Hope filled quote for the Church from Eugene Peterson

I listened/watched to an interview with Eugene Peterson from Catalyst West conference in 2012. As a final question he was asked if he was hopeful for the church. His reply is worth noting...

"I am hopeful. I know there is a lot of pessimism in the church these days... some of it hysterical... but you know we've been in this situation so many times in the past 2000 years and 2000 years before that as a Jewish community. We've never been successful... never! Can you find one good successful Church in the New Testament? And when was Israel ever faithful? For short periods of time once in a while, but mostly they were a mess... and yet all the way through this salvation is being worked out, with people just like us people just like in your congregations... I know its hard but its also glorious."

Psalm 133 The Christian Journey is Not A Solitary Trek... (Songs from the road part 5)

 Psalm 133 is a psalm of ascent, from the dogeared songbook used by those returning to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon, sung by those coming together at the temple for one of the major festivals on the Jewish calendar. It’s a song from the road, a song that prepared the pilgrims to worship and encounter God and a song that can help us on our upward journey in life following Jesus. It is a song for our road.

(this first part of the message serves as a summary of where we have been on our journey through the songs from the road and have links to the other messages in the series for easy referencing)

The pilgrim starts their journey in a far off place. In Psalm 120 we saw a discontent with the way things were, living amongst the tents of those who were for war, when they were for peace. The pilgrim has this feeling of isolation and distance being a sojourner that started their Godward journey, their pilgrimage.

They may have started off alone or been part of a caravan travelling across the desert,   psalm 121 uses the imagery of the life of a caravan as the pilgrim sees their far off destination ’I look to the hills’ and looks for help to see the journey through, my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

In the psalms of ascent on that journey home, or climbing the stairs of the temple, the pilgrim remembers God’s goodness, God’s provision; Psalm 127… God’s provision in work and family,

God’s help in distress, Psalm130 crying out in the depth and having hope in the heights of God’s grace…God’s great works in creation and in history, saving and caring for Israel, they confess their sin… psalm 130 was a penitential psalm.

Psalm 133 is the last psalm of ascent, before they hear the benediction of Psalm 134. While they had felt alone and isolated now they are aware that they are part of a great family. There is a change of focus; they had been looking towards the temple as a place and symbol of God’s presence and blessing. Now they become aware that God’s presence and blessing are not found simply in a place but with the people. That God had always been about the covenant relationship with his people, togetherness is where God will pour out blessing.  

Psalm 133 is attributed to David and it has an older setting and context. It comes from the image of an extended family. In Israel’s culture sons would stay at home with their father and as they grew and got married and had children their family would come and join the Klan. If you read through genesis you can see this in the life of Abraham and more so with Israel and his sons. When you read the story of David’s anointing as King by Samuel the prophet, you also get the picture of all the sons living together. David’s experience of this must have been a good one unlike joseph’s in genesis when his brothers didn’t like his dreams and his father’s favouritism so they plotted to kill him and eventually sold him off to slavery in Egypt. But from what we know David had a good experience of it. In the end even Joseph felt this bound so tightly that he wanted to be reconciled with his brothers and bless them.  So when David is king and finally Israel is bought together as one people no longer  different factions and tribes he can apply this image of brothers living together in harmony to the whole of the nation. 

This family metaphor is applied to the whole of Israel down through the temple worship even into the Diaspora when Jews were spread all over the known world, it’s a metaphor that we the church, a truly global community use as well we are brothers and sister in Christ,

In our own nation’s sporting life we have great pictures of brothers and sisters…together in harmony… The Golden age of all black rugby when the Mead's and Clark's played together. The Wheaton’s when we first won the Webb Ellis cup and look at the Evers- Swindell’s , when they get in that skip together, see how they are blessed. What would happen if we were unified and together like that?

In fact it is such a wonderful ideal that the psalmist can’t put it into words he has to use two metaphors, two word pictures to help us grasp it.

It’s like precious oil being poured on the head and running down the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard and on to the collar of his robe.

Perhaps in our post industrial age we don’t quite see the image of having oil poured over us as being a pleasant one.  We may think of oil spills and their devastating effects.  For many of us we think whose going to get  those oil stains out of the clothes. With the price of petrol and oil based products we may again have a fuller understanding of precious oil.

Maybe we can catch a glimpse of what is envisaged here  in the growth of the boutique olive oil industry,  creating scented and herb flavoured oils. As this would have been an oil with fragrances like frankincense in it. 

