Being angry biblically

I don't know about you, but recently I've been feeling angry.  I am not at all unfamiliar with anger as an emotion, but something about the present moment seems to stir up anger in a way which is particularly difficult to deal with.  Most recently, it has been mainly the news from across the Atlantic that has made me angry - not just the terrible events themselves, but the appalling arrogance and self-satisfaction of those driving them.  It makes me angry.  And I've realised that my feeling of anger is compounded by a sense of helplessness.  Often when I am angry about things, I can do something about them.  I can have a conversation with the person who has angered me, I can remove myself from a situation.  Here I can't do either of those things.  I don't have the ear of, say, the President of the United States, but I am obliged to live in a world over which he has a huge influence.  And I am angry about that, and angry about the people (including, and perhaps especially, those who invoke the name of Christ) who enable that.  Helplessly, hopelessly, angry.

As an aside, and in case you think this is unduly politically one-sided (though for myself I think sometimes one-sidedness is called for), here are some other things from across the political spectrum that have made me feel similarly angry recently: the deliberate erosion of the idea of the sanctity of human life by British politicians; the crass materialism which drives our politics; the confusion over sex and gender which has been deliberately inculcated to forward an individualistic and antinomian agenda; the critical underfunding of services in the UK to the point of collapse...  The list goes on.  I'm quite angry.

And this is where I think some of those dark and slightly awkward passages from the Psalms are pretty helpful.  You know the sort.

Punish them, God;
let them fall by their own schemes.
Drive them out because of their many crimes,
for they rebel against you.

God, if only you would kill the wicked
–you bloodthirsty men, stay away from me –
who invoke you deceitfully.
Your enemies swear by you falsely.
Lord, don’t I hate those who hate you,
and detest those who rebel against you?
I hate them with extreme hatred;
I consider them my enemies.

The examples could be multiplied.  What are these angry passages doing in the Bible?  Well, surely one thing they're doing is reminding me - and you, if you feel at all like I do - that the situation is neither helpless nor hopeless.  When we are angry, we can voice our anger in prayer to God - and these passages remind us that we don't have to first moderate that emotion, clear it up, tone it down.  No, here is full on anger, but it is anger brought into the presence of God.  Anger that implores him to do something about people and situations I can do nothing about.

The very violence of these verses is, I think, helpful.  God, if only you would kill the wicked.  I can't, and I shouldn't.  But you can, O Lord - vengeance is yours, you will repay.  And of course it is safe to make this appeal to God, in a way it would not be safe to make it to anyone else.  He knows what is right, and he will do what is right.  Only he can judge who are the wicked who must die; only he can ensure that the arrogant rebels receive what they deserve.  If I call down curses on an innocent head in my anger, he is able to turn those curses into blessings, and indeed to correct my perception if I am open to that.  In my anger, I commit myself and the world for which I am concerned to God.

Of course these Psalms aren't here for every moment of pique and fit of rage I might experience.  But when there is real anger, with real cause, here are prayers I can pray.

Christ the Psalmist

Two great Psalms in my reading for Morning Prayer today - Psalms 25 and 26.  Great Psalms in isolation, but curiously contradictory when you read them side by side.

King David Playing the Harp
(Gerard van Honthorst, 1622)

Notice first of all that these are both presented as 'Psalms of David'; whatever exactly we think about the originality or significance of the headings to the Psalms, we are certainly being encouraged to read these together in some sense.  We can't say that these Psalms belong to different traditions, or represent different theological viewpoints, or belong at very different points in the history of revelation and redemption.  The Psalms seem to originate together and belong together.  And yet...

In Psalm 25 we have confessions of sin, pleas for forgiveness, expressions of dependence on God's mercy:

Do not remember the sins of my youth
or the acts of my rebellion...

Lord, for the sake of your name,
forgive my iniquity, for it is immense.

Consider my affliction and trouble
and forgive all my sins. 

 But then in Psalm 26 we have a rather different mood:

Vindicate me, Lord,
because I have lived with integrity...

I wash my hands in innocence
and go around your altar, Lord...

How do we hold together the frank admission of 'immense' guilt with the confident appeal to one's own innocence and integrity?  How do we join up what is essentially an appeal to God to forget David's behaviour (because it was sinful) with the appeal to God to remember David's behaviour (because it was righteous)?

There are of course a number of simple ways we might get around it.  If we take the Psalms primarily as expressions of human psychology, perhaps in connection especially with the life of faith, then it's not difficult to think of times from our own experience when we felt especially sinful and other times when we felt basically innocent.  Perhaps it's just that these two Psalms are given to us so that we can pray appropriately in the light of those different feelings.

Or we can construe a scale of relative righteousness - we could argue that David knows of course that in God's sight he is sinful, but compared to the enemies who oppress and harass him (and these enemies are prominent in Psalm 26) he is innocent.  Or we can imagine a situation in which David, without denying his essential guilt, could be maintaining his innocence in this particular case.  He hasn't done this one thing of which he is accused, and so he can appeal to God on the basis of this innocence.

