You may have read Bonhoeffer on the Sermon on the Mount, but did you know that he has a compelling and inspiring set of published lectures of Genesis 1-3, too?
for whom the terms “God spoke” and “it became so” are identical.
In Creation and Fall this idea reaches fuller expression:
That God creates by speaking means that in God the thought, the name, and the work are in their created reality one. What we must understand, therefore, is that the word does not have ‘effects’; instead, God’s word is already the work. What in us breaks hopelessly asunder–the word of command and what takes place–is for God indissolubly one. With God the imperative is the indicative.
This month Logos Bible Software offers Creation and Fall for free. I haven’t read the whole thing, but what I have read has helped even familiar chapters of Scripture come alive in new ways. Highly recommended.
You can find Creation and Fall for Logos here. As part of the same promotion, Logos is also offering Bonhoeffer’s Fiction from Tegel Prisonfor $0.99.
If you’re not already set up with Logos, feel free to message me here, and I’ll tell you how to do it.
My two-year-old gave me an unexpected opportunity yesterday to practice what I just preached Sunday. I noted in my sermon that I had been understanding Psalm 23 as a “counter-circumstantial prayer of defiance,” a “subversive prayer when you compare it to what you see around you.”
I mentioned some potential circumstances which make us feel far from the idyllic pastoral imagery of the Psalm, and then suggested that those are some of the best times to (defiantly) pray Psalm 23:
When you hear about wars and rumors of wars, say this Psalm.
When your best friend gets sick, say this Psalm.
When someone in your family grieves you by their seeming lack of care for you, say this Psalm.
When you don’t know what the next year of your life holds, say this Psalm.
An instance I didn’t think to include was:
When your two-year-old daughter draws with permanent marker all over the brand-new cork floor that the church graciously put in last year in the parsonage kitchen… say this Psalm.
When I noticed the damage, this image is about the opposite of how I was feeling:
Image Credit: LifeintheHolyLand.com (Todd Bolen), used with permission
I was feeling more like this:
For at least 10 minutes as I frantically scrubbed, I didn’t even remember there was a Psalm 23, let alone think to say it.
But then I took a step back (by God’s grace) and began to quietly say–through gritted teeth:
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul….
And when my gracious and patient wife came home, she gently reminded me of the “magic sponge” we have under the sink that takes permanent marker off of everything. Within minutes, the green marker drawing on the floor was gone. Gone. The cork floor is good as new.
True, there are much darker valleys in life to walk through, but I think sometimes in parenting those little mini-valleys of frustration and exasperation can add up pretty quickly. And for us parents, they can be the regular “stuff” of our everyday existence. We need good Psalms to pray for the big valleys, and good Psalms to pray for the little valleys.
For those moments–should my two-year-old again somehow elude my watch like she has been so eager to do lately–I will try again (and again) to remember to “say this Psalm.”
Psalm 23 is a Psalm of Trust. A Declaration of Confidence in God.
The imagery and tone of the Psalm are peaceful: “green pastures,” “quiet waters,” a restored soul, the promise of God’s presence even when death and darkness are near. The LORD is my shepherd: he provides, he guides, he restores, he is with his sheep, and he comforts.
“He makes me lie down in green pastures.” With God as my comforting shepherd, there is time to rest. Time to stop. Time to be still.
Image Credit: LifeintheHolyLand.com (Todd Bolen), used with permission
Typically a shepherd leads sheep to a pasture where they can graze. The sheep still do work; the shepherd does the leading but not necessarily the feeding. As the Psalm progresses, God as comforting shepherd becomes welcoming host, who sets out a whole banquet for his flock.
Image Credit: LifeintheHolyLand.com (Todd Bolen), used with permission
Psalm 23: It Just Got Personal
Psalm 23 is intensely personal. It’s a prayer of an individual to God; a song from one soul, who recognizes that the ruling king of the universe has taken the time to lead him to a restful spot to get a drink… to rest.
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul….
David uses the first person singular pronoun throughout the Psalm. God is the shepherd of each individual who would follow him.
This may seem slightly unremarkable to us. We live in a North American society that already tends toward individualism. Our cultural construction of the self tends to be individually-focused.
The culture in which David found himself was much more communally-oriented. The sins of an individual and the corporate sins of the community were not always distinguished. A person’s sense of self was constructed and informed and shaped in a communal context.
Identity for a Hebrew man or woman had much more to do with being a part of a chosen and called-out community. A chosen people, plural.
