It would be too strong to say I hate digital church. It’s not that I hate it, I am grateful for the technology and the sliver of connectedness it affords us in this socially distanced world of coronavirus. But still, I have seen the real thing, the body of Christ assembled in varying numbers singing their hearts out. I’ve looked through my own tears upon people that I love and pastor as I proclaim to them the hope they have. I have tried to concentrate on one single conversation in a bustling lobby after a gathering, feeling the potential energy and harmony as the body of Christ is sent out into the world to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to go be present, to go inhabit, to go incarnate.

And now. Now, I stare into a camera with no understanding of how my words are landing—though to be fair, I get about the same reaction to my jokes. Now, I end the service not by sending the people as the blessed ambassadors of resurrection hope into a world teeming with stories to be written, the Spirit of God hovering over us as it hovered over the young, unformed oceans. No, now I tell them, stay home.

To be the church right now, a socially distanced virtual body, is antithetical to everything that I have ever known or loved about church. The early Christians were known for their presence in plagues. In the first centuries of the church, several plagues afflicted the Roman Empire and the church responded by staying, binding the wounds of the ailing, and embodying the presence of Jesus often at the cost of their lives^[1]Bishop Dionysius, 3rd century bishop of Alexandria reports: Most of our brother-Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of … Continue reading. There were priests during the Bubonic plague that administered last rites knowing that it would lead to their own final confessions ^[2]In The Great Mortality, John Kelly says that the mortality for priests during The Black Death was “42 to 45 percent” (p.224), which is higher than the overall mortality rates seem to be for the … Continue reading But this, this we are told is different. In this moment, we are told that the best way to love our neighbors is to withdraw. How can there be a body of Christ without a people to embody it?

What might God be up to?

The People Of God Quarantined

As I survey the story of the Scriptures, it’s astonishing to see how the most profound moves of God often happen as a result of the people of God being in a sense, quarantined, locked away. Bear with me, I really want this to not read like one of those cheesy posters you see in a Sunday school classroom.

Old Testament

Noah is adrift in an arc, Isaac is bound to the altar, Joseph is imprisoned, Moses wanders a wilderness alight with a blazing bush, the Israelites place blood over their doors, Caleb crouches as he surveils the land, David hides in a cave from his pursuers, Elijah goes to Mt. Horeb, Jonah and his message of scandalous mercy is swallowed whole by a giant fish, Daniel is thrust into a den of lions, his friends are locked in a blazing furnace.

The word of God goes dormant for some four-hundred years before the word that brought the world to life sings out again.

Jesus

Jesus grows in his mother’s womb for nine months, is born to a no-name family in a backwater town, he flees to Egypt as a refugee, spends 30 years in obscurity, is driven to the wilderness to wrestle with his own desires and with Satan, John the Baptist is imprisoned and executed, Lazarus is bound in grave clothes, Jesus locks himself away in an upper room on the last week of his life, and then retreats for one last prayer time in the garden. And then, seemingly, the ultimate closed door.

Jesus is crucified, the anguish of human sin carried upon his shoulders. The tomb is sealed.

And in the depths of that darkness, the perfect love of God breaks every power of sin and death, the Spirit speaks a new, fresh word, life dawns anew under the reign of King Jesus.

New Testament

And even still in the afterglow of that resurrection light, the people of God are locked in a room waiting in fear and uncertainty, God breaks in and pours out his Spirit. John and Peter are imprisoned, Stephen is stoned to death, Saul is blinded until the healing touch comes from Ananias, Paul is shipwrecked, his letters are passed through prison bars, and John the revelator is exiled on Patmos.

To be locked away, hidden, fleeing, to have nothing to rely upon but the presence and power of God is a part of the operating system of the kingdom of God. Out of these moments flow promise, salvation, a renewed sense of God being near, and ultimately resurrection.

Wait On The Lord

So what might God be up to in these moments as the church doors are locked, the body of Christ’s hands and feet are replaced by one’s and zero’s, and much is being lost? The truth is, I have no idea. But if the story of Scripture tells us anything it’s that the kingdom comes in seed form, that which grows and provides life for the world is cultivated by being buried in the ground. What will bloom, what will blossom? Life. Grace. Promise. And yes, resurrection, a new beginning, a new heart, and a new body, right here in this world.

