Tag: Psalms of Ascent

Journey To Jerusalem 5: The Blessings Of Unity, Psalm 133 (Lent 6 Palm Sunday)

Psalm 133

1 How good and pleasant it is

    when God’s people live together in unity!

‘God’s people’? If you know this psalm in older versions of the Bible you will know this verse as ‘How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.’ Strictly, that is an accurate translation. But today, with the concern for inclusive language, just to render it as ‘brothers’ would in the eyes of many exclude women. We want to get the same truth across in a different way. 

But the choice here of ‘God’s people’ as a modern substitute loses the emphasis on family. ‘Brothers and sisters’ would be better, maybe ‘siblings’, depending on your views about transgender and non-binary. 

Because it really is a miracle sometimes when brothers and sisters live together in unity! How many of you fell out with your sisters or brothers when you were young? My sister and I certainly did. It took growing and maturing, perhaps also along with a shared faith, to leave our childhood squabbles behind. 

You would hope, then, that in a church, a gathering of those who are brothers and sisters in the family of God, that there would be the mature love for one another as we are bound together in unity by the love of God in Christ. 

But you know and I know that it isn’t always true. Many churches are more like the childhood siblings engaging in petty arguments. People fall out with one another. They make disparaging remarks about someone behind their backs. Strong personalities clash and neither side backs down. Gossip. Negative comments are repeated without checking whether they are true. 

You may think this all sounds trivial. It isn’t. This immature and cavalier attitude to our unity destroys the church, because it undermines our very identity as those who are united in Christ. Habits like gossip are cancer in the church. 

What can we do about it? Jesus had a fair bit to say about how we handle our differences, and we could consider them some time. At one church in a past circuit I made it a rule that no-one could bring a complaint about someone to the Church Council if they had not already tried to talk it over with the person they were unhappy with. I did so, because someone drove a couple out of that church by orally attacking them at the Council without warning. 

But the Psalmist doesn’t offer solutions here. Instead, he (most likely it was a man in that society) offers a compelling vision of what unity among the believers looks like and accomplishes. There are two images he gives us that make us want to aspire to greater unity in the faith. They are the oil on Aaron’s beard and the dew on Mount Hermon. Put like that, they sound culturally alien to our world today. But it’s quite easy to see what the Psalmist is getting at, and as a result we can be inspired and challenged by the vision he puts before us. 

The oil on Aaron’s beard

2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,

    running down on the beard,

running down on Aaron’s beard,

    down on the collar of his robe.

Aaron, the brother of Moses, and his male descendants were set aside to be the priests of Israel. For this they were anointed and consecrated with holy oil poured on their heads. Therefore, when the psalmist says that the unity of God’s family is like the oil on Aaron’s beard he is saying that unity is a priestly thing for the whole family of God. 

But what would it mean for us as the family of God to be priestly? Are we to offer sacrifices? Well, not in the sense of sacrifices for sin. They are all fulfilled, completed, and replaced by the death of Jesus on the Cross. We can, however, offer sacrifices of praise, according to the New Testament. 

That will also include making personal sacrifices for one another in Christian love. I saw that at my first theological college when a student from South East Asia lost her mother back at home and a bunch of students, who mostly didn’t have much money, rallied around to make sure she had her return air fare. I saw it in my last circuit when a Nepalese church member was made stateless and the church rallied around to make sure he could afford to apply for British citizenship. We even got that campaign into the local press and gained community support. 

But the other ongoing part of the priest’s life is prayer for the people of God. And that’s also where we as brothers and sisters in the family of God can be priestly together. It is our privilege to bring one another to God in prayer. 

Yes, of course we all have direct access to God in prayer through the Cross of Christ, and you might therefore wonder why we would ask someone else to pray for us. However, this is about mutual support as part of our unity in Christ. Sometimes there are other ordinary tasks in life that we can normally accomplish but where we need someone else’s help from time to time, especially if we are feeling weak. Prayer is no different.

This came home to me with some force in one pastoral situation at a former church. One lovely couple really did have what the late Queen once called an ‘annus horribilis’, a terrible year. In the space of twelve months, they both lost both of their parents, and then a beloved uncle also died. Five close bereavements in a year. Can you imagine the toll it took on them? 

In one conversation, the wife shared with me that this was a season where she found it hard to pray, but she was glad to be carried by the prayers of the church. That’s the oil on Aaron’s beard: a priestly ministry of prayer for one another that enhances our unity. 

One other comment on this theme is to point out that you will note I am talking about praying for other Christians, not praying against them. There are some Christians who default too quickly to the latter, effectively using prayer as a way of cursing their brothers and sisters. There are limited extreme circumstances where we might pray against the influence of a brother or sister Christian, but usually it is where they are damaging the unity of the church. 

I had one such instance early in my ministry where one of the church organists deliberately sided with a couple who were stirring trouble in the congregation. I learned that the organist and the husband in the couple were both Freemasons in the local lodge. They carried a greater loyalty to one another there than to the church. (There are other reasons to say that Freemasonry is incompatible with Christianity, not least the way it makes human merit rather than divine grace the way to salvation.)


Eventually, I was driven to extreme prayer about the organist and I prayed, ‘Lord, please either change him or move him. I’d far rather you changed him, but if he will not change then please move him.’ A week later, he and his wife put their house up for sale and a few months later they moved a hundred miles away. 

But as I say, prayers like that are the exception. Normally, the oil on Aaron’s beard means that we are blessing one another in prayer and thus deepening our unity together in Christ as his family. 

The dew of Hermon

3 It is as if the dew of Hermon

    were falling on Mount Zion.

For there the Lord bestows his blessing,

    even life for evermore.

It’s time for a bit of geography. Mount Hermon is in Lebanon, to the north of Israel. The climate is not quite as hot. Unlike peaks in the Holy Land, Mount Hermon is a place where snow can settle at the top. It thus generates cool water in a way unknown in the Promised Land. The dew on Mount Hermon is thus a symbol for being refreshed. 

There is a link, says the psalmist, between our unity as believers and experiencing a sense of refreshment in our lives. When we are one in Christ, we pull together, and we look out for one another. 

It’s something we have experienced in the last few weeks. Both ministry and life in general have been profoundly affected by the damage that was caused to the manse and the necessary measures while it has been repaired. Having had to live a distance away has not only meant the strange combination of doing more decamping than you would for a self-catering holiday but less than a full house move, the extra travel combined with road works and road closures to negotiate on our routes has made for getting in substantially later at night and leaving for meetings significantly earlier in the morning. You will not be surprised to know that one effect upon us of such an arrangement has been an increased tiredness. 

We have therefore been so glad when people in the churches and circuit have shown particular understanding of our situation. People have not asked more of us than they had to. Some specifically told us not to worry about certain regular commitments for the duration. These attitudes have refreshed us. They have helped us cope with a difficult situation. I can think of other appointments I’ve been in where people would still have wanted their pound of flesh out of me, regardless. 

And you know what? When members of the church family decide they are going to do things that refresh others it draws us closer together. The opposite pulls us apart. 

Therefore it’s worth us all pondering what we can do to refresh our brothers and sisters in the family of Jesus. Is there a way we can show understanding to someone in difficulty? Is there someone carrying a burden where we can take some of their load? Is there somebody having to cope with a challenging situation where a gesture of service would make a difference to them? 

Actually, let me suggest to you a simple prayer we can pray each day. In fact, this one goes wider than just refreshing our brothers and sisters in Christ: there are no boundaries to it. But it will bless the Body of Christ and engender deeper unity when applied there. The prayer is this:

Lord, please show me who I can bless today.

It’s really that simple. Imagine the effect if we all prayed that every day. Imagine what kind of a spiritual family we would become. 

Then put it together with the priestly actions indicated by the oil on Aaron’s beard where we are praying for each other and sacrificing for each other. Can you have a vision for the kind of community we would grow into? Can you envisage what it would be like for strangers to encounter a spiritual family like that? How might they react? 

