The Bruised Faith of the Afflicted: An Exegesis of Psalm 88

I know, I know.  You've always wondered what an exegesis paper actually looks like.  Have no fear!  This blog post is your window into the world of exegesis.  Here's a paper I just finished on Psalm 88.

Translation Notes[1]

A song. A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.

¹ O LORD, God of my salvation, at day I cry out, in the night I cry out[2] before you. 

² May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.

³ For my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave.

⁴ I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a young man[3] without strength.

⁵ I am forsaken among the dead,[4] like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.

⁶ You have put me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in the depths.[5]

⁷ Your wrath lies upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah

⁸ You have taken from me my friends and have made me an object of loathing[6] to them.  I am confined and cannot escape; ⁹ my eye wastes away from affliction.[7]

I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you.

¹⁰ Do you work wonders for the dead?[8] Do the ghosts[9] rise up and praise you? Selah

¹¹ Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?

¹² Is your wonder made known in darkness,[10] or your righteousness in the land of oblivion?

¹³ But I cry to you for help, O LORD, in the morning my prayer comes before you.

¹⁴ Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?

¹⁵ From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death[11]; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.

¹⁶ Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.

¹⁷ All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.

¹⁸ You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; my friends are [in] a dark place.[12]

______________________________________________________________________________

Genre

Psalm 88 has the characteristics of a lament psalm.  The contents of lament psalms typically convey confusion, anger, isolation, and apprehension, and Futato notes they are designed to answer the three questions of who, what, and why: “Who is there to hear the psalmist pray,” “Why [is the psalmist] experiencing trouble,” and “What does the psalmist want God to do?”[13]  Of particular note in this psalm is its deeply personal nature–it never expands to the first person plural; it always uses the first person singular.  Also of interest is the dearth of answers to the “what” question in this psalm.

Structure

-          Title–Much of the significance of these titles are ambiguous.  The instruction “For the director” seems to indicate that this was performed musically in a corporate setting at some point in Israel’s history.  Heman was one of the three temple musicians appointed by David in 1 Chron. 6:31-47, which would further support a musical performance of this psalm.  There also is a wise man named Heman listed in 1 Kings 4:31 who some list as a candidate for this designation.[14]  Korah rebelled against Moses in Numbers 16, which resulted in him and much of his family being destroyed by YHWH, though his “line […] did not die out” (Num. 26:11, NIV).  The despairing nature of this psalm seems consonant with the grief that would be present in Korah’s descendants concerning the divine wrath that befell the family, so one can see the logic behind what may have been an early Jewish interpretation of the psalm.  One can speculate over the meaning of the titles, but their utility for interpretation is not apparent.

-          Vv. 1-2–These opening verses answer the “who” question in Futato’s scheme.  This is a personal summons to God and contains one of the few positive affirmations in this psalm–YHWH is the “God of my salvation.”  While the psalmist is in dire straits, he still believes that voicing his lament to YHWH is of some value, so there is an implicit trust in God’s goodness and availability.  Verse 2 is the only explicit petition in the psalm (13a may serve as an implicit one), a request that God would simply listen.

-          Vv. 3-5–This section begins the lament proper.  The psalmist is brimming with grief and existential angst; his very life seems to be sliding away.  He bewails death’s closeness, his own weakness, and his forsakenness in relation to God and others.  This psalm is referring to someone who is afflicted with a severe malady.  “The individual statements let us recognize a very sick person who is near death. […] Very likely the petitioner is afflicted with a serious illness from his youth.  It is possible that he lives outside the gate as an outcast.”[15]  Many people in the writer’s context would have seen “a direct connection between sin and sickness and [would have understood] the sickness as the effect of God’s wrath.”[16]   People external to the diseased lamenter consider his fate sealed; he has been resigned to death in their minds and abandoned.

