact of sin. Transgressions can be seen as individual mistakes, easily reversed. But the Psalmist knows the overwhelming impact of sin. Out of the depths... I was born in iniquity... My bones wasted away... My sides are filled with burning... In later times Paul spoke of the enslavement of sin. It's far more than a few mistakes I can easily reverse with resolution. I need deliverance!

In Ps 130, a song of Ascent (going up to worship), the Psalmist fees he's crying out to distant heaven from the depths of the sea. His own wrongs overwhelm him like uncountable waves. He knows that his hope cannot be in the self that got him in the depths, but only in the character and faithfulness of God who revealed himself as merciful and forgiving (to Moses, Ex 34).

The psalm focuses (like Ps 38 and 143) on the time of realization of need. I can't do it myself. I wait; I hope. I am in darkness. I wait for God like the dawn. That realization is fundamental. But then the psalmist looks at the whole process and calls all God's people to follow in hope.

Life-Changing Renewal

Ps 51 looks more explicitly at the way God's forgiveness is a wholesale renewal of life. The added description before the psalm calls us to remember the story of David and Bathsheba. Many of these psalms highlight David's story: the irony of one so blessed by God, so entangled by sin. But the psalm also shows a long history, from David, to prophets, to rebuilding destroyed Zion.

The Psalmist asks for the painful, joyful work of real transformation. God purges and washes. He gives new experiences of joy and healing. He creates a new heart/spirit (whole inner being).

Out of the forgiveness comes not just a clean slate but a new person full of gratitude and praise.

Bringing Our Darkness to God

The five books of Psalms, Israel's book of worship, come from many periods, many situations, many attitudes. They have power to touch us and give language to our experiences in all kinds of situations. They include traditions that point all the way back to Moses and use David as a principal model. As a book the Psalms were gathered in the time of exile and after (mid 6th cent. 400 years after David). It was a time of soul-searching for Israel after total disaster. A time when the people struggled for a new identity, a renewed relationship with God

About a third of the Psalms are characterized as Laments, individual and community. But these show a great variety of attitudes, and many other Psalms have elements of lament within. It was fundamental to Israel (wrestler with God) to bring all sides of life before God, both the darkness and the light, suffering/anger/doubt as well as praise and thanks. Authentic worship.

Songs from a World that's Not Working Right Disorientation

Lament/complaint/crying out to God was not limited to the Psalms but was a manifestation of the experience of Israel (the human experience) in relation to God, and an expression of faith.

God had started this: calling and promising Abram, delivering his people, making a covenant, giving them his grace. We trusted God. Then why don't things always go well? Why is God hidden? Why not always answer my need? Without the experience and expectation of God's grace, there's no lament! But Naomi and Hannah lament bitterly. There was a powerful tradition that you suffer only because you've done something wrong; it's punishment. Then a drama like Job or Jeremiah's lament challenged that. Suffering, evil, disaster are complex, and God is no automaton.

Most Lament Psalms speak with the voice of a righteous sufferer, one who trusts God but voices deep pain. How long? Why? Where is God? It is important that these questions are voiced in worship. Sometimes with answers, sometimes none. In some Psalms the pain is surrounded by hope and confidence. Some are near despair (Ps 88). No psalm is the final experience with God.

The Psalmists hope for God's intervention. Some look for the glory of God to fill the earth. Some for God's destructive vengeance on their enemies (Ps 109). Both are submitted to God.

Songs of a Community between Already and Not Yet

Like personal Laments, community Laments (like Lamentations) meditate on the disasters that have happened to Judah and Jerusalem. Numerous prophetic voices shaped the reflections (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, also Daniel, et al.). In the light of Judah's renewal after the exile, why is it still oppressed by pagan powers? How long before deliverance? Before God's kingdom, God's universal rule as creator is manifested over all nations? Before enemies are punished?

The psalmists vigorously challenge God to remember the covenants, the ways he delivered his people in the past. Act now! They have a strong sense of living in a gap, a time of God's hiddenness, waiting and anticipating a future as yet to be defined and shaped by God.

Jesus steps into this complex world of broken yet living hopes, an anticipated a future whose shape was fiercely debated. He lived within these Psalms with their varied aspirations and expressed his own suffering with their words. But he also challenged them. You have heard it said...but I say to you. Jesus calls us to use the Psalms profoundly, but also to see them in his light.