Aaron of course was the first high priest of Israel and the picture is of him being anointed with oil not in a stingy way but lavishly having this expensive liquid poured out. It was a picture of a greater anointing as well, the anointing of the spirit. And the picture is one of that anointing coming down on all people as they gathered together to worship. They all encountered God’s blessing. One of the catch cries of the reformation was ‘a priesthood of all believers’ all of us in Christ are priests: set aside and anointed to minister and to serve God. All of us together have the blessing of standing before God. He pours out his life giving spirit, that fragrant oil, all over all of us.

“It’s as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion.

 Mt Hermon is the highest peak in Israel it stands over 9,000 feet high to the north of the Sea of Galilee. It is the place in that part of the Middle East that can be guaranteed to have snow on it all year round. The whole of the Jordan river that feeds into the Sea of Galilee and then flows on down the rift valley down past Jerusalem and on into the dead sea has its head water in  Mt Hermon.  That life giving water comes from the dew and the snow on Mt Hermon.  So for David he sees that our unity our togetherness causes God’s blessing to flow in a way that brings life to the whole of the nation of Israel. As people are together its like that life giving dew falls on a lower hill like Zion.  Just like that river has provided water for the land from the beginning so will unity bring God’s blessing even to eternal life. Jesus for us is that life giving water that enables eternal life that is best experienced in all its abundance as we live in unity.

What then for us from this ‘song for the road’.

The first is that following Jesus is a communal endeavour. It is not the lone sojourn. Relationship with God calls us into relationship with each other. Jesus summed that up by summing up the law in loving the lord your God with all your heart and strength and mind and loving your neighbour as yourself. The call to worship we used this morning from 1 Peter 2 sums that up tying together knowing God’s grace and being a people. In Christ we are family.

Secondly, families, brothers and sisters fight and don’t always get along. This may be hard to believe but as the father of four wonderful children, I know this to be true, sometimes. A road trip and long journey can be made to feel inexplicably longer when there is tension between siblings.  But as the father of four wonderful Kids, I know it is a real blessing when they all get along together. Being family calls us to be committed to one another even when there is friction and trouble, and to work it out. The two metaphors in psalm 133 give us some insights in how to do that. firstly the annointing...We are all priest’s.  We are connected not because of who each other is but rather because of what Christ has done for us. That each person has been made by God, to be the unique person they are, that they have been saved by Christ, and they have been anointed by the Holy Spirit to serve the Lord. The dew on the mountain is an image of Gods refreshing and renewing of the earth each new day and we look at the people round us and see that just like us God is at work in their lives bringing them on this upward journey, and we don’t think about what they were like yesterday, we look forward to what new thing Christ will do in them today. We are on the upward journey together and we are hopefully  by God’s grace further along the journey today than we were yesterday, and hallelujah we’ll be further along it tomorrow. We view people through those eyes of grace and hope.

Thirdly, our unity is a foretaste of what eternal life is like. People often put it jokingly by saying well you’d better get along now because guess what… we are going to be spending eternity together. When there is unity when diverse people from different cultures and different backgrounds get together and worship God and love one another, it is a glimpse of what eternal life will be like. It is the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in the realm of humanity. It is hope for our broken world.

Lastly, it is about us being there for each other. We need each other for the journey. I need you with your gifts and abilities, your insights, you love and you need me. In Pilgrim’s progress God provides Christian with companion’s that help him on his journey. That warns him of danger, give him hope and comfort in dark times, yes sometimes they are not a great help and at that times Christian has to help them. In St Brendan’s navigato, his epic journey across the sea, it is the companionship of the monks together, their keeping of spiritual disciplines that enable them to get to and from the land of paradise. Psalm 133 has been called the monastic psalm, Augustine of Hippo said it is about the monks being mono the latin word for one. .. not about members of such orders being mono-isolated by mono- one. It is interesting o see the rise of Christians in the west wanting to recapture that communal oneness in the rise of a new monasticism and in the growth of life groups and cell groups as the basic unit of doing church and life.

Rock-climbing is a good picture of the upward journey and our need for one another. It’s not that we drive each other up the wall but  In rock climbing a climber depends on another climber to  belay them. To hold the rope and take up the slack as they climb  and to keep them safe if they slip and to take the strain if they fall. Then they do the same for their companions traversing the same slope.  It’s not that the belayer climbs for them, hauling them up rock face or wall. Rather the belayer is there to support them. Dietrich Bonheoffer in his wonderful book living together  uses that image to talk of how we need each other for the journey.

" The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and discouraged, for by themselves they cannot help themselves without belaying the truth. They need their brothers and sisters as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation... The Christ in their own heart is weaker that the Christ in their brother or sister; their own heart is uncertain their brother or sister is sure."