Even in other Psalms, when God is prayed to as shepherd, there’s a sense in which he’s understood as a shepherd of a whole people:
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
So it’s at least a little remarkable, in the larger context of Hebrew worshiping society, that David begins–the Lord is MY shepherd.
The idea of God as personal shepherd is consistent with Jesus’ interpretation of himself as shepherd. You remember the Christlike image of the shepherd who–even though he has 100 sheep–will stop and go find the one who goes missing.
So it really is okay, and probably even closest to the original intent of this Psalm, to put your own name in there as you read it.
Psalm 23 as Prayer of Defiance
Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading this Psalm through the lens of the news this week, but I’m beginning more and more to see Psalm 23 not only as an affirmation of trust and confidence in God, but also as a counter-circumstantial prayer of defiance. It’s a subversive prayer when you compare it to what you see around you.
Verse 4 says, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” David seems to just take it as a given that life contains dark and death-filled valleys.
I saw in a bookstore yesterday a little book called 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About. It’s a work of satire, mostly, though not all of it is. Here are a few of the things it listed:
Exaggerated vows of love
Abysses of regret
Tipping over backward in your chair
The misery of goldfish
Heel pain caused by flip-flops
But we don’t need a book to think of all the ways in which life is full of dark valleys.
You’ve been in a dark valley before. Maybe you’re in one now. It can be a valley of darkness and shadows that you’ve found yourself in due to no choice of your own: some hurt or frustration someone has caused you; prayers that continue to go unanswered in the way you’d like to see answered; illness and physical ailment; unexpected and sudden grief.
You could be in a valley of darkness and shadows that is more of your own making, too. Maybe your whole life doesn’t feel like a valley, but maybe you’re aware of your “shadow side” that you wouldn’t dare bring to church, that part or those parts of you that you don’t want anyone to see. Maybe you’ve looked inside and seen something in your heart that—it pains you to see—doesn’t please God.
Or, to see some “valleys of the shadow of death,” you could just pay attention to global events this week. 4 children in Gaza—cousins—playing at the beach and shot dead from the ocean. An Israeli ground invasion into the Gaza Strip. Another Malaysian Airline plane crash full of passengers, this one shot down by a ground to air missile as it was flying over Ukraine.
And if you really want to lose some faith in humanity, you probably have already heard that that airplane had something like 100 of the world’s top HIV/Aids researchers on their way to an international Aids conference.
So, yes, there are plenty of valleys of the shadow of death and darkness that we walk through.
And yet, even though—“even though I walk through through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” “Even though,” David says, in a hope-filled prayer of defiance.
There’s an old story of a young preacher who was preaching in a rural church in Louisiana during the depression. This church had just one lightbulb coming down from the ceiling that gave light to the whole sanctuary. As Pastor Taylor was preaching, the electricity went out. He was a newish preacher and didn’t know what to do in the now-dark sanctuary. But an elderly deacon in the church, from the back of the room, shouted, “Preach on, preacher! We can still see Jesus in the dark.”
“We can still see Jesus in the dark.”
For whatever reason, when I hear “shepherd,” there’s part of me that thinks of a humble, young boy (or girl) walking sheep through beautiful country fields on a quiet, sunny day. And that’s right. Leading your sheep to serenity is part and parcel of what it means to be a shepherd.
But there’s this fascinating passage of Scripture, Micah 5, which says:
When the Assyrian invades our land
and marches through our fortresses,
we will raise against him seven shepherds, even eight leaders of men.
Maybe it’s just me, but reading about a coming invasion by an Assyrian superpower, my first reaction is: What kind of a country would send their shepherds out to battle?
But Micah is drawing on a rich tradition in the Scripture—especially in the Old Testament—of using “shepherd” imagery to describe kings, to describe commanders, to describe strong and mighty leaders.
When Micah says “shepherd,” he is talking about a ruling king who goes to battle for his people.
David, as a ruler himself, surely had this aspect of shepherding in mind. The readers and prayers and singers of this Psalm surely saw not just a shepherd to comfort me, not just a host to welcome me, but God as a ruler to protect me. This ruler won’t do away with all of life’s dark valleys—not yet, anyway—but he will be with me while I walk through them.
The Lord is my shepherd, and his rod and his staff—weapons of protection in the hands of a skilled shepherd—fend off that which would attack us.
When Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd, we see his gentleness in his willingness to lay down his life for the sheep, and we see his ferocity, his power, his authority over all things when he says, “No one can snatch them out of my hand.”
Even the presence of enemies in verse 5 cannot keep this ruling shepherd from playing banquet host, setting out a feast for the ones he loves.