Psalm 27vv13-14 has been my prayer and it captures this beautifully. We long to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (v.13), right here on these streets, in these bodies, in our time and place. And the way, in this moment is as it has been in so many of the pivotal moments throughout the story of God and his people: wait on the Lord, Take courage, and wait with hope (v. 14).

What choice do we have? Locked away, quarantined, and isolated, it feels like the world has come to an end. But we are an Easter people. It’s dark now, and how great the darkness. But dawn is coming, and how much greater will that light shine. And so now, we wait.

Photo by Serrah Galos.

Fearless Trust

Psalm 27 invites us to a glimpse of a well-worn, mature faith. These words are not those of one freshly afoot on the road of life with God. These words are the embodiment of the image of the tree in Psalm 1, a life firmly rooted in God, watered by past experiences of God’s salvation, by the promises and hope of what the Lord has said. David writes as one well-schooled in the art of trusting God.

Perhaps most striking about David’s assurance is that chaos seems to be the vantage point from which he prays. He describes his circumstances with images of vandal hordes descending and all hell breaking loose (vv.2-3). David’s increased depth of trust and hope in God has not resulted in a diminishing of the very real threats that plague him. But David’s trust has reframed everything. In the midst of this anarchy, David is “calm as a baby, collected and cool” (vv.2-3). 

There is something so radically this-worldly about the shape the hope Psalm 27 invites us into. The pain and the danger are real but so is the reality that God is inviting us into counter-rhythms that syncopate the cadences of chaos with order and beauty. Two important practices stand out within the context of the psalm. He writes in vv.4-5:

I’m asking God for one thing,
only one thing:
To live with him in his house
my whole life long.
I’ll contemplate his beauty;
I’ll study at his feet.

1. Contemplative Prayer

First, David invites us to the disciplines of contemplative prayer, silence and solitude. David’s world much, much like our own, moves at a frenzied pace. We are constantly being discipled by the antichrist rhythms of noise, notifications, news, and the normalization of violence. David knows that the only response is to retreat. A retreat not away from this world but a retreat into the refuge of God’s presence. Thomas Merton writes that when Christians forsake contemplation they substitute the “truth of life” for “fiction and mythology” bringing about the “alienation of the believer, so that his [sic] religious zeal becomes political fanaticism.”  David instead of leaning into the madness, embraces silence and solitude. He writes of the presence of God:

 That’s the only quiet, secure place
in a noisy world,
The perfect getaway,
far from the buzz of traffic.

2. Immersive Worship

Second, David immerses himself in worship both private and communal. Even on the way to church, he’s already singing his own songs:

I’m headed for his place to offer anthems
that will raise the roof!
Already I’m singing God-songs;
I’m making music to God.

Worship is the eruption of joy and gratitude, not a response fueled by emotivism, but a quiet resolve to contemplate what God has done and to voice heartfelt thanksgiving for it. Worship is the antidote to our own poisonous obsession with self, our propensity to live at the mercy of our circumstances and our ever-changing whims. Worship in the face of great trial is not a denial of our situation. Rather it is God’s invitation to to view the world from his own vantage point, to be with God and find that in all things he is drawing near to us.

This Exuberant Earth

David expresses one final plea, “You’ve always been right there for me; don’t turn your back on me now. Don’t throw me out, don’t abandon me; you’ve always kept the door open” (vv. 9-10). He asks for guidance, he needs God to show him the way. He writes:

Point me down your highway, God;
direct me along a well-lighted street;

And he ends his prayer in one final, resolved, steadfast, radically hopeful expression of trust. Again, what’s remarkable about this ending stanza is that this resolution is not reserved for another life. He finds hope right here in the midst of the confines of this world, this place, amongst these people and these circumstances. He knows that God won’t quit on him and so, grizzled veteran of faith and trust in God that he is, he won’t quit on God. He holds fast to the hope that God’s goodness will reveal itself again, right here in this “exuberant earth.” Don’t quit. God is faithful. In the beautiful translation of Eugene Peterson:

I’m sure now I’ll see God’s goodness
in the exuberant earth.
Stay with God!
Take heart. Don’t quit.
I’ll say it again:
Stay with God.

