Psalm 121; Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5; John 3:1-17
There is a big difference between having and keeping. I have lots of books, in the office here at the church, in the Presbytery office, at home, and on my Kindle and Nook computer apps. I don’t have to have all these books. I will be shedding many of them in the months ahead. The physical books are heavy and take up a lot of space. I also have books on loan from the library and I have them for two or four weeks and then I take them back so that I no longer have them.
Keeping is something different. People keep pets. Paula and I keep a number of cats. I am sure that the cats think that we don’t keep them at the level they want to become accustomed to. After all, people don’t own cats, people are indentured servants for cats. We are responsible for the cats, feeding them, attempting to brush and pedicure them, cleaning their litter boxes, trying to amuse them when they are bored, and not disturbing them when they are resting.
I may possess the books for a time, but we keep the cats. They are dear to us, even when they are bad. We watch over them not just for our sakes, but for the sakes of their little furry selves. As independent as they are, they are dependent on us. We watch over them because if they suffer, we suffer.
Similarly, God does not merely have us, God keeps us. We are God’s beloved creation. Like any parent, God holds us very close to the heart. We are more than possessions for the Lord to take off a shelf for a time and then put back. If we suffer, God suffers. Psalm 121 celebrates the fact that Lord is our keeper.
This eight-verse psalm — short by psalm standards — uses one or another form of the Hebrew word shamar six times in the course of the psalm. The meanings of the shamar variations have to do with “keeping” in one way or another. English language translations vary in their word choice. The translators of the Contemporary English Bible that we use here have chosen to use the words “protect” and “protector” for the Hebrew. The New Revised Standard Version uses the words “keep” and “keeper.” Eugene Peterson’s The Message uses the verb “guard” and describes God as a “guardian." The New International Version and the New Living Translation use the language of “watching over” as well as of “keeping.” The King James Version uses the words “keep” and “preserve.” You get the idea: taking care of, maintaining, being responsible for, protecting, keeping.
The eight verses are in four couplets. Verses 1 and 2 affirm that as God’s people we receive our help from the Lord. The hills may refer to the hills of the Temple mount, or they may be a metaphor for lifting our gaze away from ourselves (navel gazing; regret for the past and despondency about the present) and looking at the horizon, the future which God alone involves us in divine outcomes.
Verses 3 and 4 speak of the constancy of God. God is steadfast, sure, faithful, and dependable, even when we can’t see it or can make heads nor tails of God’s merciful activity in the world. Both God’s constancy and God’s mercy have to be experienced and recognized by faithful people. John Calvin says that God has invisible constancy. From our human perspective, it takes faith and hope to sense God’s constancy.
Faith and hope are entirely personal and subjective. The psalmist points out that God is the firm ground on which we stand (“God won’t let your foot slip”) and that God is the one who watches over and protects us. Constancy is not just a feature of God’s nature; it is also the reason for God’s vigilance. This constancy has both spatial and temporal manifestations. God is not only the ground of our being, theologian Paul Tillich’s phrase; God is also the guardian, preserver of our hope.
Verses 5-6 affirm that God is also a keeper. Israel needs a keeper. That’s the nature of things. The very sun that gives light by day can be dangerous (and the psalmist didn’t know anything about ultraviolet rays and skin cancer). The moon that gives light by night can be perilous as it waxes and wanes, as it hides behind clouds or fully illumines darkest night. Nature isn’t going to take care of the Israelites. The presence of God assures Israel that they shall not be smitten by sun or moon. There’s a conspiracy theory for you: Nature is out to get the Israelites. Don’t believe it. God rules day and night as well as humanity. The demons of the day or the nemesis of the night are fended off by God's presence.
Verses 7-8 tell us that God also preserves. God’s protection doesn’t just deal with the known perils and dangers, it extends into the realm of what can’t be known by people, the realm of evil. God’s work of preserving is for both body and soul. The connection between the menace of evil and the endangerment of the soul is clear. Theologically speaking, the protection that God provides is portable. God the preserver pays attention both to our going out and our coming in. And it has nothing to do with the clock or calendar. The psalmist declares that God's protection will follow him “from now until forever from now.”