Yes,

How good and pleasant it is

    when God’s people live together in unity!

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Journey To Jerusalem 4: The Gift Of Hope, Psalm 130 (Lent 5)

Psalm 130

I have childhood memories of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Even though our parents didn’t let us watch it, I still heard enough about it. We would ape The Ministry Of Silly Walks in the playground. We recited The Five-Minute Argument. And the Dead Parrot Sketch was our holy text. One of my college friends even rewrote the latter as the Dead Church Sketch. I might still have the script somewhere.

It therefore won’t surprise you to know that Fawlty Towers features among my very favourite ever TV shows. 

And I also like to quote from one of John Cleese’s movies. Not one of the Monty Python films, nor A Fish Called Wanda, but Clockwise, in which Cleese plays the Headmaster of a minor public school, who needs to travel to the annual meeting of the Headmasters’ Conference, the organisation for public school Heads. He is up for an award there. 

But one disaster after another befalls him on the way, and at one dark point he says, ‘The despair I can cope with. It’s the hope that kills me.’

The pilgrims of ancient Israel went to the festivals at Jerusalem to find hope. Today’s psalm reflects that. The kind of hope they sought was similar to that which we seek. 

Firstly, hope for forgiveness:

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;

2     Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive

    to my cry for mercy.

3 If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,

    Lord, who could stand?

4 But with you there is forgiveness,

    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

If our sins are not forgiven, we have no hope. If we know we have done wrong, then we need mercy. The pilgrims would see God’s forgiveness enacted at the Temple with the sacrificial system. Here, in their culture, it was dramatically enacted that God had dealt with his people’s sins and they were forgiven. 

In the next two weeks we come to our annual remembrance of what God did decisively in Jesus to bring forgiveness. At the Cross, Jesus dies in our place, and he conquers the forces of evil. 

And we should not baulk at the New Testament idea that the forgiveness of our sins comes at a price. It is no coincidence that the Scriptures sometimes talk of this in terms of the forgiveness of debts, both in the Lord’s Prayer and in the parables of Jesus, such as the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. If I forgive someone a debt that they owe to me, then that is a cost for me, because I absorb that. If they owe me two hundred pounds, then my forgiveness of them costs me two hundred pounds that I no longer have. The New Testament tells us that God in Christ has paid a cost that makes the forgiveness of all our debts to him possible and available. We simply receive this gift by holding out the empty hands of faith and giving our lives over to him and to his ways, not ours. 

We cannot earn this, but we can show our gratitude for receiving this extraordinary gift. As the Psalmist says in verse 4, 

4 But with you there is forgiveness,

    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

It is by serving God that we live out our gratitude for the hope and new beginnings his forgiveness of our sins gives us. The call to serve in the local church is not merely to fill vacancies, even if it looks like that. It is to express gratitude for the hope God has filled us with. When at the Annual Meeting you hear of jobs that need filling in the church, please see it as an opportunity to express your gratitude for the hope that God’s forgiveness has given you.

And similarly in the community. When an opening arises, this is a way to show gratitude for the hope of forgiveness. We might not see things quite the way Martin Luther did when he said that if there were a vacancy for the post of village hangman the conscientious Christian should apply, but there will be other more palatable possibilities! 

Secondly, hope for life:

5 I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,

    and in his word I put my hope.

6 I wait for the Lord

    more than watchmen wait for the morning,

    more than watchmen wait for the morning.

People need hope in the sense of having purpose and fulfilment in life. It’s the way God made us. When that doesn’t exist, something is wrong, usually to do with the brokenness of the world God desires to mend and redeem. 

So something like long-term sickness may affect our sense of hope. I read the regular writings of an author named Tanya Marlow, who was once a theological lecturer, but who contracted ME following the birth of her child, and now can rarely get out of bed. If she does so, it’s probably in a wheelchair, and she pays for it in the following days. She writes movingly and passionately on disability issues and has pointed out that the latest Government benefit savings will not always get more people back to work, because many of those receiving them have no chance medically of ever working again. What will that do to their hope?

Or maybe the existence of sin is what suffocates hope in life. To take a personal example, some people naively say to me, ‘Oh, your work must be very rewarding and fulfilling.’ Well, sometimes it is, but there are other times when the hope is sucked out of me. High upon my list of hope-sucking events have been those times when I have done something that one of my chief detractors in a church didn’t like, and the next thing I knew, I was facing an entirely fabricated Safeguarding accusation. 

Around one such season in my life, I bumped into a friend from the local Anglican church outside the village Co-Op. For a year or so, our children had been at the same school. Asking her what she was doing now, she told me she had left the teaching profession to train in a therapy that made a significant difference in the lives of children and teenagers who were neurodivergent, or who had conditions like cerebral palsy. Now qualified, she had set up her own practice, and saw transformative change in the lives of young people. She told me how richly rewarding this was. While I was delighted for her that God had done something special in her life, my own heart ached. 

Some of us, then, find hope and fulfilment in this life; others of us wait, like the Psalmist did. We rejoice in those who find that God makes their lives worthwhile and rewarding. For those who wait, we believe that God is present in the waiting. We know that ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick’, as Proverbs 13:12 says, and we stand with those who endure such sickness. We believe too that God is present in the cries for justice where sin stands in the way of fulfilled hope. 

Thirdly and finally, hope for the world:

7 Israel, put your hope in the Lord,

    for with the Lord is unfailing love

    and with him is full redemption.

8 He himself will redeem Israel

    from all their sins.

What has all this stuff about Israel being forgiven got to do with hope for the world? Simply this: God chose Israel in order to bless the world. Israel’s so called ‘election’ was not a matter of Israel being saved and others not, but of God working through Israel to bring his salvation to the whole world. If Israel is to be renewed, as the Psalmist here prays, then the consequence is not an in-house bless-up, but blessing that spreads to the world. 

It follows that God’s plans for his people, the Church, are similar. We are a channel for God to bless the nations. The renewal of the church matters, not for our own sakes, but so that God’s mission of blessing all creation may move forward. 

I belong to a network that speaks of ‘local churches changing nations.’ I also support the relief and development charity Tear Fund, which speaks of ‘transforming communities through the local church.’ Here’s what Tear Fund says on the subject: 

Extreme poverty impacts every aspect of a person’s life, devastating families, destroying local businesses, and draining communities of their resources and hope. This overwhelming reality is not God’s plan for our world.

We work through the local church in the world’s poorest countries because they know their communities best. The local church is best placed to recognise challenges and release people’s God-given potential to overcome them.

Transforming Communities is not about giving short-term aid. We train local churches to identify the resources they already have so that they can develop lasting solutions to the problem of poverty. This approach supports communities to rewrite their own stories and build a future filled with hope and opportunity.

How do they do this? Not only do they stand against poverty and hunger, they run programmes to restore broken relationships, support local businesses, and support challenges to injustice. 

We have a part to play in this as the church, too. Not only do we do so by supporting God’s work of hope among the poor, we have a calling to bring God’s hope to our neighbourhoods and community, too. It is fundamental to our calling that God has put us here to bring his blessing and hope to our town. 

It goes without saying that there are already ways in which we are doing that here. I believe that if this church were to close, the town would notice. And I can’t say that of every church, sadly. 

But that doesn’t stop the fact that we are always called to seek the spiritual renewal of the church, so that she may continue to grow in her destiny of blessing the world in Jesus’ name. Let us be grateful for where we are, but let us never be satisfied and sit back. 

Conclusion

I pray that being a part of this worshipping community is something that increases our hope:

  • That our hope in forgiveness increases our gratitude, and that we show that by finding new ways to serve our God;
  • That our hope in life brings fulfilment to us and others, and that we stand with those for whom this is not yet true; 
  • And that our hope for the world is expressed through the ministry of the church here and across the globe, in bringing God’s blessings in Christ to all in need.

Many years ago, Amnesty International used to speak about a ‘conspiracy of hope.’ I think we can go much bigger and deeper than them with our vision of hope, don’t you think?