Poetry, Prayer, Song, Worship, Weeping, Praise

We begin today exploring the Psalms leading toward our Congregational Retreat. Psalms is the longest book of the Bible (5 hr.), an anthology of Hebrew poetry, the hymnal of ancient Israel. Psalms is a powerful resource of meditation, passion, theological reflection, personal faith.

Orientation: Five Books (1-41, 42-72, 73-89, 90-106, 107-150) that vary in emphasis from lament to praise. The collection of Psalms grew over time. The earliest psalms, Ex 15 (Red Sea), Judg 5 (Deborah), are not in the book but in narrative (2 Sam 22 = Ps 18). It's impossible to get dates or settings for most psalms. The became part of scripture in the first century (Lk 24:44)

Many have notes at the beginning that are not part of the original poetry, but relate to their use in the temple, to tunes, to instruments, and their association with an early poet, especially David, Asaph, or Korah. To David dedicated to / associated with / by David (2 Sam 23:1). Historical notes may reflect ancient tradition or may be meditation aids: Think about this.

The psalms are poetry. Vary in length from 2vv (117) to 176vv (119). They mark poetic structure differently from English poetry. Parallelism: repitition, reversal, or extension of an image. Some use acrostic structure following the Hebrew alphabet (25, 34, 111, 112, 119, 145). All use rich imagery, metaphor, allusive language. Sometimes the imagery is strange to us.

Psalms through the Lens of Jesus

The psalms are both close to us and distant. They are very human, personal, passionate. We easily recognize and identify with a fellow worshiper, sufferer, questioner. This makes them wonderful.

In the great drama of the Biblical story, the psalms come from different acts, all before the great climax of Jesus. There is a strong sense of incompleteness, waiting, longing, that we share but from a different point of view. Striking themes of Jesus are only hinted at or are missing (love of enemies, forgiving one who's wronged you). But Jesus built on the psalms, a passionate relation with God, questions, insights. His last words are from Ps 22:1 and Ps 31:5 (Lk 23:46).

Psalms are human words and God's Word. God chooses to give us this wide-ranging collection to feed us, give us language and images for worship, lead us in various stages of relation to him.

Authenticity and the Invitation to Participate

As poems, the psalms are artistic creations. They distill a journey, an experience, a question into a poetic musical form and give it forth for others to experience and use in their own ways. The psalmist reflects back/out on a personal experience or story and gives it powerful expression. Others perhaps set it to music; others sing it in assembly. The personal becomes communal.

Most poems are lost. Those that survive, last because of their authenticity of expression, sensed in the community. They may be distinct but can be shared by others. They invite the worshiper or meditator to enter the experience as the psalmist is able to express it. It's sometimes painful, sometimes delightful. The worshiper brings his/her own experience before God. The scriptures show (esp. in Job) that not all poetry praising or blaming God has face value.

A Varied Journey with a Psalm

Read Ps 22. A dramatic journey from abandonment to praise, from personal isolation overwhelmed by sickness/enemies/troubles, to universal proclamation of God. Powerful images of predators.

It leads us in the struggle with reality. It shouldn't be this way. Why? Do I have a bargain with God? Is that why I trusted him? What if he doesn't pay off? Or do I worship God because he is God?

The Problem of Forgiveness

With this passage Mt brings us to a turning point. Jesus leaves Galilee and heads to Judea and Jerusalem where his confrontation with the Temple and the cross take place. His disciples know he is Messiah, anointed King, the topic is the Kingdom of Heaven (18:1,3,4,23). Jesus surprised his disciples with a child, and instructions for reconciliation not overthrow.

Peter recognizes how striking and new Jesus' teaching is and asks for clarification. He wants to follow and be generous but there has to be a limit. Jesus' response highlights a deep problem we have with Jesus. He's so impractical. We suspect he's not really in our world.

We've got no problem with God forgiving us (them?). That's his job. But for me to forgive? If you've experienced some deep betrayal, abuse, hurt, defeat, you know how hard it is. They don't deserve it. It's not fair. They need to pay. They're getting away with it. They're not really sorry, haven't really apologized. Or, To understand all is to excuse all. But Peter is a disciple. He knows wrong, sin is real. It can't be excused away. It carries a real cost.