So together we may arrive and complete this upward journey following Christ  and hear the blessing at journeys end.

Prayer of thanksgivings and confession; The truth of the gospel and God's character even in the midst of our ebbs and flows.

I am using an old Prayer that I wrote a few years back this week. maybe it is a sign of tiredness, I haven't been sleeping well. I hope it is not a sign of laziness. It still is a prayer that rings true and picks up life as it is with its calm and its raging storm, it picks up the fact that sometimes we just are not in a place to give God praise but just as Israel remembers what God has done for them in the past they find their faith and hope renewed it is the same for us... as we remember Christ.

 It has a central part that reflects the rhythm and flow of the great prayer of thanksgiving that goes before communion, telling the gospel narrative. That again seems to be part of why I originally penned it that way... it is in remembering a familiar prayer that the gospel story is retold and steps again into my story. So through tired eyes it does bring home again the gospel truth and the tireless love of God shown to us in Christ.

The prayer sort of flows between two voices one the voice of theology and the other the voice of 21st century kiwi English.

Lord God

God of the light and the dark

Night and the day 

God of the peaceful calm and the raging storm

God in plentiful times and God when it’s all lean and gone

We praise you for your goodness and your greatness.

Our circumstances dictate our emotions

Sometimes God Hallelujah is the word furthest from our lips

Praise you and thank you, are the furthest from our minds

Yet when we stop and remember, we know your great love

We know that you have showered us with your blessings and grace

The world in all its beauty and complexity

You made

Each of us with our uniqueness

you put together in our mother’s womb

We were lost and dead in our sins

Yet to you we were treasured and missing

So you sent us a shepherd to seek us out

Your son Jesus full of mercy and grace

Not to chastise and to brow beat

But to call back and make whole

Not far away and stand off-ish

But a friend of sinners and outcasts

Not an idol of wood or metal

But a real human being: blood bone and skin

Not to be served

but to serve

Not to demand our lives

But to give his life for us

Not just another blast from the past rotting in a tomb

But risen and alive today

And You invited us to journey with Jesus

To know you through him as you abide in us

You even entrusted us with the Good News of his death and resurrection

 You fill us with your Holy Spirit so we could do it

You called us to be your family together

You invite us to come live at your place when our wandering is over 

We are truly blessed

Forgive us our sins lord

Our pride in the face of your humility

Our unlove in the light of your love

Our unforgiving when you have forgiven us

Our reluctant thanks in light of all you’ve done

Our wanting more in the midst of your bounteous provision

Our neglect of the poor in light of your love for the least

People hear the wonderful good news

As we confess our sins God is faithful and just and forgives us our sins and cleanses us of all wrongdoing

God fill us a fresh with you spirit

Pour it on us like the heavy showers pounding on the roof

Convict us of our need for you, lead us into all truth

Enable us to love and to bless with a Christlike love

For your sons sake

Amen

Belaying the Truth ( a quote from Bonhoeffer and Standing at the foot of a rope being prepared to help someone whose being driven up the wall)

I've always hated climbing. When I at school which seems so long ago (so last millennium) we would be given the opportunity to abseil and rock climb, but a fear of heights and being overweight I never enjoyed such times and avoided them where possible.

AS a father I can say that while my kids may drive me up the wall, its only figuratively... they are the one who take and enjoy the opportunities to go to indoor climbing places and do this sort of out door adventures. I have however found myself being in the position of belaying them and many members of my youth group as they climb walls at camps etc. Standing at the bottom holding the rope, not dragging them up the wall but being their to take the weight if they should slip.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (in the book living together which Eugene Peterson calls one of the best books ever on Christian community) suggests that all Christians need each other to belay the truth for them as we venture on our upward journey in life following Jesus. (I've changed some of the wording to make it more inclusive and that is acknowledged by italics).

" The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and discouraged, for by themselves they cannot help themselves without belaying the truth. They need their brothers and sisters as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation... The Christ in their own heart is weaker that the Christ in their brother or sister; their own heart is uncertain their brother or sister is sure."

1 peter 2: 9b and 10 as a call to worship

Preaching on Psalm 133 this sunday and focusing on Christian unity. So using 1 Peter 2: 9b and 10  as a call to worship. While I could have used the first part of verse 9 I felt that verse 10 pulled together the idea of encounter God's grace with believers being a people and a family.

Once we were not a people,

but now we are the people of God;

Once we had not received mercy,

                But In Christ we  have received mercy.