Our twenty-first century western culture encourages individualism and self-sufficiency. Unfortunately each of us comes to the point where reality sets in. We cannot be our own gods. Try as we might, life will remind us that it’s not going to happen. We have to ask for help. We have to look to the hills.
When is God close to us? For some people it is in the midst of good times. Then they hit the wall with challenges. For others, God becomes close in the dark and challenging times. They let their protective guard down because they have no other option than to admit how their relationship to God plays out. There are finite limits to human power.
The point at which we become aware of our powerlessness is the point we can receive God’s keeping, guarding, caring, protecting blessing. These are not moments of increased powerlessness, but moments when it dawns on us just how little power we possess at any time. Naked before God, we are blessed to suffer the reality, uncomfortable as it is, that we need help beyond ourselves. With our spiritual feet not slipping, we can openly and sincerely cry to God.
Many commentators think that the psalm was used by pilgrims approaching Jerusalem for some occasion. It could have been a celebration of one of the feasts or at a time of crisis. A faith crisis, a time of needing to admit powerlessness, can happen as easily to a community of believers as to an individual. Congregations as well as individual believers are not immune from forgetting the power dynamics they have with God. Individuals may gather to form a church, but it is really God’s activity working in them, God providing the keeping authority to build a community. And communities can become despondent when events take them out of their zones of comfort, out of their complacent unreality of living without change, of being in a comfortable groove of stability. As crisis or change settles in, they lower their collective heads and gaze longingly in the past of memory rather than lifting their eyes to the horizon of future faithful possibility that the care-taking, preserving, guarding, watching, protecting God is providing and will continue to provide.
It takes two to keep and be kept. For all that we gain, we have to give ourselves to the one who offers the protection. Surrendering our little bit of control is difficult. Think again about caring for pets. We do not have them, but we keep them. We take care of them because of the love we feel for them.
It is as hard to accept that the Lord is my keeper as it is to accept that the Lord loves me. You can’t split the two ideas apart. The key to understanding is that the what, God’s care, and the why, God’s love, go together. God’s love is the very foundation of God’s trustworthiness. God loves us, and therefore the Lord will keeps us.
General Resources: Robert W. Fisher, “Psalm 121 – Pastoral Perspective,” and James H. Evans, Jr., “Psalm 121 – Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), Year A, vol. 1, 56-60.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Do Power and Glory Mix?
Psalm 2; 1 Peter 1:16-23; Matthew 17:1-9
We say these words often. Once a week. Once a day. Perhaps more often than that.
The Power and the Glory is the title of a 1940 novel by the British author Graham Greene. Like the American author Flannery O’Connor, Greene objected strongly to being described as a Roman Catholic novelist, rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic. Nevertheless Catholic religious themes are at the root of his writing, especially the four major Catholic novels, of which The Power and Glory is one.
Nick Ripatrazone wrote in the February 2016 Atlantic that Greene’s book is a”violent, raw novel about suffering, strained faith, and ultimate redemption.”(1) The book’s hero is an unnamed priest on the run from Mexican authorities after a state governor has ordered the military to dismantle all vestiges of the religion. Churches are burned. Relics, medals, and crosses are banned. The price for disobedience is death. While many clerics give up their beliefs and accept their government pensions, the unnamed priest travels in secret, celebrating Mass and hearing confessions under the cover of night. Yet he’s also a gluttonous, stubborn, and angry man drowning in vices, and the religious ambition of his earlier years has been replaced with a constant desire to drink, hence Greene’s term for him: the “whiskey priest.” Tired of risking his life, the priest even prays to be caught.
The tension between the priest’s calling and his humanity, between his desire to flout the uncivil worldly authority with the authority of God and his human desire to ultimately succumb to it catches many of the themes of the Transfiguration as witnessed to and responded to by three of Jesus’ disciples. On the mountain God confirms Jesus as the one called to bear grace and reconciling love to a broken, unneighborly, and unloving world wracked with conceit, greed, and unbelief. The disciples continue to misconstrue Jesus’ ministry by wanting to enshrine him with two great leaders of the past. However, Jesus takes them with him down the mountain and into the thick of the ministry which will confirm the world’s denial of him in its sordid attempt to shut out the Light of the world. Yet God will affirm the power and glory of that Light when it bursts forth from the tomb three days later.
