Praying for Justice – Psm. 25 KBC July 15, 07
The Midrash, an ancient Jewish commentary on the Hebrew scripture, illustrates Psalm 25 with a parable.
One night the royal watchmen of a particularly city seize a traveler suspected of a crime. He pleaded with them: “Don’t beat me, for I am a member of the King’s household.” In the morning they presented the traveler to the King. The king asked him, “My son, do you even know me?” “No,” was his answer. “However, I placed all of my trust in you, O king. If I had not claimed to be under your protection, they would have beaten me.” The king was impressed and said, “Because he placed his trust in me, let him go free.”
The commentator: “even if he is not worthy of being a member of the divine household, he will be spared affliction by virtue of his trust alone.”
The criminal had come to know that all of his running had come to an end, he resigned himself of all scheming, and threw himself on the mercy of the king.
In his classic, Fear and Trembling, the theologian/existential philosopher Kierkegaard said: “faith is not an aesthetic emotion but something far higher, precisely because it has resignation as its presupposition.” Faith has resignation as its presupposition… resignation as presupposition.
Resignation. Sounds, resigned. Sounds like quitting. Sounds like giving up. Sounds like something you do, when you have no other options.
Exactly. This is the presupposition upon which faith is built. You resign the job of being God. You quit efforts at control. You give up on ego-centrism. You understand that outside God’s grace, there is no other hope.
The old faith healer asks: “do you believa?!...” intimating that belief is about changing God’s mind. If you just had enough faith, God would do what you asked, but since you don’t, since your faith bank account isn’t large enough, well, God won’t sell… But the Bible does not teach that our faith will change what God does. It teaches that faith will change who we are. The central question of the Bible, and of all wisdom: is resignation your life presupposition, … has the decision to trust God been made… understanding that belief is not about changing God’s mind, but about transforming your soul.
This summer in our series on the Psalms we are encountering a number of different types of Psalms. Last week we looked at one directed at worship, which encourages us, nay instructs us, to rejoice in song, to shout, to praise, to exult. Next week we’ll look at a Psalm which almost sounds vengeful towards the wicked. In a couple of weeks, we’ll look at a Psalm which recounts the glory of God’s love, in the most extraordinary language. Today we encounter a Psalm of David, where he prays for help, for hope, for justice, for mercy… and its about trust, a kind of trust that resigns all pretence towards control, quits the God-job, gives up on self-perfection knowing our hope is not in the justice, goodness, we can perform, but in justice covered in grace.
Indeed, the thing that ties all these worship hymns, these poems of piety, these portable temples, together is that sense of resignation as a presupposition. At home base in these Psalms there is always a sense of faith in the providence of God, in what is and cannot be otherwise. And there is an intentional decision to rest in that perfect will – to resign to it, even before knowing what “it” really means. Psalm 25 represents this foundation of faith, this core of our convictions as people of faith.
Were we to read this in Hebrew, we’d see that it is not only a beautiful Psalm, but we’d see it is an acrostic poem. Each verse begins with the successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Many Rabbis believe that this is done to reinforce that the Psalm represents a road-map, a purposeful demonstration on the way of faith. They don’t mean there is an ABC, a 1 2 3, approach to God, but that the Psalm represents a basis for faith. Radak was a famous Hebrew scholar from the 12th century. He thought it most likely that the acrostic was developed to show that the lessons of the psalm are a fundamental program for life as basic and essential as the alphabet.
So, what are these lessons? I picked out three in this poem.
First, David understands his sin, and prays for mercy. Second, he throws his life on that mercy and seeks to obey the LORD’s instructions – praying for help in this obedience. Third, he lifts his soul in absolute trust, in complete resignation, to the God of love.
These are not expressed in this order; he starts with lifting his soul, expresses his trust in God, and then prays (again, he says, for his sins are great) for forgiveness. In the first two verses, we have the substance of faith: lifting your soul in love, trusting God’s mercy, praying for help.
Spiritually/psychologically, we have been given 2 things: 1) a conviction about sin – moral law, guilt, a sense of finitude, etc. 2) a sense of responsibility to do good. These are obviously two sides of one coin.
However, these gifts which are invaluable for human relationships sometimes are carried too far in our relationship with God. We finite creatures will never live up to the infinite God – we will always fall short, we will never be good enough. And as responsible as we are, we can never do enough good works to make up the short-fall.
We must cast our hope on the mercy of God, and trust in his forgiveness and grace. There is no other way. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted it him as righteousness. This is the heart of the justice for which we pray: resignation to the grace-giving God.
This needs be said… There are two kinds of resignation. One is resignation to fate. The other is resignation to God. Job, for example:
“Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, and said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.”—Job 1:20-22
Biblical resignation sees that everything you are and have is a gift, and you’ll leave without the clothes on your back… you have only God, the king, and your relationship with him to fall back on.
I think VVG struggled with this:
Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother in 1882, has just seen a paining by Anton Mauve. I’ve seen a reproduction. It’s of a group of horses which on a hot day. They are dragging a beached boat up the shoreline, across sand.