Let us together declare the praises of him

Who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Psalm 130 from the depths to the heights of God's Grace (Songs From The Road PArt 4: Psalms of Ascent

Psalm 130 is a psalm of ascent it is another song from the dog eared pilgrim’s song book, as they journey from exile back to Jerusalem, as they come to one of the three great religious festivals at the temple. It is a song from the road, a song for all of us on that upward journey in life following Jesus. It takes us from the depth of human suffering to the heights of God Grace, and gives us hope as we traverse a dark landscape waiting for the dawning of a new day; hope in the certainty of God’s redeeming power. 

It is a penitential psalm, a psalm that deals with sin and forgiveness. Martin Luther calls it the most Pauline of Psalms, a proper master and doctor of scripture, God forgives sin, God redeems and restores, Shown in Israel’s return from exile and hope of full restoration, experienced by us in the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the future hope for the church and world.

Psalm 130 is a psalm in four parts, its best seen as a conversation, maybe it was read on the eleventh step of the temple antiphony to accentuate the two voices in that conversation, the voice of personal experience in verses 1 and 2, and 5 and 6, and the voice of theological insight in verse 3 and 4, and 7 and 8: The reality of human existence and in response the reality of God’s character combine to give us hope. Let’s enter this conversation this journey.

The psalm has come to be known as De Profundis latin for ‘Out of the depths’ its first phrase which is followed by a repetitious cry to God. That God would hear, that God would act.

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

The repetition accentuates the distress that the psalmist finds themself in. the depth are a vivid metaphor for trouble and suffering in life. Being tossed round on the waves of life, Walter Brueggemann identifies this as a psalm of disorientation, when the world seems totally up the wrong way. Like you’d gone out to Piha on a calm day and gone out in the water only to be surprised by a giant swell, picked up and rolled over and over, not knowing which way is up. Distress grief, sickness, difficulties, aloneness, pain are all caught up for us in that image.

 It is honest about the way things are, life is full of trouble and suffering, it’s the human experience even for the believer, and the person of faith; the depths and suffering are part of our experience.  Some people think that Christians have missed the fall and we’ve gone hang-gliding instead and soar on some sort of spirit wind above it all, that’s not the case is it? We live in a time when everyone’s goal is to be perpetually healthy and constantly happy, but the psalmist is honest about life, there is suffering. Yes there are joys in life as well but it does not try and hide suffering away and put on a brave face on it, or jump quickly to an answer, rather it gives suffering a sense of dignity, its real it can’t simply be swept aside or papered over, its real and it needs a real God not just a sugar coated placebo deity to band aid over it. Out of the depths I cry.

We don’t know the circumstance that the psalm is written from, but the reference to sin in verse three shows us that wrongdoing is at the centre of the psalmist’s trouble and suffering. It may be personal wrongdoing, psalm 51 is a penitential psalm from David’s life we know it’s context David’s adultery with Bathsheba and its trouble, the death of the resulting child.  Or as a result of the sins of Israel, in its present context this could easy be  seen as the exile, Psalm 42 uses images of the depth of the sea and the raging torrents of a flood to speak about the suffering related to being taken away to captivity in Babylon. It could be from the fallen nature of the world, while Gods work starts with creation the biblical narrative moves quickly to the effect of sin on the world. Much of the wisdom literature like the book of Job wrestles with the question why do good people suffer.

But even here in the depth we discover that we are not away from God. The depths are not the bottom the psalmist encounters God. AS Eugene Peterson says “Suffering never constitutes the bottom line God is at the foundation and God is at the boundaries. God sees the hurt, maimed, wanting and lest. God woos the rebellious and confused.” The Psalm now moves to contemplate God.

The voice changes, the psalm moves from being in the first person, crying out to God, to the second person talking  to  God.

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.

From the depth troubled by sin the Psalmist is comforted by the very real nature of God. God is not some sort of cosmic policeman, a cosmic jailer intent on making sure everyone pays for what they have done wrong; this is a penitential psalm not a penitentiary psalm. We can have this false image of God making us pay making us suffer, but the psalmist sees through that to the reality of Gods character, that God is about grace. God is about forgiveness and reconciliation. Building a bridge for us to return. In the words of Isaiah those who live in darkness have seen a great light. God may have sent them in to exile as a result of their constant wrongdoing, just as he said he would, but just as he said he would he has bought them back. It wasn’t about punishment rather it was to correct them. God sent his son Jesus Christ into the world not to judge the world but that all who would believe may be forgiven their sins and have eternal life. As we read in 1 John 1:1-2:2 God is light there is no dark side waiting to pounce. If we confess our sins God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins. God is at work to restore the fallen mess (my computer keeps telling me there isn’t a word called fallnness so fallen mess is a good substitute) and brokenness of the world. God is not blind to our suffering he is working to bring an end to that. When Israel came back from their Babylonian captivity there was an expectation that it would be complete right then and there, we may look for that with the inauguration of the Kingdom of God in Christ’s coming, but there is still suffering and trouble, we will have to wait for its future consummation. There is forgiveness now but we will have to wait for all the results of sin to be swept away.