-          Vv. 6-9a–The lamenter starts directly attributing his sufferings to God’s action.  YWHH has put him in the pit.  YHWH has placed his overwhelming wrath on him.  YHWH has taken away friends and made the afflicted one repulsive to them.  The writer has a pervasive sense of YHWH’s sovereign activity behind these sufferings.  With his own weakness, his friends’ consigning him to death, and YHWH’s wrath, he feels trapped in utter despair with no source of help.  There is some uncertainty over whether the reference to imprisonment is metaphorical or literal; a literal use would fit well against an exilic backdrop.  Such direct implications of YHWH with disaster and disease can be theologically problematic for NT Christians unless the psalmist is being punished for sin.  He makes no Job-like plea of innocence; rather, he seems to focus on the magnitude of his suffering, perhaps to elucidate pity from his listener, YHWH.  Jesus repudiates the notion of sickness always being caused by sin (John 9:1-3).  God is not always the cause of affliction; sometimes it results from people being rebellious (1 Cor. 11:27-32), sometimes it comes from evil spiritual forces (Mark 9:17-27; Luke 13:10-13), and sometimes we simply do not know why affliction comes (Job).

-          Vv. 9b-12–The petitioning of verse 9b carries the assumption that God can make things better.  The lamenter is bargaining with God for his life and well-being, and there seems to be an implicit vow of praise at work here.  With life and health he can praise YHWH and declare his love and faithfulness, but as a dead man, no such things will occur.  The tacit idea about Sheol is that it is “outside the world of the living where the LORD’s works of salvation occur.  The dead are not remembered by the LORD; they are separated from his power.  The answer to the bitter questions in verses 10-12 is no.”[17]  The writer is unaware of God’s power over Sheol, or at least chooses not to have it in mind (Psalm 139:8).  Calvin notes how other OT authors have recognized God’s mastery over death and yet defends the psalmist’s incomplete theology, writing that when we are in severe sickness and sorrow, our minds do not always “pierce to the consideration of the secret providence of God,” so we may allow “unadvised words to escape from [our] lips.”[18]

-          Vv. 13-18–Verse 13 reveals why the psalmist cries out to YHWH–he is crying out for help.  This is why he petitions YHWH to listen in v. 2 and is perplexed in verse 14; there is the expectation of God’s aid.  Verse 15 reveals that the illness has been chronic and severe since youth; this has been a protracted affair.  The lamenter interprets his sickness as God’s anger constantly engulfing him and stealing away his vibrancy.  He leaves us in confusion, pain, and isolation.  The final colon is perplexing, but the parallelism of Hebrew poetry and the prevalent use of a bicola format in this psalm would suggest that the friends are “in a dark place,” which is a rephrasing of God taking away his companions in the previous colon.

Religious Affections and Theology

Several commentators have remarked that this is the darkest psalm in the whole psalter.  Though hard to detect upon first reading, the writer has some positive views of God.  God is the “God of my salvation” (v. 1), a God with whom it is good to speak (vv. 2, 9b, 13).  God is able to work wonders in this life (v. 10); his love, faithfulness, and righteousness are things that can be made known (vv. 11-12).  The perplexity at affliction (v. 14) betrays an anticipation of God’s goodness to be manifested in the life of the psalmist.  Yet these beneficent affirmations and expectations never seem to come to experiential fruition for the writer.  In spite of his hopes, he is constantly haunted by pain, exclusion, and death’s slow crawl toward him.  There is no happy ending or optimistic recalling of YHWH’s faithfulness, no skipping off to hope.  This psalm compels us to deal with the ugly reality of undesired suffering and isolation, of being abandoned by others and feeling abandoned by God.  We are forced to come face to face with our mortality and weakness, realizing that we have nothing apart from the sheer grace of God.  The profound loneliness and misery here reminds us that it is fitting to express our grief and our frustrations with God; we do not have to run from these or pretend that everything is okay.  In fact, we are given a model of how to proceed in grieving as we enter into very dark times.

The psalmist displays a dogged persistence.  Regardless of years of affliction and his prayers not being answered the way he would like, he still comes to God in prayer day and night, morning by morning, the pathos of his bruised faith cutting straight to the heart.  He is a strange coalescence, in a “state in which Hope despairs, and yet Despair hopes at the same time.”[19]  The Holy Spirit has placed this psalm on our lips for times when we are in the midst of terrible affliction ourselves, that  “our distresses, however grievous, may not overwhelm us with despair; or if we should at times be ready to faint through weariness, care, grief, sorrow, or fear, that we may not on that account despond.”[20]  We, too, can persevere in prayer and not lose hope when we are hard pressed (Luke 18:1).