Any or all of those things may have a grain of truth to them, but the deeper, and more Christian, reading of these Psalms is as expressions of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.  Maybe David wrote these Psalms, but they belong nonetheless to Christ.  The Lord Jesus in his life took up the guilt and sin of humanity and made it his own; he identified with sinful humanity in his baptism, and he carried that identity through as far as the cross.  He can confess on our behalf the immense iniquity which we carry - indeed, he confesses it to such an extent that we no longer carry it.  But on the other hand, the Lord Jesus never sinned.  He, and he alone, could truly wash his hands in innocence.  The guilt which he bore, he bore guiltlessly.  The iniquity which he confessed, he confessed from a position of total integrity.  Jesus sings both Psalms.

And because he sings both Psalms, I can sing both Psalms.  Lord, forgive my iniquity, for it is immense.  In innocence I go around your altar and proclaim thanksgiving.  In Christ I sing.

Psalm 110 and the cross of Christ

Psalm 110 is one of the most cited passages from the Old Testament in the New, and its popularity continued through the first centuries of the church.  It is not hard to see why.  For one thing, the Lord Jesus quoted it in reference to his own identity.  But even without that, the picture of the triumphant Priest-King, seated in victory at the right hand of God speaks powerfully of the Messiah and his glory.

For us, the Psalm can feel harder to appropriate.  There are elements of the structure which are confusing, and in particular it is not immediately obvious who is speaking at each point.  I think this can be cleared up relatively easily, just by noting the difference between LORD (a placeholder for the divine name, YHWH) and Lord (the Messianic King-Priest).  In verses 1 to 4, David reports the address of YHWH to the Messiah (who is David's lord); YHWH tells the Messiah that he will have victory and eternal priesthood.  In verses 5-7, David sings to YHWH, celebrating the fact that (just as YHWH promised in verse 1) the Messianic King-Priest is indeed at God's right hand, and is indeed accomplishing victory.

Probably the toughest bit for us, though, is the end.  "He will crush kings on the day of his anger.  He will judge the nations, piling up corpses..."  The image of the nations filled with the slain is of course deeply unpleasant, but more than that it sits uneasily with our vision of Christ and his victory.  Isn't this, in fact, the polar opposite of the gospel?  Christ suffered death to deliver his enemies from death, right - not to inflict it on them in vast numbers!  So what do we do with this end of the Psalm?

I think the answer, at least in part, is in passages from the New Testament like 2 Corinthians 5.  This passage is all about the Apostle Paul's missionary motivation.  What is at that drives him out to preach the gospel, at such cost?  One part of the answer to that, it seems to me, is that Paul sees humanity around him through the lens of the history of Christ.  That is to say, he doesn't look at the people around him and then try to work out how the gospel is relevant to them; rather, he considers Christ's story to be the central story of all humanity.  He has reached this conclusion, on the basis of his knowledge of Christ: "that one died for all, and therefore all died."  All died.  Paul, realising that Jesus truly is the Christ, sees his death as an event which has validity and reality for all humanity.  All died.  This is so because Christ took the place of sinners ("[God] made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us...") and suffered the judgement of God on sin - and in so doing, executed the judgement of God on sinners.  Sinners were put to death in him.

And so the Apostle, looking out across the nations, sees them filled with corpses, those slain by the judgement of God executed by - and miraculously, marvellously, in - the Messiah.  This is why the nature of his victory requires a Priest-King, after the order of Melchizedek: his great Kingly triumph over the nations is a Priestly sacrifice of himself.

Because Paul knows that Jesus is risen, he also knows the story doesn't end here.  Psalm 110, after all, envisages the Messiah's enemies coming to serve him; how can they do so if they are all slain?  But Christ died for all so that those who trust in him might rise with him; he put an end to their sinful humanity so that they might share with him in the new humanity, by foretaste in the outpouring of the Spirit ("he will drink from the brook by the way") and then finally in the physical resurrection.  Paul's missionary motivation, then, is that all the people around him are dead, really dead, because of the cross; they just don't know it yet.  But this judgement carried out in Christ is not the final word for humanity.  To submit to this judgement, to accept (in baptism) the death executed on sinful humanity in him, is to find the door opened to resurrection life, and to have a certain hope that as our King and Priest is seated at the right hand of God, so we will be seated with him.

More limits

As a brief post-script to yesterday's post, it is particularly encouraging in these troubled times to recall that God has also set limits for nations and temporal powers.  Both in time and in space, the nations are bounded. It seems to me that there are direct parallels to the way the sea is described in the Old Testament. The nations are always potentially chaotic, potentially anti-God and anti-creation. But they are restrained. And of course the nations are also a part of creation, potentially good and a blessing to those who live in them, and so within their constraints they are given time and space to flourish.