Read Psalm 25

Psalm 25 is an exercise in contrast. David is struggling, burdened by the consequences of his sin. The gravity of his guilt is like a millstone around his neck. He cries out :

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart, and bring me out of my distress. Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.^[1]vv. 16-18

The consequences of his decisions have laid a heavy burden upon him. Crushed under the weight of his guilt, unable to move, David remembers another way. He considers the ways of the Lord:

Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.  Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O LORD!  Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.  He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.  All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.^[2]vv.6-10

Maybe you have been here. Stuck, heavy-laden by the accumulation of your own sin. It’s an impossible place to be in. Walking through the world feels like you are walking on the ocean floor with intense pressure compressing your very soul. And its here at the moment when our soul feels the heaviest that its actually the lightest. David says:

To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.

Lifting our souls to God from the depths is not like Atlas lifting the world. In lifting our souls to God we find that the Lord is not a pallbearer struggling to hoist our unwieldy, oaken casket.  Rather, his mercy makes our struggles as light as a feather. He does not downplay our rebellions or make them out to be somehow less than they are. Rather, he exhausts them by taking the weight upon his shoulders, thus emptying sin of all its weight. We can lift our souls to the Lord when we can’t even lift one foot in front of the other because he has made known to us his ways, and his way is easy and his burden is light.

Lift Your Soul

Are you weary? Are you heavy laden? Does each day feel like you carry the weight of the world? Lift your soul to the God of your salvation. Wait on him.

Envision the route that you travel to church each week. Maybe you drive past suburban strip malls and dozens of other churches. Perhaps you navigate the subways, hoping not to see a rat playing on the tracks and hurrying past homeless people who somehow managed to survive another night. Now think about the space you meet in to worship. Perhaps you meet in a sleek, refurbished warehouse, maybe you meet in a school cafeteria or someone’s home. Maybe you even meet in a building that was designed for the sole purpose of being a church. Whether you travel by foot, car, or train and whether you meet in a comedy club or a traditional church building there is a striking dissonance that confronts us all as we enter the doors to worship.

The earth is the Lord’s and and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.

This is the claim of Psalm 24. The worshipper, upon entering the temple of Solomon, hears this big opening chord resounding, inviting her to worship. But then she thinks about her journey, even to arrive at the temple. How could all of it, all of the things she has seen, all of the places she traversed, all of the people she crossed paths with—how could it all of it be the Lord’s? It doesn’t add up. Some of it seemed so mundane, some of it so painfully commercial, some of it just plain evil. And then the people. So many people going about their days, so many of them with no thought of God or existence. They belong to the Lord?

The world that we live in and the world of worship seem like two completely different worlds altogether. But there it is right there, the earth is the Lord’s, not some other place, not heaven, this place, this town, this neighborhood, these people.

So how do we begin to reconcile these two worlds? Psalm 24 presents us with a radical reorienting of our imagination and a subsequent way of walking in the world. First, we have to allow our imaginations to be recalibrated. The questions, presented in call-and-response fashion at the end of the psalm are not questions seeking an answer but rhetorical questions inviting remembrance. “Who is the King of glory?” Who is the king that can hold under his reign the world that we just walked through and the world of worship? Who is the king that doesn’t further separate them into secular and sacred but harmonizes them? The answer given is the same answer given to Moses when he asks the blazing bush, who should I say has sent me? The divine name—the Lord. To declare that the Lord is Lord of all of existence is not to exercise blind faith but to shape our imaginations to the mold of the kingdom. Worship is a discipline of seeing that changes the way we view everything.

Second, how do we live in a world such as this? When we walk out of the doors, squinting in the bright sunlight with our minds freshly challenged to see in a new way,does it change anything about how we actually live? The psalmist tell us that the ones who will stand in his holy place are those who “have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.” Many have thought clean hands and pure hearts required avoidance, like Pilate constantly washing his hands of the world. But Jesus shows us that the path towards purity of heart and hand is not avoidance, rather it is incarnation. Clean hands and pure hearts are not the product of avoiding stain from the world. They are hands that bear the scars of Jesus, the one who ascended the hill of the Lord, on behalf of the world. When we as Christians walk the world as he did, in love and in service, we live out of the overflow of the new imaginations shaped in corporate worship. We live out the declaration that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it when we see every corner of our lives “charged with the grandeur of the glory of God.”^[1]Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur. We live out that every person is beckoned by the freedom and love of God when we lift Jesus up and he draws all people to himself.^[2]John 12v32

The psalm invites us, lift up your head, that the King of Glory may come in. In worship we hear the call afresh, lift up your head, see the world as it really is. Stand in the holy place of God’s presence so that you might see all the world is infused with the glory of his Spirit.