Christians have an advantage over the psalm-writer: we know that God has dominion even over the realm of the dead.  “There is suffering and death in the Old Testament, but it is only in the New that we see what suffering and death really means, as it becomes the work of God Himself, as God gives himself to this most dreadful of all foreign spheres.”[21]  Through Christ’s death and resurrection, God has indeed “worked wonders for the dead” and “declared his love from the grave” (vv. 10-12).  We do not have to fear death.  In fact, we can anticipate it, for then we get to be with our Lord Jesus (Phil. 1:23a).  The Christ who took our sins and afflictions upon himself even to death (Isa. 53:4-12) shows that suffering is not pointless, that it can be redemptive.  Indeed, those who seek to follow Christ will go through suffering and “fill up in [our] flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions,” but it is for the positive purpose of building the church (Col. 1:24, NIV).  Actually, Christ so closely identifies with his people that our present afflictions become his own (Mat. 25:31-46; Acts 9:5).  In the darkness of our own distress and unanswered prayers, we can know that we are held by this Christ who suffers with us, the Christ who himself bore our afflictions, the Christ who has gone before us into death, showing us that God’s love can be declared even beyond the grave through his triumphant resurrection.

Bibliography

Calvin, John. Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Volume III. Translated by James Anderson.

Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1949.

Futato, Mark. Interpreting the Psalms: An Exegetical Handbook. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel

Publications, 2007.

__________. The Book of Psalms. Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Volume 7. Carol Stream,

IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2009.

Kraus, Hans-Joachim. Psalms 60-150: A Commentary. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress,

1989.

Mays, James L. Psalms. Interpretation. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994.

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[1] I use the NIV here, making footnoted adjustments where I think the text could be rendered better.

[2] I choose to see verb gapping at work here rather than a null copula withיוֹם־צָעַ֖קְתִּי בַלַּ֣יְלָה נֶגְדֶּֽךָ , since the focus of the text appears to be on the cry.

[3] According to Hol1409, גֶּ֫בֶר

[4]  בַּמֵּתִ֗ים חָ֫פְשִׁ֥י is vexing; I follow closest with the NASB and NRSV.  Calvin goes with the literal “I am free among the dead.”

[5] Following the New American Standard version.

[6] Following the NASB.  תוֹעֵב֣וֹת  is a noun, not an adjective.

[7] See Hol1691 for דָאֲבָ֗ה  and Hol6418 for עֹ֥נִי .

[8] Following NRSV, ESV, and the sense of the NASB.

[9] Following Hol8013 for רְפָאִים

[10] Following NASB with the Nifal הֲיִוָּדַ֣ע, and פִּלְאֶ֑ךָ  is singular.

[11] The Hebrew is mystifying here, so I follow with many of the English translations.

[12] The Hebrew is problematic; with מְֽיֻדָּעַ֥י מַחְשָֽׁךְ , there are no prepositions, but the principle of parallelism in Hebrew poetry would suggest the NRSV’s translation so that both cola refer to friends being taken away and distant.

[13] Mark Futato, Interpreting the Psalms: An Exegetical Handbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2007), 150-155.

[14] Calvin argues for this in John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms Volume III (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1949), 406.

[15] Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 192.

[16] James L. Mays, Psalms, Interpretation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 163.

[17] Ibid., 283.

[18] John Calvin, Commentary Upon the Book of Psalms, Volume III, 410-411.

[19] The author is quoting Martin Luther.  Mark Futato, The Book of Psalms, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Volume 7 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2009), 286.

[20] Calvin, Commentary Upon the Psalms, Volume III, 407.

[21] Kraus citing Karl Barth, Psalms 60-150, 195.

Meditation on the Cross

Tintoretto's 1568 Crucifixion Scene

Meditation on the Cross

On the cross

Bleeding and mocked

All hope seems lost

Dashed against the rocks

You who walked on water,

And restored life to the dead,

Will You come down from such slaughter

And shake shame from your head?

Exposed like a Lamb

The wolves play with their prey

We hold our heads in our hands

Night steals away the day

You who healed the afflicted

And the unclean made pure

Why hang You now rejected?

Can You Yourself cure?

Show us a god who doesn’t suffer

A god who doesn’t let us fall apart

One who never challenges our thinking

Lives a million miles from the heart

God is in the yearning

In the ache and wondering why

In mundane 24-hour cycles, turning

The world, the pages, life.