It’s important to note that God’s mercy and forgiveness; God’s grace is given as a reason to fear and serve the Lord in verse 4. We often get it the wrong way round, we thing we fear God so we then do what he likes, maybe we are used to the big stick, but God’s grace and kindness is always seen as the foundation for relationship. The Ten Commandments and the Sinai covenant are based on God’s grace, rescuing Israel from Egypt, Gods invitation for all who believe in Christ to be the sons and daughters of God is based on Jesus sacrifice for our sins. God calls us to love him and so keep his commands not out of fear of some tyrant. Walter Brueggemann sums this up by saying  ‘there is forgiveness and from it everything else flows it is the first fact of the new life, of the new age’

Then we move back to the psalmist experience in v 5 and 6.

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.

The psalmist still finds himself journeying through the depth, sojourning in a dark landscape, but his posture has changed: From wailing to waiting, from despair to hope, from fettting to trust.  Knowing the character of God knowing God’s forgiveness and grace means the Psalmist can wait for God to act. Again this part of the psalm is full of repetition; it shows the extent of that change. We often think of waiting as a passive thing. I’m not a very passive waiter, Kris dropped me off at the church here one Saturday on her way to work and I had to grab the bus home. I waited 25 minutes for one to come past. I knew it was coming, I knew what time it was coming but I checked my watch every minute or so just to see if it was due. Waiting in the bible is also not a passive thing. To wait on the LORD is to live trusting in God. The dawn will come. Later in the year we are going to look at Jesus teaching on the end times. In the Olivette discourse Jesus gives us a good understandings of what it means to wait. In a series of parables, this isn’t a spoiler by the way, he says to wait is to keep loving each other, to wait is to be filled with the oil of the spirit, keep our spiritual life growing, to wait is to invest our talents and gifts in the Kingdom of God, to wait is to care for the lost and the least. To serve the God whose grace we have experienced and who will make all things new. The psalmist says he is like the watchman, going about his task in the sure knowledge that the sun will soon rise.

The psalm then finishes with a call for people wait and to put their hope in the character of God.

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.

The psalmist has found his hope in God’s presence and now encourages others to find the same comfort he has found. From this side of the cross and the empty tomb we see this psalm having it fulfilment it Jesus. The seed of the hope that enables us to live and follow is Gods character, Gods unfailing love. Again in 1 John 1 we see that forgiveness from sin is not dependant on what we do but we are forgiven because God is faithful and just. The image in these verses of redemption is a word we often use, it means to buy someone back from slavery, they had a debt they could not pay so had been sold into slavery, or were in bondage and a kind kinsman would pay their debt, but there is more than that, this image full redemption does not mean just buying back but restoring to the way it was as well. In Israel the idea of the year of jubilee was that all land would be returned to its original owners, the wealth would be shared, the means of producing wealth would be shared to use more modern ideas. Theologically not only would debt be forgiven but we and the world we live in will be restored to health and wholeness. This is what Christ has done for us, and we along with Israel are called to put our hope in Christ, he has forgiven us, paid the price for our sin and is working by his spirit to bring all things together under him. We can trust God to bring transformation. We don’t know when that will be completed, it is our future hope, but we can trust God to do it, even here in the depth.  Charles Spurgeon so eloquently puts it like this “the one who cries out in the depth will sing in the heights.”

So the psalmist would call us to put our hope in the LORD. To wait and watch and see what God will do. The depths are real, suffering is real but the bottom is not the bottom, we find underneath us the everlasting arms. It is in the depths perhaps we can find the deep truth about God’s grace. The psalmist met God in the depths, and it changed things. We can too. The psalmist encountered the true gracious nature of God and we can too. It changed his wailing into waiting his despair to trust, he will do the same for us.  Put your hope in the Lord.

The Grace Message style

One of the things I enjoy about Eugene Peterson's  'The Message' translation of the Bible is that it provides a fresh take on passages that revitalises them for us. I often use them in public worship to give fresh insights into things that we simply repeat and repeat like for example the benediction from 2 Corinthians 13:12... While we are comfortable and can say from memory 'May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.' Its good to have to rethink that blessing. Using Peterson translation...

May the amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ,

 The extravagant love of God,

And the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit,

Be with us all.

Amen (sung three fold )