Opossum Screed: September 2018

Unity and Serenity

❦ UCC Series IV ❦

I remember talking to a church member who once told me in early October that they'd just gotten back from a business trip. When I asked where, he told me Germany. My eyes must’ve lit up. “Where in Germany?” I asked. “Munich,” he replied. And then I’m sure my bright eyes quickly turned to an evil grin, because if there’s a time to visit Munich, then it’s got to be the end of September, which is Oktoberfest. I think many Americans picture Oktoberfest to be kind of like a fall festival. But it really only means one thing, and that’s beer.

How did they receive you, Lord Jesus?
Not when you arrived at the stable in Bethlehem
or in the synagogue in Nazareth
or when you entered Jerusalem on a donkey.

The first hymn of any hymnal tells you something about the denomination that uses it. For example, Methodists always put Charles Wesley's O For a Thousand Tongues as the first hymn in their official hymnal. The UCC's New Century Hymnal has Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise as № 1, probably chosen as a compromise between its two predecessor denominations: The opening hymn in the old E&R Hymnal was Holy, Holy, Holy, and № 1 in the Pilgrim Hymnal (of the Congregational Christians) was Isaac Watts' paraphrase of Psalm 90, Our God, Our Help in Ages Past. It's hard to overstate how well loved this song was (and still is) in many churches that identify themselves as being from the old Congregational tradition.

I remember being invited to preach at an evening chapel service in a retirement community in La Jolla, California. One of the hymns I'd chosen was Our God, Our Help in Ages Past, and I noted some commotion as we sang it. After the service was over, I asked someone what that was about, and they told me that the people were rather upset about that musical choice, because they associated that hymn with funerals.

Psalm 90 does indeed speak of how fleeting life is, but the true context is established at the very beginning:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

✙ Ps 90:1-2 ✙

Any subsequent discussion of mortality is cast in the light of the eternity of God, and any doubt of the fate of a child of God is assuaged with the opening verse: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations."

Our God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home:

Under the shadow of Thy throne
thy saints have dwelt secure;
sufficient is thine arm alone,
and our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
or earth received her frame,
from everlasting thou art God,
to endless years the same.

A thousand ages in thy sight
are like an evening gone;
short as the watch that ends the night
before the rising sun.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
soon bears us all away;
we fly, forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.

Our God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
be thou our Guide while troubles last,
and our eternal home. Amen.

✙ Ps. 90, paraphrased by Isaac Watts (1719)

Anticipation

Way back when, Carly Simon questioned her own perception of the present in the song Anticipation. Was she really living in the moment, or was she already looking forward to something better?

I think about this when I meditate on the state of the church. The religion that best represents my beliefs seems to have peaked in the days leading up to Ms. Simon's hit song. Mainline churches didn't know it in the 50's and 60's, but they'd soon begin a decline that still hasn't been reversed. Though certain other churches have grown during that same period, the population of the United States is far less Christian than it once was. Indeed, the number of people who claim to have no religion at all is roughly the same as the number of people who now belong to the once dominant mainline Protestant churches (e.g. Methodists, UCC, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians).

Thus, I've spent my entire adulthood living with this reality. But what were my forebears thinking back then? Were they anticipating a bright future, did they see difficulties down the road, or were they living in the moment?

This is the filter through which I read the following verse:

I will not violate my covenant, or alter the word that went forth from my lips.
Once and for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David.
His line shall continue forever, and his throne endure before me like the sun.
It shall be established forever like the moon, an enduring witness in the skies.

But now you have spurned and rejected him; you are full of wrath against your anointed.
You have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust.

✙ Ps 89:34-39 ✙

This section of the 89th Psalm I would list as one of the problems with reading the psalms in the first place. How can this be considered scripture when it so obviously contradicts itself. On the one hand, God promises never to break a promise, and this promise not to break a promise is followed immediately by—at least from the viewpoint of the psalmist—the breaking of the promise.

And yet this very perception of a promise broken is, in reality, all the more reason to pray the psalms. It is precisely this honest reaction that gives me permission to pour out my heart to God—even if my heart is overreacting or my perception is mistaken.

And there are actually at least two ways that verses 38-39 (and several more that follow them) are based on a misperception.