Jesus Weeps

There are two times that Jesus is recorded weeping in the Scriptures. Once as he stands at the tomb of his good friend Lazarus, lamenting the loss of his friend and face to face with the specter of grave.^[1]I preached a sermon I am particularly proud of on this text here. The second time is found upon his entry to Jerusalem. The last week before he is crucified, Jesus enters the city riding on a colt. The people welcome him as a conquering hero. You see, in their minds the fact that he’s riding a colt is a minor detail. They all have heard about this Jesus, the miracle worker who may even be God’s Messiah, the anointed one who would finally bring about the judgment of God upon the Romans. The people want bloody revolution, they want a fight and here, finally, is one who might be God’s chosen instrument in bringing victory and vindication. Sure, they’d like their king to be on a stallion, standing tall above the crowds on a stately horse, but maybe, they ventured, all he could find was a a colt. For the writers of the gospels, however, Jesus’ chosen vehicle, the colt, is not an ancillary curiosity but expresses the very point of the story. The fact that he is not on a war horse tells us everything about what he says as he stands far off from the city crying over its coming fate:

⁴¹ As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, ⁴² saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.

The Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans

Approximately 40 years from Jesus’ fateful ride into Jerusalem, the war horses will come. Except they won’t be carrying the Messiah, they will be mounted by Roman generals leading legions of Roman soldiers to march upon Jerusalem. The people of Israel will gear up for war thinking this is a battle like the days of old when their own generals went by the names of Joshua and David. In days of old God would speak to the leaders of Israel before the battle, commanding them to be faithful in order to ensure victory. The problem in this instance is that God has already spoken, in fact he came himself to speak, and he what he said to the people staring down the barrel of the Roman gladius is simple, “Run, don’t fight.” But as Jesus foretold, they missed that word and thus they fight. They fight because that’s the only way they can envision conquering. They fight because they think that’s what God wants them to do.

And they lose. They lose everything. Josephus, a Jewish historian on the Roman payroll, records the horrors visited upon the Jewish people because they try to resist the Romans. What he describes is a literal hell on earth. He describes the utter desperation of the city’s inhabitants, dying of starvation, the most chilling tale being that of Mary, a woman who kills, cooks, and eats her own son.^[2]See Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews Like, I said, hell.

Hell On Earth

Hell is the one place in all of the universe where God is absent. In hell, there is no love, hope, justice.  As humans, we have seen the sorts of hells on earth throughout our history due to human hatred. This hatred is fueled by a myopic will to power a completed inability to see the humanity or at least a ready willingness to dismiss it. Hell is the place where nothing new can be imagined —a world that trades eyes for eyes, a world that says the answer to America’s gun problem is more and more guns.

The suggestion that we arm every corner of society to the teeth sounds, to me, like hell: a complete failure of the imagination. If all we can envision in a world fraught with violence is having more people equipped to return fire, we have lost both our minds and our way. For Christians, the notion is particularly absurd. Jesus showed us that the only way to undo violence is to exhaust its power in self-giving love. When Jesus gave his life on the cross, the devil actually thought he had won. The devil, caretaker of hell that he is, is bereft of imagination. The devil colluded with the powers of the world—human sin, religious systems, political empires—to crucify the son of God. But because he was unfamiliar with what C.S. Lewis called “the deep magic”, because he lacked imagination, he could not conceive that in giving his life completely, Jesus was making a show of these powers, disarming them, nailing them to a cross.^[3]Colossians 2v14

Hell is the place where nothing new can be imagined —a world that trades eyes for eyes, a world that says the answer to America’s gun problem is more and more guns.

Imagining A New Day

The Scriptures envision a day where weapons of warfare will be melted down into tools for farming. ^[4]Isaiah 2:4What if every Christian responded like this guy, who though he loves to shoot his gun and would never use it to purposefully hurt anyone, decided to part with it?