It is worth remembering with gratitude that the supreme limit against which the nations bump up is the enthronement of the Lord Jesus as the King of the universe. They cannot undo this, nor can any political arrangement (or lack of arrangement) threaten it. Therefore God's people are secure, no matter what.

I think it's a bit of a mug's game to try to discern exactly what is going on out there from the point of view of providence. But the certainty that providence rules, and that God has already allotted the times and spaces of the nations, is encouraging to me - precisely because he is the good God, who is for us in Jesus.

As a father has compassion

Preaching Psalm 103 yesterday, the big thing that struck me was the contrast between the frailty of humanity and the eternity of God:

As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children's children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.

The contrast is clear: God is from everlasting to everlasting, man is barely from one day to the next.  He is the enduring Lord, they are a flash in the pan at best.  We might ask, with another Psalm, what is man, that God should be mindful of him?

But according to Psalm 103, the response of God to humanity is not disdain.  One might reasonably expect this.  That is how the gods of the classical pantheons tended to view humans, and of course Aristotle thought that god would be completely unaware of such trifles as human beings - too caught up in his own perfection to be bothered.  (It would in fact constitute a loss of perfection for god to cease contemplating his own perfect self and take note of something so mundane as a human being).

Not the God of Israel.

As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

And in the full biblical witness to revelation, we see what that compassion means.  The Psalmist notes that God the creator "knows our frame" - he knows how we're made.  Of course he does, as creator.  But it's more than that.  In his compassion, God the Son has actually taken on that frame, and lived it from the inside out.  He has not just felt for us in our brevity and weakness, from a distance.  He is not condescending (in a negative way); he has condescended, to be one of us.  His compassion has extended so far, the distance from heaven and earth (the same distance which, according to the Psalm, marks the span of his great love).

What a great God we have, that for us he should become a feeble man!

Though the earth gives way

I preached Psalm 46 at CCC this past Sunday.  It opens with this great picture of the security of God's people:

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.

Even if everything falls apart - and it is the very destruction of creation that is envisaged here, the undoing of God's good ordering of things through the division of the seas and creation of dry land - even if it all collapses, we will not fear.  Why not?  Because God is our hiding place.  God is our firm foundation.  He is a very present help in trouble.

As an aside, what a great phrase that is!  We can talk about the omnipresence of God if we want to, and certainly the Bible does sometimes talk that way, but the perspective of this Psalm on the question of God's presence is: are you in trouble?  Then God will be there to help you.  This is not a piece of philosophy; it is gospel gospel gospel, all the way down.

One of the things that the rest of the Psalm makes clear is that this uncreation is directly related to human action, human war and destruction.  It is not about 'natural disasters' so much as it is about the ruining of everything through the chaos of a humanity which has 'liberated' itself from God's wise and righteous ways.

And the response to this chaos of humanity is two-fold.  In the present, the Psalmist says, God's people remain secure no matter what.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.

Notice the water!  Outside, the foaming of the terrible seas and the tidal waves which sink the mountains; inside, the quiet river bubbling gently over its stony bed and refreshing the people of God.  "Whoever believes in me," Jesus said, "out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  The Holy Spirit with God's people is their refreshment and their security.

And then in the future, God will put an end to the destructive ways of humanity.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the chariots with fire.

When God calls the nations to be still, and know that he is God, it is because he has ended their chaos once and for all.  The security of God's people in the present is like an outpost of the future, a glimpse into the final security of all creation when God has made it impossible for the earth to fall into the sea or for human beings to rise up against him and one another.

So here's the thing: there are a variety of things that make us feel like the earth is falling into the sea.  The political turmoil in the UK makes me feel that way.  I imagine I will also feel that way (and I realise with rather less justification) when England crash out of the World Cup.  (I am just putting this here as a hypothetical example, I know it's not really going to happen.  It's coming home, right?)

The point is that pretty much all our hopes, whether they are in people, institutions, or processes, are insecure.  Our only solid hope is that in all the trouble that comes our way, and through all the turmoil that shakes the earth, God is our very present help through his Son the Lord Jesus Christ, who supplies to us the glorious sustenance and refreshment of his Holy Spirit.

He will come to judge the world

My guess is that nothing serves as a better barometer of the spiritual climate than the sorts of thoughts we entertain about God's judgement.  I've been struck particularly over the last week or so by the way in which many people, even Christians who are committed to their Bibles, are uncomfortable with the thought of God as judge.  In particular, we struggle to square our commitment to the idea that God is love - and the NT certainly does say that, in so many words, and means it too - and the idea that God will come with fire and a winnowing fork.

And yet the Psalms paint a different picture.

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the Lord, for he comes,
for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness,
and the peoples in his faithfulness.

A joy that fills all creation, and all because God is coming to judge!  And sometimes this is directly linked to God's love.

