Who could stand?

Hear the word of the Lord:

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!

To be down in the depths is to be in over your head,
Buried in things to do, responsibilities to cover,
Jobs that get missed, commitments that fall short.
Anyone with any sense would cry out to God;
plead with him for help,
pray for his undivided attention.

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.

If God really were a cosmic traffic cop,
there would be so many warrants for our arrest
that Dillinger would blush for looking the amateur.
If God were the kind of judge some of my brethren
expect to meet “on the day”, then I would advise
that they go stock up on barbecue sauce, because
they’ll be on the rotisserie soon enough. Yet,
Somehow God knows of our iniquities, and
We’re still standing as if nothing happened.

Something significant has happened, though;
God has been true to his real identity:
He cleans up messes that Hercules wouldn’t touch.
He is helper of the certifiably helpless.
He is the redeemer of those who have indebted
themselves into a slick pit of slavery.
He is the savior of lost people in lost causes,
and the praise of our lips, our lives,
is all that we can hope to offer him.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.

That is not to say that this Holy One, this Other,
will jump to our whim, our whistle, or our whining.
Sometimes he seems even to miss when we’re
really in need, really victims, really righteous.
We had best understand that we don’t understand
how he works, or when he works, at all.
We are not told to understand, though,
but to be found faithful, to be found waiting.
Sometimes the wait is long, as long as the night
watch in the hours before dawn: dark, dark,
and dark until a soul is dizzy with the dark.
Yet no matter how dark the dark, or deep the dark,
or long the dark, we must not lose hope.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
It is he who will redeem Israel
from all its iniquities.

His steadfast love will save his people;
that is why I want to be found waiting among
his people, today, and in the day.

Blessings,

Ron

Psalm 130 – NRSV

They reeled and staggered ...

Often we think that we alone have troubles;
sometimes we might be tempted to think
that we suffer those troubles alone.
Yet God knows, God hears, God suffers,
and God redeems us from those times.
Will we be faithful until the hour of our rescue?
Hear the word of the Lord:

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
those he redeemed from trouble
and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.

As you hear the movement of this psalm,
imagine it, picture it, line by line.
Hear the crash of the waves,
smell the splashing salt water,
feel the blast of the wind …

Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the mighty waters;
they saw the deeds of the Lord,
his wondrous works in the deep.
For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their calamity;
they reeled and staggered like drunkards,
and were at their wits' end.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he brought them out from their distress;
he made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.

Did you feel the waves lifting you high
and then falling out from under you?
Could you imagine how hard it would be
to walk the deck in the midst of such a storm?
Can you ever remember such a storm in your life?
A storm where your feet are under you one moment,
and the bottom falls out the next?
A time in your life when your heart
feels as if it tickled your tonsils one minute,
and stomped on your stomach the next?
Do you remember a time when you cried out,
not for food, or drink, but for life itself?
For hope in the face of despair?
He will hear our distress.
He will deal with the unruly sea,
as the text told us yesterday,
as if it were an unruly child.
Then we can celebrate.

Then they were glad because they had quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,
and praise him in the assembly of the elders.

We ought to praise God.
If we are at a safe place, he has brought us to this haven.
If we still find ourselves riding out the storm,
he is the one who will has saved us before
and will deliver us once again.

Blessings,

Ron

Psalm 107:1-3; 23-32 – NRSV

Pictures of God

But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
Romans 3:21-31 NRSV

How can we know God? How can we know what God looks like? How he would behave? Paul tells that God and his righteousness have been revealed in Jesus Christ. So if we want to construct a mental image of God, we could use the Bible, or theology, or the various materials of worship. Yet, more simply, if we look at Jesus we see God. God in the flesh. When Paul writes Colossians, he tells us that “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation ... For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15,20 NRSV).

We know this; some of us will think that this is even intuitively obvious. But is this how we actually think? When we imagine God the Father, don’t we all too frequently tend to act as if the parental side of the Trinity has a totally different personality? A different demeanor? The Judge. The Traffic Cop. The Wrathful Warrior. The Landowner uprooting dead trees. How do we justify this? How do we maintain this in opposition to Scripture?

I think it is because all too frequently we tend to project our earthly fathers onto the face of God, however good or however bad this father image is. Obviously if our father is godly this is somewhat helpful if occasionally confusing. If our father is not godly, then we are going to have to be particularly careful about how we image God. Otherwise, this tendency causes us to engage in a serious if unintentional piece of idolatry – substituting the image of something or someone else for God. Truth stands in opposition to this idea. Jesus is the only, the true “image of the invisible God.”

If “Jesus loves me, this I know,” why don’t we believe this about the Father, even when the Bible tells us so? “For God [the Father] so loved the world ….” If Jesus wants to redeem us, can we not see that God wants to do the same? If Jesus is merciful, is this not a perfect picture of the Father’s mercy? Since Jesus is faithful, will not God be? Ultimately since Jesus is righteous as God is righteous, he makes it possible for us to have a relationship with God the Father and a healthy image of that Father who made himself visible in the form of Jesus. When you’ve seen Jesus, you’ve seen the Father.

So is it our job to go around showing people pictures of Jesus so that they can know what God looks like? Yes, exactly so. We don’t have a photo of him in our wallet, or our computer, or even on our Facebook pages. His image is to be revealed in our demeanor, our lips, our hands, and our feet. So perhaps the reason that many people struggle to believe in God is not that we have yet to construct some “superproof,” some apologetic that can convince any and everyone. Perhaps the problem is that we, his imagers, need to present a clearer picture of Jesus. In focus. Consistent even in the little details. Not smudged. Surely this is something that can only be done by the power and grace of God.

Being conformed to the image of Christ, the mind of Jesus, is the calling of a lifetime. It is our calling today.

Grace and peace,

Ron