Psalm 2 is one of several royal psalms that celebrate the anointing of God’s chosen king. It may have been for a human king or it may be for the promised Messiah. Christians have historically read this text through a messianic lens. On the surface, the psalm warns the rulers of the earth who have placed themselves in opposition to God and God’s people.
In the context of the Transfiguration Psalm 2 takes on additional meaning. Besides Jesus’ experience on the mountain, we also remember the Exodus account of the experience of Moses on Mount Sinai. Both events are instances of God putting the divine stamp of approval on the missions which will be going forward.
The obvious parallel between Psalm 2 and the Gospel story of the transfiguration is that both describe God’s anointing of a chosen one. The psalmist identifies the king as anointed, declaring, “You are my son, today I have become your father.” The story of the transfiguration echoes these words, as God’s voice booms through the clouds and names Jesus as the son whom God dearly loves.
Psalm 2 envisions God’s chosen king as a powerful military leader, who is ready – and able with God’s help – to conquer the nations of the earth. This is the dominant image of the expected Messiah which is recorded in Hebrew Scripture. With only a few exceptions, this vision of leadership is most prevalent in the rule of the Israelite kings. This is the Messiah for whom the Israelites and their descendants longed.
Except that this is not the mantle of leadership which Jesus took up. He would not become the type of Messiah that Israel anticipated. Like Frost’s traveler at the fork of woodland paths, Jesus “took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Time and again, Jesus rejects the job description of a powerful, militaristic Messiah.
We see this most notably in the report of the temptation of Jesus, a temptation that this psalm almost foreshadows. In the psalm God promises to grant the king “the far corners of the earth” as his property as well as power over the nations. Compare that idea to the dramatic scene from Luke’s temptation account, where the devil shows Jesus the kingdoms of the world and suggests that they could all be his (Luke 4:5-7). You can almost see the devil’s sinister smile as he makes this offer. The irony is that in the psalm it is God who laughs at the feeble rulers of the nations.
Jesus has come to reveal a different kind of royal leadership and a kingdom with a different mission and purpose. The kingdom that Jesus leads is not defined by power and might, but by humility and servanthood. That is also the message of the story of the transfiguration. Jesus sets the tone of all he has done and all he will continue to do in the limited number of days ahead. His mission is not about earthly glory. He does not stay long on the holy mountain, basking in radiance, as his disciples think he ought to do. Instead, he leads the disciples back down the mountain. Jesus knows that his throne is not of this world and that his true glory will be revealed on the cross.
It is true news: Jesus does indeed become a king on a holy hill, but it is the hill of Golgotha, not Zion. When that coronation happens, Jesus is clothed in shame, not in splendor. We don’t hear God laughing in derision; the mockers are the crowds and the executioners surrounding Jesus. The anointed one is crucified and all the expectations of an all-powerful Messiah are overturned.
Human expectations are upended and reversed. That is a key element of the scriptural narrative. It doesn’t make sense, it is counterintuitive. The people of Jesus’ day couldn’t understand it, and we aren’t a whole lot better at it today. You and I spend enormous amounts of time and energy in pursuit of success, esteem, power, control, and all the things that go along with them. We don’t know how to define our earthly kingdoms in any other way. Our minds are boggled by the concept that Jesus’ life and mission are defined by relinquishing power and by traveling a sacrificial journey toward death.
We confess and somehow believe that God acted in Jesus to overcome death with life. In his journey toward the cross, Jesus, the unexpected Messiah, reveals a kingdom more eternal and more powerful than any the world has known. The power of the world and the glory of God reconciling the world in Christ don’t mix.
Among twentieth-century Christian writers, Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder stands out in his analysis of this unexpected kingdom and its lessons for us. In The Politics of Jesus Yoder demonstrates how Jesus defies the traditional expectations of the Messiah and forges a different kind of kingdom, the kingdom of God. This kingdom does not depend on military might or economic prowess, but rather is made known through concern for the poor, justice for the oppressed, love for friends and enemies alike. The kingdom that Jesus leads builds doors instead of walls, welcomes rather than bans, loves rather than despises, affirms rather than debases, seeks the truth rather than revels in falsehood.
