Psalm 33: Sing a New Song

Psalm 33 – Sing a New Song

Psalm 33 instructs us to sing a new song – what might this new song be?  How do we know it is new and not just a rehash of some other songs, warmed over and re-served?  Ecclesiastes says there is nothing new under the sun.  If so, what could this new song be?  More often than not, when we preach, we try to find new ways to get across the same old story – the story of God’s love, a message worth repeating.  We struggle to find new ways to get our listener’s attention so that God might speak to them. 

Often people claim they are starting out fresh, maybe leaving a relationship or job for another, only to find themselves in the same rut with the same problems, only the names and faces have changed.  So what is the new song the Psalmist is writing about?

Psalm 33 talks of God as creator.  The writer praises our God who through his word made the heavens (6-9).  It is the Lord’s counsel that stands forever, not the counsel of men (10-11).   Our God watches the goings on below on his earth and keeps his people safe (13-15, 18-19).  People are not saved by armies but by their God (16-17).  And so we have reason to sing songs to our God, but what is so new about this?

God in Isaiah says “see I am doing something new.”  Only God can do something new.   So how do we know we are doing something new?  If God is the author.   Only God, the creator, can bring new life out of dried out bones; only God creates, we are but participants in God’s creation. 

So sing a song to our God, allow God to sing within us, allow God to change us, transform us, and then our song will be new.  So . . . what are you doing that is new????

Copyright Robertson January 2013

Psalm 32: Is Confession Good for the Soul?

Psalm 32: Is Confession Good for the Soul?

“When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away. . . I acknowledged my sin . . . then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin.” (3-5)

It’s been said that confession is good for the soul, and this psalm would attest to that.  The writer was afflicted with suffering.  Knowledge of some past sin was haunting him to the point that he had become physically ill.  As long as he held it in, he was tortured, wracked with guilt but when he told his sin to God, he found forgiveness. 

This is the second of the penitential Psalms, but it is also a psalm of thanksgiving.  The writer is thankful to God for the gift of forgiveness.  “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,” (1a) he states.  He knows the gift of forgiveness, but in order to know this he had to first sin and recognize his sinfulness.  “It can no doubt be ‘a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’ (Heb. 10:31), but it is a worse thing to fall out of them,” as one commentator states (Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 4, p. 170).  The psalmist had fallen out of God’s hands through his sin.  How great his delight to return to God through confession.  The psalmist then instructs the reader to not be stubborn like a mule but to turn to God for forgiveness in order to experience what it is to be “blessed.”

Surely confession is good for the soul, but first there must be recognition of what needs to be confessed, then there must be genuine remorse.  It isn’t enough to admit to a wrong doing.  In the news this week has been Lance Armstrong’s confession that he had used drugs during his years of competition.  He finally admitted to what he had done but he claimed he was just doing what everyone else was doing.  He justified his actions.  So, was this confession good for his soul?  It is not for us to judge what is in his heart, that is for God – best to leave it there.

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.  Words without thoughts never to heaven go,” the king in Hamlet states after an unsuccessful attempt at prayer. (Hamlet, Act III, sc. III)  He knew he had sinned but wasn’t willing to do what was necessary to make amends, to admit to what he had done and give up his ill-gotten gain.  And so he remained in his sin.

Perhaps the greatest sins are the ones we refuse to see, sins of excessive pride, greed, justifications for hording the world’s goods, walking away from those in need.  None of us are perfect; therefore all of us are in need of God’s forgiveness.  Perhaps our prayer needs to be that God will help us see when we have fallen short of the mark for by ourselves we remain blind.  Then our confession will bring the healing and forgiveness we need.

Copyright Robertson January 2013

A Cup of Coffee and the Psalms

Coffee and the Psalms

 “My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the Psalms.”  Dorothy Day

Good things happen over a cup of coffee or tea:  in depth conversations with a friend or just shooting the breeze; early morning meditations with God.

Since I’m no longer preaching every Sunday, I took a break from posting to this blog in order to re-evaluate, redesign and recommit.  I’m still pursuing my own study of the Psalms, praying them, reflecting on them, studying them.  I will be sharing these but my entries will be shorter.  I hope they will still provide fodder for preachers who may want to preach on the Psalms but will also reach a wider audience.