“I never heard a good sermon on resignation, nor can I imagine a good one, except that picture by Mauve… That is the resignation - the real kind, not that of the clergymen. Those nags (horses), those poor, ill-treated old nags, black, white and brown; they are standing there, patient, submissive, willing, resigned and quiet. They have still to draw the heavy boat up the last bit of the way - the job is almost finished. Stop a moment. They are panting, they are covered with sweat, but they do not murmur, they do not protest, they do not complain, not about anything. They got over that long ago, years and years ago. They are resigned to living and working somewhat longer, but if they have to go to the knacker (e.g., glue factory) tomorrow, well, so be it, they are ready. I find such a mighty, deep, practical, silent philosophy in this picture - it seems to say… [Knowing how to suffer without complaining, that is the only practical thing, it is the great science, the lesson to learn, the solution of the problem of life.]
I read in this a resignation w/o relationship. A kind of beastly resignation to a halter, a resignation to a fate. David lives out something else. It is a resignation to a God of love and forgiveness. He gives up control, but not to a halter and whip of capricious people who would move a boat across dry land, but to a God… who has a loving purpose in the world.
Resignation is our presupposition, not just to peace of mind, but to actions which will make a difference in our world.
When asked about a definition (who is a neighbor) Jesus does not attempt a Webster’s answer. He instead tells a story. It’s a story about a priest, a Levite, and a foreigner. (new Yorker cartoon or a bad joke) In contrast to all cultural expectations, it is the religiously ill-trained alien, the immigrant, the foreigner who treats the injured as a neighbor.
Why didn’t the priest and the Levite stop? They could have both quoted all kinds of Hebrew Scriptures about caring for the needy. Why did they cross the road? Not just to get to the other side, but to avoid impedance to their plan. The Good Samaritan was resigned to use his day in whatever way God intended.
Being in the profession, I expect they had a meeting to get to, a committee to work with, a service to perform, a dead person to bury, a young couple to marry, someone in the hospital to see… the list is endless. In fact the list is so large it makes neighbors hard to see.
Joseph Butler (19th century preacher): “Resignation to the will of God is the whole of piety: it includes in it all that is good; and is a source of the most settled quiet and composure of mind… Our resignation to the will of God may be said to be perfect, when our will is lost and resolved up into his; when we rest in his will as our end, as being itself most just, and right, and good.” (Sermon at Rose Chapel, 1827)
If resignation is not your presupposition, then with me, then with David the psalmist, let us sing: teach me thy way.
One night the royal watchmen of a particularly city seize a traveler suspected of a crime. He pleaded with them: “Don’t beat me, for I am a member of the King’s household.” In the morning they presented the traveler to the King. The king asked him, “My son, do you even know me?” “No,” was his answer. “However, I placed all of my trust in you, O king. If I had not claimed to be under your protection, they would have beaten me.” The king was impressed and said, “Because he placed his trust in me, let him go free.”
The commentator: “even if he is not worthy of being a member of the divine household, he will be spared affliction by virtue of his trust alone.”
The criminal had come to know that all of his running had come to an end, he resigned himself of all scheming, and threw himself on the mercy of the king.
In his classic, Fear and Trembling, the theologian/existential philosopher Kierkegaard said: “faith is not an aesthetic emotion but something far higher, precisely because it has resignation as its presupposition.” Faith has resignation as its presupposition… resignation as presupposition.
Resignation. Sounds, resigned. Sounds like quitting. Sounds like giving up. Sounds like something you do, when you have no other options.
Exactly. This is the presupposition upon which faith is built. You resign the job of being God. You quit efforts at control. You give up on ego-centrism. You understand that outside God’s grace, there is no other hope.
The old faith healer asks: “do you believa?!...” intimating that belief is about changing God’s mind. If you just had enough faith, God would do what you asked, but since you don’t, since your faith bank account isn’t large enough, well, God won’t sell… But the Bible does not teach that our faith will change what God does. It teaches that faith will change who we are. The central question of the Bible, and of all wisdom: is resignation your life presupposition, … has the decision to trust God been made… understanding that belief is not about changing God’s mind, but about transforming your soul.
This summer in our series on the Psalms we are encountering a number of different types of Psalms. Last week we looked at one directed at worship, which encourages us, nay instructs us, to rejoice in song, to shout, to praise, to exult. Next week we’ll look at a Psalm which almost sounds vengeful towards the wicked. In a couple of weeks, we’ll look at a Psalm which recounts the glory of God’s love, in the most extraordinary language. Today we encounter a Psalm of David, where he prays for help, for hope, for justice, for mercy… and its about trust, a kind of trust that resigns all pretence towards control, quits the God-job, gives up on self-perfection knowing our hope is not in the justice, goodness, we can perform, but in justice covered in grace.