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Journey To Jerusalem 3: Building The Church, Psalm 127 (Lent 4)

Psalm 127

‘Unless the Lord builds the house’ are – ahem – interesting words for my family to hear at present, just when a wall of our manse is being rebuilt, following an incident where a delivery driver managed to reverse into it. It may not literally be the Lord rebuilding our manse, but at least Methodist Insurance have called in a good building firm.

‘Unless the Lord builds the house’. But which house? I suspect that, especially since this is a Psalm of Ascent for pilgrims on their way to the Temple at Jerusalem for one of Israel’s feasts, that the house in question is what they called ‘the house of the Lord’, that is, the Temple itself.

I said in last week’s sermon that we Christians don’t speak of church buildings as ‘the house of the Lord’ because Jesus is the true Temple and we together are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The church is fundamentally not the building but the people. 

Hence, a Christian interpretation of this psalm would be to see it in terms of building the church, the people of God. In that case, ‘Unless the Lord builds the house’ sits very well with Jesus’ promise that he would build his church, and with worship songs where God says, ‘For I’m building a people of power and I’m making a people of praise’, and the people reply, ‘Build your church, Lord.’ 

Surely that is something all Christians are concerned about. Instead of decline, we want to see the church grow, both in quantity of people and in quality of living the Christlike life. 

And it’s something we’re focussing on in the circuit right now as churches have Mission Action Plan meetings with John Illsley. We want to see the churches built up again. But how? 

The Psalmist here gives us the two sides of the coin: God’s part and our part. Let’s explore them. 

Firstly, God’s part:

1 Unless the Lord builds the house,

    the builders labour in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

    the guards stand watch in vain.

2 In vain you rise early

    and stay up late,

toiling for food to eat –

    for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Building the church is God’s work. It is a spiritual matter, therefore we need to see him at work. 

This is consistent with what we know about God elsewhere. The whole of salvation is based on the fact that God acts first, and we only respond. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, the first act in salvation was the Lord coming walking in the garden, looking for them. God delivers the Israelites from Egypt before he gives them the Ten Commandments: the commandments are a response to God acting first. In the New Testament, we read that ‘we love because God first loved us.’ 

This is so different from the way we often approach these things. We have so fallen into our society’s technological approach to solving problems that we think we need to devise some clever plan to make the church grow again. So we follow the latest trends, copy what the latest trendy speaker says, we fall for books that tell us there are a certain number of essential steps to take, and you know what? We fall flat on our faces. 

What has happened? We have succumbed to the ancient sin of pride. We have believed that it all depends on us. And secretly, we rather like that. We want to be known for our daring exploits. But it’s wrong. This is God’s work, not ours. It is his Name that will be glorified, not ours. It is about God’s grace which requires our faithful trust. It is not about our good works. The Gospel itself tells us that salvation is about grace and faith, and that we are not saved by our good works. Well, neither does the church grow by our good works. It grows because God is at work and we merely respond. 

Now if we accept that building the church is God’s work, there is an opposite error into which we can fall. We can say, well if it’s all down to God, then we don’t have to do anything. It takes the old saying, ‘Let go and let God’, which was meant to emphasise our need to trust, and extrapolates it to a point where we abdicate all moral responsibility. If the church grows, that’s down to God, and if it doesn’t grow, well that’s nothing to do with me, Guv. 

It is God’s work to grow the church. We need a move of the Holy Spirit to make that happen. But you know what that means for us? If we desire that God build his church, then we need to pray. 

There is a time and place for strategizing and planning the mission of the local church, but it is not the first thing. The first thing is that we need God to move, and on our side that means prayer. So all our planning and programming has to wait until we have heard from God. Unless and until we know what his vision is for our church in mission, we don’t start organising and managing things in the ways we love to do. 

Because really all that organising and managing is just a subtle way of saying that we want to stay in control. We don’t have the faith and trust in God that is at the heart of Christianity. When we want to zoom into action first without taking time to be still and to listen to God, then all we are doing is proving the adage of the late American Christian leader AW Tozer, who once said that ‘Most Christians live like practical atheists.’

More positively, we remember the words of John Wesley, when he said that God does nothing except in response to prayer. 

To build the church, we need God to move first. 

Secondly, our part:

To examine this, I want to look at the second half of the Psalm, with those words we must handle sensitively about the gift of children. Let me initially read them again: 

3 Children are a heritage from the Lord,

    offspring a reward from him.

4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior

    are children born in one’s youth.

5 Blessed is the man

    whose quiver is full of them.

They will not be put to shame

    when they contend with their opponents in court.

Let me add some context and qualifications. Yes, children are a blessing. I love my own daughter and son more than words can say. But children can also be a source of pain. And others may not have the blessing. They may have wished for children but not had them. They may have lost children. A few Christians are even specifically called not to become parents, because it will interfere with their particular divine calling. 

There are some fundamentalist groups that say you should all have lots of children. One such movement is called ‘Quiver-full’, and is named after this psalm, where we heard ‘Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.’ To a certain extent, they have a point. Religions where families have large numbers of children tend to grow in the world. You could look at Northern Ireland, which when I was young had a significant Protestant majority in the population, but where soon the Catholics will outnumber the Protestants and a united Ireland will be a very real political prospect. 

But at the same time you can’t make what the Psalm says into an absolute principle for everyone. After all, what would that say about Jesus, who had no children of his own. Was he not blessed? 

We must look elsewhere for an interpretation of these words in the light of Jesus.

God has created a people for his praise. He wants to build that people, his church. Our privilege is to be the spiritual midwives who bring new children of God into his people. The new birth is all God’s work, but he calls us into partnership with him. Just as a couple comes together for a pregnancy to happen and a midwife comes alongside them to assist them with the birth, so the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to people and God uses us to help bring them into the kingdom of God. 

Now what does that involve on our part? How are we spiritual midwives? In a number of interlocking ways. One is that we set out to live such lives of devotion to the ways of Jesus in the world that our friends want to talk with us about what makes us the way we are. Another is that when we have the opportunity, we are willing and able to talk about Jesus and what he means to us with our non-Christian friends. Alongside that, we will be willing to give an appropriate invitation, whether that is to come to something exploratory like an Alpha Course, or even to attend church. It also means that we learn how to lead someone to faith in Christ. 

Friends, what would it be like if we concentrated on training our church members in habits and practices like these, rather than just setting up meetings with speakers that amount to little more than religious entertainment? 

There are many resources available to help churches learn these skills and virtues. Right now at my Haslemere church, our mission development worker is leading a weekly course on how to share our faith sensitively. 

Honestly, it’s not difficult to find these courses. The question is, why don’t we? Do we do other things in church life in preference to these spiritual priorities? Do we try to fill our church life with other things to avoid dealing with these things? Is this why we come up with all the silly nonsense that having hirers of our church premises amounts to outreach? 

For so long as we keep on doing the same old things, acting like a religious club rather than the Body of Christ, deluding ourselves that one day people will start rushing into our doors, we shall be guilty of Einstein’s definition of insanity: that we keep doing the same things while expecting a different result. 

Sanity will come when we accept that we need God to act first, and on our part that means prayer. When God works in people’s lives, our response will be not to run an institution or a club but to be spiritual midwives to the new life the Holy Spirit brings. 

Build your church, Lord. Unless you build it, we labour in vain. 

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Journey To Jerusalem 2: How Worship Shapes Us, Psalm 122 (Lent 3)

Psalm 122

If you survey a group of Christians and ask them what the number one priority of the Christian life is, they will almost certainly answer, ‘worship.’ 

I personally would want to refine that answer a little: I would answer in terms of the description the crowd gave of the disciples at Pentecost, ‘We hear them declaring the mighty works of God,’ which to me seems to describe both worship and mission. 

But I get the basic point. Worship is a central activity of Christian faith. 