I hope that this blog will be a space for dialogue about the Psalms, for a chance to, in a sense, sit down together with a cup of coffee and converse.  To discuss, what are your favorite Psalms and why?  Are there quotes about the Psalms that you really like?  Have the Psalms played an important role in your life and if so, how?  All of these will be up for discussion.  I hope you will join me in this endeavor.

Psalm 31 - Into your hands I commit my Spirit

Psalm 31 - Into Your Hands,  I Commend My Spirit

I love this time of year.  There is beauty everywhere.  If only I could freeze frame all of the colors of fall.  I look about and try to etch a memory indelibly into my mind, but it doesn’t work.  Nothing remains in my memory, even sights of beauty.  I walk from one room into another and forget what I’m looking for.  I write so many notes to myself to jog my memories that I have notes for my notes.  The price of growing old, I guess.

This beauty is but a fleeting moment for us to enjoy.  We can’t store them up for tomorrow or the next day much though we may want to.  We have to let these days go like the falling leaves, trusting that in the spring new leaves will grow; new beauty will assault our memories.  But for today, we have the autumn leaves.  And I ask myself, what more do I have to let go of this year?  How is God stripping me yet again in this life?  Like the trees I am being stripped bare of adornment, externals, till nothing is left but the bare bones, the frame from which new life will grow.

Psalm 31 might be termed an autobiography in three parts, much like Psalm 23.  There are three psalms joined into one, a triple cry for deliverance. 

In verses 1-8 the writer is seeking assurance of protection from some impending trouble.  He begins with a statement of trust in God, then he asks God to listen to him and rescue him.  “Take me out of the net which is hidden for me,” he pleads.  He doesn’t know the exact nature of what is about to come, just that evil lies in wait for him. 

He commits his spirit, his life, into God’s hands, confident that God will protect him, uttering the words that Jesus himself used before his death with one small change.  Jesus added the word Father.  Where the writer of the psalm was committing his life into God’s hands, confident that he would escape death, Jesus was committing his life to the Father in his death.   As one commentator states:  “A psalm which comes into the mind of the Sufferer of all sufferers at the moment of death is a psalm to be reverenced.” (Interpreter’s Bible, Vol 4, p. 163).    

As is common in laments, the writer thanks God in advance for all he will do.  The writer rejoices for God has not let him fall into the hands of his enemies and has set his feet in a broad place, a metaphor found in other Psalms.  In this case the writer escapes the snares and traps that had been set for him.

Then there is an abrupt change from rejoicing to lament in verse 9.  Verses 9-12 are the words of one who is being plagued by physical disease, an ailment that has been long standing.  He has been crying his eyes out with grief, his strength is gone, even his bones are wasting away.  When dealing with grief and prolonged illness it can feel like your whole life has been like this; that it has been forever, even if it has not been the case. 

He has forgotten the joy experienced in verse 7 and now all is sadness.  The writer is an object of scorn, even horror.  People flee from him.  In verses 13 – 18, the lament shifts to someone who is being lied about.  They are whispering together against him he says.  They are scheming to take his life.  It could be that in his suffering he is paranoid, imagining that people are plotting against him.  This is easy to do.  The machinations of the mind can be wild indeed.   Or it could be that people are plotting against him.  He escaped the plots in the first part of his life only to be attacked even stronger later.

Perhaps the writer was afflicted with leprosy or some other disease making him unclean.  Later Christians saw Jesus, the suffering servant in this passage.  He was a sight that people couldn’t bear to look at, so marred was his form from being scourged.  People ran away from him during his last hours.

Who are the pariahs of our times?  Who do we run from?  Perhaps victims of AIDS who are considered unclean?  Perhaps those disfigured by war and disability that we don’t want to look at because it upsets us? As I grow older and face the weakening of my bones, this passage takes on new meaning.  Are the old among us the new pariahs that we put away into “homes” so that we don’t have to deal with them?

But even in this state of great suffering, the writer remains faithful.  He puts his trust in God, asking God to deliver him from his persecutors, asking God to put them to shame, even send to hell, those who would lie against him.  Some commentators would clean up this passage, stating it is unchristian to condemn another to hell and spiritualizing the passage to mean our own failings and sins being condemned to the land of shadows.  While this can be one way of using the passage, it is highly unlikely the writer meant any such thing.  When in despair and pain, it is human to respond with anger and the desire for revenge.