First, when first Israel, then Judah fell to foreign invaders, it necessarily looked like either God broke a promise, or that God was too weak to keep the promise. But the psalmist was unable to see how the divine promise would, in fact, be kept. And as a Christian, I believe that the promise preceding verse 38 was kept in Jesus Christ.
Which brings up another possibility for misunderstanding. What if the anointed mentioned in verse 38 and the servant mentioned in verse 39 is, in fact, Jesus? Certainly the cross seemed like rejection, and Christ's burial a defiling of his crown in the dust. And yet, both the cross and the tomb stand empty today, because God was, in fact, able to keep covenant—in a much more powerful way than ever the writer of this psalm could have imagined.

And so in my prayers, the psalms teach me that it's okay to pour out my heart to God, even if I'm angry with God or questioning God. But they also teach me that my perception is subject to my very human limitations. And God's promises were never made to me alone, but also to people who will live long after I'm gone. Abraham did not live to see his descendants become as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand on the beach. Yet today there are billions of people who believe in the God who was revealed to him. And so may I never forget to pray, but may I also never forget that my prayers are not based on an omniscience I can call my own.

Teach me to pray the difficult prayers, Lord. But may my prayers that are based on the small picture lead me to an understanding of the big picture. I pray them in the Name of Jesus Christ who taught me to pray...

Heritage Prayer

This pastoral prayer was offered on a Sunday when we learned about our Puritan heritage:

We thank you, O God, for all your good gifts.

But especially this day we thank you for faith.

We thank you for the faith of our fathers and mothers—

both our biological ancestors,

but even more, for our ancestors by example.

We thank you for their openness to receiving more light and truth
as it broke forth from your holy word,

their willingness to change and be changed,

and for their courage in standing up to oppression.

We thank you for their pilgrim spirits,

Happy are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your countenance; they exult in your Name all day long, and extol your righteousness.

✙ Ps 89:15-16

Consistency must be the key. Can I reasonably expect to run around shouting with my hands waving in the air all day every day? I think that the festal shout that God's people know must be more in my heart than on my lips, for it's not an occasional ejaculation, but an all-day song of praise, sung while walking in the light of God:

There’s a song in my heart that my lips cannot tell,
and my soul is with happiness filled,
since the Savior has come in my life to foretell
the sweet treasures in store for His child.

O would that the words might be given to me,
to show you how sweet ’tis to dwell
with Jesus, who gave to my life this dear song,
the song that my lips cannot tell.

O the peace and the joy of this song in my heart,
fill my life with a blessedness new,
and I long for the wisdom and power to impart
his great message—so wondrously true.

✙ Irene Young

Bless me, Lord, with your light guiding my feet as your praise fills my heart; in Christ's Name, who taught me to pray...

This Cannot Possibly Happen

Since the beginnings of the Christian church, no council has
been more glorious than the Synod of Dort (1618-1619) ✙

I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.
I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.
You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to my servant David:
‘I will establish your descendants forever, and build your throne for all generations.’”

✙ Ps 89:1-4 ✙

Sometimes I despair. I am a sinner. I cannot not commit wrongdoing. Even when I do the right thing, it is for selfish reasons. And so I come to be convinced that I am bound to fall away; God's grace isn't sufficient for someone like me.

But this "cannot possibly happen. God’s plan cannot be changed; God’s promise cannot fail; the calling according to God’s purpose cannot be revoked; the merit of Christ as well as his interceding and preserving cannot be nullified; and the sealing of the Holy Spirit can neither be invalidated nor wiped out."

✙ Canons of Dort 5.8 ✙

I thank you, my Creator, for the obedience of Christ and the intercession of your Spirit. Help me never to despair, but to believe your promises, sealed with the blood of your Son, in whose Name I pray as he taught me...

Let Me Bear My Cross with Patience

O Lord, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence, let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry.

✙ Ps 88:1-2 ✙

Psalm 88 is a prayer of complaint, and the complaint is so sustained that even Calvin states that there's a danger in this prayer of committing the sin of murmuring against God. But "by applying to God the appellation of the God of his salvation, casting, as it were, a bridle upon himself, he restrains the excess of his sorrow, shuts the door against despair, and strengthens and prepares himself for the endurance of the cross."

Psalm 88 teaches me that God can handle my problems better than I can, so I should not hesitate to lay them at his feet. But at the same time, I must not forget my true calling, namely, to take up my cross and follow Jesus. When I do this, the burden that I think impossible to bear becomes bearable, for I know that pain and death will never have the final word.