Building Community God's Way

Isaiah 58:9b-14 (NIV)

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
    with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
    and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you always;
    he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
    and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
    like a spring whose waters never fail.
12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
    and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
    Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

13 “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
    and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
    and the Lord’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
    and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
14 then you will find your joy in the Lord,
    and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
    and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Building Community God’s Way

Back in the late 1800s, several Christian women in America started to become more active outside of the home “due to the invention of labor saving devices” like washing machines and canned foods.[1]  Many women became more active in their churches through assisting the poor and sick, bringing kids to Sunday school, and witnessing and ministering to people who weren’t Christians.  A lot of untapped potential was present in middle class women who no longer spent so much time doing housework, so much so that women started to organize to influence society more effectively.  At the time, women taking leadership roles, both in church and in American society, was frowned upon.  The greatest vehicle that expanded women’s voice into the public sphere was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.  This group saw “drunkenness, alcoholism, saloons, and the liquor industry as the determinate factors in crime, abuse, poverty, unemployment, and corruption.”[2]  While I don’t hold to the same commitments concerning temperance, I do admire the WCTU’s ability to analyze and courageously address a problem for positive change. Methodism had a strong tradition of temperance at the time, so naturally many Methodist women were on board with the WCTU paradigm.  One of those women was Frances Willard.

Willard was elected executive secretary of the WCTU in 1874 and later president in 1879, a position she held for 19 years until she died in 1898[3].  She spoke and travelled tirelessly for her cause, espousing a vision for a transformed society and a transformed church.  Willard’s theology and vision starts with liberation of the human heart by our becoming born again through trust in Christ and being filled with the Holy Spirit.  From there, God’s transforming power spreads outward, touching the home, society, church, and government.  Willard pushed for egalitarian marriages, for women to have lay representation in the Methodist Episcopal Church, for a ban of the dangerous substances of alcohol and nicotine, and for women’s right to vote in American government.

Under the leadership of Frances Willard and other like-minded women, the WCTU became an outlet for women to grow in their Christian journey, find their voice when the culture didn’t think they should have one, advance intellectually, exercise leadership, and work for positive change in society.  Willard’s causes carried on beyond her lifetime, and though she didn’t live to see it, women eventually did obtain the right to vote in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1900, sending the first lay women delegates to general conference in 1904.  The eighteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting the sale of alcohol was ratified on January 16^th, 1919, and the nineteenth amendment granting women the right to vote was ratified on August 18^th, 1920.  For Willard, it all began with a personal life transformed by Jesus Christ and it spread outward from that life-giving relationship.

I think Willard serves as a good counterexample to how Israel is described by our Isaiah text this morning.  The people being addressed in the text are very religious, but also very unethical.  They were trying to love God in their rituals, but completely disregarded their neighbors.  Their faith bolstered personal aggrandizement, but did not have a positive impact on those around them.

Isaiah 58 is a Hebrew poem written to an Israel in exile, and it addresses the nature of true fasting and true religion.[4]  There is no universally agreed upon theory for the composition of Isaiah, but most OT scholars today hold that there are several traditions that make up what we have in Isaiah that were compiled by a later editor.  Chapters 1-39 are thought to compose the first book, which was written to a disobedient Israel and often foretells of coming disaster, with chapter 39 containing the last reference to Isaiah son of Amoz.[5]  A drastic shift occurs at chapter 40, and the author assumes that the exile has already happened.  Chapters 40-66 are thought to compose the second book, with traditions coming from the times of Israel’s exile from and eventual return to Jerusalem.  The setting for our text seems to imply a lot of suffering and oppression, which makes it seem likely that this was written for Israel while they were in exile in Babylon.

Isaiah 58 reveals a big hypocrisy of which many of the people of Israel are guilty.  And these aren’t ignorant unbelievers that we’re talking about.  They don’t even appear to be lukewarm in their spirituality toward God.  These are people who pursue God diligently and are even fasting so that God might draw near.  People who fast aren’t slackers when it comes to religiosity; in fact, they often are some of the most zealous people.  But their zeal is misguided, for they have a misunderstanding of how their relationship with God works.  They believe in magic rather than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

