In the great congregation

Psalm 40

I waited patiently for the Lord;

    he inclined to me and heard my cry.

He drew me up from the pit of destruction,

    out of the miry bog,

and set my feet upon a rock,

    making my steps secure.

He put a new song in my mouth,

    a song of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear,

    and put their trust in the Lord.

Blessed is the man who makes

    the Lord his trust,

who does not turn to the proud,

    to those who go astray after a lie!

You have multiplied, O Lord my God,

    your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;

    none can compare with you!

I will proclaim and tell of them,

    yet they are more than can be told.

In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,

    but you have given me an open ear.

Burnt offering and sin offering

    you have not required.

Then I said, “Behold, I have come;

    in the scroll of the book it is written of me:

I delight to do your will, O my God;

    your law is within my heart.”

I have told the glad news of deliverance

    in the great congregation;

behold, I have not restrained my lips,

    as you know, O Lord.

I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart;

    I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;

I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness

    from the great congregation.

As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain

    your mercy from me;

your steadfast love and your faithfulness will

    ever preserve me!

For evils have encompassed me

    beyond number;

my iniquities have overtaken me,

    and I cannot see;

they are more than the hairs of my head;

    my heart fails me.

Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!

    O Lord, make haste to help me!

Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether

    who seek to snatch away my life;

let those be turned back and brought to dishonor

    who delight in my hurt!

Let those be appalled because of their shame

    who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”

But may all who seek you

    rejoice and be glad in you;

may those who love your salvation

    say continually, “Great is the Lord!”

As for me, I am poor and needy,

    but the Lord takes thought for me.

You are my help and my deliverer;

    do not delay, O my God!

Colossians 3:1-11

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

It may not be readily apparent what these two passages have to do with one another.  To be honest, it isn’t readily apparent to me what they have to do with one another except that they are both included in the Daily Office readings for the day.  But they are both beautiful, and I feel compelled to write about them both this morning.

To begin with the morning’s psalm:  I will tell of the Lord’s wondrous works and his great salvation.  To give a nutshell, the Lord brought me from bitterness and despair, anger and selfishness, and taught me joy, love, and patience.  Granted, I’m a slow learner.  It is much truer to say that he is teaching me.  Truest to say that he has taught, is teaching, and will continue to teach.  But as far as I know English lacks the pluperfect so I can’t get that statement into one word.

I have seen the gospel worked out in my life.  That gospel that says “If any man is in Christ he is a new creation”.  I have seen that personal care of a loving father for his beloved son.  I currently have no debt because the Lord rather miraculously provided a job for me that paid well enough to get them all taken care of.  If you haven’t heard that story, the short version is that I got an email out of nowhere from a friend I hadn’t seen for years who lived in another state offering me a job that I wasn’t qualified to do because he felt that God was wanting him to do something for me.  It just so happened that in the previous months I’d been spending a lot of time praying about the future and felt that God was telling me to pay off my debts, which was impossible at the time since I worked a low paying job.  I did at one point tell God that if he wanted me to pay off my debts, he’d have to do something about it himself, because it wasn’t going to happen any time soon otherwise.  The story could be longer.  I’d be happy to give anyone a longer version if you ask me for it.

There are many other ways that I have seen God’s love for me personally, from the family and friends he’s given me to the simple things that could go unnoticed.  Do we remember when Israel was wandering in the wilderness?  God sustained them so that their shoes didn’t wear out.  I now invite anyone to look at my 2001 Oldsmobile with 250,000 miles that should probably be dead by now but is still limping along from day to day, despite its many injuries and mice.  I’m counting that as God’s provision.  Why?  Because it should be dead and it isn’t.  And he’s doing a great job of providing me a lack of car payment at the moment.  Also great affordable housing in a pastoral dreamscape with an awesome roommate and community around.

Yes, the Lord has done great things.  Psalm 40 sets up an awesome picture of the relationship between God and his servant.  (It struck me how much this psalm is like the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah.  Fulfilled ultimately and perfectly in Christ, but true of the one speaking and of all of God’s anointed servants.)  The picture is of God giving mercy and blessing and his servant giving thanks.  Not the servant giving sacrifices and offerings and the placated God responding with kindness.  Servant asks for mercy, God shows mercy, servant gives thanks.  The image gets better.

Why does the servant ask for mercy?  “My iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see.”  It isn’t simply the outside world heaping contempt on God’s servant.  He is suffering under his own iniquity.  (I mentioned Christ fulfilling the psalm perfectly in the above paragraph.  I’m not making the jump that Christ was suffering for his iniquity.  Keep it focused.)  This is a little bit hard for me to describe well, because I don’t think I understand it very well.  I’m tempted to set up a situation wherein God punishes us for our sins in this life and this is the result of suffering.  There’s a part of me that wants that to be true.  That part of me is wrong and a liar and is trying to make me forget God’s love and kindness.  There are natural consequences of our sins that God may not shield us from, but he is not heaping bad things on us because of how wretched we are.  He doesn’t do that.  Discipline, sure.  He will use even our sin for our good.  He may send us difficult circumstances in order to teach us something about himself or to help us learn to walk in his ways or simply so that we may share in the sufferings of Christ.  But he doesn’t beat us in anger to show us who’s boss.  He has forgiven our sins.  They are nailed to the cross.