So good shepherds are not to be trifled with, because they protect their flock. They walk with them through darkness. The Good Shepherd is a ruling king, and he keeps our modern-day enemies—shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, the accusations of others, stress, hatred… he keeps our modern-day enemies at bay. Even though life is full of valleys of the shadow of death, tens of thousands of things to potentially be miserable about, Jesus the Good Shepherd is a ruling king who STILL is sovereign over all he has made, no matter how fouled up it gets.
“We can still see Jesus in the dark.”
So—when you’re riddled with doubt and self-loathing, or just questioning your worth? Say this Psalm.
When you hear about wars and rumors of wars, say this Psalm.
When your best friend gets sick, say this Psalm.
When someone in your family grieves you by their seeming lack of care for you, say this Psalm.
When you don’t know what the next year of your life holds, say this Psalm.
When you have to do the hard work of reconciling with someone you have hurt or that has hurt you, say this Psalm.
When you can’t pay your mortgage on time, say this Psalm.
When you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, say this Psalm.
When you get scared of the dark, say this Psalm.
As a holy act of defiance against the darkness,
as an affirmation of trust and confidence in Jesus,
when you come up on one of life’s dark valleys, get ready to walk through….and say:
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.
The above is adapted from the sermon I preached today. Scripture quotations are from the 1984 NIV. See my other sermons gathered here, including the first Psalm of Summer sermon here.
Some 12 years ago I wrote the following poem-prayer after reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and some of his other writing on the church. I found it again the other day so am posting it here:
Hasta que haya la paz, no descansaré. Hasta que las guerras cesen, no abandonaré la lucha. Hasta que la justicia reine, seguiré leyendo, predicando, y gritando. Hasta que haya una verdadera liberación humana, no dormiré. Que vengas, Jesucristo. Que venga tu voluntad y tu reino, como en el cielo, así también en la tierra.
This summer we’re going to delve more deeply into the Psalms. “The Psalms of Summer,” I’m calling the preaching series. (Or, as a pastor friend of mine called it, the Psalms of Psummer.)
We’ll find ourselves here in these poems and see our heart’s desires expressed in the Psalms. Some days we’ll walk out of church with new prayers to pray: prayers we’ve been longing to pray and have already been feeling, but maybe couldn’t put words to.
We’ll seek, too, to be shaped and formed by these prayers.
Psalm 1 as Preface, and Picking a Password
Psalm 1 is, as one early church theologian called it, the “foundation” of the house. It sets up the whole book of 150 Psalms. You could almost even think of it as a sort of “Psalm 0.”
The ones who are blessed, this Psalm says, the ones with the richest, most God-filled lives, the ones who flourish, are the ones who meditate on God’s word. Over and over.
Blessed are those… who delight in the law of the LORD and meditate on his law day and night.
I found myself this week being redirected to an article on NBC’s Today Website, because I had to click on the link that said, “How a password changed one man’s life for the better.”
Mauricio Estrella had just gone through a painful divorce and was depressed. He says:
One day I walk into the office, and my computer screen showed me the following message:
“Your password has expired. Click ‘Change password’ to change your password.”
His work required a change of password every 30 days. He writes:
I was furious that morning. A sizzling hot Tuesday, it was 9:40 a.m and I was late to work. I was still wearing my bike helmet and had forgotten to eat breakfast. I needed to get things done before a 10 a.m. meeting and changing passwords was going to be a huge waste of time.
As the input field with the pulsating cursor was waiting for me to type a password — something I’d use many times during every day — I remembered a tip I heard from my former boss.
And I decided: I’m gonna use a password to change my life.
He reasoned like this–he has to type in his password several times a day–when his screen saver came up or his lock screen kicked in when he was away from his desk for extended periods of time.
So, freshly wounded from the divorce, he set a password: “Forgive her.”
Except he had to have at least one capital letter, one lowercase letter, one symbol, and one number, so it was “Forgive@h3r.”
Every day for a month he wrote, “Forgive her.” And Estrella said:
That simple action changed the way I looked at my ex wife. That constant reminder that I should forgive her led me to accept the way things happened at the end of my marriage, and embrace a new way of dealing with the depression that I was drowning into.
A month later, his password expired, so his new password–reflecting a new mantra he wanted to take on–became: Quit@smoking4ever.
It was a great article–a little self-help-y for my tastes, and it is true that we find ourselves in way too many situations that we can’t just positive think our way out of. But Mauricio Estrella knew what the writer of Psalm 1 knew–what we meditate on has the power to transform us.