With magic, you say a certain incantation, do the right rituals, and boom, God does what you want.  You see, magic is about getting the formula right.  That is why paganism had such a strong appeal to Israel and why it still has a strong appeal today throughout the world; we Christians even slip into that sort of mindset ourselves even though we know the true God!  We want to manipulate God into doing something for us that he otherwise would not do.  The God of Christianity has always been about relationship, not magic.  We don’t manipulate him, but rather we surrender to his love and grace and come under his rule and authority.[6]  It’s out of this relationship and out of a desire to see his will done on earth that we pray and ask God to move in power.  The fact that some of our prayers don’t get answered is a testimony that we’re dealing with a sovereign God, not magic.  The recipients of this prophetic critique have not grasped this truth, however.  Though they seek God, they seek him on their own terms, not on God’s terms.  They have a gap between their actual conduct and what they say they believe in worship.[7] 

Isaiah 58:3-4 reveals their main mistake: they did not let their faith in God translate over into their relationships with others.  They viewed God as a god of goodness and blessing, but not as a God that has expectations for their conduct.  Specifically, their sin has to do with economics and how they interacted with each other.  They are oppressing their workers as well as arguing and fighting with each other.  It doesn’t seem too hard for me to imagine how they got there.

Just think: the people of Israel were forced to leave their homeland and are living somewhere completely new, losing their sense of place and questioning their identity as a people.  They are staying with a people who killed Israelite soldiers and destroyed the temple in which they worshiped Yahweh. They have been forced to integrate into a Babylonian system with people who speak with a foreign tongue and worship other gods.  After such a disorienting catastrophe, they may feel justified in cutting a few corners and treating others like dirt so that they can get ahead and become upwardly mobile in this new land.  They probably are angry with each other and have a few theories as to why they are currently in exile, blaming each other and getting in shouting matches and fights over their identity, the causes of their present state, and the direction of their future.  The ones that still believe in God realize that they have sinned against him, so they are very zealous in their religiosity.

Sometimes things fall apart for us, too.  All of us have found ourselves in hard times and tough situations.  Maybe you brought disaster upon yourself by the choices you made, maybe you didn’t.  The question is: are you going to cheat and exploit and fight your way into better days, or are you going to follow God and love and respect others even when you’re hurting and things don’t make sense?  Are you going to try to justify hurting others and cutting corners because of your pain?  Are you going to blame and blow up on others for the mess that you’re in, or are you going to work toward meeting needs and providing for those who are suffering?

Our Scripture this morning tells us to put away the yoke of oppression, stop pointing fingers, and cease speaking evil.  It calls us to spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry and to meet the needs of the oppressed.  The text in 58:10-12 holds a promise that God will guide, sustain, and provide for the needs of those who do these things.  It holds out a promise to an exiled Israel that they could be the people to rebuild the old ruins and raise up ancient foundations.  They could repair the torn walls and make a devastated community a place to live again.  It is a promise from God that Israel can return and rebuild Jerusalem, the most important city of their heritage, or at least build a sense of community where they are that is comparable to their glory days back in Jerusalem.  “The community addressed will have the energy, fortitude, and resources that arise from genuine neighborly investment in the community.  The community, as a consequence, will be renamed and reidentified as ‘repairer, restorer,’ the one who makes a new, viable community possible.”[8] 

This promise holds true for us today, too.  So who are the oppressed around us, those who are bound up by heavy yokes and exploited by others that they might gain?  I think undocumented workers definitely fit into this category, and would urge you to pay and treat them fairly if you employ any of them.  So often they are paid under the table, have no health insurance, are separated from their families, and are at risk of being deported and losing so much.  And Alabama’s current policy on immigration with HB 56 is one of the cruelest and most unforgiving in the nation; it should be done away with[9].  Maybe you know of someone with a mental illness who is being taken advantage of, or there’s a person who is surrounded by negative influences and needs encouragement, or someone who just needs an opportunity.  Maybe there’s folks we could stop enabling and help them take responsibility for their life.  I’d encourage us to be a part of breaking the chains of oppression and poverty by helping people become self-sustaining and fruitful.

But we’re not to throw our spirituality out of the window.  The call is not to lose our intimate connection with God and our acts of personal devotion while we do this good work, but to have both works of justice and time spent in intimacy with God.  Our passage closes with a call to observe the Sabbath. 