The last section, verses 19-24, is a hymn of thanksgiving for God’s deliverance from the suffering of the previous verses.  Now comes the happy ending.  At the end of life, the writer is able to look back at his life and see how God has been present.  It is with confidence that he can say, “Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me.”  He then instructs others, those younger, those yet to come, to trust in the Lord who saved him.  It is the Lord who delivers justice, who “requites him who acts haughtily,” not us.  So be strong and wait for the Lord.

Thus is one life, a mixture of suffering and blessings.  The challenges of youth give way to even greater challenges in mid-life.  Those who remain firm in faith, trusting in their God, will reach peace and quiet after the storms of life.  Over all, the one phrase chosen by Jesus resounds, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”  Repeatedly throughout life, we are challenged to let go, to place our life into God’s hands, just as the trees let go of their leaves.  We do so in preparation for that final letting go at the end of our life.

So as to my initial question - what might God be asking me to let go of this fall? – I don’t know.  But I’ll trust in the Lord.  Whatever challenges may be facing me, whatever new losses, I will land on firm ground for God is with me.

Copyright October 2012 Robertson

Random Thoughts on Preaching by Catholic Lay Woman

Random Thoughts on Preaching using the Revised Common Lectionary by a Catholic Lay Woman

            As a Catholic Lay woman who has never been formally trained in preaching, who am I to preach?  I am not allowed to preach in the Catholic Church, that being reserved to ordained priests and deacons, and yet that is what I’ve been doing in other settings.  For the past twelve years I’ve been preaching each Sunday at services at the retirement community where I held the position of chaplain, using the Revised Common Lectionary as the basis for my preaching. 

I liked using the Revised Common Lectionary.  I liked knowing that millions of people throughout the world are hearing the same readings and hearing sermons preached on those readings, yet no two will be alike.  To me, that is incredible.

            I loved the challenge of trying to find a common theme for all three of the readings.  It was like solving a puzzle each week.  I know that preaching instructors would say this is not a good idea, that this is a beginner’s mistake - the readings weren’t set up with a common theme. Usually the Gospel and Old Testament readings were connected but then you had these letters thrown in to provide a different direction for preaching if desired, not to make the preacher do mental gymnastics in order to find a connection.  But that is what I liked to do. 

Good preachers I’ve heard stick to one reading, one theme that they develop in depth.  Some even preach a whole sermon on one verse of Scripture.  But then I don’t claim to be good.  I guess I’m just a beginner, especially in comparison to others who have had extensive training and more years of experience than I have had. 

I loved being forced to reflect on God’s word by my weekly deadline.  I would reflect on the readings, pray about them, carry them with me in my head all week, asking first what God was saying to me through these readings, then what God might be saying to my people. It is work, hard work, it took up a good portion of my week, yet it was good work, God’s work. 

I will miss it now that I no longer hold this position.  It seems I’m a fraud who has finally been found out.  But then who among us is truly worthy to speak God’s words?

copyright Robertson, August 2012

Psalm 30:5b - Joy comes with the morning

Psalm 30:  Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

Joy comes with the morning.  I’ve been living with this passage for the past month, since July 18 when my position as chaplain was abruptly eliminated.  One minute I was planning out the next month’s sermons, an hour later I was sitting in my car with twelve years of my life packed into the trunk and back seat. 

The psalm I was scheduled to preach on next was Psalm 30.  When I read it the next morning, I felt comforted by its assurance of rejoicing in the morning.  I wasn’t rejoicing yet, but the promise was there.

            As I dealt with shock, denial, anger and sadness over the loss of this position, I’ve reminded myself repeatedly, in the morning rejoicing.  This too will pass.  Perhaps I’m on the verge of the greatest adventure yet; this next chapter in my life might very well be the best.  I’ve reflected on these words as I’ve puzzled over what to do about my sojourn into the realm of Psalms.  Not even a third of the way through, I know I don’t want to quit, but how to continue?  In the morning comes rejoicing.

            I no longer have the necessity of preparing a sermon every week to push me into Scripture, but I’m also free to go in different directions.  Freed of the need to come up with fifteen to twenty minutes worth of material, I can write shorter, more reflective pieces if I want.  But what do I want?  A good question.  In John’s gospel Jesus asks his disciples, “What are you looking for?  What do you want?”  So, what do I want?