Two Ways
Here is one way of outlining Psalm 1:
What are the two ways? (Ps. 1:1-2)
What are they like? (Ps. 1:3-4)
What do they lead to? (Ps. 1:5-6)
This Psalm tells us, especially, that what we meditate on has the power to transform us.
What are the two ways? (Ps. 1:1-2)
Ps 1:1 Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but who delight in the law of the LORD and meditate on his law day and night.
Or, get this–I’d never read Psalm 1 in this translation until this week:
Happy the man
who did not walk by the counsel of the impious,
and in the way of sinners did not stand,
and on the seat of pestiferous people did not sit down.
(Stay away from the pestiferous ones!)
Walk… stand…sit. There’s a progression into wickedness here. At first you might be walking on by, just taking a look at–thinking about–going down a road you shouldn’t. If you slow down enough to stand there and look at the way of the wicked–that’s worse… when you stop to sit in the chair of those pestiferous people, well, then… you’re done for. Because what we meditate on has the power to transform us. And the ones that we spend time with also have the power to transform us, for better or for worse.
These are the two ways: the way of the wicked, the way of the righteous.
Righteous ones “delight in the law of the LORD and meditate on [it] day and night.”
Remove@clothingm1ldew?
Later Psalms will echo this. In Psalm 119, verse 97, it says, “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.” Then in verse 103, the Psalmist writes, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
I suspect that this idea of loving the law of God can sound a bit strange to us. We all see the value in laws and rules and regulations, sure, but to love somebody’s laws more than the summer season’s first ice cream?
We hear the word “law” and might think about some of the detailed instructions given in, say, Leviticus, regarding physical hygiene and ritual purity, such as Leviticus 14, which is about cleansing from infectious skin diseases and what to do when you notice mildew on your clothes.
So your new computer password becomes: Remove@clothingm1ldew.
Or we hear the word “law” and think of it as opposed to “grace.” They were living under “law”; we are living under “grace.”
So what’s the Psalmist talking about?
He’s talking about his equivalent to our Bible. The Torah–the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. This is “the Law”–it’s “God’s Word.” And not just the laws part of God’s law–but the revelation of God that it brings, the story that it tells of a compassionate God who is, in fact, slow to anger and eager to show compassion on all he has made.
In meditating on God’s law–God’s very words–the Psalmist is meditating on God: his guidance, instructions, blessings, love, character.
And I think Psalm 1 is self-referential, too–those who meditate on these Psalms will be blessed, will experience the favor of God.
What are they like? (Ps. 1:3-4)
3 [The righteous] are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.
4 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
Those who meditate on God’s word are rooted, strong, nourished, bearers of good and visible fruit to all who walk by them. The wicked–in this case those who ignore God’s truth and go their own way–they are the chaff that has fallen to the floor. The grain is kept and preserved, the chaff just blows away. No roots, no fruit, no nothing.
What do they lead to? (Ps. 1:5-6)
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will be destroyed.
Then in verses 5 and 6 there is what one interpreter calls a “parting of the ways.” God watches over them. What we meditate on has the power to transform us, so the righteous one now is a rooted and well-watered tree, bearing fruit like it should. She or he receives God’s blessing, God’s preservation.
The wicked one has been transformed by the bad company he keeps, so he just floats away with the next wind, on his way to judgment.
It’s God who does the planting and watering and blessing here, but it’s the righteous person who has done his or her part to meditate on God’s word. And that meditation has caused a transformation.
Scripture Memory
Over the last month or so I’ve gotten back into Scripture memory. I have these little cards I bring in my pocket with verses on them. The pocket is a great place for them because I might reach for my phone to check for messages, and I’ll feel the little packet of cards instead. This is a prompt for me to either pull a card out and learn a verse, or if I already know it, to try to say it and pray it.
There are many ways to meditate on God’s Word. We’re going to try one particular way this summer, and that is Scripture memory….
[AKJ note: Here we looked at some Scripture memory cards I made up for Psalm 1:1-2, as a way to put into practice what this Psalm preaches. Make your own, using this document, if you want!]
The above is adapted from the sermon I preached last Sunday. Scripture quotations are from the TNIV. See my other sermons gathered here.
These are good but difficult words from Mother Teresa. They were noted today on Plough, the Website where I mentioned finding the free Oscar Romero book. I’ve just subscribed to Plough Quarterly and am already enjoying the content of the site greatly.