Sabbath is the alternative to a restless, aggressive, unbridled acquisitiveness that exploits neighbor for self-gain.  The ancient command provided rest for the members of the community and for all the household of the members, including workers (Deut. 5:12-15).  All will rest and enjoy the abundance of creation (Exod. 20:8-11).  Sabbath is a cessation of feverish anxiety and control.[10] 

Taking Sabbath and resting is one of the ultimate acts of trust in God, because in it we acknowledge that we are not ultimately in control, that the world and life goes on well enough without us.  It reminds us that God is our peace, that we don’t have to frantically strive to obtain it, but simply abide in God.

So the challenge for us this morning is to have eyes to see where others are kept down with no hope of having a thriving quality of life, where others are exploited and kept poor so that others might be a bit richer.  We are to stop taking advantage of the weak.  We are to work for a new way, a way that genuinely honors everyone and seeks their wholeness, financially, spiritually, and socially.  We are to stop blaming others and using whatever tough situation we’re in to justify sinful exploitation and backbiting and we’re to start working toward better days in God’s way.  We are to spend time in intimacy with God, resting in Christ our Sabbath.  Once our religion combines both acts of devotion with a holy life committed to justice and compassion, then God will take notice of our fast.  Then God will come near and will guide us.  He will sustain us and take care of us for all of our days, raising up beloved communities all over Randolph County and elsewhere.  He can make us people who develop communities, who build relationships, who make a locality a place to call home, a place where people know each other and want the best for each other.

I confess to you that I don’t have it all together when it comes to this.  That’s why the prophets are hard to preach.  But I want to try.  I want to be faithful by growing more deeply in my relationship with God and doing something that matters and furthers his purposes in our world.  We can be people of faith like that old Methodist Frances Willard, who realized that following Jesus isn’t purely individual spirituality, nor is it purely being a force for changing others and society, but it is forever both hand in hand.  Jesus, who according to Luke’s Gospel quoted from the book of Isaiah when he started his ministry, wouldn’t have it any other way.  After all, he was anointed to preach good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, release for the oppressed, and the time of God’s liberating favor.  We, the church, are called to continue in this mission of Christ.  Will you join in?

---

[1] Russell Richey, Kenneth Rowe, & Jean Schmidt, American Methodism: A Compact History (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2012), 113.

[2] Ibid., 116.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah Vol. 2 Chapters 40-66, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 186.

[5] Gene Tucker, Isaiah 1-39, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VI (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2001), 30.

[6] John Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40-66, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 497.

[7] Brueggemann, 186.

[8] Brueggemann, 192.

[9] Read what groups like Southern Poverty Law Center and Alabama Arise have to say about HB 56.

[10] Brueggemann, 193.

Professional Spirituality (Or Why God is Not Your Job)

Whoever this pastor is, he looks happy and professional.

(I'm indebted to my former counseling professor, Dr. Anthony Headley, for much of what follows.)

"Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young.  Instead, set an example for the believers through your speech, behavior, love, faith, and by being sexually pure.  Until I arrive, pay attention to public reading, preaching, and teaching.  Don't neglect the spiritual gift in you that was given through prophecy when the elders laid hands on you.  Practice these things, and live by them so that your progress will be visible to all.  Focus on working on your own development and on what you teach.  If you do this, you will save yourself and those who hear you."  (1 Tim. 4:12-16, CEB)

Sometimes it becomes very easy to think of God as my job.  My spirituality gets molded around preaching and teaching, so much so that when a reprieve from those duties come, I can slide into spiritual entropy and rebellion in an attempt to get some “space” between me and my “work.”  It can be very revealing on how I have come to view God when I go through a period of rest and all those responsibilities are held at bay for a bit.  Sometimes I find that I have been keeping a professional spirituality in order to fulfill my responsibilities as a Christian leader while neglecting my personal, just-between-me-and-God time.  I'm pretty sure everyone in Christian leadership bumps up against this at some point or another.

God is not our job; He’s our Father.  That means there is more depth to our relationship than Him simply helping us fulfill a public role.  He does that, and we shouldn't neglect our responsibility of being faithful members in the Church- -that's necessary.  But a relationship with a parent is meant to be one of love, joy, growth, receptivity, humility, and permanence.  That does not change whether we are floundering in a maelstrom of responsibility or peacefully reposing from the demands of life.  God is concerned about you and I just as much as he is concerned about those we serve.  He wants the best for us, which doesn't always look like we think it should.  