So what makes the difference in perspective?  My guess is a couple of things.

Most fundamental, I suppose, we - or at least many of us - have become far too accustomed to living in the world, such that we no longer notice its corruption, the evil all around us.  We're okay with the world carrying on as it is, pretty much indefinitely.  Or we've bought into the secular idea that things aren't that bad, and it just needs a little human effort to bring in the future utopian bliss.  This is probably only something that happens when Christians are comfortable, both in terms of an absence of persecution and a good provision of worldly goods.  My guess is that the best way to counteract this is to think about others a bit more.  For myself, remembering that in our peaceful and prosperous society the unborn can be freely disposed of brings it home that this world needs judgement.

I think as well that the standard image we're given of God's judgement in much contemporary teaching, in which we believers stand on the right side of judgement and everyone else goes down, makes us quite uncomfortable.  As well it should.  If we know anything at all, we know we're at least as bad as those around us.  It smacks a bit of that most contemporary sin, privilege, to claim that we'll make it through the judgement and everyone else won't.

There is a strand to the biblical picture of God's judgement which looks like this: God rescuing his people by judging the world.  But there is something more fundamental, I think.  When God comes to judge the world, he comes to make things right.  That is why all creation rejoices.  Can we just think a little more about the sin of abortion?  Who is promoting abortion rights in our society?  It's not the baddies.  It's the decent, progressive, nice people.  The people with whom we could stand shoulder to shoulder to protest the abuse of the poor, or the dehumanising of immigrants.  And yet these same people believe strongly in their right to expose infants (for that is what it is).  What do we do with that?  Who can unravel these strands or right and wrong, see to the heart of it, make sure everyone gets justice?  Only God, surely.

That's why creation rejoices at the coming judgement of God.  His judgement is the final dividing of light from dark, order from chaos, good from evil.  In the Genesis story, a provisional and primary division is made as the good creation is brought out from the darkened chaos.  In Revelation, that division is extended to the moral and personal realm and made final.  And this is good!  Just as the morning stars sang together at the first dawn, so all the trees and mountains and rivers will rejoice at that final definitive dawn.

And what a depth it adds to this picture when we understand that this judgement has been entrusted to our Lord Jesus!  But that is a whole different post.

Learning to Pray

The introduction to Bonhoeffer's short book on the Psalms - The Prayerbook of the Bible - is worth every penny you might pay for the book, even assuming you didn't read and benefit from the rest of it, which you ought to.  In noting that Jesus' disciples ask him to teach them to pray, Bonhoeffer probes and pops on of the great prayer myths that circulates in the church.

"To learn to pray" sounds contradictory to us.  Either the heart is so overflowing that it begins to pray by itself, we say, or it will never learn to pray.  But this is a dangerous error, which is certainly very widespread among Christians today, to imagine that it is natural for the heart to pray.

We imagine that prayer comes spontaneously or not at all.  Not so, says Bonhoeffer, for if it were so how could Jesus teach the disciples to pray?  There is plenty of stuff the heart can do by itself - "wishing, hoping, sighing, lamenting, rejoicing" - but these are not yet prayer, and ought not to be confused with prayer.

Praying certainly does not mean simply pouring out one's heart.  It means, rather, finding the way to and speaking with God, whether the heart is full or empty.

This has implications.  How should we learn to pray?  Why, the same way we learn to talk in general: by imitating our parent's speech.  In this case, taking on the speech of God.  "Repeating God's own words, we begin to pray to God."  We encounter this language of God in Holy Scripture.

This allows Bonhoeffer to develop a particular, and a particularly Christological, view of the prayers of the Bible, and particularly the book of Psalms.  Here in the Psalms we have the Word of God - but they are also prayers to God, which is to say they are particularly human words.  (What is prayer but a human word?)  How can they be both?

We grasp it only when we consider that we can learn true prayer only from Jesus Christ, and that it is, therefore, the word of the Son of God, who lives with us human beings, to God the Father who lives in eternity...  In Jesus' mouth the human word becomes God's Word.  When we pray along with the prayer of Christ, God's Word becomes again a human word.

Jesus prays, and we can pray along with him, because he includes us in his prayers.

If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible, and especially the Psalms, we must not, therefore, first ask what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ.

Recognising that we must learn to pray, and that we can only do so as we pray along with Christ Jesus, we learn to pray beyond our own immediate interests and feelings, to pray more than what it is in our hearts at the moment - sometimes, indeed, "it is precisely the case that we must pray against our own heart in order to pray properly."

Not the poverty of our heart, but the richness of God's Word, ought to determine our prayer.

All quotations from The Prayerbook of the Bible, in volume 5 of Bonhoeffer's Works, pages 155ff.

Flee for refuge

In Ruth 2, Boaz blesses Ruth: "A full reward be given to you by Yahweh, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!"  The image of the bird spreading out its wings over its vulnerable chicks is tender and magnificent; it is heightened in Ruth 3 when Boaz himself agrees to spread the 'wings' of his garment over Ruth, becoming the answer to his own prayer, being the shelter of the Lord.