Sure we would be more vulnerable in a sense, but well, isn’t that kind of the point of our faith? In embracing weakness, absorbing violence, turning the other cheek, and praying for those who persecute us we are not conquered but conquer through the love of God. As John writes to the church:

For whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.^[5]1 John 5:4

We were in hell, dead in our sins, nothing new was possible until our Savior, in a profound act of imagination, liberated the world not by conquering, not by fighting, not by demanding but by laying down his life. Jesus showed us the only way to peace is a cross. He invites us to imagine our own lives completely shaped by his, carrying our crosses and following him. May we as the church imagine a new way way, grace and peace to you.

In the Old Testament, few gods other than YHWH (the name of the Israelite God) warrant mention.  The Old Testament witness is univocal in its condemnation of idolatry but usually these alt-deities are lumped into categories, “gods” or “idols.”  However, there are a few pagan objects of worship that warrant mention by name because of their particular allure to the covenant people.  Among those specifically referenced are Baal, the chief god of Canaanite cult, Asherah, the mother goddess of Canaanite and Babylonian origin, and Molech, a Canaanite god notorious for commanding human sacrifice.^[1]Mentioned by name in Lev. 18:21; 20:2-5; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:10; Isa. 57:9; Jer. 32:35   The nation of Israel was not like our own consumerist culture looking for the flashiest spiritual fads or the latest most “relevant” message to allow a person to be their best self.  Rather, these deities were much like the political parties of the ancient world.  The idols named in the Old Testament came with promises attached to them.  Deities promised fertility, harvests, victory in battle, all it required was the devotion of the worshipper.  For the most part, these idols were a part of a pantheon of divinity and thus did not require the sole devotion of its members.  YHWH seems to be unique in this regard.  The OT writers go to great lengths to display differences between the way of YHWH, the way of holiness, justice, and mercy with the way of the idols, who seek to divert Israel’s gaze away from YHWH and are powerless to bring about blessing of provision they promise. The psalmist in Ps. 106 reflects:

35 but they mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did. 36 They served their idols, which became a snare to them. 37 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; 38 they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood. 39 Thus they became unclean by their acts, and prostituted themselves in their doings.

The psalmist describes his own heritage of faith, a history of idolaters.   Often in the course of its idolatry, the nation of Israel does not explicitly give up on faith in YHWH.   They simply try to mix it with faith in idols.  While YHWH forbids any image trying to capture the essence of who he is, the pagan cults allowed for gods that you can see.  There is something alluring about an idol, about a god you can hold in your hand, a god that promises to get things done for you no matter the cost.  YHWH demanded unflinching, singular devotion but the pagan idols let you have your religion a la carte—a little YHWH, a little fertility goddess.  It’s all very pragmatic.

We live in a bleeding world.  On the whole, America in 2018 is violent, hostile, embittered, and divided.  Schools, concerts, and churches have all become shooting galleries of horror and devastation.^[2]I write this in wake of the horrible devastation in Parkland but unfortunately, I know this content will be evergreen, not needing one event as its referent  I am not sure if a world in the throes of sin and idolatry can evince itself as anything other.  But here’s my fear.  When I survey the world that is hostile to God—the world that in John 3:16, God loves so much that he gives his Son for them— and the world of the white evangelical church in America.^[3]I think it is important, in this instance, to distinguish this particular segment of the larger evangelical church as the majority of our Black, Latino-American, Asian-American and Native American … Continue reading, I do not see the kind of difference I would expect. What I see, instead, is a church that is trying to combine a small understanding of devotion to God with fervent devotion to political entities and thus both literally and figuratively is sacrificing its sons and daughters at the altar of the idols.  The church, in not modeling the peaceful way of Jesus is aiding and abetting the proliferation of weapons of indiscriminate murder in America.  In large part, the white evangelical church has blindly supported a political agenda that, in the face of heinous acts of mass murder, essentially shrugs and says, “the blood that was shed is the price of upholding the 2nd Amendment.”  Sounds a lot like sacrifice, does it not?

The loss of life is unspeakable, but as horrible as that result it, it is not the only consequence. Not only do the lives of the innocent suffer but future generations face the consequences of our lack of faithfulness.  The white evangelical church in America is shrinking^[4]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/15/white-christian-america-is-dying/?utm_term=.9aa7d1395c5f because it has forsaken its witness in the face of political pragmatism.  It remains to be seen what effect that this will have on the wider church in America.  I tend to think a new kind of evangelicalism will rise from the ashes, led by minority leaders and female voices that are already emerging, but that hope does not stopping me from  lamenting over the church of my own cultural heritage, weeping because we do not know the things that make for peace.