Worship was also central for ancient Israel. And with only three opportunities a year to travel to Jerusalem for the great feasts, they retained a sense of how special and awe-inspiring it was: 

1 I rejoiced with those who said to me,
  ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’

2 Our feet are standing
in your gates, Jerusalem.

What a contrast with our casual approach to worship that treats it as little more than a visit to the supermarket. “I don’t feel like going to church today, it’s raining, I’m tired, my friend isn’t going to be there, I don’t like the preacher, I bet it’s those horrible modern hymns,” and so on. 

So I believe the pilgrims of ancient Israel on their way to the Temple at Jerusalem have a lot to teach us about worship. Granted, our context is different. In New Testament terms, we are not to refer to church buildings as ‘the house of the Lord’ for two reasons. One is that the Gospels show us that Jesus is the new and true Temple, where heaven and earth meet in his divine and human natures. The other is that Paul tells us that we together are ‘the temple of the Holy Spirit,’ something the early church was able to express as they met in people’s homes. 

But for all those qualifications, my point remains: we have a lot to learn from ancient Israel about worship, and especially in this Psalm about how worship shapes us as disciples. 

Firstly, worship gives us a framework:

3 Jerusalem is built like a city
    that is closely compacted together.
4 That is where the tribes go up –
    the tribes of the Lord –

The tribes went up three times a year to participate in festivals that celebrated the creating, redeeming, and providing works of the Lord. They ‘declared the mighty acts of God,’ to use my earlier expression. And the building of Jerusalem ‘closely compacted together’ was an architectural metaphor for this structure and framework that the worship festivals gave to Israel.[i]

Christian worship is meant to do no less. We declare and celebrate our belief in God as Creator of all things. We rehearse his special creation of the human race in his own image. We recall his acts of salvation in forming a people for himself, and sending patriarchs to lead them and deliver them, judges and prophets to call them back to him. Most of all, we recall how the Father sent his only-begotten Son who took on human flesh, proclaimed the kingdom of God, and went to the Cross to conquer sin. We rejoice in God’s raising of Jesus from the dead to bring new life, Christ’s ascension to the Father’s right hand on high where he reigns until everything is put under his feet, and the sending of the Spirit to empower our lives of discipleship. We anticipate the full coming of God’s kingdom, when all things will be made new. 

This is what we acclaim about our God in worship. Have you ever wondered why we have a big thanksgiving prayer at Holy Communion? This is why. It goes over the mighty deeds of God and puts Christ and his Cross central. 

This gives us a framework for our life of devotion to Christ. You know, atheists have good arguments against the existence of God. Christians and others have good arguments to support the existence of God. But which gives a better framework for life? Is it atheism, with its belief that we are just an accidental collection of atoms and that the process of evolution is entirely random and without purpose? If that is true, then it is meaningless to talk about love. How can you love another accidental collection of atoms? How can you speak of having any purpose in life when everything is random? 

Or is it better and truer to speak of a God with good intentions for his creation, who continues to reach out to humans who have rejected him, who came and lived among us and paid the ultimate price, and whose kingdom project is to make all things new? For all the problems there might be in believing in God, this framework is surely a better one to live by. 

And it is worship that embeds us in that framework. 

Secondly, worship is a command:

4 That is where the tribes go up –
the tribes of the Lord –
to praise the name of the Lord
according to the statute given to Israel.

‘According to the statute given to Israel.’ Ancient Israel was commanded to worship. This was God’s decree for them. 

We may say that we are not under the Jewish Law, we are under grace, but that does not negate the command and duty to worship. The first commandment, according to Jesus, is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus wasn’t shy in giving out commandments! He also talked about us worshipping God in spirit and in truth. 

Today, we resist the idea of being commanded by someone else. We think we run our own lives. We want to be in charge. We do not want to be subservient. We are wrong.

This is not about being humiliated, but it is about being humble. It is about recognising our true relationship with God, where he is the Creator and we are his creatures. 

You will have heard preachers say that the English word ‘worship’ is a contraction of ‘worth-ship.’ It is about ascribing true worth, in this case, to God. It is the right thing to do. 

But more than that, the Greek word most often translated as ‘worship’ in the New Testament means ‘to move towards and kiss.’ This is not in the romantic sense. It refers to the kiss of allegiance, such as when a new Prime Minister or a new Anglican bishop is appointed and they have to kiss the sovereign’s hand. 

If this is all true, then our habit of measuring worship by our feelings must go. It is not good worship just because it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, although it’s nice if that happens. Nor do we decide whether to worship depending on whether we feel like it. God is worthy of our worship, full stop! Maybe at times we shall particularly feel that it is a sacrifice to worship but so be it if we are doing what is right regardless of our feelings by offering our worship. 

Thirdly, worship is about hearing the Word of God:

5 There stand the thrones for judgment,
    the thrones of the house of David.

Judgment? We don’t like that word. But here’s a definition of this particular biblical word: 

The decisive word by which God straightens things out and puts things right.[ii]

In worship, we are not only coming to get our lives set in a proper framework and to give God the honour due to his Name, we are also coming to hear what God says to us. That is why the reading of the Scriptures and the preaching of them is so important. When I preach, it is not my task to share a soundbite or a religious opinion. It is not that I preach a sermon to make a point. 

I have a much deeper and more solemn task than that. It is to teach and proclaim the Word of God. Nothing less. And given the levels of biblical illiteracy among many experienced Christians, that takes time. I hold to the old adage that ‘Sermonettes by preacherettes make Christianettes.’ 

If we stay at home and engage with the Scriptures, that’s good and necessary. But we also need to engage with God’s Word in worship with others, as together we listen to what he is saying and discern together with guidance that word he has for us now. 

It may be fashionable to knock preachers, and maybe some of us deserve it on occasions, but do not despise the fact that God has ordained to speak to us through his Word. 

Fourthly and finally, worship is about seeking God’s action in the world:

6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
    ‘May those who love you be secure.
7 May there be peace within your walls
    and security within your citadels.’
8 For the sake of my family and friends,
    I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
    I will seek your prosperity.

Our encounter with God in worship leads to our desire that he act in the world. And so we ask him to do so. We ask for ‘peace’ and ‘security’. Peace and security are gifts we receive in worship: peace and security with God as he assures us of his faithful love. 

More than that, the Hebrew words for peace and security both play on the name ‘Jerusalem.’ Our worship and our life together as God’s people are to be characterised by these qualities. And we desire that the rest of the world also experience these gifts, not only peace and security in relationship with God but also peace and security in their own societies and nations. 

So, you say, this is the justification for prayers of intercession. Indeed so. If we have received such riches from God we shall want others to share in them, too. So we pray for God’s mission in the world – both for people to know God’s peace and security themselves (evangelism) and for societies to experience peace and security in their relationships and their ordering (social justice). 

But it doesn’t stop there. We don’t get away with just ‘thoughts and prayers’, as if we have done our duty by praying and continuing with our private happy lives. God calls us to partner with him in the answers to these prayers. 

So if worship begins with the journey to Jerusalem, it concludes with our departure into the world. As one church put over the exit doors from its premises, ‘Servants’ Entrance.’

[i] Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience In The Same Direction, p47f.

[ii] Ibid., p50.

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Journey To Jerusalem 1: Looking In The Wrong Place For God, Psalm 121 (Lent 2)

Psalm 121

Have you ever lost something and not found it for a while because you were looking in the wrong place for it? That sometimes happens in our household. One of us misplaces our mobile phone, cannot find it, and says to someone else in the family, ‘Can you ring my phone, please?’ It will then turn out that we have been looking downstairs for a phone that was upstairs in a bedroom. 

Or one of us goes to our pocket for our car key, only for it not to be there. It has fallen out of a pocket and slipped down between the seats of the sofa. It was no good looking in the pocket: that was the wrong place. 

I’ll leave those of you who know us personally to guess who it is who loses their phone, and who loses their car key. Either way, we get frustrated by looking in the wrong place – all without knowing. 

Psalm 121 is for people who are looking in the wrong place for God, matters of the spirit, and the meaning of life. And since this Psalm is describing the journey of pilgrims to Jerusalem for Israel’s great feasts, the implication is that even disciples can look in the wrong places for the important things in life. 