But what has been particularly striking me in the last couple of days is how much fleeing for refuge there is in the Old Testament.  The lectionary yesterday took me to Psalm 5 ("But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you.") and then to Psalm 7 ("O Yahweh my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me").  In the evening at a church prayer meeting, Psalm 46 was read ("God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.")

Some reflections:

1.  This means life is hard.  Nobody flees unless they have to, nobody becomes a refugee willingly.  Life is hard.  Circumstances are difficult, ranging from mildly irritating to impossible to sustain.  Our own brokenness is hard, whether it is physical or mental health struggles or just the sense of homelessness that comes from being a human in a fallen creation.  The struggle with sin is hard, whether we're winning or losing.  Guilt is hard, hard to repress or ignore and even harder to acknowledge.  Flight to refuge is surely the experience of all of us at one time or another.

2.  The God who directs providence provides protection.  Surely the hardest thing in life is God himself.  I mean, the God who stands inscrutable behind providence; and more, the God who stands at the end of everything as Judge.  It is striking that the book of Ruth, which unless I am badly misreading it is primarily a story of providence, contains Boaz's blessing in the middle.  It is God who has directed the hard providence of Ruth 1, and yet it is God to whom Ruth has fled for refuge.  Is there a parallel here that needs to be thought?  It is God who sits on the seat of judgement and condemns my sin and wickedness, and yet it is this same God to whom we flee for forgiveness and a covering of righteousness.  The flood is his, but so is the ark.

3.  Jesus.  Where, other than in Christ, does any refuge appear?  Under whose wings can we take refuge, other than his?  Here in Christ we see that the direction of providence, the rule of the Judge, is by no means an impersonal fate or a harsh legalism.  Here I see God himself raising a lament over those who have resisted his grace: "How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!"  Here is the loving hand that guides even the darkest providence.  Here in the God who hangs on the cross is the fortress of my soul, the rock which is split so that I can hide within.  Here is refuge.

Other refuge have I none,

Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;

Leave, oh, leave me not alone,

Still support and comfort me.

All my trust on Thee is stayed,

All my help from Thee I bring;

Cover my defenseless head

With the shadow of Thy wing.

REPOST: Imprecatory

Psalm 139 is regularly read in church services.  It's a beautiful celebration of humanity as created and sustained by God.  It's a wonderful reassurance that God's great design stands behind each human being, and that his awesome presence accompanies each human life.  Where we are perhaps ready to see the flaws in each other and in ourselves, the Psalm encourages us to view each person as "fearfully and wonderfully made".  Where I tend to feel alone, the Psalm lifts my eyes to see that wherever I am and whatever my circumstances, God's "right hand shall hold me".  No wonder the Psalm gets so much airtime.

But then you hit verse 19.  Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God!

The reading often skips this bit out.  How can this verse sit alongside the beautiful sentiments of the rest of the Psalm?  How can we affirm on the one hand that God knows each human life intimately, but on the other hand pray that God would smite the wicked?

But there is no conflict here.  It is precisely because of the value of life that the Psalmist cries out against the wicked.  The wicked are "men of blood", those who stand against God's good intention, those who oppose life.  And they are strong, and they are bold, and mere human beings cannot stop them.

Therefore, oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God!

Now, with New Testament lenses on, we can see that this prayer is ultimately answered, not in the death of any number of wicked people, but in the death of wickedness itself  at the cross of Christ.  And yet...  May we not still hand over the wicked, whose power is beyond us, to God - the just judge?  Should we not ask the Judge to enforce justice?  I think perhaps we should.

Love of life - the life created by God - must mean enmity to everything that stands for death, and in that battle our weapon is prayer.

Originally posted in November 2015

The unique sorrow

When Israel lamented the destruction of Jerusalem, that terrible event was portrayed as incomparable.  "Look, and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow..."  "What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Zion?  What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you..?"

Is this just grief-stricken hyperbole?  From what I know of the ancient world, the fate of Jerusalem was far from unique; from what I read in the news, much the same is happening around the world today.  It could, of course, be hyperbole.  The authors of Holy Scripture were men fully caught up in the national life of Israel and Judah, and felt keenly the national grief at the loss of Zion.  It would be no surprise if they gave vent to that grief in their writings.  But I think there is more behind it.  The suffering of Jerusalem is unique because two unique circumstances stand behind it.

The first is that the sin of Jerusalem is unique.  Jeremiah writes:

For cross to the coasts of Cyprus and see, or send to Kedar and examine with care;
see if there has been such a thing.
Has a nation changed its gods,
even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
for that which does not profit.

 No other nation has so rejected its gods - and those gods were just their own inventions, which could easily be changed at will!  But Israel has uniquely turned away from God, the Living God.  The sin is unique.

