The “celebrations of life” people hold now pretend that what has happened isn’t real. The funeral homes with flowers everywhere—flowers that themselves will be dead in mere days—cover with their sickening sweetness the stench of death in a corpse we’ve filled with formaldehyde to pretend none of this is really happening….
Read MoreThroughout the Scriptures we see the righteous suffering. St. Paul had his thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to harass him. Job experienced the death of his children, the scorn of his wife, the rebuke of his friends, and the wasting away of his flesh. His days were spent on the dunghill, and his nights filled with bitter weeping. Abraham and Sarah spent years in barren sorrow. Isaac and Rebekah grieved over their wayward children. Jesus said that His followers should expect tribulation in this world. And St. Paul told Timothy that everyone who desires to live godly will suffer persecution….
Read MoreA strange piety the Psalms give us, because they invite us to complain to God, even to accuse God. He is not acting in the way we expected. And the only hope, the only reliable thing, is to return to the foundational character of God, expressed in the final line of the Psalm: “Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.”
The people of God don’t expect God to act because of something they are offering Him; in fact, they don’t even try. There is no bargaining.
And they don’t expect Him to act because of their accusations of His not being fair, as though He could be shamed into acting.
They simply appeal to God to be who He is….
Read MoreLamentation doesn’t fit the American religion. We are inculcated to seek success. Prosperity comes from work.
In the Psalter, however, we have genres that do not fit the American mindset. The Psalms address not only thanksgiving and praise, but desolation and grief, guilt and loss.
The Psalms of Lament teach us to see ourselves, in the words of Jürgen Moltmann, “Limping, but blessed”…
Read MoreEaster is about a risen body. If that isn’t true, then everything really is meaningless. But the words, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”, those words were spoken to people who then saw the Lord Jesus risen in His body….
Read MoreWe are very familiar with Psalm 141, since it is a fixed part of our Evening Prayer liturgy. “Let my prayer rise before You as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”
The lifting up of hands in prayer at the evening sacrifice betokened the Lamb of God, who was offered up as our sacrifice at the evening of the world – and whose death itself came about at the time of the evening sacrifice. There on the cross, His arms were lifted up, as He offered prayers for the world’s forgiveness.
Read MoreJesus placed Himself entirely in the hands of the Father. Jesus was confident that the Father would judge rightly. He was confident that He would be vindicated.
This is likewise how the Psalm teaches us to live. We are surrounded by those “who plan evil things in their heart.” But the way of Jesus is shown in this Psalm. We do not plot against them in return, but entrust ourselves to Him who judges justly.
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