It’s all there in the opening two verses: 

1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains –
    where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

Many people read those famous words, ‘I lift my eyes to the mountains’ and think that the Psalmist is encouraging us to look at the wonder of creation. But while the majestic peaks the pilgrims would have seen on their journey would have been awe-inspiring, that is not what the Psalmist is affirming here. 

No: it’s looking to the mountains versus our help coming from the Lord. Why? Eugene Peterson says, 

During the time this psalm was written and sung, Palestine was overrun with popular pagan worship. Much of this religion was practised on hilltops. Shrines were set up, groves of trees were planted, sacred prostitutes both male and female were provided; persons were lured to shrines to engage in acts of worship that would enhance the fertility of the land, would make you feel good, would protect you from evil. There were nostrums, protections, spells and enchantments against all the perils of the road. Do you fear the sun’s heat? Go the sun priest and pay for protection against the sun god. Are you fearful of the malign influence of moonlight? Go to the moon priestess and buy an amulet. Are you haunted by the demons that can use a pebble under your foot to trip you? Go to the shrine and learn the magic formula to ward off the mischief. From whence shall my help come? From Baal? From Asherah? From the sun priest? From the moon priestess?[1]

Do you see now that for the pilgrims to lift up their eyes to the mountains was to go looking in the wrong place? The mountains were the strongholds of false gods, idols, demons, and occult practices. 

So firstly, the psalmist says, don’t look to false gods:

3 He will not let your foot slip –
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

In the days of the psalmist, there was a popular belief that a demon could move a pebble and make you slip. Therefore, you needed to seek protection. There was a variety of idols to which you could turn. One of the most popular, Baal, is hinted at in these words of the psalm, when we read that the true God ‘will neither slumber nor sleep’ You may recall the story where the prophet Elijah took on the priests of Baal at Mount Carmel. When Baal failed to set the sacrifice his priests had offered alight by fire, Elijah mocked his opponents, telling them to shout louder, in case Baal was asleep. 

Ad the psalmist here says, Baal won’t answer you or protect you because it’s as if he’s asleep – in fact he doesn’t even exist. But ‘he who watches over Israel’ isn’t like that at all: he ‘will neither slumber nor sleep.’ 

 We may not have Baal today, but we have plenty of instances where we go after that which is not god in order to find satisfaction in life. I am not saying that advertising is wrong per se, but much of it is based on the idea of making people feel dissatisfied with their lives unless they have the one particular item being presented to them as the solution to all their problems. And we have so many adverts like that, because they work. We fall for them. The Christian virtue of contentment would destroy so much of our economics today. 

Money is similar. We need it, but it is a good servant and poor master. We delude ourselves that a higher income or a lottery win will make us happy. But J D Rockefeller, the first ever American billionaire, was asked how much money was enough, and he replied, ‘Just a little bit more than I already have.’ Yes, even someone as ridiculously wealthy as him. 

Money never satisfies. It always demands more. And it never delivers true peace. The best that can be said for it is as Spike Milligan said, that it may not make you happy, but it may make you comfortable in your misery. 

Alongside Baal in Canaanite religion was the goddess Asherah. She symbolised many things, but the theme the Bible seems most concerned about is that she was a fertility deity. There were trees and poles dedicated to her as totems of fertility, and we read of Gideon being told to cut down an Asherah pole. 

The contemporary equivalent is the devotion to sex as a god. We live in a society where primary school children are encountering pornography on the Internet. We make people feel inferior if they are not in a relationship. And in the general absence of belief in God, people look to their romantic partners to fulfil them – a burden a mere mortal cannot carry. 

Once again, we are dealing with idols. We have elevated a good part of God’s creation into a deity itself. Sex and relationships are crucial to humanity, and I would say they are among God’s best inventions! But they are only that: creations, not gods. And so to look to them for ultimate meaning and significance in life is to go looking in the wrong place again. We end up doing terrible things as a result. These things are a gift of God, to be received with thanksgiving, they are not of themselves divine, and they should not be worshipped. 

The trouble, as the great Catholic novelist G K Chesterton said, is that ‘When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.’

Secondly, the psalmist says, don’t fear the created order:

If we’re dealing with created things that are not gods, there is still the issue that creation itself can have fearsome power. Should we live our lives in terror of that? 

No, says the psalmist, that too would be looking in the wrong place for the meaning of life:

5 The Lord watches over you –
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

The power of the sun in the Middle East is significant. When I spent three weeks in Israel in July 1989, the temperature was regularly over 40C each day, and that was before the record-breaking summers of recent years. We were advised to drink six litres of water a day to remain hydrated. Hence, pilgrims walking to Jerusalem maybe not in the height of summer but probably in late Spring or early Autumn would still have protracted exposure to what we would consider quite hot conditions. They would have to be careful. 

And the reference to the moon? Surely the nights would be a relief? Not exactly:

A person travelling for a long distance on foot, under the pressures of fatigue and anxiety, can become emotionally ill, which was described by ancient writers as moonstroke (or by us as lunacy).[2]

But again, serious as these things are, and as we and the ancients also know through phenomena like storms and earthquakes, they are not the ultimate truth to be feared. Whatever the dangers are, we have a Lord who watches over us and who is our shade. Four times in this psalm we are told that the Lord watches over us. Whatever bad things come our way, God has not forgotten us. So Eugene Peterson again: 

The only serious mistake we can make when illness comes, when anxiety threatens, when conflict disturbs our relationships with others is to conclude that God has gotten bored in looking after us and has shifted his attention to a more exciting Christian, or that God has become disgusted with our meandering obedience and decided to let us fend for ourselves for awhile, or that God has gotten too busy fulfilling prophecy in the Middle East to take time now to sort out the complicated mess we have gotten ourselves into. That is the only serious spiritual mistake we can make. It is the mistake that Psalm 121 prevents the mistake of supposing that God’s interest in us waxes and wanes in response to our spiritual temperature.[3]

And we have read that our God is the ‘Maker of heaven and earth’. In other words, he created all these things to which we wrongly look for meaning and truth. They are created things, but he is their Creator. Instead of looking in the wrong place at these things, let us look in the right place to our Maker and Redeemer. We put these things in their place: under God’s sovereign rule, as we are. 

And we remember that God cares for us, even when the difficulties and the pain come. As the final two verses of the Psalm say, 

7 The Lord will keep you from all harm –
    he will watch over your life;
8 the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and for evermore.

It is not that we shall have a trouble-free existence, even though the psalmist’s words may sound like that. The rest of Scripture affirms, as Jesus said, that ‘In the world you will have tribulation.’ But as Jesus goes on to say, ‘But be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.’ 

God will be taking care of us. His Son took the journey to Jerusalem and ended up on a cross. But God raised him from the dead. 

This is like the journey we are taking. On it we do not look in the wrong place to worship or fear the created order, but rather we put ourselves in the hands of the Lord, who is the Maker of heaven and earth. He will hold us, as we trust our lives to him through his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. 

[1] Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience In The Same Direction, p36f

[2] Ibid., p35.

[3] Ibid., p39.

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Sermon: Suffering And Faith

Psalm 130

The pastor of a Christian Science church was talking to a member of his congregation. ‘And how is your husband today?’

‘I’m afraid he’s very ill.’

‘No, no,’ corrected the pastor, you really shouldn’t say that – you should say that he’s under the impression that he’s very ill.’

The woman nodded meekly. ‘Yes, pastor, I’ll remember next time.’

A few weeks later, the pastor saw her again.

‘And how is your husband at the moment?’

‘Well, pastor,’ she replied, ‘he’s under the impression that he’s dead.’[1]

It isn’t long in life before a bright beginning is touched by suffering. A child is born, and discovers pain. Even Prince George will find that out. A wedding and honeymoon is followed by the reality of each partner’s frailties. Someone is converted to Christ, but then learns it isn’t a rose garden.