Jesus, help me, I am sinking
in the cold and chilly wave;
give me strength, my faith increasing;
thou alone hast power to save.
Let my soul be filled with rapture,
let my hope be stayed in thee,
let me bear my cross with patience,
till I sleep and wake with thee. Amen.

✙ Fanny Crosby

A Census Was Taken

On the holy mount stands the city he founded;
the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God.

Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon; Philistia too, and Tyre, with Ethiopia—“This one was born there,” they say.
And of Zion it shall be said, “This one and that one were born in it”; for the Most High himself will establish it.
The Lord records, as he registers the peoples, “This one was born there.”

Singers and dancers alike say, “All my springs are in you.”

✙ Ps 87 ✙

❦ UCC Series III ❦

This is the audio of my sermon on the Puritans. It concentrates on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I'll post the manuscript separately after I clean up the footnotes.

Of What Handmaid?

Turn to me and be gracious to me; give your strength to your Servant; save the Son of your handmaid.

✙ Ps 86:16 ✙

I'm a pretty committed Protestant, and so even a hint of the adoration of Mary is something I tend to avoid. But Christians have traditionally interpreted this section of Psalm 86 as a messianic prayer for deliverance from death, and that God's answer to the prayer was resurrection. I don't expect non-Christians to buy into this interpretation, but it is where I personally can enter into the psalm. If the Servant praying this prayer is the Anointed of God, then the handmaid spoken of as his mother must of necessity be Mary.

I'm going to try my hand here at paraphrasing Augustine's discussion of what this means:

First French Republic

On this day in 1792, France became a republic.

🎼 This song is called the Song of Departure, and its stanzas are sung (in order) by a deputy of the people, a mother, a boy, a young woman, and 3 soldiers. A rough translation of its refrain (sung by all) is: The republic calls us: May we know either how to conquer or die. A Frenchman should die for her (the republic) or a Frenchman should live for her.

Knit My Heart

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your Name.

✙ Ps 86:11 ✙

I have always loved this verse of Psalm 86. My heart is distracted by so many things, sort of like Martha in the kitchen. It is a prayer for a heart whose attention is no longer divided among getting the bulletin copied, writing a sermon, paying the bills, caring for a house, keeping the car running, pleasing this or that person, and honoring God. "Give me an undivided heart to revere your Name," I pray.

And that's an excellent prayer to pray all day any day. But apparently it's not quite the prayer I think it is—at least not the prayer prayed in Psalm 86:11. The Geneva Bible comes closer to the true translation (but still not close enough) with

Much of Psalm 86 is a prayer prayed in extremis—the sort of biblical prayer that is prayed so often as to be a bit discouraging, a reminder of all the pain in the world, all the things to be afraid of. But in the middle of it is an affirmation that can be prayed in the context of the psalm, but can also be lifted out of it and remembered in good times and bad,

Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.

✙ Ps 86:1 ✙

Psalm 86 is one of many psalms which tell me of God's love for the downcast. Calvin reminds me that I should be encouraged by this particular psalm when I find myself oppressed or destitute, writing "that despair therefore may not overwhelm our minds under our greatest afflictions, let us support ourselves from the consideration that the Holy Spirit has dictated this prayer for the poor and the afflicted."

We are not alone,
we live in God’s world.

We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.

We trust in God.

We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God’s presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.

In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.

Thanks be to God.

—United Church of Canada, 1968 (rev. 1980, 1995)

The Completeness of That Blessedness

Bread Winners by Thomas Blinks (1905) ✙

Likewise, the Lord will grant prosperity: and our land shall yield her increase. Righteousness shall go before him; and set her steps in the way.

✙ Ps 85:12-13 ✙

A literal interpretation of Psalm 85:12 seems a bit shallow—a precursor to today's name-it-claim-it theology which states that if we're good enough or have enough faith, we'll be blessed materially. Wouldn't a strictly spiritual interpretation be better (and more realistic)? Calvin takes both into consideration, and comes down on the side of the former. But he does so (whether intentionally or unintentionally, I don't know) in such a way as to make me think:

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.

✙ Ps 85:10-11 ✙

Theologians sometimes very dryly refer not to Jesus, but to the Christ Event. I suppose this is supposed to mean the historical Jesus, considered apart from faith. But if you were to ask me, "What is the Christ Event?" I would answer: It's what happens when steadfast love and faithfulness meet, when righteousness and peace kiss one another, when faithfulness springs up from the earth and righteousness looks down from the sky: The point at which they all intersect is the Christ Event. Calvin agreed, saying of this verse, "I cordially embrace the opinion which is held by many, that we have here a prophecy concerning the kingdom of Christ." And what is that kingdom, except the time and place where all these wonderful things come together?