The church, in not modeling the peaceful way of Jesus, is aiding and abetting the proliferation of weapons of indiscriminate murder in America.

It is possible to be love America and to love Jesus.  But we can only learn to love America rightly by loving Jesus fully.   Anything less than the God revealed in Jesus is an idol.  Both God and the idols demand sacrifice.  There will be blood. Will we continue to sacrifice the blood of the innocent to our idols of political relevance or will we cling to the blood of Jesus shed on behalf of the world to make peace?  Will we give up our American rights and embrace our God-given mission of peace and mercy?   Either we will sacrifice the blood of the innocent and our witness along with it or we will offer our bodies as living sacrifices, burning with the love and beauty of our God.

The 23rd psalm is so simple in its beauty, so evocative in its imagery. For generations, it has inspired artists and comforted mourners. I want to connect this psalm with my reflections on Psalm 21 and Psalm 22. Psalm 21 is triumphant, God will demonstrate his power. Psalm 22 is apoplectic, “My God why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22 screams the questions that Psalm 21 should rightfully raise, “Is God’s victory and hope certain even in the darkest moments of life?” In Psalm 23, the psalmist no longer has a voice to shout his objections in the assembly, rather he whispers them in sobs all alone in the dark. Psalm 23 takes the question, “How?”, to its fullest extent and in doing so gives us a glimpse into the heart of the Gospel of Jesus: “How does God keep his promises in the valley of the shadow of death?”

You see, the promises of God always run the risk of disintegrating into platitudes. Quasi-spiritual assurances like, “everything happens for a reason” or “God works everything for the good of those who love him” are nice and all but don’t do us a lot of good when we are lost in the abyss, traversing treacherous terrain, surrounded by predators, exhausted from walking and fear. Ideas are nice, they are content of faith, but in the face of certain death, I need more.

Enter Psalm 23. The psalmist proclaims, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.” He proclaims the tender care of the Lord in sustaining and guiding him. David expresses the innocent bliss of trusting in God to provide. But then, almost on a dime, he turns from the sunlight to the shadow. “Even though I walk through the darkest valley ^[1]I still like the feel of the  traditional translation “valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”

Did you catch that? The question of God-forsakenness in Psalm 22 is given its free expression to deconstruct any notions of simplistic faith. What about the valley of the shadow death? Am I forsaken there? How are you going to keep your promises there? According to Psalm 23, God will not merely decree his will from far off in Heaven, he will not leave us to rest on cliches while we wallow in the darkness, he won’t even miraculously light up that darkness in a demonstration of sheer power. No, none of this will do. How will God keep his promises? He himself will come to us. He is right there, walking in he valley of the shadow of death as he walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening.

Psalm 23 doesn’t just tell us we are not abandoned, that we will not be forgotten or forsaken. It shows us. The Lord is our shepherd, we don’t have to be afraid not simply because he is powerful, good, full of justice and mercy. He of course is all of those things and more. We don’t have to be afraid because he is here. His rod, his staff, his table. Even in the darkest hour, he comes to us.

What is in me that needs to die before I die?   Lent, for all its caricatures of giving up chocolate or not drinking so much red wine, is the seasonal embodiment of Jesus’ promise that those who wish to find their life must lose it.  Lent is a journey away from petty idolatries and distractions towards a life focused on the Jesus way—the way of sacrifice and meekness, the way that , incidentally, happens to lead to truth and life.  As Christians around the world receive the ashes tomorrow and we hear the sobering words, “Remember from dust you have come and to dust you shall return,” we are not engaging in an exercise of cynical fatalism or morbid asceticism.  Nor are we merely wallowing in self-righteous self-pity.  Rather, we are taking the first step, with Jesus, towards Jerusalem:  towards the upper room, towards Gethsemane and Golgotha, and ultimately, the empty tomb.

The ashen cross smudged on the foreheads of faithful children, women, and men declares with the psalmist that we are but a breath, a flower cut from the bush that dies as soon as it flourishes (Ps. 103).  Furthermore, we wear the dark marks of our humanity and our failure to live in proper relationship with God, one another, and creation.  We have sinned and sin leaving mangled relationships in every part of its scorched-earth wake needs more than just a simple, “sorry.”   Ash Wednesday, as the gateway to the lenten season, is a funeral for our idolatrous lives, the clear-eyed acknowledgment that we have sinned and we will die.  We clothe ourselves in ashes and sackcloth mourning our own shortcomings, repenting of our sins.  And yet underlying even this judgment is an indescribable current of hope that looks to a day when God himself will clothe our feeble mortal bodies with the imperishable garments of eternity (1 Cor. 15).