One more thought about the psalm before I move on to the epistle:  It’s very clearly a cycle.  I suffer, God delivers, I suffer again, God delivers again.  I know that God will deliver me from this suffering because God has delivered me in the past.  I will tell it to all the people because I’ve seen it, and I will tell it to myself because I need to remember.  I am suffering now, but God will deliver me, and I will give him praise.  Because he loves me.  All of it, because he loves me.

It feels unnecessary to move on to the epistle, but I have to do it.

So then, in light of all these things, in light of the fact that God has forgiven all our sins (pluperfect?) and delights to give us good things, how ought we to respond?  Giving thanks, of course, is important.  But there’s something more here.  God always required righteousness and he was always forgiving.  That didn’t change under the new covenant.  (I’m fairly certain that the biggest change in the new covenant was its being open to all people and giving the Holy Spirit, but don’t take that as any sort of authoritative statement.  Ask a bishop.  Or if you’re a part of my diocese, you can also ask our Canon Theologian, who will certainly answer your question and leave your head spinning with all of the extra fantastic information that you never thought to ask for.)    God still requires righteousness.  He accepts the righteousness of Jesus.  But that isn’t excuse for us to go on sinning because Jesus has us covered.

What St. Paul says here is that we have died and been raised with Christ.  If, then, we have died and been raised, we ought to live our lives as if we have died and been raised.  We ought not to focus on the things of this world.  We ought, rather, to set our minds on heavenly things.  We ought to put to death what is earthly in us.  A short list of things to put to death: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying, social and political divisions.

We exist in a culture that elevates the rights of the individual above all things.  (Granted, it is impossible to consistently maintain the rights of the individual as a highest good.  Holding up the rights of one means that you will inevitably infringe the rights of another.  The impossibility of maintaining the rights of the individual as a highest good even under the best possible circumstances should be our first hint that it is not in fact a high good.  That reality should encourage us to stop pursuing it as if it were.)  Because we value the rights of the individual as a culture, we bring that into our Christian lives.  This isn’t a new problem, and I’m not claiming it as a uniquely modern or uniquely American thing.  Which is fortunate, because that means we have lots of examples throughout history and scripture to show us the right way.

There is a question often asked by Christian teens and twenty-somethings who are dating.  “How far is too far?”  I don’t propose to answer that question.  I simply use it as an example of the thought that is in our minds and hearts when we look at sin.  “How much can I get away with and still be okay?”  This sets up a balance, as if we could put two or three ounces of sin on the scale without tipping it, but anything more is too much.  But Paul doesn’t describe it like that.  He describes it as life and death.  It’s binary.  Either it is alive or it is dead.  Okay, I can’t covet my neighbor’s donkey, but how about his dog?  Is that still too much?  Okay, maybe just his rose bushes?  No?  One rose?  The problem isn’t the object of coveting or the quantity of coveting, the problem is that covetousness is still alive.  Put it to death.

We sow divisions within the church based largely on our desire to define the acceptable quantity of sin.  On one side we have people completely excusing all sorts of things that have been described as sin in scripture, like sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying, and they entrench in a political party or social group and spit at the other side of the church.  Why?  Because they value their own dignity above all other things and demand that they be allowed to do what they want.  Their minds are focused on earthly things, not on things above.  If their minds were focused on things above, it might become less important that they aren’t married or don’t share a bed with another man or woman.  It might become less important that they don’t have the same pay as another.  It might become less important that they are limited in what they are allowed to do, by one power structure or another.

On the other side of we have people absolutely forbidding all sorts of things, even things that scripture doesn’t forbid, and in so doing are glossing over and thus practically excusing sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying, and their entrenchments in a political party or social group that spits at the other side of the church.  “Don’t be given to drunkenness” becomes “Don’t taste alcohol or go into any establishment that serves it.”  This side is caught up with the rules of “Do not touch.”  Why?  Because they value their own dignity above all other things and demand that others thing highly of them.  Their minds are focused on earthly things, not on things above.  If their minds were focused on things above, it might become less important that the government is taking away their legally protected rights.  It might become less important that others are receiving rights that they believe ought not to be given.    It might become less important that they be paid more than others, or that they be given the respect and recognition they feel they deserve.

We don’t really have two sides in the church.  We have one big circle that’s doing the same things in different ways.  When we spit hatred on others, we spit hatred on ourselves.  We have to stop doing that.  Put to death wrath and malice.

We also have to stop living as if we were not crucified and raised with Christ.  We must put to death the old self.  Not because we will only earn our salvation if we work it out perfectly.  Of course not.  But because the reality is that we have been crucified and raised with Christ.  To live as if we have not been is a lie.  And to put to death the old self is to proclaim to the great congregation the things that God has done.

May we also shout his good works to the world and to one another.  May we embrace death and resurrection.  May we love one another with all kindness and humility.  In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.