the church geek

This is the second in a sermon series on “Faithful Questions.” This sermon addresses the topic of prayer and takes Psalm 42 and Luke 11:1-13 as its primary texts. It was to have been originally preached on Feb 17th, but was delayed a week due to cancellation of worship because of a winter storm.

Imagine if you will what it would be like to try to live the Bible as literally as possible for one whole year. I personally think it would be pretty challenging.

The good news is you don’t have to try it for yourself to find out what it would be like because one fellow has already done it. His name is A.J. Jacobs, and he’s a writer for Esquire magazine. He writes about his year in a new book called, “The Year of Living Biblically.”

There is a somewhat humorous scene from the book where Jacobs figures out the most commonly mentioned punishment in the Hebrew Bible is stoning. He also discovers this loophole: the bible doesn’t say what size the stones have to be.

Hoping to find someone to stone, Jacobs – who lives in NY City - heads out to Central Park dressed up in his biblical garb; a white robe, tassels, and a staff, and he also brings along a handful of small white pebbles.

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A photo actually taken on an excursion this last Friday. This is a reflection of trees and sky in a pond, hence the reference to Psalm 1.

More photos from that excursion are here.

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In honor of “Talk Like a Pirate Day” I post the Pirate Psalm for your enjoyment:

Pirate psalm

Aarg! The Lord is me Cap’n
And I ain’t wantin’ nuthin’.
He shivers me timbers,
And sails me through blistering barnacles.
He refreshes me rum
And guides me
To Spanish galleons
For his booty. Aarg!

Even though I walk the plank
Over shark-infested waters,
I ain’t afeared,
For my Cap’n is wi’ me.
Along with the bo’sun
And first mate. Aarg!

He gets ready the mainsail
And broadsides the enemy,
The deck o’erflows
Wi’ powder and blood.

Surely pillage and plunder
Will be my pirate life,
And I will dwell in
Davey Jones’ Locker
Forevermore. Aarg!

(c) 2007 John Stuart

(HT: Stushie via Presbyterian Bloggers)

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My friend Dave from seminary has a very thoughtful and moving sermon, really a prayer, given yesterday following the discovery that the teenage daughter of one of his parishioners had been murdered. Please read it and be praying for David, his church, and the family facing this tragedy.

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Over the years, I’ve fluctuated in the amount of time I’ve spent listening to Contemporary Christian Music.

At times there have been some artists I’ve loved a lot: In college I went through a Michael Card faze. In more recent years my favorite CCM artist was Rich Mullins, and I was deeply saddened by his tragic death a few years back.

Mostly I detest the format of Christian Radio, and I’ve been turned off by the “Positive Music for a Negative World” rhetoric which communicates to me “Christians shouldn’t really care too much about what happens in the world.”

I’ve not listened to much CCM over the past three or four years, partly because I had tired of music that didn’t take the pain in the world reality of life seriously enough. But today, I happened to turn on one of our local CCM radio stations and heard a wonderful song by Natalie Grant titled “Held.” The lyrics are gut wrenchingly honest about the struggle of life, and the chorus of the song says:

I wish I had heard this song before I did my sermon series on the Psalms. Her song is a perfect modern day example of a psalm of lament. Other songs I’ve heard in recent days from Third Day (Cry Out to Jesus) and Casting Crowns (Praise You in This Storm) indicate what I think is a positive turn to songs with deeper honesty before God about the hard stuff of life.

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“What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” As the Westminster Catechism suggests, glorifying God and enjoying Him forever ought to be the guiding principle that informs the whole of our life.

That is the concern of Psalm 145. Look for a moment at vs. 2. Almost word for word in concert with the Westminster Catechism it proclaims, “Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.”

Psalm 145 is a Psalm of praise. This Psalm is all about glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. Its heart is worship and its soul is praise of God.

Frederick Beuchner, one of my favorite writers on faith, takes complex concepts and makes them simple. About worship, Beuchner says:

To worship God means to serve God. Basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for God that God needs to have done – run errands for God, carry messages for God, fight on God’s side, feed God’s lambs, and so on.

The other way is to do things for God that you need to do – sing songs for God, create beautiful things for God, tell God what’s on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice in God and make a fool of yourself for God the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love.

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In the first chapter of his recent book “Free of Charge” Miroslav Volf tackles two common misconceptions held about God.

The first misconception sees God as a Negotiator. This view sees God as infinitely demanding while at the same time hoping that God might be willing to cut a deal. Those who see God as a negotiator, promise to do things for God if God will grant them what they wish for or what they need. Others who hold this view do things for God hoping to earn God’s favor and as a result to get something in return.