In the kingdom over which Jesus is Lord, he introduces a new social ethic. Jesus forsakes the quest for power and control and doubles down in a commitment to servanthood and sacrifice. It is truly an upside-down kingdom, where the last shall be first, and where suffering and death lie unavoidably on the path toward joy and lasting life. Jesus is transfigured and messiahship is transformed.
Now that the Light of the world is so revealed that the power structures of the world must seek to envelope it in darkness we are at a decision point. Which type of Messiah will we follow: the one dependent on brute force and oppression or the one that turns the other cheek and goes the additional mile? Which kind of kingdom will we give our allegiance to: the one that squeezes power out of every last individual or the one that promotes compassion, forgiveness, and love?
May we lessen our thirst for power and open ourselves to God’s grace in Christ lavished upon us by the Spirit.
General Resource: Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) Year A, Volume 1, 441-445.
(1) “Revisiting The Power and the Glory During Lent,” Atlantic, February 2016. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/02/the-power-and-the-glory-lent-graham-greene/461820/
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
We say these words often. Once a week. Once a day. Perhaps more often than that.
“Thine is the power and the glory forever.”You recognize them. These are the closing words of the Lord’s Prayer. We will be saying them soon, at the end of the Great Thanksgiving prayer of the communion liturgy.
The Power and the Glory is the title of a 1940 novel by the British author Graham Greene. Like the American author Flannery O’Connor, Greene objected strongly to being described as a Roman Catholic novelist, rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic. Nevertheless Catholic religious themes are at the root of his writing, especially the four major Catholic novels, of which The Power and Glory is one.
Nick Ripatrazone wrote in the February 2016 Atlantic that Greene’s book is a”violent, raw novel about suffering, strained faith, and ultimate redemption.”(1) The book’s hero is an unnamed priest on the run from Mexican authorities after a state governor has ordered the military to dismantle all vestiges of the religion. Churches are burned. Relics, medals, and crosses are banned. The price for disobedience is death. While many clerics give up their beliefs and accept their government pensions, the unnamed priest travels in secret, celebrating Mass and hearing confessions under the cover of night. Yet he’s also a gluttonous, stubborn, and angry man drowning in vices, and the religious ambition of his earlier years has been replaced with a constant desire to drink, hence Greene’s term for him: the “whiskey priest.” Tired of risking his life, the priest even prays to be caught.
The tension between the priest’s calling and his humanity, between his desire to flout the uncivil worldly authority with the authority of God and his human desire to ultimately succumb to it catches many of the themes of the Transfiguration as witnessed to and responded to by three of Jesus’ disciples. On the mountain God confirms Jesus as the one called to bear grace and reconciling love to a broken, unneighborly, and unloving world wracked with conceit, greed, and unbelief. The disciples continue to misconstrue Jesus’ ministry by wanting to enshrine him with two great leaders of the past. However, Jesus takes them with him down the mountain and into the thick of the ministry which will confirm the world’s denial of him in its sordid attempt to shut out the Light of the world. Yet God will affirm the power and glory of that Light when it bursts forth from the tomb three days later.
Psalm 2 is one of several royal psalms that celebrate the anointing of God’s chosen king. It may have been for a human king or it may be for the promised Messiah. Christians have historically read this text through a messianic lens. On the surface, the psalm warns the rulers of the earth who have placed themselves in opposition to God and God’s people.
In the context of the Transfiguration Psalm 2 takes on additional meaning. Besides Jesus’ experience on the mountain, we also remember the Exodus account of the experience of Moses on Mount Sinai. Both events are instances of God putting the divine stamp of approval on the missions which will be going forward.
The obvious parallel between Psalm 2 and the Gospel story of the transfiguration is that both describe God’s anointing of a chosen one. The psalmist identifies the king as anointed, declaring, “You are my son, today I have become your father.” The story of the transfiguration echoes these words, as God’s voice booms through the clouds and names Jesus as the son whom God dearly loves.
