Making war, making change
Commentary
Object:
It has happened more than once that I have been counseling a young couple who are planning to get married, and the discussion has come around to the subject of fighting, arguing, and conflict. It's a standard point I raise in various ways in premarital counseling, wanting to get the issue of conflict on the table and look at how it happens in their relationship. And it has happened that the couple looks at me and says something to the effect of, "Oh, no, pastor, we're too much in love to argue." Implied in what they say is the idea that they will always be so much in love that they won't ever fight. What is most extraordinary about it is that they really seem to believe it. Admittedly, when I have run into this it has been with naive and very young couples, and it is also a phenomenon that I have seen less and less lately.
Now, I have to say that that view of how their marriage will be doesn't mean that their marriage is in jeopardy. I have usually been pretty confident that it won't be too long before they have their first fight and discover the truth that there is conflict in all marriages.
Nevertheless, there is a distinct view that comes through in such comments, one that the culture promotes. It is the view that we can actually not have conflict, that we can actually go through a marriage, or a meeting of a church board, or have nations that adjoin each other or that trade with each other, without disagreements or arguments or out-and-out warfare.
The corollary to that view is the idea that there can be true change without some kind of conflict.
Well, that may be so in some arenas of life. I'm just not sure where. And Israel, born of Jacob, would be the first to tell you that fighting produces deep change, perhaps most of all, fighting with God.
Genesis 32:22-31
Jacob comes to the river Jabbok with his family out of the wreckage of his tumultuous life, a life of battling with someone or deceiving someone or conning someone out of something. Thus far Jacob has not been an exemplary character; just ask his brother Esau or his father-in-law Laban. Now, after his sojourn in Haran where he married and got rich and fathered a family, Jacob is returning home to Canaan.
The story of his wrestling with God is strange and confusing. Commentators are agreed that it bears the marks of great antiquity and of the pre-literary oral tradition and of pre-Israelite Canaan, on the basis, among other things, of the very confusion and the questions that the account raises.
In verse 24, the wrestling begins very matter of factly, the second clause of the sentence making it seem like a mere afterthought. So far there is neither an explanation for the wrestling nor an identity of the man. Clearly Jacob is very strong (see 29:10 on Jacob's strength) and so in the night-long fight, he prevails. Then in verse 25 we get a hint that the man is something more than just a man, for he knows a magical place to touch Jacob to make him lame. Yet still Jacob holds on. The man's request to be released because daylight is coming leads some to suggest that in the story's pre-Israelite form the man was a nocturnal demon. Jacob senses the being's power, for he insists on a blessing as a condition of releasing him. In response the man asks Jacob's name, and Jacob, trustingly, gives it. At that point the man gives Jacob a new name, and in so doing identifies himself as God. Has Jacob indeed prevailed over the Creator? Jacob in turn asks the man's name but doesn't get it, instead getting the blessing he had sought. Apparently it is now clear to Jacob that the supernatural being he had wrestled with was God; so he names the place in honor of what happened there.
Certainly in this story the issue of naming is of the highest importance. To the Hebrew mind -- in fact for many ancient peoples -- a name is more than a superficial attachment to a person or a place. There is a connection between the essence of a thing and the name it bears. In the case of a person, a name reflects an inner quality, or perhaps a destiny. Thus Jacob the Supplanter (Genesis 25:26) has become Israel, the One who Strives with God, and with that new name comes, we shall see, a change in Jacob. Further, there is distinct power in knowing someone's name. So it is that Jacob put himself in the man's power when he actually told him his name, which is precisely the same reason that the being never gave his name.
Our understanding of the significance of the story depends on the larger context. Because what we really see here is the beginning of the transformation of Jacob, marked by the change in his name. Where he has been dishonest and crafty, he will become the true patriarch and the father of the nation of God's chosen people, beginning with his coming reconciliation with Esau. Jacob has fought with God. He has not emerged unscathed. He is permanently lamed, but there is a deeper and more fundamental change in Jacob. He has been remade, recast, as a result of the battle.
Romans 9:1-5
Paul was a man for all seasons and a man of all contexts in the first-century world. He was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, he was a citizen of Rome, he was born in the Greek-speaking city of Tarsus, he was a Pharisee, and he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. The New Testament reports many of the struggles within him over all of those roles and positions, not least of which was the fact that he had been a persecutor of the church. Yet no conflict within him brought him more anguish than the fact and the fate of his people, Israel.
This short reading is but a fragment of, the introduction to, the great struggle of Paul with the question of the Jews, chapters 9-11 of Romans. How do you deal with the fact of Israel's unbelief that the Jews have not come -- in Paul's time or in ours -- to know Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah?
The depth of Paul's feeling is clear: not only does he state it uncategorically in verse 2, but he even goes on to say in verse 3 that if he could be accursed and thereby bring Israel to Christ, he would do so gladly.
Then we come to verses 4 and 5, a uniquely powerful statement about Israel, particularly in the NRSV: "They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen."
The last doxological lines of verse 5 have long been argued about. The argument is one of punctuation, so it really isn't clear from the Greek. Here's the question: Does Paul intend "God" to be in apposition with "Messiah"? (NRSV). In other words, is Paul intending to say that Jesus is God? The KJV and the RSV both render christos "Christ," while the NRSV changes matters slightly by translating it "Messiah." In the RSV the blessing is directed to God, who is not identified with Christ. The KJV and the NRSV are more ambiguous, which is probably the best place to leave it.
Here in these last two verses of the reading we have a singularly concise, but also singularly accurate, appraisal of the role of Israel in God's saving history. It brings to mind God's call to Abraham in Genesis, and the role of Abraham in the salvation of the world: "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3).
It points out the utter irony that God's salvation has come, in all respects, through the people Israel; yet they have not believed in the culminating event of that salvation. Again it brings to mind the line from John's prologue, "He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him."
But this passage only poses the question and deals with Paul's deep feelings. To get more, to hear Paul's answer, we look beyond the lectionary at the larger context, and to Paul's deep hope and belief, to be found in 11:26, that "all Israel will be saved."
Matthew 14:13-21
Altogether, there are six accounts of the feeding of a large number of people in the four gospels. Matthew and Mark each have two -- first 5,000 and then 4,000 -- while Luke and John each have one. It seems clear that they all emerge from a common tradition that at some point became duplicated.
The first part of verse 13, "heard this," refers to the gruesome death of John the Baptist. So Jesus withdrew. Was it out of grief for the death of his friend and kinsman? Or perhaps it was fear for his own safety? We don't know, but the gospels are clear that Jesus would on occasion go off by himself -- from forty days in the wilderness to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was into that context that the crowd came clamoring. He wanted and needed to be alone, but the crowd wanted him, they wanted his teaching and his healing, or perhaps some unguessed-at promise that this strange rabbi seemed to hold.
In response to their need, and despite his own need, Jesus had compassion. He healed them and fed them.
In a previous era, one of the chief exegetical tasks when dealing with miracles was to find a naturalistic explanation -- one that people could readily accept. So one explanation frequently offered for the multiplication of fish and loaves was that the people had food hidden in the sleeves of their clothes, and they were moved by Jesus' own compassion to have compassion for others and so they brought out their food and shared it. The real miracle, goes this explanation, was one of inspired compassion. Uh... well... in the face of such absurd assertions, it's usually best to keep a smile on your face and move on. The postmodern interpretive task with miracle stories, I believe, is to keep the mystery and the power and not explain it away into nothingness. That means wrestling with it, possibly saying simply, "I don't know," or perhaps actually accepting it, all the while letting the story stand as it is and speak to us.
There is no question that the feeding has a eucharistic feel and connection, carrying anticipatory echoes of what is to come later, specifically verse 19b: "... he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples...." Is the story a retrospection from the Last Supper? Or perhaps the eucharistic language was simply borrowed from the account of the Last Supper? Again, to take a hard stance on such issues often results in depriving the story of its meaning and power.
Let it suffice to say that Jesus' compassion is a major theme in the story, the compassion he had even when he was depleted and needed to be by himself, a compassion that had enormous -- and miraculous -- power to meet people's needs.
Application
How wonderful it would be if life could be lived, and love could be treasured, and relationships between nations could be enjoyed, without conflict. In the past twenty years, there was a brief instant of hope that large conflict would be eliminated from the world. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama declared that with the fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent demise of communism, the world had reached "the end of history," that is, the "end point of human ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." It didn't last long. The strife in the former Yugoslavia, among other places, showed us that history in Fukuyama's sense was still going strong. And that was well before September 11, the war on terrorism, and the boiling crisis in the Middle East.
No, conflict is here to stay.
Very reasonably, we try to avoid it, and we hope it won't come. After all, human conflict, national conflict, familial conflict, tribal conflict kills people or wounds them in body and soul. It happens on the large scale of nations and the small scale of lovers. So the young couple I counseled genuinely and sincerely didn't want to think that their married life would have strife and fights. So we smooth things over, pour oil on the various troubled waters around us, douse the fires before they become raging infernos. There are countless metaphors for avoiding conflict. But there is a real danger in that.
The married couple who go out of their way to avoid all conflict are not really avoiding it, they are simply driving it inward and barring the door. The inner strife is still there waiting to emerge in some other form.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was roundly condemned in 1938 for his appeasement of Hitler and the Third Reich, avoiding conflict at all costs. He achieved what he called "peace for our time," which became a catchphrase for a nation burying its head in the sand. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn't appeased Hitler? But we do know what did happen in World War II.
Not only is conflict inevitable, it is also through conflict that change happens. In the human body, a muscle struggles against an object, a set of weights, say, and if the muscle does that enough, it grows, gets bigger, becomes able to push harder, it changes.
Likewise, in a marriage there is productive conflict, conflict that airs differences and resolves feelings and ultimately builds a stronger, deeper relationship.
Now the danger here is that we become too sanguine about conflict, too ready to accept it, a Pollyanna, or perhaps a Pangloss, saying easily that all things work together for the best. We don't want to dismiss the pain and injuries caused by conflict. But we also need to affirm that very little true change happens in life without struggle.
Case in point: Jacob, a scoundrel who fought with an unknown creature, a man, a being, a demon, an angel, God. At the end, Jacob was certain that it was God he had fought. And in some way he prevailed, but only, of course, on God's terms. God's terms for Jacob's victory were that even though Jacob prevailed in the struggle, he came out of the fight injured, lame for life, with a new name, Israel, and changed forever deep inside. What if Jacob had immediately made peace with his opponent and not fought at all? Well, of course we don't know, but the all-night-long struggle implies that it was important for it to happen. Only later would we see the change as he reconciled with his estranged brother Esau, and as he became Israel, the father of the nation.
Certainly in many of us there is horror at the thought of fighting with God. After all, we have been taught to fear God and love God. But sometimes fighting with God, struggling in our hearts, through our church, in our studies, in our denominations, is exactly what God wants of us, because it is the means by which God touches our hips and lames us for his service, and gives us a new name for his service, and transforms us for his service.
Alternate Application
Matthew 14:13-21. A depleted Savior? Jesus needed to be alone; he was tired, maybe afraid. Perhaps he was depleted, wrung out. Yet despite his own need for solitude, Jesus met others' needs, healing and feeding people. Why? Why didn't he take time for himself, a mental health day, to use the current expression? The answer is that he was filled with compassion, and in some way that took priority for Jesus. It could be a model for us: Do we need to wait until we are completely healthy and whole to help other people? It could just be that it is as we minister to others, we ourselves are restored, and as we feed others, it feeds us.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 17:1-7, 15
The cry of the righteous
It's a safe bet that pretty much everyone would agree that it's bad when people suffer. We don't spend much time asking if the suffering people are good or bad; we almost instantly sympathize with those who are hurting. Whether it's an earthquake or a flood, a fire or the ravages of disease or war, we find it pretty easy to feel for these people. It's easy because that average Joe or Jane represents a mirror in which we see ourselves.
But if someone is truly righteous, our feelings change a bit. This is why this psalm touches a sensitive spot in us. The plea from these verses doesn't come from some regular guy who's having a rough time. It's easy enough to feel for that person. Here, though, we receive the cry of the righteous. Here is someone whose "lips are free of deceit," whose heart is pure, and whose "mouth does not transgress." Here we see a really good guy having a really bad time.
Oddly enough, we find it more difficult to work up sympathy for one such as this. Strange as it may seem, there is a secret delight that slips from cynical hearts when a righteous person falls upon hard times. This is why schoolyard bullies get away with terrorizing the innocent. It's why we love to see the mighty fall. It is the same kind of sentiment that caused the crowds to call for the release of Barabbas when they could have chosen Jesus. It is an inexplicable piece of our herd mentality. Yet who can deny that it exists?
Perhaps these feelings emerge from our own well-repressed feelings of guilt. Maybe we carry a tiny amount of guilt around with us because we simply do not take the trouble to be as righteous as the person making the plea in this psalm. We really don't like seeing these better-than-average folks. They reflect badly on us. It's why the kids who get good grades get shunned in school. Their success magnifies the merely average performance of the crowd. And so we nod slightly and turn away from the kid getting beaten on the schoolyard.
The question almost asks itself. What would it take for us to step out of our herd mentality so that we might seek a new level of excellence? How could we walk away from what one educator called "the tyranny of lowered expectations" and step into the raised hopes and dreams of a more righteous way?
No matter what we do, the righteous will still suffer along with the rest of us. But maybe if we set our sights a little higher, we ourselves might be counted among those whose lips are free of deceit; among those whose mouths do not transgress.
Now, I have to say that that view of how their marriage will be doesn't mean that their marriage is in jeopardy. I have usually been pretty confident that it won't be too long before they have their first fight and discover the truth that there is conflict in all marriages.
Nevertheless, there is a distinct view that comes through in such comments, one that the culture promotes. It is the view that we can actually not have conflict, that we can actually go through a marriage, or a meeting of a church board, or have nations that adjoin each other or that trade with each other, without disagreements or arguments or out-and-out warfare.
The corollary to that view is the idea that there can be true change without some kind of conflict.
Well, that may be so in some arenas of life. I'm just not sure where. And Israel, born of Jacob, would be the first to tell you that fighting produces deep change, perhaps most of all, fighting with God.
Genesis 32:22-31
Jacob comes to the river Jabbok with his family out of the wreckage of his tumultuous life, a life of battling with someone or deceiving someone or conning someone out of something. Thus far Jacob has not been an exemplary character; just ask his brother Esau or his father-in-law Laban. Now, after his sojourn in Haran where he married and got rich and fathered a family, Jacob is returning home to Canaan.
The story of his wrestling with God is strange and confusing. Commentators are agreed that it bears the marks of great antiquity and of the pre-literary oral tradition and of pre-Israelite Canaan, on the basis, among other things, of the very confusion and the questions that the account raises.
In verse 24, the wrestling begins very matter of factly, the second clause of the sentence making it seem like a mere afterthought. So far there is neither an explanation for the wrestling nor an identity of the man. Clearly Jacob is very strong (see 29:10 on Jacob's strength) and so in the night-long fight, he prevails. Then in verse 25 we get a hint that the man is something more than just a man, for he knows a magical place to touch Jacob to make him lame. Yet still Jacob holds on. The man's request to be released because daylight is coming leads some to suggest that in the story's pre-Israelite form the man was a nocturnal demon. Jacob senses the being's power, for he insists on a blessing as a condition of releasing him. In response the man asks Jacob's name, and Jacob, trustingly, gives it. At that point the man gives Jacob a new name, and in so doing identifies himself as God. Has Jacob indeed prevailed over the Creator? Jacob in turn asks the man's name but doesn't get it, instead getting the blessing he had sought. Apparently it is now clear to Jacob that the supernatural being he had wrestled with was God; so he names the place in honor of what happened there.
Certainly in this story the issue of naming is of the highest importance. To the Hebrew mind -- in fact for many ancient peoples -- a name is more than a superficial attachment to a person or a place. There is a connection between the essence of a thing and the name it bears. In the case of a person, a name reflects an inner quality, or perhaps a destiny. Thus Jacob the Supplanter (Genesis 25:26) has become Israel, the One who Strives with God, and with that new name comes, we shall see, a change in Jacob. Further, there is distinct power in knowing someone's name. So it is that Jacob put himself in the man's power when he actually told him his name, which is precisely the same reason that the being never gave his name.
Our understanding of the significance of the story depends on the larger context. Because what we really see here is the beginning of the transformation of Jacob, marked by the change in his name. Where he has been dishonest and crafty, he will become the true patriarch and the father of the nation of God's chosen people, beginning with his coming reconciliation with Esau. Jacob has fought with God. He has not emerged unscathed. He is permanently lamed, but there is a deeper and more fundamental change in Jacob. He has been remade, recast, as a result of the battle.
Romans 9:1-5
Paul was a man for all seasons and a man of all contexts in the first-century world. He was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, he was a citizen of Rome, he was born in the Greek-speaking city of Tarsus, he was a Pharisee, and he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. The New Testament reports many of the struggles within him over all of those roles and positions, not least of which was the fact that he had been a persecutor of the church. Yet no conflict within him brought him more anguish than the fact and the fate of his people, Israel.
This short reading is but a fragment of, the introduction to, the great struggle of Paul with the question of the Jews, chapters 9-11 of Romans. How do you deal with the fact of Israel's unbelief that the Jews have not come -- in Paul's time or in ours -- to know Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah?
The depth of Paul's feeling is clear: not only does he state it uncategorically in verse 2, but he even goes on to say in verse 3 that if he could be accursed and thereby bring Israel to Christ, he would do so gladly.
Then we come to verses 4 and 5, a uniquely powerful statement about Israel, particularly in the NRSV: "They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen."
The last doxological lines of verse 5 have long been argued about. The argument is one of punctuation, so it really isn't clear from the Greek. Here's the question: Does Paul intend "God" to be in apposition with "Messiah"? (NRSV). In other words, is Paul intending to say that Jesus is God? The KJV and the RSV both render christos "Christ," while the NRSV changes matters slightly by translating it "Messiah." In the RSV the blessing is directed to God, who is not identified with Christ. The KJV and the NRSV are more ambiguous, which is probably the best place to leave it.
Here in these last two verses of the reading we have a singularly concise, but also singularly accurate, appraisal of the role of Israel in God's saving history. It brings to mind God's call to Abraham in Genesis, and the role of Abraham in the salvation of the world: "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3).
It points out the utter irony that God's salvation has come, in all respects, through the people Israel; yet they have not believed in the culminating event of that salvation. Again it brings to mind the line from John's prologue, "He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him."
But this passage only poses the question and deals with Paul's deep feelings. To get more, to hear Paul's answer, we look beyond the lectionary at the larger context, and to Paul's deep hope and belief, to be found in 11:26, that "all Israel will be saved."
Matthew 14:13-21
Altogether, there are six accounts of the feeding of a large number of people in the four gospels. Matthew and Mark each have two -- first 5,000 and then 4,000 -- while Luke and John each have one. It seems clear that they all emerge from a common tradition that at some point became duplicated.
The first part of verse 13, "heard this," refers to the gruesome death of John the Baptist. So Jesus withdrew. Was it out of grief for the death of his friend and kinsman? Or perhaps it was fear for his own safety? We don't know, but the gospels are clear that Jesus would on occasion go off by himself -- from forty days in the wilderness to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was into that context that the crowd came clamoring. He wanted and needed to be alone, but the crowd wanted him, they wanted his teaching and his healing, or perhaps some unguessed-at promise that this strange rabbi seemed to hold.
In response to their need, and despite his own need, Jesus had compassion. He healed them and fed them.
In a previous era, one of the chief exegetical tasks when dealing with miracles was to find a naturalistic explanation -- one that people could readily accept. So one explanation frequently offered for the multiplication of fish and loaves was that the people had food hidden in the sleeves of their clothes, and they were moved by Jesus' own compassion to have compassion for others and so they brought out their food and shared it. The real miracle, goes this explanation, was one of inspired compassion. Uh... well... in the face of such absurd assertions, it's usually best to keep a smile on your face and move on. The postmodern interpretive task with miracle stories, I believe, is to keep the mystery and the power and not explain it away into nothingness. That means wrestling with it, possibly saying simply, "I don't know," or perhaps actually accepting it, all the while letting the story stand as it is and speak to us.
There is no question that the feeding has a eucharistic feel and connection, carrying anticipatory echoes of what is to come later, specifically verse 19b: "... he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples...." Is the story a retrospection from the Last Supper? Or perhaps the eucharistic language was simply borrowed from the account of the Last Supper? Again, to take a hard stance on such issues often results in depriving the story of its meaning and power.
Let it suffice to say that Jesus' compassion is a major theme in the story, the compassion he had even when he was depleted and needed to be by himself, a compassion that had enormous -- and miraculous -- power to meet people's needs.
Application
How wonderful it would be if life could be lived, and love could be treasured, and relationships between nations could be enjoyed, without conflict. In the past twenty years, there was a brief instant of hope that large conflict would be eliminated from the world. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama declared that with the fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent demise of communism, the world had reached "the end of history," that is, the "end point of human ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." It didn't last long. The strife in the former Yugoslavia, among other places, showed us that history in Fukuyama's sense was still going strong. And that was well before September 11, the war on terrorism, and the boiling crisis in the Middle East.
No, conflict is here to stay.
Very reasonably, we try to avoid it, and we hope it won't come. After all, human conflict, national conflict, familial conflict, tribal conflict kills people or wounds them in body and soul. It happens on the large scale of nations and the small scale of lovers. So the young couple I counseled genuinely and sincerely didn't want to think that their married life would have strife and fights. So we smooth things over, pour oil on the various troubled waters around us, douse the fires before they become raging infernos. There are countless metaphors for avoiding conflict. But there is a real danger in that.
The married couple who go out of their way to avoid all conflict are not really avoiding it, they are simply driving it inward and barring the door. The inner strife is still there waiting to emerge in some other form.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was roundly condemned in 1938 for his appeasement of Hitler and the Third Reich, avoiding conflict at all costs. He achieved what he called "peace for our time," which became a catchphrase for a nation burying its head in the sand. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn't appeased Hitler? But we do know what did happen in World War II.
Not only is conflict inevitable, it is also through conflict that change happens. In the human body, a muscle struggles against an object, a set of weights, say, and if the muscle does that enough, it grows, gets bigger, becomes able to push harder, it changes.
Likewise, in a marriage there is productive conflict, conflict that airs differences and resolves feelings and ultimately builds a stronger, deeper relationship.
Now the danger here is that we become too sanguine about conflict, too ready to accept it, a Pollyanna, or perhaps a Pangloss, saying easily that all things work together for the best. We don't want to dismiss the pain and injuries caused by conflict. But we also need to affirm that very little true change happens in life without struggle.
Case in point: Jacob, a scoundrel who fought with an unknown creature, a man, a being, a demon, an angel, God. At the end, Jacob was certain that it was God he had fought. And in some way he prevailed, but only, of course, on God's terms. God's terms for Jacob's victory were that even though Jacob prevailed in the struggle, he came out of the fight injured, lame for life, with a new name, Israel, and changed forever deep inside. What if Jacob had immediately made peace with his opponent and not fought at all? Well, of course we don't know, but the all-night-long struggle implies that it was important for it to happen. Only later would we see the change as he reconciled with his estranged brother Esau, and as he became Israel, the father of the nation.
Certainly in many of us there is horror at the thought of fighting with God. After all, we have been taught to fear God and love God. But sometimes fighting with God, struggling in our hearts, through our church, in our studies, in our denominations, is exactly what God wants of us, because it is the means by which God touches our hips and lames us for his service, and gives us a new name for his service, and transforms us for his service.
Alternate Application
Matthew 14:13-21. A depleted Savior? Jesus needed to be alone; he was tired, maybe afraid. Perhaps he was depleted, wrung out. Yet despite his own need for solitude, Jesus met others' needs, healing and feeding people. Why? Why didn't he take time for himself, a mental health day, to use the current expression? The answer is that he was filled with compassion, and in some way that took priority for Jesus. It could be a model for us: Do we need to wait until we are completely healthy and whole to help other people? It could just be that it is as we minister to others, we ourselves are restored, and as we feed others, it feeds us.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 17:1-7, 15
The cry of the righteous
It's a safe bet that pretty much everyone would agree that it's bad when people suffer. We don't spend much time asking if the suffering people are good or bad; we almost instantly sympathize with those who are hurting. Whether it's an earthquake or a flood, a fire or the ravages of disease or war, we find it pretty easy to feel for these people. It's easy because that average Joe or Jane represents a mirror in which we see ourselves.
But if someone is truly righteous, our feelings change a bit. This is why this psalm touches a sensitive spot in us. The plea from these verses doesn't come from some regular guy who's having a rough time. It's easy enough to feel for that person. Here, though, we receive the cry of the righteous. Here is someone whose "lips are free of deceit," whose heart is pure, and whose "mouth does not transgress." Here we see a really good guy having a really bad time.
Oddly enough, we find it more difficult to work up sympathy for one such as this. Strange as it may seem, there is a secret delight that slips from cynical hearts when a righteous person falls upon hard times. This is why schoolyard bullies get away with terrorizing the innocent. It's why we love to see the mighty fall. It is the same kind of sentiment that caused the crowds to call for the release of Barabbas when they could have chosen Jesus. It is an inexplicable piece of our herd mentality. Yet who can deny that it exists?
Perhaps these feelings emerge from our own well-repressed feelings of guilt. Maybe we carry a tiny amount of guilt around with us because we simply do not take the trouble to be as righteous as the person making the plea in this psalm. We really don't like seeing these better-than-average folks. They reflect badly on us. It's why the kids who get good grades get shunned in school. Their success magnifies the merely average performance of the crowd. And so we nod slightly and turn away from the kid getting beaten on the schoolyard.
The question almost asks itself. What would it take for us to step out of our herd mentality so that we might seek a new level of excellence? How could we walk away from what one educator called "the tyranny of lowered expectations" and step into the raised hopes and dreams of a more righteous way?
No matter what we do, the righteous will still suffer along with the rest of us. But maybe if we set our sights a little higher, we ourselves might be counted among those whose lips are free of deceit; among those whose mouths do not transgress.