The second misconception sees God as Santa Claus. In this view, God is the great gift giver in the sky who gives gifts freely and demands nothing in return. God gives good gifts to us simply because as in the words of the famous Saturday Night Life character, Stuart Smalley, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

The problem with this view is that we forget that while God does indeed give us every good and perfect gift, there are certain demands and expectations that God has of us.

When Jesus was asked to summarize what it is that God asks of us, he started out with the first and greatest commandment “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” And finished with the second commandment which was like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

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I’m finally back from vacation; well actually I’ve been back for a couple of days already but this is the first time I’m getting to think about doing an actual blog entry. Maybe someday I’ll even get a chance to continue work on the re-design/re-development of the site.

Here’s a question that’s been bugging me for years, which has come to the forefront this week as I’m studying Psalm 32 for my next installment in my sermon series “Psalms Everyone Should Know and Why.”

The question is: If we say that forgiveness from God comes solely through the work of Christ on the cross, why then do we have Psalms like 32 and 51, which talk about confession and forgiveness on such a deep and personal level; seeking God for and rejoicing in the joy of forgiveness?

Psalm 51, attributed to David, is the request of a sinner to personally experience the joy of being forgiven by God. Exodus 34 and other texts echo the character of God towards forgiveness “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

We tend to think of forgiveness as solely the business of the New Testament, so the answer one often hears is that these texts in the Old Testament anticipate the work of Jesus which will later come on the cross (in a way that can seem to communicate that Moses and David somehow knew that Jesus was coming some day….)

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Our denomination like other mainline denominations is operating in crisis mode. Last year’s membership loss in the PC (USA) was close to 40,000 people. A few months ago our national offices in Louisville were downsized with 75 employees losing their jobs.

Part of the problem is that conservatives and liberals have been wrangling for control for decades. We’ve been fighting over many issues including homosexuality and abortion. The fighting has tired us out and as a church we’ve lost focus on our mission.

On the local level, things are not much better; once thriving churches struggle to keep their doors open. Biblical literacy among members is at an all time low. Many are not sure what it means to be Christian, much less a Presbyterian.

In their struggle to survive, churches have focused inward. They have forgotten about reaching out with the gospel in mission and evangelism. Our own church here has not been immune to some of these issues and concerns.

Psalm 80 is a Psalm of Lament that gives voice to the lament of a community. It gives expression to the grief of the community of God’s people. In the midst of crisis comes its cry repeated three times: “Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.”

In its time, this psalm gave expression to the grief and lament of the nation of Israel. As with many of the Psalms, we don’t know the exact historical situation surrounding this one. But many scholars think it was written after Israel’s northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians.

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The book “Night” by Elie Weisel is an autobiographical novel, depicting some of the horrors experienced by Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust. One story in the book is of two men and a young child hung at the gallows by the SS.

As Weisel tells it, the only thing that made the child guilty was being the servant of a man involved in a plot to blow up an electric power station. Both the man and the child refuse to identify others involved in the plot. The man is sent away and the child is condemned to death.

On the day the three were hung, the 2 men died quickly, but because the boy weighed so lightly, he struggled for his life for over a half-hour. The other prisoners were forced by the SS to march past the three hanging victims. Weisel writes:

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
“Where is God now?”
And I heard a voice within me answer him:
“Where is he? Here he is – He is hanging on this gallows…”

With this story, Weisel identifies deeply with the cry of Psalm 22. The horror of the holocaust certainly plums the depths of the psalmist’s cry.

Psalm 22 is an important psalm because it helps us identify with the absolute worst of human experience. It and other psalms like it are called Psalms of lament. The most basic definition for the word lament comes from The Compact Oxford English Dictionary which defines lament as “a passionate expression of grief.”

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Today, we continue our trek through the psalms in our summer sermon series with a stop at Psalm 84. This psalm is a story of coming home. It describes the beauty and joy of arriving at one’s true home, but it is also a meditation on the journey one takes when traveling home.

This psalm is one of a handful classified as a Song of Zion. Pilgrims probably sang it together as they made their way up to worship God at the temple in Jerusalem. The song captures the joy of those making their pilgrimage to the temple expecting to meet the presence of God.

A pilgrimage begins with a desire or longing.
In verse 1 & 2, the psalmist longs to see and to be in the temple in Jerusalem. Such a longing may have been created by a past experience with God’s presence in the temple, which she desires to experience again. Or perhaps it was created by hearing the experience of others who had encountered God’s presence in the temple.

The Hebrew’s believed that God’s presence dwelt among them in the temple at Jerusalem. The temple was the place where God hung out with his people. It was where God’s presence was made known.