And the second circumstance stands behind that one.  Israel was a people uniquely privileged with knowledge of God, uniquely party to a gracious covenant with him.  "Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live?"  "He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his rules."  Israel's unique relationship with God means that their rejection of God is a unique sin, and their suffering is the unique punishment of God on that unique sin.  No matter the historical resemblances to other situations, the internal logic is utterly different.

When one man died on a cross, his historical circumstances were far from unique; indeed, two other crucifixions occurred on either side.  But this man was unique, because he uniquely bore the guilt of all human sin.  And he was unique because he only stood in total unity with God, as God the Son incarnate.

Is there any sorrow like his sorrow?

Creation and Covenant

Psalm 147 is a prime example of how the Psalms can be both 'nature' psalms and songs celebrating God's covenant with Israel at the same time.  Are we talking about God building up Jerusalem, or about God creating and maintaining the stars?  Is the theme that God's word melts the ice, or is it that God's word is sent to Israel for their obedience?  Ultimately these things cannot be unpicked.  Here are some slightly jumbled thoughts on the Psalm.

1.  Creation is not in itself the covenant.  There is a particularity about what God does for Israel which is lacking in creation - "he has not dealt thus with any other nation".  That God chooses Israel to be the witness of his glory (not least his glory revealed in creation!) is not just another part of the unfolding of creation itself, but is something subsequent and new.  (Although sometimes it seems to be prior and older - the building of Jerusalem takes precedence over the creation of the stars!)

2.  Creation is not a neutral sphere within which the covenant is enacted.  Israel is governed by God's word - "his statutes and rules" - but so, in its own way, is the snow and ice and water - "he sends out his word, and melts them".  There is continuity in the way God works, and he is absolute Lord over all he has made.

3.  Creation and covenant derive from the same power and evoke the same praise.  The greatness of God is revealed in his healing the broken-hearted of Israel, and in his giving the stars their names and number.

4.  Creation exists for the covenant, but there is 'gratuitous' overflow.  God fills Israel "with the finest of the wheat" - creation is geared up to provide covenant blessing.  But then, he also feeds the young ravens!  Though God's delight is in those who fear him and hope in his love, that same love overflows to those who cannot fear him and hope in him.

5.  It is pleasant to sing praise to God for his glory in creation and covenant.  When creation is seen in the light of God's dealings with Israel, there seems to be a return to the 'it was good' of Genesis 1.  Here is a positive delight in the works and ways of God which it wouldn't hurt us to imitate!

The Lord, the Giver of Life

A recent camping holiday provided an excellent opportunity for some reflection on some of the 'nature Psalms', and I've especially enjoyed and benefited from time in Psalm 104.  Two verses are particularly striking:

When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
When you send forth your Spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.

 The basic point is simple but profound: all created things are sustained by the Holy Spirit.  As I've chewed this over, I've had a few other thoughts...

1.  The Spirit's sustaining work goes beyond the provision of the necessary means for life.  That is there in the immediate context, but these verses add something else.  God doesn't just provide the necessary secondary causes of continued existence; he actually provides, by sending his Spirit, existence itself.

2.   The Spirit's sustaining work extends to both individual creatures, and the whole system of creation.  The renewal of creation is of course driven by the ordinary processes of procreation, but underlying those processes is the sending of the Spirit.  Life and the systems which sustain and renew life are equally upheld by the Breath of God.

3.  This is not pantheism or even panentheism.  Creation is not God, nor does it subsist within God - rather, the creature is distinct from God, and is distinctly maintained and sustained by him.  Note the dynamic and interactive language used - you take away, you send forth...  The Spirit is not some sort of impersonal substrate of creation, nor is he tied to creation, but he comes and goes at the will of God, sustaining the whole.

4.  God's Spirit can be, and is, withdrawn at God's will.  The ongoing existence of creation as a whole is dependent on God's faithfulness and nothing more.  The ongoing existence of any particular creature within the whole is also dependent on God, and can be withdrawn at any point in his sovereignty.  We, and all the things we see and experience, are dramatically contingent.

5.  Creation is real.  It is not a phantom, or a dream in God's mind.  It's very fragility and dependence on God's Spirit testifies to its reality as a thing which exists but which is not God.

6.  The same Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters of creation in the beginning sustains creation now.  And he is the same Spirit who comes in the waters of baptism, creating and thereafter sustaining new life in Christ.  His work in old creation and new are linked through the creation of the human nature of Christ - hovering over the waters of the womb?

Preaching God's commands

A checklist for preachers, based on part of Psalm 19.