But Jesus is insistent (70x7). He calls disciples to step into the life shown in God's forgiveness, into self-giving love, breaking the grip of anger, revenge, retribution. Our wars and movies.

An All-too-clear Parable

Then Jesus tells this parable of the unforgiving servant.' We find ourselves wishing for enigmatic parables, for needing ears to hear.' The story is simple, hyperbolic, and clear.

A king with subjects (slaves) who owe him (taxes, debts). He demands payment. One is brought in owing a vast sum. (1 talent = 75 lb. of gold or silver). All life and property are forfeit slavery ahead. He begs, helplessly, hopelessly. I'll pay everything. Give me time.

Then the surprise. The hard-nose lord, demanding payment, has compassion on him and forgives the debt. What happens to the debt? The lord bears it, absorbs it. He'll never get the billions due him, not even years of labor. He releases the servant and bears the cost.

Then there's the other servant and his debt. He owe 1/600,000th of the first debt. But the first servant is like us and the disciples and Israel. Just because I was good and my debt was forgiven, doesn't mean somebody else can treat me unfairly, hurt me and get away with it. The lord finds out. The forgiveness is reversed, fairness enforced. The servant goes to jail.

Jesus concludes with truly fearsome words his last before going to Jerusalem. Jesus says this is not just a quirky suggestion. This is profoundly serious. A key to everything else I teach.

The Unfairness that Opens New Life

Forgiveness seems unfair, and it is. It challenges my instinct for what's just, especially for me. I have a rightful claim and I release it. I refuse to strike back. I don't let their wrong control me.

Forgiveness is not excusing wrong. If a deed can be excused, there's no need for forgiveness. Forgiveness is being honest about past wrongs and who's responsible. But it sees that revenge/retribution continue and empower the past wrong. Forgiveness strikes our instinct for self-centered life and a cycle of revenge. Forgiveness opens the possibility of new life.

In forgiveness Jesus shows us the character of God. This is God's way of dealing with, entering the problem of human evil, sin, brokenness. In Jesus and his death, God enters and take on himself all our sin and evil and releases us from the debt. This is his heart of self-giving love. He knows that forgiveness is a necessity if love is to be real. He renounces his complete right to fair revenge. He chooses the joy, healing, reconciliation that requires the cross.

He invites us into his Life! Let it go! Die to it. Gain life. Forgive. Seventy times seven, Forgive!

Tom continues his series in the book of Matthew.

We begin with what looks to be one of the strangest little stories in the Gospel. Mt has been dealing with big issues: Jesus as the Messiah; the suffering of the Messiah, the disciples' failure to understand, Jesus' transfiguration, Jesus in relation to Moses and Elijah, John the Baptist as Elijah, Jesus challenging the disciples to have faith even as a mustard seed.

But Jesus knew that people were looking for offenses (skandalon) in him, things to misinterpret, misunderstand. He's against the Temple because he's stingy, he doesn't want to pay the tax. It's a serious/joking response. Catch a fish. Let it pay the tax. Stay free for the confrontation.

The skandala are what make the world, "the world" spiritually. God is pushed to the periphery or out altogether I am at the center. I'm gaining my life. I lose it absolutely. Jesus says, the skandala are always there. Being a disciple means you never give in to their definition of life. Fight it in yourself. Make any sacrifice. "Lose your life for my sake." Then Life is really yours.

Guest speaker, Matthew Vaughan leads us through a reflection on 'Jacob's Dream' in Genesis 28. Using visuals and a testimony from an artist, Matthew helps us reflect and see the power of this story. If you would like a copy of the visuals for this presentation please email Matthew at [email protected]

Tom continues his series in the book of Matthew.

Jesus is pushing his disciples (and us) to think in a fundamentally different way, to see life, ourselves, our problems, our hopes through a new lens. That lens is Jesus. Peter is us. Like him we think the things of humans, not God. Like him we can make dolphin leaps out of our ocean of deception. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to a mountain. They (we) get a glimpse of his glory. As with the confession, Jesus instructs them not to tell..till after resurrection. They don't understand, bu Jesus is planting a seed that will sprout later. The adventure begins. Seeing everything, life, choices, hopes, challenges through a new grasp of reality in Jesus' suffering and glory, cross and resurrection.