Meanwhile, we have people who want to play pretend about suffering. They want to act as if it doesn’t exist, or they demand it be magically removed from existence in an instant. Maybe they even try to get round it in a religious way by saying that the body doesn’t matter, it is only a shell for the real person. That isn’t a view you can take while still believing in the New Testament, with its strong emphasis on the resurrection of the body.

The first thing our Psalm of Ascent this week does is be frank about the reality of suffering.

Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
2     Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy. (Verses 1-2)

The Scriptures do not get into philosophical discussions about the existence of suffering and belief in a good and powerful God. They simply enter the story of suffering, and describe that narrative. Our Psalmist here is in deep suffering – he cries ‘out of the depths’. While there are great accounts of deliverance from suffering in the Bible – the Exodus, the healing miracles, and so on – we are not presented with faith as a ‘Get out of jail free’ card. Faith enters human suffering.

Henri Nouwen (1981?) at his apartment in New Haven
Henri Nouwen (1981?) at his apartment in New Haven (Photo credit: jimforest)

And so, before anything else, simplistic and obvious as it might sound to some of us, we need to embrace the reality of suffering and stop playing games. Henri Nouwen wrote,

Many people suffer because of the false suppositions on which they have based their lives. That supposition is that there should be no fear or loneliness, no confusion or doubt. But these sufferings can only be dealt with creatively when they are understood as wounds integral to our human condition. Therefore ministry is a very confronting service. it does not allow people to live with illusions of immortality and wholeness. It keeps reminding others that they are mortal and broken, but also that with the recognition of this condition, liberation starts.[2]

Are there areas where any of us is pretending? Are there times when – much as we believe that God heals – he is in truth going to take us the long route to wholeness? We like to believe that if God works a miracle it will be a great testimony, and it certainly can be. However, are there times when we say that, but what we really want is a short cut out of our personal difficulties rather than the testimony? Could it be that God will also bring glory to his name when he takes us on what seem to be detours rather than the direct route?

For me, that was true in one particular instance. In my first year at theological college, I suffered a collapsed lung. My lung had previously collapsed three times a few years earlier, and I had only avoided surgery then when the consultant was inconveniently on holiday. But on the weekend when it happened to me at college, the father of a student friend was visiting. My friend’s Dad was known for having a healing ministry. Surely he would pray for me and I would be healed. But he had left to go home a few minutes before I got back from A and E. This time, I had to have the operation. It meant a week and a half in hospital, a month’s convalescence at home, and three months before I was back to anything like full strength. But God used that experience so that when I visit people in hospital, I have a way of identifying with them and a reason to bring them a word of hope.

That leads to the second piece of frankness in the Psalm: we hear about the reality of God. The Lord is addressed throughout the Psalm. The Psalmist cries out to him (verses 1-2); he acknowledges and relies on the Lord’s mercy and forgiveness (verses 3-4); and the Lord is the reason to wait and hope (verses 5-8).

God is there. God is present. God is even in the depths. The Old Testament describes a God who hears his people’s suffering, even if he does not always act on it as quickly as his people would desire him to do. But the cry of suffering reaches him, and he liberates his enslaved people from Israel. He brings them back from exile in Babylon.

Not only that, the same Old Testament begins to describe God as being involved in his people’s suffering, even functioning as some kind of representative or substitute. I really don’t think you can avoid reading passages such as the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 52:13-53:12 that way.

What the Old Testament doesn’t have, but which we have, is the filling out of that belief in Jesus, who came as a servant, lived among the poor and suffered death on a Cross.

Ours, then, is the God of the depths – even the depths of Hades. In Christ God stands with us in suffering and he stands for us in suffering. And in doing so, he shows supremely the divine answer to the Psalmist’s cry for mercy and the forgiveness of sins. The merciful God is the One who enters the depths of human suffering, who drinks the cup to its dregs.

English: Eugene Peterson lecture at University...
English: Eugene Peterson lecture at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington sponsored by the Seattle Pacific University Image Journal. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As Eugene Peterson puts it,

God makes a difference. God acts positively toward his people. God is not indifferent. He is not rejecting. He is not ambivalent or dilatory. He does not act arbitrarily in fits and starts. He is not stingy, providing only for bare survival.[3]

He goes on to say,

And this, of course, is why we are able to face, acknowledge, accept and live through suffering, for we know that it can never be ultimate, it can never constitute the bottom line. God is at the foundation and God is at the boundaries. God seeks the hurt, maimed, wandering and lost. God woos the rebellious and confused. … Because of the forgiveness we have a place to stand. We stand in confident awe before God, not in terrorized despair.[4]

Suffering is awful, but it is not the final word. God has seen to that in Christ. At the Cross and the Empty Tomb we find that God has the last word. God has not stayed remote and sent us a philosophical answer to our suffering. Instead, he has got his hands dirty. He has come alongside us, and also in his suffering he has accomplished what we cannot do for ourselves due to our sin. He has provided for forgiveness and so we can serve him with reverence (verse 4), or ‘stand in confident awe before [him]’, as Peterson put it.

Now this leads us on to the third and final piece of honest faith in the face of suffering that the Psalmist models for us, and that is the reality of waiting. Hear how he uses words about watching, waiting and hoping:

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
6 I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

7 Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
8 He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins. (Verses 5-8)

In the Old Testament, the words ‘waiting’ and ‘hoping’ are very close. There are passages where in one Bible translation the English word used may be ‘wait’ and in another English Bible it may be ‘hope’. You could say that the faithful disciple of Old Testament days waited in hope. Certainly when we face suffering we often need to wait, and our waiting will have meaning and significance if we can wait with hope. That is what we do as New Testament Christians for sure, living in some respects between the suffering of Good Friday and the hope of Easter Day.

But what do we do while we are waiting hopefully? The Psalmist suggests we apply for the job of nightwatchman:

I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning. (Verse 6)

In my home church was a gentle, devout Jamaican Christian called Clarence. He was employed as a security guard. Anyone less likely to tour a building site at night accompanied by fierce Rottweilers you would find it hard to imagine. But for most of the time, he told us, he was able to sit in the site office. Each night he would take his Bible and his Moody and Sankey hymn book, and study his faith. He may have been the most unlikely candidate for the job, and heaven knows how he got it, but he used his waiting time fruitfully and every morning, the dawn came.

So it is for us. We are on the night watch in our faith as we wait for God who is with us in our suffering to act on our behalf. What we think should not take him a trice is something he chooses for reasons only he can see to take longer about resolving. Meanwhile, in the darkness we wait.

But … we wait knowing that the dawn is coming. Hence we wait in hope. And during that waiting, it would be good if we put the time to good use, as Clarence did.

How can we use our waiting time? We too can certainly take advantage of opportunities to deepen our faith, too. We can express our trust, even if at times it is a bemused trust, in the God for whom we are waiting. We can share our hopeful waiting with others who are also struggling, so that we may encourage them. Such people can be found both inside and outside the church.

I’ll give the final word again to Eugene Peterson:

The depths have a bottom; the heights are boundless. Knowing that, we are helped to go ahead and learn the skills of waiting and hoping by which God is given room to work out our salvation and develop our faith while we fix our attention on his ways of grace and salvation.[5]

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Sermon: A Servant Psalm

books
books (Photo credit: brody4)

Psalm 123

I have several friends who are authors. Some are journalists, others are playwrights, some are ghost writers for famous people who cannot write sufficiently well for their books, still others are novelists (everything from historical romance to science fiction) and some write non-fiction titles.

If I have learned one thing from my friends in the writing trade, it is a principle they all hold dear:

Show, don’t tell.

If they want to get a point across, they show it rather than telling it. They do not lecture you; they do not give you philosophical principles; instead, they describe, or they tell a story.

So it is with the Psalms. As songs, they are works of art, like books. While they contain great spiritual truth, they tend to show it rather than tell it.

That certainly happens in today’s Psalm. The Psalmist does not give us a host of reasons as to why we should consider ourselves servants of God; instead, the servant-master relationship is shown. It is described.