In preaching the commands and requirements of God, am I:

• presenting the commands without apology or embarrassment, as the expression of absolute perfection in moral conduct and good living?
• wearying my hearers with a burdensome command, or refreshing them with a commandment which is good news?
• delivering the commands in a way which shows their logic, so that they shape the hearers into people who can make wise decisions in other ethical areas?
• showing how right living is a cause for rejoicing?
• opening people's eyes through the commands to see the big reality that lies behind them, rather than presenting isolated and abstract demands?
• provoking a hunger for God's good commands and a savour for obedience?
• warning the listeners of the consequences of disobedience, and holding out the prospect of eternal reward for obedience?

Imprecatory

Psalm 139 is regularly read in church services.  It's a beautiful celebration of humanity as created and sustained by God.  It's a wonderful reassurance that God's great design stands behind each human being, and that his awesome presence accompanies each human life.  Where we are perhaps ready to see the flaws in each other and in ourselves, the Psalm encourages us to view each person as "fearfully and wonderfully made".  Where I tend to feel alone, the Psalm lifts my eyes to see that wherever I am and whatever my circumstances, God's "right hand shall hold me".  No wonder the Psalm gets so much airtime.

But then you hit verse 19.  Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God!

The reading often skips this bit out.  How can this verse sit alongside the beautiful sentiments of the rest of the Psalm?  How can we affirm on the one hand that God knows each human life intimately, but on the other hand pray that God would smite the wicked?

But there is no conflict here.  It is precisely because of the value of life that the Psalmist cries out against the wicked.  The wicked are "men of blood", those who stand against God's good intention, those who oppose life.  And they are strong, and they are bold, and mere human beings cannot stop them.

Therefore, oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God!

Now, with New Testament lenses on, we can see that this prayer is ultimately answered, not in the death of any number of wicked people, but in the death of wickedness itself  at the cross of Christ.  And yet...  May we not still hand over the wicked, whose power is beyond us, to God - the just judge?  Should we not ask the Judge to enforce justice?  I think perhaps we should.

Love of life - the life created by God - must mean enmity to everything that stands for death, and in that battle our weapon is prayer.

Waking up

David is quite excited about waking up:

I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.

On a couple of occasions he welcomes in the dawn with praise.  What is so exciting about a new day?  I don't think David even had access to coffee.  What did the morning have to offer him?

I suppose the key thing is that David has been asleep.  Being asleep is the state of least control.  Awake, David may be King and have followers at his beck and call.  Asleep, he is absolutely vulnerable.  Sleep is like a temporary death.  So waking up is like... a resurrection?

The morning brings fresh mercies.  The death of sleep has wiped out the sin of yesterday - but to rise from that sleep takes a new act of mercy.  Putting yesterday to death doesn't necessarily lead to tomorrow.  Fresh mercy, new life.

But fresh mercies are crowded out pretty quickly by fresh struggles, fresh disappointments, fresh sins, fresh troubles.  Fresh, but old.  They seem new, but they belong to yesterday's yesterdays.  Not yet new, not totally.  Morning becomes afternoon, and we long for sleep - to put the day with all its mess to bed.  To die, to sleep.

And yet every moment could be a morning, rich with new mercy, springing unexpected from the grave of just now, the grave dug by Christ with his own cruciform shovel.

That is why it says:

“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Fruitful tension

The last four verses of Psalm 51 introduce a striking - less charitably, odd - tension into the composition. Here they are, split into two pairs of verses:

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 

Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.

The first pair broadly represents the interests of the rest of the psalm, but the concluding pair introduces a whole different, and at first glance contradictory, concerns.  To list a few, the psalm has been very individual and personal, but the end introduces corporate and national themes; the psalm is a plea for mercy, but the end introduces the idea that God might be pleased with Zion; and most strikingly - because of the verbal contradiction - the psalm has been concerned with inward attitudes, but the end introduces ceremonial actions.

What do with this?

Of course the standard critical response will be that the last two verses are a later addition, perhaps from someone concerned by the apparent slight on the temple system in the previous end of the psalm.  Well, that's as may be - it's a plausible hypothesis.  The frustration, though, is that by not dealing with the psalm as we have it - and in the only form which we know for sure it has ever had - we can miss out on really helpful theological reflection.  After all, might it not be useful to ponder the relationship between the individual's piety and the good of the covenant community?  Might not a meditation on the relationship between our plea for forgiveness and God's good pleasure be a fruitful one?  And we surely would benefit from thinking carefully about the contrast between sacrifices in which God does not delight and those in which he delights indeed.

I would suggest that the points of tension in this psalm are actually the points where we can learn most about God and ourselves.  I wonder if that might be the case elsewhere?

Taste and See

What man is there who desires life
and loves many days, that he may see good?

Psalm 34:12

This verse jumped out at me as I was reading this week. It is not a rhetorical question (it is not effectively denying that there is such a man), but a practical question - do you want life? Do you love the good days of life and long for them to continue?
Then turn from evil, and do good, says the Psalmist.  Control your tongue.  Speak the truth.  Seek peace.  Then YHWH will look on you, and you can expect life in fullness.