Yesterday's prayer was one for revival, since that's what the sixth verse of this psalm called for. And the eighth verse puts that into context. I picture revivals to be rather raucous occasions of manipulative preaching and spirited singing, the point being to whip people into an emotional frenzy. But if Psalm 85 is any indication, biblical revival seems almost the opposite of that—

Point of Departure

UCC Series II

O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.

—Ps. 43:3

A few years ago, I came across an old schoolbook of mine. Very old. It was my second-grade spelling book, and it was nothing if not a curious volume. For instance, one lesson—the one I’d have read in November of 1967—had a brief story about the first Thanksgiving, followed by a list of words that I was supposed to learn to spell. It was a story of goodwill and inclusion, and the vocabulary words were simple and pleasant, such as beans and feast and eat. The point was well taken: so amicable were the Pilgrims and Indians (as they were called in those days), that together they could teach seven-year-olds how the letters e and a could work together to create a single clean sound.

But then a few lessons later—and this one I would’ve read sometime around March of 1968—came another story about colonial America. The picture above the story was of a frightened blond girl in her log cabin. The text was all about Indians (we still called them that a few months later) attacking her family. “The Indians were on the warpath!” the story proclaimed. And the vocabulary list included words like warpath, and arrow, and tomahawk. The lesson was clear. So untrustworthy and volatile had these Indians become, that they could now be employed to teach second-graders not only the fickle nature of the letter w, but just as importantly, its adverse effects on innocent English vowels.

Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you?

✙ Ps 85:6
✙

Eugene Peterson said that "nothing suffers from time quite so much as religion. The skeletal structure of obedience becomes arthritic, and the circulatory system of praise becomes sluggish."*

A Storm Prayer

You, O God, are our God, and you are a mighty God.
We are overjoyed by the beauty of your creation,
and overwhelmed by your bounty.
But even as we acknowledge your goodness,
we are in awe of your power.
In gentle shower, cooling breeze,
and lapping wave, we find refreshment.
But in torrent, and whirlwind, and storm surge, we stand in fear.
We try to grasp how you can be both the God of fair weather
and the God of typhoon and hurricane;
how your Spirit, which tamed the waters of chaos,
can also bring destruction.
In our terror of what might be
and in our concern for sisters and brothers both near and far,
we cry out to the God we understand—
even Jesus Christ, Divinity made known to us in the flesh.
Calm the storm both within us and around us.
Quiet every voice but your own,
that we may be still and know that the Lord is our Shepherd.
And in the stillness, speak to us of love between God and humanity,
and brotherly and sisterly love among the people of earth.
Whether we are victims or observers,
assure us that we experience no pain you do not understand,
and grant no blessing that is to remain unshared.
Give us the strength, insight, and courage
to make it through difficulties,
and to be there for others
when their burden is too heavy to bear alone.
We pray in your Name, who bore our agony on the cross
and lives in triumph as Ruler of rulers. Amen.

The Best of All Consolations

O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.

✙ Ps 84:12 ✙

Calvin's interpretation of this final verse of one of the most beautiful of the psalms is quite elegant. He states that it...

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.

✙ Ps 84:10 ✙

We live in a world in which "successful" people look to how they can best utilize others in order to gain power or happiness or wealth or fame for themselves. I, however, am called to follow One who came not to be served but to serve [Matt. 20:28]. The psalmist, no less a part of the church than I am, understood better than I what Christ meant. For they desired not length of life, but even the briefest time near to the heart of God. And they desired not

This song is dedicated to the people of the Carolinas who are preparing for Hurricane Florence, and to the people of Luzon who are being battered by Typhoon Mangkhut...

huracán • que pase el huracán • alejandro santiago

The Highways to Zion

Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

✙ Ps 84:5 ✙

We usually think of the pilgrimage written and sung about in Psalm 84 as physical. But in the fifth verse I see that it is no less spiritual, for the roads I travel lie within me. I assume that only certain highways within my heart are highways to Zion, the others leading eventually to dead ends. But meditating on Romans 8:28,* I must remember that God's will for me—whatever that is—cannot be thwarted by my choices, good or bad.

The highways in my heart also remind me of a song that I've known (and have always related to) since I was a kid. It's from the first album I ever owned, American Pie:

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.