And perhaps that’s important when for us the notion of being somebody’s servant is not one we readily approve.

So first of all in Psalm 123, servants look up.

I lift up my eyes to you,
to you who sit enthroned in heaven.
2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he shows us his mercy. (Verses 1-2)

Servants metaphorically ‘look up’, because God is enthroned in heaven, not in Jerusalem, the place to which they are heading on pilgrimage. However grand the Jerusalem Temple was, Jewish thought always understood that God was not restricted to a building, nor was he specially present in a holy building in ways that he wasn’t elsewhere in creation. It’s something we who end up venerating church buildings would do well to remember.

But there is a deeper reason in the ‘looking up’. Eugene Peterson puts his finger on the problem:

Too often we think of religion as a far-off, mysteriously run bureaucracy to which we apply for assistance when we feel the need. We go t a local branch office and direct the clerk (sometimes called a pastor) to fill out our order for God. Then we go home and wait for God to be delivered to us according to the specifications that we have set down.[1]

We are so used to being consumers that we treat religion like that. Just as we are used to buying goods and services, and then complaining when they do not meet our expectations, so we treat God. Unless he does what we want, when we want and to the standard we want, we will demand our money back. The title of the Billy Connolly film ‘The Man Who Sued God’ is not so far off the truth of our behaviour. And if pastors don’t meet our expectations, we’ll get rid of them. If churches don’t provide all we want, we’ll move.

But our posture is one of looking up, not looking down. We are the servants, not the masters. And as I said, we don’t like that. We would rather give the orders than be subject to them. My Mum’s uncle told his children that the reason they should work hard at school was so that they were the people who gave the orders, rather than followed them.

Furthermore, servanthood is associated in our minds with some awful things, especially if servants are actually slaves. We might celebrate the abolition of the slave trade, but it still exists and does wicked things to people. If that’s what being a servant entails, we don’t want it.

And this is where the second description of servants comes in: servants seek mercy.

so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he shows us his mercy.

3 Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,
for we have endured no end of contempt. (Verses 2b-3)

English: Eugene Peterson lecture at University...
English: Eugene Peterson lecture at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington sponsored by the Seattle Pacific University Image Journal. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you are a servant, then you certainly want a merciful master. And thankfully the testimony of the Scriptures is exactly that about God. Some may fear that being a servant puts us at risk from a despot of a God, but it is not the experience of God’s people down the centuries. Again, hear what Eugene Peterson has to say:

The basic conviction of a Christian is that God intends good for us and that he will get his way in us. He does not treat us according to our deserts, but according to his plan. He is not a police officer on patrol, watching over the universe, ready to club us if we get out of hand or put us in jail if we get obstreperous. He us a potter, working with the clay of our lives, forming and reforming until, finally he has shaped a redeemed life, a vessel fit for the kingdom.[2]

The God described in Christianity is the God Jesus alluded to in the character of the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. His younger son has asked for his share of the inheritance – effectively wishing his father to be dead. He squanders money, and is so desperate when it is all gone that he ends up with the pigs – a truly awful place for a good Jewish boy to be. Any respectable father in that culture would have had crossed arms, waiting for his son to return home and grovel, so no wonder the errant son plans his humble speech. But his father does what was considered inappropriate by looking out for his return, and undignified when he runs towards his son.

Tony Campolo: Author and speaker on political ...
Tony Campolo: Author and speaker on political and religious topics (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tony Campolo tells a story in one of his books[3] where he has travelled from his home state of Pennsylvania to Hawaii and is on jet lag. As a result, he finds himself in a diner at 3 in the morning. The only other customers are a group of local prostitutes. He hears one, named Agnes, say that the next day will be her birthday, but she also says that she has never had a birthday party in her whole life.

So Campolo had a word with the diner owner. He discovered that Agnes and the other prostitutes came in every night, and asked if they could have a party for her the next night. The owner’s wife agreed to bake a cake, and it was all set up.

Agnes turned up at about 3:30 the next morning to the biggest surprise of her life. She even asked if she could take the cake home quickly so that others could see she actually had a cake before anyone else sliced it up.

At the end, Campolo found himself offering to lead a prayer. The owner of the diner said, “Hey! You never told me you were a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to?”

Campolo replied, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.”

“No you don’t,” said the owner. “There’s no church like that. If there was I’d join it. I’d join a church like that!”

But this is the God of the Bible. He is full of mercy. He throws parties for those who have completely messed up. There is no fear in being his servant when this is the extent of his mercy.

And that takes us to a third and final description of servants in this psalm: servants are downtrodden.

Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,
for we have endured no end of contempt.
4 We have endured no end
of ridicule from the arrogant,
of contempt from the proud. (verses 3-4)

That doesn’t sound much like good news, does it? But put it like this: the servants who know their God is outrageously merciful can bring their downtrodden status to him. For a merciful God is one who is on the side of such people. And even if you don’t start off in that category, it’s possible to end up there, purely by being a disciple of Jesus Christ: at times that will earn you the ridicule and contempt of which the psalmist speaks.

Fiddler on Roof Tevya
Fiddler on Roof Tevya (Photo credit: jimmiehomeschoolmom)

We don’t know why the psalmist and his friends were on the receiving end of contempt. It may not so much have been simply because they were part of the people of God, but it might well have been because the people of God were not doing that well in the world. It reads as if they were suffering oppression at the time. Maybe they were being mocked, because that meant it didn’t look outwardly as if they were living under the favour of God. As Tevye in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ says to God at one point, “I know, I know. We are your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t you choose someone else?”

Those downtrodden by life may cry out to the God of mercy and he will hear them. The suffering People of God may cry out as servants to their master and he will hear them, too. If that is where we find ourselves in life, there is a God enthroned in heaven who will help, normally using human agency to do so.

What might we do about it? Well, remember that this is one of the Psalms of Ascent, sung by pilgrims on their way to the Jerusalem Temple for a great feast. They would surely have brought their troubles to God in prayer – just as they were already doing in the words of the psalm. They would have entered into worship, and thus experienced a little of God’s perspective on life. They would have made sacrifices, prefigured the great sacrifice God would make in due time for them through the offering of his Son. This God would in Jesus Christ endure contempt and ridicule himself so that the lowest strata of society could experience his merciful love.

What does this mean for us now? I think it has to turn us into the kind of ‘church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.’ There is a call for us to show God’s lavish love to those rejected and sidelined by society. If those who endure contempt today are to know about a merciful God, then we have to demonstrate it to them.

That gives us plenty of scope in the wider world. You probably don’t need me to give you too many examples from the news, and I invite you to get involved by supporting organisations that demonstrate God’s love to the broken.

But I also suggest we need to put this into practice close to home and not simply give money to bodies that will do this for us at a distance. We should put out our best biscuits, regardless of who is in the house. If the nice biscuits are only for those who know how to behave, what are we saying about the Gospel? People with troubled backgrounds need to be as welcome as anyone else here at KMC.

I wonder whether people would experience us as the kind of ‘church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning’, as Tony Campolo describes. Or would they react like the owner of the diner, saying, “There’s no church like that,” all the while secretly wishing there was?

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Sermon: Where Does My Help Come From?

Travel
Travel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Psalm 121

When I was a child, one of the great parts of preparing for our family summer holiday was Dad’s planning of the journey. He would pore over maps, come up with a route and then ring the RAC to see what they thought. There was no chance in those days to go online and find out up to date information on road works or local hazards, so he made use of his RAC membership in this way. Armed finally with Dad’s plans and the RAC’s advice, we would set off.

On one occasion, we were heading to Willersley Castle in Derbyshire for our holiday and were driving up the M1. Dad had said something about us going via Nottingham. Mum had dozed off, but suddenly woke up and saw an exit sign for Nottingham. She screamed in panic, and Dad – who was in the middle lane – suddenly veered left across the other traffic to take the exit. Somehow nobody hit us.

And it wasn’t even the right exit for Nottingham. We needed the next one.