When you think about it, the Bible is full of this sort of thing.  Jesus came to give abundant life, after all.  The promise of life, life in fullness, life full of good things - that is all over Scripture.  In Christ and his discipleship there is life.

A few thoughts:

It is vitally important that we read this promise through the cross.  It is right to love life, right to want many days, right to enjoy the many good things which life has to offer.  But life - real life - comes on the other side of death, whether that is the daily 'little death' (but not so little!) of self-denial or the 'final death' (but not so final!) of the grave.  If we forget this, we will create a theology of glory and deny the cross of Christ.

I think that for most people religion is about avoiding death, or at least avoiding the fear of death.  I wonder if that isn't right on the money for some of us who profess ourselves followers of Christ.  Scripture calls us to more than this: the love of life, not just the fear of death.  I think that will play out in a number of different ways.  Fear of death leads at best to disciplined and committed rule-keeping, hatred of sin, avoidance of evil; love of life leads to disciplined yet joyful submission to God's law, love of holiness, pursuit of Christ.  Fear of death leads to world-denial, and self-contained, self-confessed spirituality; love of life leads to loving service of the world (albeit recognising the temptation of worldliness) and a willingness to risk.  How can you risk anything, waste anything, put anything at all in harms way if your main motive is to avoid death?  But if you love life - and know that life means knowing Christ and his cross - then you can say: this is the game, this is the final, this is what counts; let's give it everything.

I wonder as well how we as Christians address those who just want life.  I suspect that often we just see the surface froth of hedonism and condemn this, without realising that underneath that is love of life, love of goodness, love of joy.  How do we persuade people that here, in Christ Jesus, here is life?  How do we shift the perception of the church from being joy-denying, world-hating, repressive, anti-life misery?

How will we taste and see that the Lord is good?  And how will we invite others to do the same?

Waiting

One of the most useful things, for me, in following the liturgical year, is that emotionally I'm not able to be everywhere at once.  The year helps me to order things, and brings an emotional focus to the different seasons.  So what am I meant to be feeling in Advent?

I've been thinking about waiting in the Psalms.  Waiting implies a situation which is not yet what you believe it ought to be.  For the Psalmists that is generally opposition to themselves and to God, but what has struck me as I have been reading over the Psalms which deal explicitly with waiting for God is that the feel of them can be very different.  Take Psalm 33, for example.  This is a Psalm of joyous worship - "shout for joy in YHWH you righteous!" - and absolute confidence - "he is our help and shield".  But there is still waiting.  "Our soul waits for YHWH".  Confidence here leads to waiting.  Because God is good, and sovereign, and cares for us, we will wait for him.  This is expectant, eager waiting.

Psalm 62 has a slightly different feel.  Without a doubt, the Psalmist is struggling in some way; it seems from opposition around him - "how long will all of you attack a man?"  But there is still a certain serenity about it.  "For God alone my soul waits in silence".  It seems to me that this is patient, enduring waiting.

Psalm 69 is different again.  Here the Psalmist's situation seems more desperate - "the waters have come up to my neck" - and his cry more anguished - "save me, O God!"  If he waits for God, it is not so much eagerly or patiently, but because he is forced to.  "My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God".  This looks like urgent, anxious waiting.

In Psalm 39, it feels as if the Psalmist has almost given up.  He waits for God only because nobody else can help him, since his problem is fundamentally his own sin and guilt.  "And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?  My hope is in you.  Deliver me from all my transgressions."  This feels to me like resigned, enforced waiting.

Then there are Psalms 74 and 79, with their impassioned "how long, O YHWH/God?"  The concern here is wider; it is not so much to do with the Psalmist's personal situation as it is with the state of the world, and particularly the way in which God is dishonoured - "is the enemy to revile your name forever?"  This is impatient, zealous waiting.

Waiting for God does not have one particular emotional or situational profile.  I am working on what that means for me personally, but I am encouraged that God meets us where we are - whether that is quietly confident in him, hugely saddened by the brokenness and rebellion of the world, or frustrated and impatient with his apparent inaction.

Keeping quiet

If I had said "I will speak thus", I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

In context, this verse in Psalm 73 is saying something pretty controversial in today's world (and church).  The Psalmist had big doubts about the goodness of God, and he kept them to himself.  And looking back, he is glad he kept them to himself.  His doubts could have damaged other people.

I'm all for honesty, and I'm absolutely committed to the idea that the church is a community which accepts doubters, and doesn't discourage openness about struggles with faith.  But I do wonder whether sometimes 'personal integrity' is viewed as an ultimate good.  I think this, so I have to say it.  I doubt this, so I'd best express that.  This Psalm suggests that sometimes it would be better to have internal anguish rather than cause others to suffer.

I just thought that was interesting in a world where everyone has to 'be themselves', and a church where contradicting centuries of Christian teaching and belief is applauded as heroic so long as you are doing it for the sake of integrity.