✙ Ps 84:3-4 ✙

Raised as I was on the RSV and loyal it the NRSV which replaced it, I have always counted on the above translation to be correct. But it might not be. Calvin interprets it differently, and he gives good reason. I need to hear him out:

September 11 to me will forever be the day I pay tribute to the people who gave me shelter and kept me safe when the rest of the world was in tumult in 2001.
gander • 911 • newfoundland • newfoundland and labrador • 9/11 • terrorism

Always on the Move

Psalm 84 is a pilgrim's psalm. I've divided the psalm up so that the verses most applicable to a pilgrimage will come later. But today there's a different kind of pilgrimage to look at, and I don't see it very clearly in the NRSV. So I'm posting it as the Geneva Bible translated it, which is closer to the Hebrew:
✙

O Lord of hosts, how amiable are thy tabernacles? My soul longeth, yea, and fainted for the courts of the Lord: for my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.

✙ Ps 84:1-2 (Geneva Bible)

✙

The NRSV uses "dwelling place" (singular) for מִשְׁכְּנוֹתֶ, which is the plural form of a word used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible to refer to the tabernacle, or tent of meeting—the sanctuary used by Israel up until after the death of King David. And so here at the beginning of this pilgrim's psalm, we are reminded that God was perceived by our ancestors in the faith as a tent-dweller.

Oreb and Company

Gideon was commissioned by God
while threshing wheat ✙

The 83rd Psalm talks about a threat to Israel, and it's easy to overlook this chapter of the Bible as just a bunch of unfamiliar names and a prayer against my enemies that I'd never pray. But something caught my eye:

Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna, who said, “Let us take the pastures of God for our own possession.”

• Ps 83:11-12

The names of those Midianites who had invaded Israel seem weird, but in translation, not so much:

Our European Roots

UCC Series I

❦ The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.

❦ Psalm 16:6 ❦

One of the problems with church history is that most of it tells the story of the church in Europe. That doesn’t mean that the church is a European institution. But after the Roman Empire became a Christian empire, most of the world’s Christians became concentrated in or near the continent where Rome was located.

But early on, Asia and Africa were much more important to the history of our religion than Europe was. With Asia, it’s obvious. The land we call the Holy Land is in Asia. Jesus was born in Asia, as were all his first disciples and all the apostles. When you read the New Testament, most of it takes place in Asia.

The Roman pantheon was a temple dedicated to the worship of all gods ❦

God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?
❦
Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk around in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I say, “You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.”
Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!

❦ Ps 82

❦
Israel's religion evolved. And here I see signs of that evolution. In ancient polytheistic cultures, different peoples were aware of the fact that their gods and their neighbors gods had different names and even had different powers and priorities. When one nation conquered another, it wasn't just the people who were thought of as triumphant, but also (especially) that nation's gods. Among these nations, Israel was unique in that it had not a variety of gods, but only One God. They didn't choose to worship that God, rather they were that God's chosen people. Unique among the nations, also, was Israel's refusal to allow depictions of their God. They were not to worship human-made representations of God, but the God they couldn't see.

And God would have fed them with the fat of wheat, and with honey out of the rock would I have sufficed thee.

✙ Ps 81:16 (Geneva Bible)

At the end of Psalm 81, the psalmist talks about a people who have closed their ears and hearts to God. But it need not be this way. The grace of God is still grace, even when we think we can reject it. The final verse is a demonstration of this. Fat does not drip from wheat stalks (after all, מֵחֵלֶב חִטָּה doesn't mean finest wheat, but wheat-fat), and rocks to not ooze honey. Yet this is what is on offer to the people of God. We can talk all we want about what's really meant by these strangely beautiful images, but I would maintain that they are but metaphors for grace—something impossible on their own, and inexplicable in human terms, and yet something unbidden and unearned that drips and flows from the bounteous hand of God for the nourishment of the elect:

I hear a voice I had not known: “I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket."

✙ Ps 81:5b-6

The prayer of confession we use when we take communion is from The New Century Hymnal, and it contains the line, We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. That's how I relate to this brief passage from Psalm 81.