Indeed, the thing that ties all these worship hymns, these poems of piety, these portable temples, together is that sense of resignation as a presupposition. At home base in these Psalms there is always a sense of faith in the providence of God, in what is and cannot be otherwise. And there is an intentional decision to rest in that perfect will – to resign to it, even before knowing what “it” really means. Psalm 25 represents this foundation of faith, this core of our convictions as people of faith.
Were we to read this in Hebrew, we’d see that it is not only a beautiful Psalm, but we’d see it is an acrostic poem. Each verse begins with the successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Many Rabbis believe that this is done to reinforce that the Psalm represents a road-map, a purposeful demonstration on the way of faith. They don’t mean there is an ABC, a 1 2 3, approach to God, but that the Psalm represents a basis for faith. Radak was a famous Hebrew scholar from the 12th century. He thought it most likely that the acrostic was developed to show that the lessons of the psalm are a fundamental program for life as basic and essential as the alphabet.
So, what are these lessons? I picked out three in this poem.
First, David understands his sin, and prays for mercy. Second, he throws his life on that mercy and seeks to obey the LORD’s instructions – praying for help in this obedience. Third, he lifts his soul in absolute trust, in complete resignation, to the God of love.
These are not expressed in this order; he starts with lifting his soul, expresses his trust in God, and then prays (again, he says, for his sins are great) for forgiveness. In the first two verses, we have the substance of faith: lifting your soul in love, trusting God’s mercy, praying for help.
Spiritually/psychologically, we have been given 2 things: 1) a conviction about sin – moral law, guilt, a sense of finitude, etc. 2) a sense of responsibility to do good. These are obviously two sides of one coin.
However, these gifts which are invaluable for human relationships sometimes are carried too far in our relationship with God. We finite creatures will never live up to the infinite God – we will always fall short, we will never be good enough. And as responsible as we are, we can never do enough good works to make up the short-fall.
We must cast our hope on the mercy of God, and trust in his forgiveness and grace. There is no other way. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted it him as righteousness. This is the heart of the justice for which we pray: resignation to the grace-giving God.
This needs be said… There are two kinds of resignation. One is resignation to fate. The other is resignation to God. Job, for example:
“Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, and said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.”—Job 1:20-22
Biblical resignation sees that everything you are and have is a gift, and you’ll leave without the clothes on your back… you have only God, the king, and your relationship with him to fall back on.
I think VVG struggled with this:
Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother in 1882, has just seen a paining by Anton Mauve. I’ve seen a reproduction. It’s of a group of horses which on a hot day. They are dragging a beached boat up the shoreline, across sand.
“I never heard a good sermon on resignation, nor can I imagine a good one, except that picture by Mauve… That is the resignation - the real kind, not that of the clergymen. Those nags (horses), those poor, ill-treated old nags, black, white and brown; they are standing there, patient, submissive, willing, resigned and quiet. They have still to draw the heavy boat up the last bit of the way - the job is almost finished. Stop a moment. They are panting, they are covered with sweat, but they do not murmur, they do not protest, they do not complain, not about anything. They got over that long ago, years and years ago. They are resigned to living and working somewhat longer, but if they have to go to the knacker (e.g., glue factory) tomorrow, well, so be it, they are ready. I find such a mighty, deep, practical, silent philosophy in this picture - it seems to say… [Knowing how to suffer without complaining, that is the only practical thing, it is the great science, the lesson to learn, the solution of the problem of life.]
I read in this a resignation w/o relationship. A kind of beastly resignation to a halter, a resignation to a fate. David lives out something else. It is a resignation to a God of love and forgiveness. He gives up control, but not to a halter and whip of capricious people who would move a boat across dry land, but to a God… who has a loving purpose in the world.
Resignation is our presupposition, not just to peace of mind, but to actions which will make a difference in our world.
When asked about a definition (who is a neighbor) Jesus does not attempt a Webster’s answer. He instead tells a story. It’s a story about a priest, a Levite, and a foreigner. (new Yorker cartoon or a bad joke) In contrast to all cultural expectations, it is the religiously ill-trained alien, the immigrant, the foreigner who treats the injured as a neighbor.
Why didn’t the priest and the Levite stop? They could have both quoted all kinds of Hebrew Scriptures about caring for the needy. Why did they cross the road? Not just to get to the other side, but to avoid impedance to their plan. The Good Samaritan was resigned to use his day in whatever way God intended.
Being in the profession, I expect they had a meeting to get to, a committee to work with, a service to perform, a dead person to bury, a young couple to marry, someone in the hospital to see… the list is endless. In fact the list is so large it makes neighbors hard to see.
Joseph Butler (19th century preacher): “Resignation to the will of God is the whole of piety: it includes in it all that is good; and is a source of the most settled quiet and composure of mind… Our resignation to the will of God may be said to be perfect, when our will is lost and resolved up into his; when we rest in his will as our end, as being itself most just, and right, and good.” (Sermon at Rose Chapel, 1827)
If resignation is not your presupposition, then with me, then with David the psalmist, let us sing: teach me thy way.
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