            Joy comes with the mourning.  Joy can be found within mourning and grief.  The writers of the Psalms didn’t wait for God to deliver before thanking God for blessings.  They thank God in advance.  In the midst of lamentations, the writers thank God for hearing their cries, confident that God will come through for them.  And so I trust, in the morning comes rejoicing.  I don’t know what shape this rejoicing will take; I just know it will happen. 

The sorrows of today, the struggles and challenges, all will pass, will seem like but a minute in comparison to the joys that tomorrow will hold.  God is creating a glorious future for me, opening a window to replace the door that shut.  Sorrow lasts but for a moment, joy comes with the morning.  Each day is a new beginning.

“Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing; thou hast loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, that my soul may praise thee and not be silent.  O Lord my God, I will give thanks to thee forever.”  Psalm 30:11-12

Psalm 28: With Song I Give Thanks!

July 15, 2012               Psalm 28:  With Song I Give Thanks

2 Samuel 6:1-19                      Psalm 28                     Ephesians 1:3-14         Mark 6:14-29

Liar, liar, pants on fire – appropriate phrase as we listen to the political rhetoric around us.  Satan is the prince of lies, a master of deception, and if so, his presence is apparent throughout our society.  Lies are everywhere, they are destructive, none more so than the lies we tell ourselves.  It’s so easy to deceive ourselves.  Our readings for today give examples of how easy it is to do this.

In our reading from Samuel we hear about how David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.  On the surface it seems pretty straight forward, if Jerusalem is to be the seat of the kingdom, you would want the symbol of God there.  However, was this what God wanted, or what David wanted?  Was it motivated by devotion to God, or political expedience, helping to further consolidate David’s power as ruler of Israel?  God was present to the Israelite people in the desert in the Ark.  The Ark was even brought into battle, unsuccessfully so in 1 Samuel chapter 4, when it was used against the Philistines and captured.  It was a sign of God’s presence and protection, God’s leadership of his people.  David, as king, was assuming this position. 

David recaptured the Ark and prepared to bring it to Jerusalem in our reading today, a time for great rejoicing and singing as David danced before the Ark.  But it wasn’t as simple as that.  When the Ark starts to tilt and Uzzah reaches up to steady it, he is immediately struck dead for daring to touch the sacred.  David is angered by this and leaves the Ark at the house of Obededom for three months where Obededom is blessed.  Seeing this David decides to attempt again to bring the Ark to Jerusalem, however he has learned his lesson.  This time he offers sacrifice to God after moving the Ark six steps, and again as he entered Jerusalem.  If there was any doubt before as to who is leading who, it is gone now.  David once again dances before the Ark, rejoicing at bringing this sacred object to his city, but he also gives God due respect. 

David is well-intentioned in bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, but we all know where those good intentions sometimes lead.  He doesn’t stop to ask God what God wants and when  Uzzah is struck down, he doesn’t respond with fear of the Lord, but anger that God wasn’t grateful to him for the good he was doing him.  David had yet to learn the difference between working for the Lord and doing the Lord’s work, as defined by Thomas Green in his book, Weeds Among the Wheat.  In the first case, you are busy working for God, doing what you think God wants, in the other you are asking God first what God wants and then doing God’s work, what God wants you to do not what you want to do for God: an important difference.  David was busy doing what he wanted to do for God, not what God wanted. 

David was well-intentioned, but he was deceived.  He had this idea and talked himself into believing it was what God wanted without even checking with God.  How often have we done this?  We get an idea into our head and we right away assume it was from God when maybe we were just deceiving ourselves.  But then, once right with God, David had reason to rejoice. 

At this point we get another glimpse into the working of self-deception.  Michal, Saul’s daughter and David’s wife, sees David dancing and is ashamed at his fervor, at least that is what she tells herself.  Chances are, the love she once had for David had started to grow cold.  He had since married two other women, perhaps she was jealous and just looking for a reason to despise him.  We don’t know the inner workings of her mind, just that she did not rejoice with David at the coming of the Ark to Jerusalem, she was at odds with her husband-king.  This was just an excuse, a justification for the hatred she was already feeling.