When I, as a pastor, impose the ashes, I look into the face of people I love and walk with everyday and tell them one of the two or three truest things I am capable of saying to them:  “You are going to die.”  When Christ talked to his disciples of his impending sacrifice he followed up with an equally cryptic statement:  “But in three days I will rise again” (Mark 8:31).  The Messiah, according to Peter and many of his contemporaries, was supposed to restore the Kingdom.  He couldn’t exactly manage those affairs from the grave.  But the disciples, as a microcosm for the world at large, fail to understand what Jesus is telling them.   When Jesus is telling his disciples, “I am going to die,” he is in the same breath saying, “I am going to live and you are too!”  We would have God form a bureaucracy and give us a cushy job.   Instead he offers us himself and his eternal kingdom.  God’s life offered to us is always better than the one we would dream up for ourselves.  Even our imaginations need resurrecting.

But first, the dying.  There is no get-rich-quick scheme in the kingdom of God, no life-hacks for eternity.  There is no way to resurrection except through death.  Jesus, as the incarnate Son of God, died everyday to his own wants and desires and submitted to the will of the Father.  Lent is a 40-day period where we practice the art of dying well—the art of dying like Jesus.   But just as Jesus’ death is not ultimately about death, we don’t die merely for the sake of dying.  We die so that we may live.  We fast so that we may feast.  We deny ourselves so that we might share.  We allow the Spirit to do meticulous surgery on our hearts so that those renewed hearts might beat for God and for others.  So the question of lent remains what needs to die in us before we die?  What needs to die in us so that we may live?  “The world is not conclusion,” Emily Dickinson wrote.  Death is not the end.  But the only way to resurrection is to come and die.

The juxtaposition between Psalm 21 and Psalm 22 could not be more striking. Look at the end of Ps. 21:

Be exalted, O Lord, in your strength! We will sing and praise your power.

Now read the beginning of Ps. 22:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? In many ways the bookends of these two psalms frame the Christian life.

Psalm 22 tests the integrity of the promises of Ps 21. It’s one thing to declare in the sanctuary that “your hand will find out all your enemies; your right hand will find out those who hate you” and another to be tortured mercilessly at the hands of those very same enemies. And the question the two psalms ask together, “Do these promises hold up in the darkest nights of the soul?” Psalm 22 moves us from the comfort of the congregation to the bloodthirsty chaos of a lynch mob. You can hear the thuggish mocking of the strong bulls ^[1]Psalm 22v12 and the ravenous lions ^[2]Psalm 22v13 surround our psalmist.

As the people who follow the crucified Jesus, we walk the line of trust and hope, resting in the promises of God and being literally God-abandoned, stretched to our breaking and pierced by this life.  If the promises of God are true, promises for life from barrenness, life from exile, life from death, then they have to be true in our moments of God-forsakenness.

This psalm contains such stunning poetry that finds its fullest manifestation in Jesus. As he is poured out like water, as his bones are jolted from their joints, and his heart melts like a candle that has been forgotten about, ultimately to be laid in the dust of death.^[3]Ps. 22vv14-18 is so hauntingly beautiful and bears witness to so much of the pain of life; Jesus holds on to the promise. He holds on to the promises of God that God will hear and save^[4]Ps. 22vv19-21, that the poor shall have their share ^[5]Ps. 22vv26, that the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the Lord like waters cover the seas ^[6]Ps. 22vv27-28, and that his arm is long enough to reach even to the grave ^[7]Ps. 22vv29-30.

The line between victory and utter defeat is  tear-soaked, blood-stained, anguish-ridden faith. Are the promises of God true? Ps. 21 says they are true in the congregation in the songs of the people of God. Ps. 22 says, yes, they are even true in the blackest night, in the curses of the enemies of God. The cross is simultaneously the place where all hope is lost and the only place that hope is possible. Jesus, holds onto the promises of God with nail-pierced hands, this is faith that proves God’s word true.