I know a lot of Christians who want to serve and help others for Jesus.  It's harder to find those who are intentionally working on growing themselves in Christ as Paul instructs Timothy in the above passage.  And strangely, it's often the ones who are growing themselves whom God uses to bear lasting fruit in others.  Our personal growth and the growth of those we serve are intricately connected; the two are mutually additive.  What sort of example are we setting when it comes to the Christian life?  It can be easy to perform all the duties for helping others while staying far away from God in our personal lives, leaving an example of a well-meaning but divided faith that is relevant for others but not for me.

God help me; I've got a ways to go in this area, and that's not false humility talking.  Are you taking time to listen to God’s voice and grow into Christlikeness?  When was the last time you faced a fear, or stopped avoiding something, or dealt with a personal issue?  Is there something you need to work out or explore in more depth?

Christ our Light and the Prayer of Examen

“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” – (John 3:19-21, NIV)


I’ve noticed a peculiar behavior in myself and my relationship with God. Sometimes I ask God for forgiveness of my sins without letting the Holy Spirit search me and bring specific sins to light. Taking such an approach to forgiveness is not wise. I’ve tried to rationalize it before by saying that this method helps me seek God’s forgiveness for those times when I have sinned and not even realized it. While unknown failings are real possibilities, only focusing on them neglects something deeper, and one thing I’ve learned from Wesley is that sin has more to do with the intention of the heart and the will, not merely externally doing the right things. Such blanket requests for forgiveness help me run away from the searching presence of the Holy Spirit, from Christ the True Light, from our Father who disciplines his children. It shows that I want forgiveness of my sins, but I don’t actually want God to show me my sinfulness, I don’t want to own the inadequacies he reveals in myself, and I don’t want to deal with them and grow in holiness. It’s cheap grace, wanting God on my terms rather than his terms.

Think about it. Does any other relationship work that way? Would you say to a friend, family member, or spouse “I’m sorry if I hurt you today in any way” without seeking to understand, own, and specifically acknowledge your failure? Such an action comes across as disingenuous and will not be tolerated for long. Friendships and relationships aren’t sustained on false forgiveness, but on honest sharing about our choices and how we affect each other. You can’t forgive if you don’t fully own the truth of how you have hurt someone and/or someone has hurt you (there’s rarely a purely “innocent” party in interpersonal conflicts). If this is true with other people, how much more is it true and important with the God of the universe? God desires real relationship with sinners who haven’t got it all together yet, not a dishonest relationship that involves a lot of pretty Christian words, but is cold and detached.

Maybe this is why the desert fathers and mothers, the monks, and the mystics of the Christian tradition have so emphasized what is termed “the prayer of examen.” This is a coming under the searchlight of our loving Father, who seeks our improvement and conformity to Christ. In this form of praying, we invite God to reveal those areas where we have been faithful to him so we can celebrate them, and we also invite God to reveal those ways in which we have failed that we can mourn, repent, and seek God’s aid. God has a way of humbling those of us who think we are always justified in our actions and never sin, and he has a way of comforting and correcting those of us who tend to beat ourselves up too much.

When we do this, we take a posture of listening and ask God to search us (I like to pray Psalm 139:23-24 when I begin such times). We then think through our days and past actions, cognizant of God’s presence with us. We are sensitive to the promptings and directives of the Holy Spirit, who rejoices over the good and seeks to correct the bad. Remember: God’s correction is not meaningless, but rather is for our wholeness in Christ and for the sake of blessing others. Rather than de facto assuming that we have sinned in many egregious ways throughout each day, it may be the case that when we pray, God shows us that we didn't sin today. (I’ve yet to find in the Bible the phrase “we all sin daily in many ways;” in fact, the writers of Scripture seem to expect a higher standard for the Christian life. Christ died for more than to “polish the chains that bind us,” as one of my professors is keen on saying.) Maybe there is something God has wanted to show us that we’ve been keeping at a distance by asking for a blank, unspecified forgiveness so we wouldn’t have to acknowledge and deal with the ugliness.

There have been many times where I have run away from Christ our Light in order that I might cling to some darkness and sin in my life. God is working on me with that. The last part of the John 3 quote is key: “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” The truth is that Christ has died for sinners that whoever actively trusts in him may have true and everlasting life, not the empty and despairing life marked by his absence. This gift of grace is what empowers us to live in the light and show everyone the transformative power of God in our lives. I hope you’ll join me in seeking to honestly relate to God about our successes and failures.