But as Christians, we don’t as closely associate our buildings as sacred places where God’s presence dwells. Instead, we believe that God in Jesus Christ came to dwell among us and the Holy Spirit now dwells within us so we can personally experience God’s presence.

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In May 1934, a group of German church leaders and theologians gathered in Barmen, Germany because their beloved churches were in crisis. Over a year earlier, Hitler had taken total control of Germany placing full control of the German government in the hands of the Nazis.

To gain power, Hitler exploited the German nationalism which had not dampened following the country’s defeat in World War I and its humiliation on the international stage. The Treaty of Versailles which required payment of war reparations far beyond what Germany could ever afford fanned the flames of German nationalism into a roaring fire.

In German churches, the predominate theology of the time was optimistic about the progress of history and the benefits that European culture was bringing to the world. It also easily bought into the claims of German Nationalism. Wanting to support Hitler, many influential church leaders joined “The Faith Movement of German Christians.”

These “German Christians” aligned themselves with the Nazi Party and worked to gain strategic positions to take over their denominations. They hoped to align all German protestant churches with the nationalistic ideals of the Nazis.

There were some churches that resisted, though they were few. Led by theologian Karl Barth and assisted by Deitrich Bonhoeffer, church leaders against the “German Christians” met in Barmen Germany in May of 1934 to craft the “Theological Declaration of Barmen.”

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Most of us at one time or another, have gazed up into the crystal clear night sky, looked upon the million of stars, and have had the experience the Psalmist poetically captures in these words:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

If the Psalmist who wrote those words several thousands of years ago felt tiny when looking up at the night sky, imagine how much more insignificant he’d feel if he lived today.

Since those words were written so many thousands of years ago, science has exponentially expanded our understanding of the size of the universe beyond anything the psalmist could have ever imagined.

Now, NASA’s Voyager after 25 plus years of travel sends back data and images from the very edge of our solar system. And, over 3 million home computer users in the SETI program analyze radio telescope data in an attempt to discover if extraterrestrial life is somewhere out there.

Within the vastness of the universe that continues to expand second by second, how can we not feel lost? In the swarm of a planet populated by countless billions upon billions of people, how can we not feel totally insignificant?

Martin Marty, Professor of Religion at the Univ. of go, observes that there are four basic questions for those of us who live in the late modern world:

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* Do you ever find that when you need them the most, you do not have the words to pray?

* Do you ever have feelings or emotions that you think God finds unacceptable?

* Have you ever been in such grief, anguish, or personal turmoil that you’ve wondered where is God?

* Have you ever wondered at the marvel and mystery of life and questioned its purpose?

* Has your heart ever soared in praise and thanksgiving to God?

* Have you ever been disgusted that justice goes un-served and that wickedness is rewarded?

If you identified with any of those concerns then my sermon series “Psalms Everyone Should Know and Why” is for you! And if you didn’t then maybe we’d better get a doctor over to see if you have a heartbeat.

For thousands of years, people with these and other thoughts, feelings, and attitudes have turned to the pages of the Psalms for no other reason than that they are about the stuff of life.

Within the pages of the Psalms, people have found comfort and solace; wisdom and instruction. They’ve found answers to some of life’s toughest questions and in the times when they’ve discovered that there are no answers they’ve found it’s okay to vent their frustration.

They’ve also found words to express what’s going on in their heart of hearts and within their deepest emotions. And perhaps more importantly, they’ve found that God is big enough to handle anything, without exception, that can be thrown at God.

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Well here’s my list of potential Psalms for my sermon series “Psalms Everyone Should Know and Why.” What do you think?

Psalm 1 - (I would certainly include this one on any list, but I already preached on it a few weeks ago so it disqualifies for this series.)

Psalm 2 - A Royal Psalm declaring the sovereignty of God while yet acknowledging the reality of opposition to God’s reign. “Why do the nations conspire and plot in vain?” Quoted 3 times in the NT.

Psalm 8 - A Song of Praise. Verse 4 says it all “what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” Also quoted 3 times in the NT.

Psalm 22 - A Psalm of Lament - The psalm presents both complaint and trust. It was quoted by Jesus: “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” and figures predominately in the Passion story.

Psalm 32 - Psalm of Thanksgiving/Wisdom Psalm declaring the blessedness of those whose sin is forgiven. “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” It’s a hard choice but this one wins out over David’s Psalm 51.

Psalm 80 - A Communal Lament. I include this one because I need to wrestle with my uncertainty about how such communal laments apply to us (do they apply to us nationally, or as a church, or in some other way?)

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