As we spend the summer meditating on the Psalms of Ascent, we are reflecting on ‘journey’ psalms. These are the psalms of the Jewish pilgrims as they travelled from wherever they lived to Jerusalem for the great feasts. We, too, as Christians are on a journey to Jerusalem for a great festival. However, our travels will take us to the New Jerusalem in the New Creation, for the great feast of God’s kingdom.

And like the child frustrated on a long journey, from time to time we cry out, “Are we there yet?” knowing full well we aren’t, but impatient for the glories of what awaits us.

So the Psalms of Ascent are there to be sung on our journey, too, and to sustain us in our travel to the light and beauty of God’s kingdom. None of us should speak in this life as if we have arrived: to become a Christian is not that at all. It is to have joined the pilgrims on their travels to Jerusalem.

There are dangers on the journey. It might be the panic that led to my Dad’s sudden left turn to Nottingham. Or it might be other things. One of my favourite places is Lee Abbey, a Christian retreat and conference centre in North Devon. The most direct route there involves 25% (1 in 4) hills, one of them combining the extreme gradient with a hairpin bend.

Go beyond these fair shores and you will of course find far greater challenges than those which challenge my modest driving skills. Some of my sister’s exploits when she spent three months working with a missionary hospital in Rwanda are in a different league. A combination of poor roads, over-filled vehicles and driving skills that make Italian drivers look a model of restraint might about cover some of her stories.

The Jewish pilgrims faced travelling dangers, too. Their feet could slip, and a sprained ankle when needing to walk miles with no cars and no NHS would hamper all the ambitions of pilgrimage and risk further damage to the ankle bones.

By day there would be the high temperatures if they were walking in the middle of the year. My own visit to Israel-Palestine was in July one year, and the temperatures Andy Murray and the Centre Court crowd experienced last Sunday were as nothing to what we endured, needing to drink six litres of water a day to stay hydrated.

Then there were the cold nights under clear skies. Not for those ancient pilgrims the pollution that keeps heat in, but a contrast to the day and little prospect of somewhere to sleep under cover. Wild animals would lurk; perhaps the travellers took turns to stay awake by a camp fire and guard everyone.

We face other dangers on our pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem. The attacks that would derail our journey to the Kingdom are different. There are both temptations and assaults to knock us off course.

The temptations might be summed up in the classic New Testament unholy triad of the world, the flesh and the devil. ‘World’ here does not mean creation in general, which is good, it means the prevailing culture that lives in disregard of God and his ways. So it involves all those temptations to go along with popular values, whether they are godly or not. It might mean the way we are tempted to allow ourselves to be absorbed into Surrey values of continuous acquisitiveness, the accrual of more, the necessity of taking several foreign holidays and driving a ‘Chelsea tractor’. Follow the world too keenly and we lose our passion for God and his Christ.

Similarly, the ‘flesh’ does not mean that our bodies are bad, but it does refer to a couple of things. One is our general sinful nature, our predisposition to selfishness, which can manifest in characteristics such as the whole culture of entitlement. I’m reminded of the old slogan that ‘sin is a little word with ‘I’ in the middle’.

And the flesh can also be about those ways in which good bodily desires take over and dominate. Appetites of all kinds are necessary in the ways they alert us to physical needs. But when we allow them to dominate, we end up as slaves to them, rather than servants of Christ.

The devil? Although I struggle with those Christians who see Satan behind every bad thing, I believe those who dismiss his existence are equally naïve. Jesus acknowledged the presence of an enemy of our lives, and we must beware the ways in which he tempts us by asking us to make a deal with sin.

But it is not only temptation to sin that threatens to take us off course. As well as sin, we have to cope with being sinned against – the violences done to us that we do not deserve. The enemy laughs at our pain, and further when those assaults raise questions in our minds about the goodness or even the existence of God.

Where, then, do we look for help in staying en route to the New Jerusalem? The Jewish pilgrims looked around. Perhaps when you hear those famous opening words of this psalm,

I lift up my eyes to the mountains –
where does my help come from? (Verse 1)

you think that the mountains were where they found help. Aren’t the mountains a sign of the grandeur and power of God?

Well, in some parts of Scripture they are, but not here. On a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the mountains and their foothills were anything but. They were bandit country. Think of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

And hear also what Eugene Peterson has to say about them in this psalm:

During the time this psalm was written and sung, Palestine was overrun with popular pagan worship. Much of this religion was practised on hilltops. Shrines were set up, groves of trees were planted, sacred prostitutes both male and female were provided; persons were lured to the shrines to engage in acts of worship that would enhance the fertility of the land, would make you feel good, would protect you from evil. There were nostrums, protections, spells and enchantments against all the perils of the road. Do you fear the sun’s heat? Go to the sun priest and pay for protection against the sun god. Are you fearful of the malign influence of moonlight? Go to the moon priestess and buy an amulet. Are you haunted by the demons that can use any pebble under your foot to trip you? Go to the shrine and learn the magic formula to ward off the mischief. From whence shall my help come? From Baal? From the sun priest? From the moon priestess?[1]

Is it possible that today we too go to the wrong spiritual sources for protection from the dangers of our journey to Jerusalem? I think so. The Christian who spends more time in the horoscope column than the Scriptures. Those more concerned to follow the latest guru who has been interviewed by Richard and Judy, or promoted by Oprah Winfrey. The believer who takes more guidance from friends at the health club or the school gate rather than the accumulated ancient wisdom of the Church. The church member who seeks security more in received financial wisdom than in Christ. All too often we look to our mountains instead of to the Lord.

Because that is where our help truly comes from:

My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth. (Verse 2)

Not from the hills, but from the Lord. He has the power to keep us on the road. It is to him that we should turn.

How, then, does our Lord keep us on track or even put us back on the road?

Taking first the question of how our own sin (‘world, flesh and devil’-caused) takes us off-road, we remember before anything else how astonishing the forgiveness of God is. Our Father is not grudging in forgiving us; he is the Father who throws lavish parties with feasting for returning prodigals. What could be more wonderful for getting us back in the right direction, aligning our lives with the life of the world to come?

And accompanying that is the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. God’s commitment to us is that he will always set us back on the road through forgiveness, and he will give us the strength to stay on the road.

But what about the way we get knocked off by what is done to us? How often are we discouraged by the rude interruption of suffering, and the seismic jolts of untoward life events? Some of us question God’s existence, and so the journey becomes pointless. Some of us don’t do that, but we wonder about God’s goodness, and whether we want to move closer to him.

In response to that, I want to share with you something that struck me recently when I was reading an old John Ortberg book. He talks about the way God pays attention to us. He describes the number of times in the Gospels that something happens for good because Jesus ‘saw’ someone. He refers to the so-called Aaronic blessing with which we shall conclude Holy Communion this morning – the same words we use to bless babies who are baptised:

The LORD bless you and keep you,
The LORD make his face to shine on you and be gracious to you,
The LORD look on you with kindness and give you peace.

If God’s face is shining on us and he is looking on us with kindness, then surely he is paying attention to us.

“But,” we say, “God is silent in my suffering. I can’t hear him saying anything to me.”

Might that mean, then, that what God is actually doing as he pays attention to us is simply listening? The best listeners are those who are not thinking of how they will reply while the other person speaks. Could it be that God knows we still need to pour out more of our pain to him before he says a word? Perhaps, unlike the husband who hides behind his newspaper when his wife begins to speak, God is quietly giving us his attention, ready to speak when necessary. Maybe this is his ‘watching over you’ that the Psalmist describes (verse 5).

I venture to suggest, then, that while God does not stop harm coming our way, he ‘will keep [us] from all harm’ (verse 7) and ‘watch over [our] coming and going’ (verse 8) by keeping our spiritual lives with him. The God of Psalm 121 is the God of assurance. Wesley said we not only need to be saved and can be saved – even saved to the uttermost – we can also know we are saved.

And this God – the God of assurance – is the God of Psalm 121, the God who sets us back on our eternal journey.

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