I think the NRSV probably gets v. 5 wrong. It translates שְׂפַת, which literally means lip (of), as voice. But the 16th century Geneva Bible does a better job:

Jesus Saves (When We Would Delete)

This sermon on Matthew's version of this Sunday's appointed gospel reading is from last August. I won't preach on this text this week, but thought it would be appropriate to post again now. ❦

Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

❦ Matt. 15:28

❦

There was a news story late last month that shines a bit of light on today’s New Testament reading. It came from the field of genetics, and was a report that scientists had tested inhabitants of the Middle East and discovered that the DNA of the Canaanites still lived on in the modern Lebanese. What was odd about many of the articles I read, however, was the number of them that made yet another claim, and that was that this story proved the Bible wrong.

A good example is the British newspaper The Independent, which stated that...

But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.

Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your Name.

❧ Ps 80:17-18

❧
The bar for answered prayer here seems a bit too low. Give us life, and we'll call on God's Name. The promise couldn't have been made by one who was dead, so...

Olympe de Gouges ❦

As glorious as the French Revolution may have been for men, it did not grant women equality. In response to The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted on August 26, 1789, Olympe de Gouge wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen on September 5, 1791. It was never adopted. Indeed, French women were not even given the right to vote until after World War 2. Here are the articles of the declaration:

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might, and come to save us!

Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

❧ Ps 80:1-3

After the death of King Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel was divided in two: the southern one was called Judah (roughly the area called Judea in the New Testament), and consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin; while the northern one retained the name Israel, and was made up of the other 9.5 tribes (Levi was the landless priestly tribe and divided between the two). The capital and Solomon's temple were located in the southern kingdom, and after the split, Judah was thought of as more faithful than Israel.

O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the air for food, the flesh of your faithful to the wild animals of the earth.
They have poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them.
We have become a taunt to our neighbors, mocked and derided by those around us.
How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealous wrath burn like fire?

❧ Ps 79:1-5

My mind is not inclined to think the right thoughts. I read the opening of Psalm 79 and I automatically think, What if these horrible things happened to me? How would I react? Would I have enough faith to trust God for deliverance, even if I believed God had brought on the calamity?

But guess what!

"Today too many have forgot the goals for which our parents fought."

God's Choice

He chose his servant David, and took him from the sheepfolds; from tending the nursing ewes he brought him to be the shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel, his inheritance.

With upright heart he tended them, and guided them with skillful hand.

❧ Ps 78:70-72

God once again speaks to us about leadership. David, an humble shepherd who cares tenderly for his sheep, is brought in from the fields to tend to Israel. It is not pointless that we see the movement here that we do—from the fields to the halls of power, the same man who tended nursing ewes now skillfully guiding his people. Nor is it by accident that we are told of David's upright heart.

'The Art of Divine Contentment'

There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.

—1 Timothy 6:6

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In the church I had belonged to up until about fifteen years ago, congregations couldn’t choose their pastors, and pastors couldn’t choose their churches. A bishop appointed pastors to congregations—usually with no contact between the two until after the appointment had been made. Ordained pastors in that church are called itinerant, and they are never even allowed to belong to a local church. In fact, if a pastor gets in trouble and loses his or her standing, the technical term is located. To be located means to be kicked out of the active ministry.

This is okay in a way, because churches never have to go through an interim period, and pastors never have to look for a job. There has been a bit of a change, not in the system, but in people’s attitudes toward it, in recent years. This means that I think there is a bit more consultation with pastors and churches before appointments are made, and pastors are allowed to stay longer in one place.

Back when I was part of that system, I was a young pastor and got moved around several times. Since I knew the move was going to come, I was probably more interested in my colleagues and my superiors than I should’ve been. Who got a big promotion? Who got a lateral move? Who was demoted? And this also probably meant a bit of detachment from the congregation I was serving.

Mortals ate of the bread of angels; he sent them food in abundance.

❧ Ps 78:18-25

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You never know as you're reading the Bible, what is going to catch your fancy should you take a notion to look at a verse in the original language. And, as it turns out, Psalm 78:25 is really interesting when you look at the Hebrew.
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We'll celebrate the Lord's Supper today in church, so I'm thinking about the manna in the wilderness in terms of Holy Communion. And I often meditate on the words

He established a decree in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach to their children; that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their ancestors, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

The Ephraimites, armed with the bow, turned back on the day of battle.

They did not keep God’s covenant, but refused to walk according to his law.

They forgot what he had done, and the miracles that he had shown them.

In the sight of their ancestors he worked marvels in the land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan.

He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap.

In the daytime he led them with a cloud, and all night long with a fiery light.

✙ Psalm 78:5-14
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George Santayana, though an atheist, said something that pertains to a great deal of scripture—especially the psalms which recount the history of God's people: