Power on display
Commentary
Object:
"Creation was the greatest of all revolutions," said G. K. Chesterton. When young Anne
Frank was hidden in an Amsterdam attic during World War II, fearful of the dreaded
Nazi revolution and longing for a day in the park with her friends, she concurred as she
wrote this note in her diary: "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or
unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens,
nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be."
Even in the harshest of storms, the magnificent power of God is displayed. After Sir Ernest Shackleton returned from one of his Antarctic expeditions, he told of the intense suffering he and his two partners had endured: extreme pain, numbing cold, haunting starvation, consuming exhaustion. When rescued, barely alive, all they had left were two axes and a logbook. "But in memories we were rich," said Shackleton. "We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We have seen God in his glory!"
But bright lights can dim eyesight, and the constant bombardment of God's glory can turn our timid spirits toward the dark places. One person has put it this way: Imagine a family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano. Music filled their piano-world, swelling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was someone close to them -- though invisible to them -- who made the music. They loved to think of the great player whom they could not see.
Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how the music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths that trembled and vibrated. The mice had to revise all their old beliefs: none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the unseen player.
Later, another explorer carried the explanation further. Now the secret was hammers, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, and it showed that the mice lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The unseen player came to be thought of by the mice as a myth.
Today's passages reflect both God's overpowering glory and our willfulness in attempting to dim it or turn away. Moses begs for God's glory to be reasserted for a people who have recently been starstruck by the bling-bling of the golden calf. Paul praises the Thessalonian congregation for keeping its bearings in a stormy sea where many have taken their eyes off the saving light. And Jesus challenges those in his day and ours that power without purpose has no principle.
So the pianist continued to play. And those who heard the music cried, "Glory!"
Exodus 33:12-23
The golden calf incident of Exodus 32-34 is a critical turn in the book of Exodus. Chapters 1-19 explain Israel's oppressed condition in Egypt and the deliverer Yahweh provides in the person of Moses. Chapters 20-40 take place at Mount Sinai where Israel is married to Yahweh through the covenant formed there. In the middle of this grand event comes a distinctly obnoxious moment. Moses' delay on the mountain (32:1), talking with Yahweh on behalf of the people, bred frustration within the community. So they begged Aaron for symbols around which to rally, and what emerged was a bull calf made of gold. The Israelites were probably not seeking to worship something other than the God who brought them out of Egypt so recently; rather they were trying to find a representation of that God within their frame of reference. Since the bull calf was revered among the Egyptians as portraying the liveliness of living power, it could well serve the Israelites at this time of national adolescent brash energy.
The problem for Yahweh was twofold. First, the calf was an Egyptian symbol, and thus virtually blasphemous in light of Yahweh's recent decisive victory over all aspects of Egyptian power and civilization. Second, the calf reflected brute power in the natural order and of a kind that could be controlled by human will. A bull was meant to be yoked and harnessed and guided by whips and goads. True, it was more powerful than its human driver, but at the same time it became a tool in service to the human will. For Yahweh to be thus represented undermined the significance of the divine defeat of Egypt and its culture, and attempted to turn Yahweh into a powerful but controllable source of energy serving the Israelite will.
Under Moses' leadership, his own tribe, the Levites, rallied to avenge Yahweh's disgrace, and because of that action were appointed to the honored position of keepers of the House of God. Meanwhile, Yahweh himself wished to break covenant with Israel and then start over with Moses' family (33:1-5), since Moses and Yahweh had become great partners and almost friends over the past forty years. Now, in today's lectionary text, Moses argued against this turnabout for two reasons. First, Yahweh has made this Suzerain-Vassal covenant with Israel and it cannot so easily be discarded or broken. Yahweh had deliberately invested Yahweh's own destiny into this people, and while they might wrestle with the chafing fit of this new relationship, Yahweh no longer has a right to deny it. Second, Moses raised the card of shame. What would the nations say if Yahweh quit this project now? The peoples of the ancient near east had begun to tremble because of Yahweh's decisive victory over pharaoh; if the God of Israel was able to clearly and convincingly topple the deities of Egypt and their power in both the natural and supernatural realms, what hope could there be for any other mere national interest or powers? But if Yahweh now suddenly left the Israelites to die in the wilderness, the nations around would see that this god was no more than a flash-bang, a one-hit wonder, a dog with more bark than bite. Moses used Yahweh's own covenant to make the deity toe the line and get back into bed with Israel on this honeymoon night.
All of this is affirmed in various ways through the text of these chapters. For instance, prior to the construction of the tabernacle Moses sought to commune with Yahweh not only on the mountain but also in a small structure called the "Tent of Meeting," which was located slightly outside the camp (Exodus 33:7-11). Once the tabernacle had been built, however, this designation of the "Tent of Meeting" was transferred to that newer edifice (Exodus 39:32--40:38). Furthermore, the term used to describe the grander "Tent of Meeting" is mishkan, which means "place of dwelling." The same root is also found in the Hebrew term shakhen, which means "neighbor" (so the significance of Yahweh moving into the neighborhood), and again in the shekina ("presence") cloud of glory that settled on the Tabernacle as its divine occupant moved in. In today's text, before the glory of Yahweh finds its home in the Tabernacle (still to be built), Moses begs to experience this revelation himself. He wants to touch the face of God, so to speak, in order that face-to-face, God and he will be on the same page about Israel's fate. This is more than a desire to get the experience of a lifetime; it is a prayer that two lives will have the full understanding once only possible to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden where they and their creator were "naked and not ashamed."
There are only a handful of truly great words in the English language, says one scholar. They are words without synonyms, words that can't be explained, words that sound like what they mean. One of those words is glory. Only the hushed whisper of that word can describe God. Only the thundering roar of that term can tell what happens when God passes by. This is what Moses needed to see/hear/feel/experience/know. Forever afterward he would be changed, as Paul would later reflect (2 Corinthians 3:7-18), calling for something of the same in us.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
This letter is among the first bits of the New Testament to be written. Probably about six months earlier Paul had penned his letter to the Galatians, writing in the heat of turmoil about the growing tensions between Jewish and Gentile understanding of the gospel of Jesus. Since then, sometime in the year 49, the first leadership council of the Christian church was held in Jerusalem (Acts 15), confirming for all time that this messianic Judaism was no longer bound to the ceremonial rites of ancient Israel.
Now Paul and Silas were in the early stages of their mission journey to Macedonia and Greece. They had picked up Dr. Luke in Troas along the way (Acts 16), established a church in Philippi, and stopped briefly in Thessalonica, Berea, and Athens before settling in for a solid new-church development in Corinth.
Paul was worried about the congregation beginning to form in Thessalonica. He had hardly spent long enough in that city to do more than announce the newness of the Christ gospel. So he sent Timothy on several communication runs to get eyewitness reports and to deliver correspondence. Today's lectionary passage emerges from that frenzied interaction.
The upshot of what Paul says is that the newness of Christ has become the new announcement of God's power and it is being trumpeted in new ways by these new Christians. It is all about the new, and that is something to contemplate with our congregations that have sometimes gotten too entrenched in the old and the traditional, or who have been captured by the wrong spirit of newness in our age.
According to Robert Pirsig, author of the popular 1970s best-seller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, " 'What's new?' is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow."
Newness certainly can be trite. In Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens once described the Veneerings (rather surface people, even by name) this way: "Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was brand-spanking new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly married as was lawfully compatible with having a bran-new baby...." Apparently Dickens didn't think much of people who specialized in "newness!"
Still, as Paul asserts in his commendation of the Thessalonians, not all the new is bad, nor all the future dismal. This is what reverberated from the new congregation in Thessalonica as they reflected on the new thing God was doing in Jesus, and how their own orientation to life had shifted. Moreover, the newness of the coming kingdom of God announced judgment against this old order and the corruption that gnawed away at it. As the young church celebrated the new, even on a battlefield where the ancient tyranny still corrupted, all around them, people sat up and listened. It was a new day.
Matthew 22:15-22
Can you imagine the headline? "God Wins Election! Nations Erupt In Celebration!" Not likely in our lifetime, though Jesus' words about God and Caesar continue to nag at our hearts. Who really is in charge around here, and what does it matter? Most of the time our world seems quite content to get along without a sense of God's majesty and divinity competing with the powers of our age. A sixty-something-year-old woman once told me she liked church, but she didn't really care much for God; always so dark and foreboding, always overwhelming, and overpowering. Always too big to be kept in his place.
Wouldn't it be better, sometimes, if God were less big and grand? If, perhaps, God would be there to create all things, and then again maybe to get us out of trouble when we really need it? If God would win a local election in some small church community, but wouldn't get involved in the global political scene? If God would stay in the church and Caesar could get on with business in the marketplace and governing halls?
Thomas Hardy once wrote a poem about a man who has a complaint and decided to take it to God. Only he had to look hard for God because God had sort of drifted off to the other side of the universe. Finally the man located God and asked for a hearing. Things aren't going well on Earth, he told God. Couldn't God do something about it all?
"Earth?" replies God. "I don't remember it...."
Then the man got upset. "But God," he shouted, "you've got to remember Earth. After all, you created it! How could you forget Earth?"
After a bit of a sigh and a reflective thought, God said to the man, "Oh, now that you mention it, I think I do remember something about Earth. There's some faint recollection that I did something like that ... But," he goes on, "it doesn't matter...."
Does that make you shudder a little bit? "It doesn't matter...." And Earth is left to its own devices, its own political games, and its own feuding powers. Hardy called his poem, "God Forgot."
Jesus reminded those around him that even if religion is marginalized and church is separated from state, there can be no good when God is absented from the field of human existence. Perhaps the difficulties we face in life are the very reason why God shouldn't forget, why God shouldn't stay too far away from us, because it's God's overwhelming presence that brings a measure of perspective to life on Earth.
Without the justice of God, without the norms of divine structures for creation, without the righteousness that establishes right and wrong in our consciences and in our hearts, life on Earth would become a battleground of powers without mercy and wills without restraint. Caesar never rules autonomously. When people make that assumption it is neither Caesar nor we who win the day.
Application
There is a scene in Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring where a partnership is forged among those who would accompany Frodo on his journey to destroy the ring of power. The movie version makes for a gripping visual illustration, and the original literary text is equally as moving. What comes through is a sense of selflessness as the bond that unites these creatures. Furthermore, each subsumes his will to the greater cause and trusts an unseen and transcendent good for an outcome that will bless all of Middle Earth, even if the trek itself causes the demise of any or all of the compatriots.
So it is in the small glimpses of the mission of God that resonate through today's passages. In a world turned cold to its creator (Exodus), in an age riddled by Delphic oracles and temple prostitutes (Thessalonians) and emperors claiming divinity (Matthew), God called together a strange team to make its mark by playing a different game.
The fear of the worst in new things can sometimes blind us to the best that is yet to come. Near the end of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Miranda shouts with joy at the beauty of the world that is opening to her. "How beauteous mankind is!" she cries. "O brave new world, That hath such people in't!" Our thoughts immediately take her innocent rapture and recast it in the dark shades of Huxley's stolen title for a horrible Brave New World where science and technology and totalitarian government join unholy hands to bind human hearts and kill human spirits. Will the "new" do that to us? We pray it won't while we fear it might.
However, the gospel comes ringing through on a day like today. See the glory of God! Let it shine through your new lives! Then, let the powers of this world play, for you know who holds the trump card.
Alternative Application
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10. When novelist Lloyd C. Douglas was in college, he boarded in a large house where the owner lived in the basement, and every room on every floor was converted into an income-generating apartment. For some reason (maybe because the landlord himself was a musician), nearly all the tenants were singers or instrumentalists. The place was always filled with music, some of it grand and good, some of it quite hard to take.
Lloyd Douglas had an ongoing joke with his landlord. They'd meet on the steps, and Douglas would greet him by saying, "Well, what's the good news today?" Invariably, the man would reach into his pocket, pull out a tuning fork, rap it against his heel, and set it against the wall until the whole stairwell echoed with its sound.
"That's middle C!" the landlord would say. "That's the good news today. The soprano in the attic may be singing sharp, and the cellist may be off his music, and the tenor may be flat today, but that's middle C. At least you can count on that!"
Paul would agree. What's the good news today? All the other music in our world may be playing out of tune, but in this be glad: The Lord reigns. And by God's middle C all the fiddlers' tunes shall be judged.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 99
One of the realities that inhibits our understanding of biblical language is the fact that we really don't have much to do with kings these days. Certainly, there is the celebrity-based fascination with the late Princess Diana, and the fevered click of the cameras around Britain's royal family, but truthfully, kings and queens don't have much to do with us today. They especially don't touch us as sources of power in our world.
Power comes from dictators, prime ministers, and presidents. It doesn't much flow from a king anymore. So to say "The Lord is king," evokes a yawn from most contemporary listeners. But, if the language of power were updated and we were to claim, "The Lord is our president!" it's guaranteed that more than a few people might turn to listen. As it turns out, there's someone living on Pennsylvania Avenue who is quite convinced that he is the president. If we claim that the Lord is president, then we have a bit of a conflict.
Jesus understood this clearly when he said, "[You] can't have two masters, for you will love the one and hate the other" (Matthew 6:24). This psalm also has a clear understanding about this. The tone is oppositional. The Lord is king, not that guy sitting on the throne in Jerusalem ... or wherever. The Lord is president, not the one sitting in the oval office, but the Lord God who created us all.
Now we're saying something. In a world of competing interests and loyalties we are being clear. When push comes to shove, we stand with God and no other. When the laws of God and the laws of human beings are in conflict with one another we will follow the laws of God, no matter what the cost. God is our king! God alone is holy!
This psalm, it turns out, is a sort of political manifesto. This God is not only president. This God loves justice and will establish it as [he] brings equity to all people! This is the God we choose to follow in baptism. This is the God we claim as we embrace the Son, Jesus Christ. This God is our president, and no other.
Now before the critiques start flying, it's important to note that this is no call for some theistic anarchy. There is a place for worldly leaders. We need hospitals, schools, and roads. We need good government to make sure that all the people have enough to eat and that true justice lives in the land. However, as we assert this need for reasonable human leadership, let us be clear. Our final allegiance is to God and God alone. "Extol the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy."
Even in the harshest of storms, the magnificent power of God is displayed. After Sir Ernest Shackleton returned from one of his Antarctic expeditions, he told of the intense suffering he and his two partners had endured: extreme pain, numbing cold, haunting starvation, consuming exhaustion. When rescued, barely alive, all they had left were two axes and a logbook. "But in memories we were rich," said Shackleton. "We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We have seen God in his glory!"
But bright lights can dim eyesight, and the constant bombardment of God's glory can turn our timid spirits toward the dark places. One person has put it this way: Imagine a family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano. Music filled their piano-world, swelling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was someone close to them -- though invisible to them -- who made the music. They loved to think of the great player whom they could not see.
Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how the music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths that trembled and vibrated. The mice had to revise all their old beliefs: none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the unseen player.
Later, another explorer carried the explanation further. Now the secret was hammers, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, and it showed that the mice lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The unseen player came to be thought of by the mice as a myth.
Today's passages reflect both God's overpowering glory and our willfulness in attempting to dim it or turn away. Moses begs for God's glory to be reasserted for a people who have recently been starstruck by the bling-bling of the golden calf. Paul praises the Thessalonian congregation for keeping its bearings in a stormy sea where many have taken their eyes off the saving light. And Jesus challenges those in his day and ours that power without purpose has no principle.
So the pianist continued to play. And those who heard the music cried, "Glory!"
Exodus 33:12-23
The golden calf incident of Exodus 32-34 is a critical turn in the book of Exodus. Chapters 1-19 explain Israel's oppressed condition in Egypt and the deliverer Yahweh provides in the person of Moses. Chapters 20-40 take place at Mount Sinai where Israel is married to Yahweh through the covenant formed there. In the middle of this grand event comes a distinctly obnoxious moment. Moses' delay on the mountain (32:1), talking with Yahweh on behalf of the people, bred frustration within the community. So they begged Aaron for symbols around which to rally, and what emerged was a bull calf made of gold. The Israelites were probably not seeking to worship something other than the God who brought them out of Egypt so recently; rather they were trying to find a representation of that God within their frame of reference. Since the bull calf was revered among the Egyptians as portraying the liveliness of living power, it could well serve the Israelites at this time of national adolescent brash energy.
The problem for Yahweh was twofold. First, the calf was an Egyptian symbol, and thus virtually blasphemous in light of Yahweh's recent decisive victory over all aspects of Egyptian power and civilization. Second, the calf reflected brute power in the natural order and of a kind that could be controlled by human will. A bull was meant to be yoked and harnessed and guided by whips and goads. True, it was more powerful than its human driver, but at the same time it became a tool in service to the human will. For Yahweh to be thus represented undermined the significance of the divine defeat of Egypt and its culture, and attempted to turn Yahweh into a powerful but controllable source of energy serving the Israelite will.
Under Moses' leadership, his own tribe, the Levites, rallied to avenge Yahweh's disgrace, and because of that action were appointed to the honored position of keepers of the House of God. Meanwhile, Yahweh himself wished to break covenant with Israel and then start over with Moses' family (33:1-5), since Moses and Yahweh had become great partners and almost friends over the past forty years. Now, in today's lectionary text, Moses argued against this turnabout for two reasons. First, Yahweh has made this Suzerain-Vassal covenant with Israel and it cannot so easily be discarded or broken. Yahweh had deliberately invested Yahweh's own destiny into this people, and while they might wrestle with the chafing fit of this new relationship, Yahweh no longer has a right to deny it. Second, Moses raised the card of shame. What would the nations say if Yahweh quit this project now? The peoples of the ancient near east had begun to tremble because of Yahweh's decisive victory over pharaoh; if the God of Israel was able to clearly and convincingly topple the deities of Egypt and their power in both the natural and supernatural realms, what hope could there be for any other mere national interest or powers? But if Yahweh now suddenly left the Israelites to die in the wilderness, the nations around would see that this god was no more than a flash-bang, a one-hit wonder, a dog with more bark than bite. Moses used Yahweh's own covenant to make the deity toe the line and get back into bed with Israel on this honeymoon night.
All of this is affirmed in various ways through the text of these chapters. For instance, prior to the construction of the tabernacle Moses sought to commune with Yahweh not only on the mountain but also in a small structure called the "Tent of Meeting," which was located slightly outside the camp (Exodus 33:7-11). Once the tabernacle had been built, however, this designation of the "Tent of Meeting" was transferred to that newer edifice (Exodus 39:32--40:38). Furthermore, the term used to describe the grander "Tent of Meeting" is mishkan, which means "place of dwelling." The same root is also found in the Hebrew term shakhen, which means "neighbor" (so the significance of Yahweh moving into the neighborhood), and again in the shekina ("presence") cloud of glory that settled on the Tabernacle as its divine occupant moved in. In today's text, before the glory of Yahweh finds its home in the Tabernacle (still to be built), Moses begs to experience this revelation himself. He wants to touch the face of God, so to speak, in order that face-to-face, God and he will be on the same page about Israel's fate. This is more than a desire to get the experience of a lifetime; it is a prayer that two lives will have the full understanding once only possible to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden where they and their creator were "naked and not ashamed."
There are only a handful of truly great words in the English language, says one scholar. They are words without synonyms, words that can't be explained, words that sound like what they mean. One of those words is glory. Only the hushed whisper of that word can describe God. Only the thundering roar of that term can tell what happens when God passes by. This is what Moses needed to see/hear/feel/experience/know. Forever afterward he would be changed, as Paul would later reflect (2 Corinthians 3:7-18), calling for something of the same in us.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
This letter is among the first bits of the New Testament to be written. Probably about six months earlier Paul had penned his letter to the Galatians, writing in the heat of turmoil about the growing tensions between Jewish and Gentile understanding of the gospel of Jesus. Since then, sometime in the year 49, the first leadership council of the Christian church was held in Jerusalem (Acts 15), confirming for all time that this messianic Judaism was no longer bound to the ceremonial rites of ancient Israel.
Now Paul and Silas were in the early stages of their mission journey to Macedonia and Greece. They had picked up Dr. Luke in Troas along the way (Acts 16), established a church in Philippi, and stopped briefly in Thessalonica, Berea, and Athens before settling in for a solid new-church development in Corinth.
Paul was worried about the congregation beginning to form in Thessalonica. He had hardly spent long enough in that city to do more than announce the newness of the Christ gospel. So he sent Timothy on several communication runs to get eyewitness reports and to deliver correspondence. Today's lectionary passage emerges from that frenzied interaction.
The upshot of what Paul says is that the newness of Christ has become the new announcement of God's power and it is being trumpeted in new ways by these new Christians. It is all about the new, and that is something to contemplate with our congregations that have sometimes gotten too entrenched in the old and the traditional, or who have been captured by the wrong spirit of newness in our age.
According to Robert Pirsig, author of the popular 1970s best-seller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, " 'What's new?' is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow."
Newness certainly can be trite. In Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens once described the Veneerings (rather surface people, even by name) this way: "Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was brand-spanking new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly married as was lawfully compatible with having a bran-new baby...." Apparently Dickens didn't think much of people who specialized in "newness!"
Still, as Paul asserts in his commendation of the Thessalonians, not all the new is bad, nor all the future dismal. This is what reverberated from the new congregation in Thessalonica as they reflected on the new thing God was doing in Jesus, and how their own orientation to life had shifted. Moreover, the newness of the coming kingdom of God announced judgment against this old order and the corruption that gnawed away at it. As the young church celebrated the new, even on a battlefield where the ancient tyranny still corrupted, all around them, people sat up and listened. It was a new day.
Matthew 22:15-22
Can you imagine the headline? "God Wins Election! Nations Erupt In Celebration!" Not likely in our lifetime, though Jesus' words about God and Caesar continue to nag at our hearts. Who really is in charge around here, and what does it matter? Most of the time our world seems quite content to get along without a sense of God's majesty and divinity competing with the powers of our age. A sixty-something-year-old woman once told me she liked church, but she didn't really care much for God; always so dark and foreboding, always overwhelming, and overpowering. Always too big to be kept in his place.
Wouldn't it be better, sometimes, if God were less big and grand? If, perhaps, God would be there to create all things, and then again maybe to get us out of trouble when we really need it? If God would win a local election in some small church community, but wouldn't get involved in the global political scene? If God would stay in the church and Caesar could get on with business in the marketplace and governing halls?
Thomas Hardy once wrote a poem about a man who has a complaint and decided to take it to God. Only he had to look hard for God because God had sort of drifted off to the other side of the universe. Finally the man located God and asked for a hearing. Things aren't going well on Earth, he told God. Couldn't God do something about it all?
"Earth?" replies God. "I don't remember it...."
Then the man got upset. "But God," he shouted, "you've got to remember Earth. After all, you created it! How could you forget Earth?"
After a bit of a sigh and a reflective thought, God said to the man, "Oh, now that you mention it, I think I do remember something about Earth. There's some faint recollection that I did something like that ... But," he goes on, "it doesn't matter...."
Does that make you shudder a little bit? "It doesn't matter...." And Earth is left to its own devices, its own political games, and its own feuding powers. Hardy called his poem, "God Forgot."
Jesus reminded those around him that even if religion is marginalized and church is separated from state, there can be no good when God is absented from the field of human existence. Perhaps the difficulties we face in life are the very reason why God shouldn't forget, why God shouldn't stay too far away from us, because it's God's overwhelming presence that brings a measure of perspective to life on Earth.
Without the justice of God, without the norms of divine structures for creation, without the righteousness that establishes right and wrong in our consciences and in our hearts, life on Earth would become a battleground of powers without mercy and wills without restraint. Caesar never rules autonomously. When people make that assumption it is neither Caesar nor we who win the day.
Application
There is a scene in Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring where a partnership is forged among those who would accompany Frodo on his journey to destroy the ring of power. The movie version makes for a gripping visual illustration, and the original literary text is equally as moving. What comes through is a sense of selflessness as the bond that unites these creatures. Furthermore, each subsumes his will to the greater cause and trusts an unseen and transcendent good for an outcome that will bless all of Middle Earth, even if the trek itself causes the demise of any or all of the compatriots.
So it is in the small glimpses of the mission of God that resonate through today's passages. In a world turned cold to its creator (Exodus), in an age riddled by Delphic oracles and temple prostitutes (Thessalonians) and emperors claiming divinity (Matthew), God called together a strange team to make its mark by playing a different game.
The fear of the worst in new things can sometimes blind us to the best that is yet to come. Near the end of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Miranda shouts with joy at the beauty of the world that is opening to her. "How beauteous mankind is!" she cries. "O brave new world, That hath such people in't!" Our thoughts immediately take her innocent rapture and recast it in the dark shades of Huxley's stolen title for a horrible Brave New World where science and technology and totalitarian government join unholy hands to bind human hearts and kill human spirits. Will the "new" do that to us? We pray it won't while we fear it might.
However, the gospel comes ringing through on a day like today. See the glory of God! Let it shine through your new lives! Then, let the powers of this world play, for you know who holds the trump card.
Alternative Application
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10. When novelist Lloyd C. Douglas was in college, he boarded in a large house where the owner lived in the basement, and every room on every floor was converted into an income-generating apartment. For some reason (maybe because the landlord himself was a musician), nearly all the tenants were singers or instrumentalists. The place was always filled with music, some of it grand and good, some of it quite hard to take.
Lloyd Douglas had an ongoing joke with his landlord. They'd meet on the steps, and Douglas would greet him by saying, "Well, what's the good news today?" Invariably, the man would reach into his pocket, pull out a tuning fork, rap it against his heel, and set it against the wall until the whole stairwell echoed with its sound.
"That's middle C!" the landlord would say. "That's the good news today. The soprano in the attic may be singing sharp, and the cellist may be off his music, and the tenor may be flat today, but that's middle C. At least you can count on that!"
Paul would agree. What's the good news today? All the other music in our world may be playing out of tune, but in this be glad: The Lord reigns. And by God's middle C all the fiddlers' tunes shall be judged.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 99
One of the realities that inhibits our understanding of biblical language is the fact that we really don't have much to do with kings these days. Certainly, there is the celebrity-based fascination with the late Princess Diana, and the fevered click of the cameras around Britain's royal family, but truthfully, kings and queens don't have much to do with us today. They especially don't touch us as sources of power in our world.
Power comes from dictators, prime ministers, and presidents. It doesn't much flow from a king anymore. So to say "The Lord is king," evokes a yawn from most contemporary listeners. But, if the language of power were updated and we were to claim, "The Lord is our president!" it's guaranteed that more than a few people might turn to listen. As it turns out, there's someone living on Pennsylvania Avenue who is quite convinced that he is the president. If we claim that the Lord is president, then we have a bit of a conflict.
Jesus understood this clearly when he said, "[You] can't have two masters, for you will love the one and hate the other" (Matthew 6:24). This psalm also has a clear understanding about this. The tone is oppositional. The Lord is king, not that guy sitting on the throne in Jerusalem ... or wherever. The Lord is president, not the one sitting in the oval office, but the Lord God who created us all.
Now we're saying something. In a world of competing interests and loyalties we are being clear. When push comes to shove, we stand with God and no other. When the laws of God and the laws of human beings are in conflict with one another we will follow the laws of God, no matter what the cost. God is our king! God alone is holy!
This psalm, it turns out, is a sort of political manifesto. This God is not only president. This God loves justice and will establish it as [he] brings equity to all people! This is the God we choose to follow in baptism. This is the God we claim as we embrace the Son, Jesus Christ. This God is our president, and no other.
Now before the critiques start flying, it's important to note that this is no call for some theistic anarchy. There is a place for worldly leaders. We need hospitals, schools, and roads. We need good government to make sure that all the people have enough to eat and that true justice lives in the land. However, as we assert this need for reasonable human leadership, let us be clear. Our final allegiance is to God and God alone. "Extol the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy."