Today I came across this arresting, powerful, and difficult quote from Mother Teresa:
God cannot fill what is full. He can fill only emptiness – deep poverty – and your “yes” [to Jesus] is the beginning of being or becoming empty. It is not how much we really “have” to give – but how empty we are – so that we can receive fully in our life and let him live his life in us. In you today, he wants to relive his complete submission to his father – allow him to do so. Take away your eyes from yourself and rejoice that you have nothing.
Many Greek Septuagint manuscripts do not contain them, but the Odes are a fascinating collection of texts appended to the end of the Greek Psalter in Codex Alexandrinus and a few other manuscripts.
The Odes compile some beautiful prayers from Scripture. A few of them are in the Book of Common Prayer’s Morning Prayer canticles.
Good information on the Odes is hard to come by, though. In part this is because they are generally not accorded the same status as, say, the Psalms. The NETS introduction to the Psalms, for instance, has:
One “book” not included in NETS, however, is Odes since it has dubious integrity as a literary unit, and, in any case, almost all of the individual Septuagint odes have already been included in their native setting in other books. The sole exception is Ode 12 in Rahlfs’ edition, the Prayer of Manasses, which for that reason has been separately appended to the Psalter.
I’ve just discovered, however, that David Lincicum has a nice rundown of the Odes, their numbering, and their contents. He also includes a bibliography for further reading. Check it out here.
*HT to a member of the Yahoo! LXX email group for the idea of the Odes as a sort of “little hymnal.”
Whether it’s another school shooting, a cancer diagnosis, an unjust imprisonment, violence perpetrated against the peaceful, or an unkind word that brings tears to the eyes of the one who received it… there’s a lot to lament in this world–too much.
A year-and-a-half ago I read a fantastic book called Psalms of Lament by Ann Weems (see more here). I continue to come back to her modern-day lament psalms from time to time. Of course, it’s hard to top the lament psalms in the biblical book of Psalms, so really Weems and David go together. I appreciate the freshness with which Weems approaches the important practice of lament.
Weems tragically lost her son just after his 21st birthday. It is out of that sense of loss and grieving that she writes many of her lament psalms. She says:
This book is not for everyone. It is for those who weep and for those who weep with those who weep. It is for those whose souls struggle with the dailiness of faithkeeping in the midst of life’s assaults and obscenities. This book is for those who are living with scalding tears running down their cheeks.
So if you are weeping right now, or weeping with someone who is weeping… or if you feel like maybe you should be weeping but can’t, or don’t know how… here is Weems’s Lament Psalm Thirty-two (posted with publisher’s permission), which can help to give shape and voice to a heartfelt prayer of lament:
O God, explain to me
the cruelty of your world!
Make sense of those
who make no sense!
Tell me why the innocent die,
and evil people live
to kill again!
Tell me why the faithful
are shunned,
and the self-righteous
point their fingers!
Tell me why the wounded
are wounded,
and sorrow falls
on the shoulder of sorrow!
Tell me why the abused
are abused,
and the victims
victimized!
Tell me why the rains
come to the drowning,
and aftershocks
follow earthquakes.
O God, is this any way
to run a world?
O Merciful One, let us rest
between tragedies!
Speak to us
for we are your people.
Speak to us of hope
for the hopeless
and love for the unloved
and homes for the homeless
and dignity for the dying
and respect for the disdained.
Speak to us, O God,
of the Resurrected One!
Speak to us of hope,
for in spite of
the tidal wave of tears,
we remember your story
of new life!
Tell the world again,
O God of creation!
Tell us that winter will fade,
and spring will wash us new,
and the world will green again,
and we will be new creations
in the garden of our God.
Free us from these tentacles
of sorrow,
and we will fall on our faces
and worship you,
O God of goodness,
O God of a new green world!
A little more than a month ago a 27-year-old woman, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, was sentenced to death by the Sudanese government for not recanting her Christian faith in favor of Islam. She has a just-under-two-year-old son and was eight months pregnant at the time of her arrest. (She has since given birth, in prison.)
Were the sentence to be carried out, she would have been a martyr in her death, but she is already even now a martyr in life.
Yesterday her appeal to have the sentence overturned was accepted by a higher court. She was released.
If you are inclined to join me, as I post any more about Meriam Yehya Ibrahim on Facebook and Twitter, I’ll use the hashtag #LetHerGoFree. See here.
I have my own qualifications and occasional reservations about so-called hashtag activism, but hashtag praying as activism seems a good way to go. Among all the other factors that led to Ibrahim’s being freed in the first place, I’m convinced that prayer played a major role. So let’s keep it up. And–dear God–please, let her go free!
Words on the Word 