Our gospel reading shows us yet more instances of self-deception and justification.  Herod wanted his brother’s wife, Herodius, and took her from him as his own.  His justification most likely was that he was king and could therefore take what he wanted.  John the Baptist acts as the voice of his conscience in condemning him for his adultery.  Herod doesn’t like what John is saying, but is politically astute enough to recognize the danger in harming John who is revered by the people.  Herodius however has no such concern.  She hated John and wanted him dead.  When her daughter dances before Herod and incurs favor, she tells her to ask for John’s head, thereby forcing Herod’s hand to kill an innocent man.  Her justification for this was her hatred for John.

It’s so easy to justify our actions.  We take something that is not ours to take yet justify it by any number of ways, saying, no one will notice, no one will care, it’s no big deal.  We take someone’s good name through gossip and justify it by insisting we were only telling the truth, or, everybody does this, everybody gossips, so it’s okay.  We say unkind things to and about others and justify it.  We rejoice when someone we are jealous of or dislike experiences misfortune.  We tell ourselves it’s no big deal, but these lies can become a way of life, blinding us to future lies.  We can become so wrapped up in our own lies and justification that they become as truth to us.  Lies beget more lies. 

When Satan came to Eve in the garden, he convinced her with his lies.  She justified her actions saying the serpent made me do it, rather than accepting responsibility for her actions.  It seems to me that Satan lies to us in two ways, in telling us we are greater than we are, such is his lie to Eve, or in telling us we are less than we are, in degrading us to the point of despair.  Each are lies.  Sin doesn’t happen overnight.  It is our thinking that eventually leads us to sinful action.  How do we get out of this cycle of lies that lead to sin?

Our psalm for today is a lament.  Brief and to the point, the writer has taken refuge in the Temple.  He is sick or being tormented by wicked people who are the source of his illness or suffering.  He calls out to the Lord, saying, “be not deaf to me,” listen to me (1).  If God remains silent, then the writer will be like one cast into a deep, dark hole, or cast into his own particular hell.  Certainly, without God, this life can be a living hell.  He lifts up his hands in supplication to God and prays that God not let him suffer the violence that befalls the godless, those workers of evil who are duplicitous, who speak peace but whose actions are far from peaceful.  The writer attributes his problems to evil men whom he had trusted but he doesn’t say exactly what they did to him.

“Requite them according to their work (4a),” the writer says.  Give back to them as they gave, not as punishment necessarily, but that they might come to understand their wrongdoing and then repent.  Is it more loving to pretend we have not been hurt by the actions of another, or to let them know the consequences of their action so that they might change?  Sometimes we need to be brought down, in order that we might be lifted up.  We need to be shown the error of our ways and of our thinking so that we might change.

In verses 6-7 the psalmist breaks into rejoicing with an exceptionally long and exuberant exclamation.   God has heard his pleas, God has proven trustworthy, and this is reason to rejoice.  This is reason to dance before the Lord as David did.  The psalm ends with a statement of faith and a prayer.

So how do we deal with self-deception and lies?  Through prayer, through turning to God in prayer, asking him to deliver us not just from those outside who seek to harm us, but to deliver us from that which is within us that would harm us, lie to us, through listening to God’s truth, not our own version.  This can be hard.  It is hard to look at ourselves through the lens of truth and realize that some of our best intentions are not as worthy as we thought, as happened to David, to recognize our idolatries and our lies and ask for deliverance.  Yet the end result of such brutal honesty is rejoicing, exulting in our Lord and Savior who loves us despite ourselves, who sees all of our failings and loves us anyway. 

And once out of the cycle, the way to stay out of the cycle is through praising God, thanking God constantly.  If Eve had been busy thanking God for all the good God had done for her at the time that the serpent called, he would never have been able to plant lies in her mind.  But he found fertile ground. 

In Ephesians, Paul says, blessed be God, who chose us to be holy and without blemish before him, who redeems us, saves us from our sins, “so that we might exist for the praise of his glory.” (12a)  We were made to praise our God, to sing to God with glory and rejoice in our Lord. 

The lies that others tell us and that we tell ourselves get in the way of being all we are meant to be, they keep us from praising our God.  They can be like an illness, only God has the cure.  So like the psalmist we need to turn to our God in trust, asking to be delivered and rejoicing in this deliverance.  Then will our heart exult as we give thanks to our God.                

Copyright Robertson, July 2012