Psalm 2 envisions God’s chosen king as a powerful military leader, who is ready – and able with God’s help – to conquer the nations of the earth. This is the dominant image of the expected Messiah which is recorded in Hebrew Scripture. With only a few exceptions, this vision of leadership is most prevalent in the rule of the Israelite kings. This is the Messiah for whom the Israelites and their descendants longed.
Except that this is not the mantle of leadership which Jesus took up. He would not become the type of Messiah that Israel anticipated. Like Frost’s traveler at the fork of woodland paths, Jesus “took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Time and again, Jesus rejects the job description of a powerful, militaristic Messiah.
We see this most notably in the report of the temptation of Jesus, a temptation that this psalm almost foreshadows. In the psalm God promises to grant the king “the far corners of the earth” as his property as well as power over the nations. Compare that idea to the dramatic scene from Luke’s temptation account, where the devil shows Jesus the kingdoms of the world and suggests that they could all be his (Luke 4:5-7). You can almost see the devil’s sinister smile as he makes this offer. The irony is that in the psalm it is God who laughs at the feeble rulers of the nations.
Jesus has come to reveal a different kind of royal leadership and a kingdom with a different mission and purpose. The kingdom that Jesus leads is not defined by power and might, but by humility and servanthood. That is also the message of the story of the transfiguration. Jesus sets the tone of all he has done and all he will continue to do in the limited number of days ahead. His mission is not about earthly glory. He does not stay long on the holy mountain, basking in radiance, as his disciples think he ought to do. Instead, he leads the disciples back down the mountain. Jesus knows that his throne is not of this world and that his true glory will be revealed on the cross.
It is true news: Jesus does indeed become a king on a holy hill, but it is the hill of Golgotha, not Zion. When that coronation happens, Jesus is clothed in shame, not in splendor. We don’t hear God laughing in derision; the mockers are the crowds and the executioners surrounding Jesus. The anointed one is crucified and all the expectations of an all-powerful Messiah are overturned.
Human expectations are upended and reversed. That is a key element of the scriptural narrative. It doesn’t make sense, it is counterintuitive. The people of Jesus’ day couldn’t understand it, and we aren’t a whole lot better at it today. You and I spend enormous amounts of time and energy in pursuit of success, esteem, power, control, and all the things that go along with them. We don’t know how to define our earthly kingdoms in any other way. Our minds are boggled by the concept that Jesus’ life and mission are defined by relinquishing power and by traveling a sacrificial journey toward death.
We confess and somehow believe that God acted in Jesus to overcome death with life. In his journey toward the cross, Jesus, the unexpected Messiah, reveals a kingdom more eternal and more powerful than any the world has known. The power of the world and the glory of God reconciling the world in Christ don’t mix.
Among twentieth-century Christian writers, Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder stands out in his analysis of this unexpected kingdom and its lessons for us. In The Politics of Jesus Yoder demonstrates how Jesus defies the traditional expectations of the Messiah and forges a different kind of kingdom, the kingdom of God. This kingdom does not depend on military might or economic prowess, but rather is made known through concern for the poor, justice for the oppressed, love for friends and enemies alike. The kingdom that Jesus leads builds doors instead of walls, welcomes rather than bans, loves rather than despises, affirms rather than debases, seeks the truth rather than revels in falsehood.
In the kingdom over which Jesus is Lord, he introduces a new social ethic. Jesus forsakes the quest for power and control and doubles down in a commitment to servanthood and sacrifice. It is truly an upside-down kingdom, where the last shall be first, and where suffering and death lie unavoidably on the path toward joy and lasting life. Jesus is transfigured and messiahship is transformed.
Now that the Light of the world is so revealed that the power structures of the world must seek to envelope it in darkness we are at a decision point. Which type of Messiah will we follow: the one dependent on brute force and oppression or the one that turns the other cheek and goes the additional mile? Which kind of kingdom will we give our allegiance to: the one that squeezes power out of every last individual or the one that promotes compassion, forgiveness, and love?
May we lessen our thirst for power and open ourselves to God’s grace in Christ lavished upon us by the Spirit.
General Resource: Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) Year A, Volume 1, 441-445.
(1) “Revisiting The Power and the Glory During Lent,” Atlantic, February 2016. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/02/the-power-and-the-glory-lent-graham-greene/461820/
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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