3rd Sunday
of Lent, March 4, 2018
Last year, right around this time,
the greatest of UNC basketball luminaries was asked what was the ceiling for
the 2017 North Carolina Tar Heels men’s basketball team? How far could that team go? He excited and confused the Dean Dome crowd
by proclaiming, “The ceiling is the roof!”
Horizons; when I think of horizon, I
think how high I can go and how far I can see.
What is the horizon in your life, the limit? Think in terms of relationship, purpose,
accomplishment. In the Bible, Psalms 1, 19, and 119 are referred to as “great
Psalms of Torah,” and these Psalms show the people of God to be a people whose
“horizon is defined by Torah.”[i]
I’d bet my pinky finger you’ve never
said, “My horizon is defined by Torah.”
Torah is law, but in the Bible,
Jewish people mean more that the simple definition of law we use – it is the
law that you drive 25 miles per hour in a residential zone and if you go
faster, thus breaking the law, then you could get a ticket and a fine. Torah is far more elegant than something as
mundane as that.
Torah is the text of the first five
books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It is the story of God’s creation of all that
is; it is the story of God’s selection of one man, Abraham, and his descendants,
to be his chosen people; and, it is the story of God’s self-revelation as he
rescues Abraham’s descendants from slavery in Egypt and then, through the
mediator, the prototype-prophet Moses, gives the law. The law shows Abraham’s descendants how to
live as God’s chosen people. “I, the
Lord your God am holy. You shall be holy
as I am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).
Per Michael Jordan, the Tar Heels’
basketball ceiling is the roof. Per the
Bible, the ceiling, the roof, and the sky beyond it all fall under God. We know God first and foremost in our
encounter with God in Torah. The God we
meet in Torah determines how far we go, who we become in life.
Of course all that I have said is a
great offense, a true insult, precisely because it is me saying it. As a Gentile, I am not of the chosen
people. I have no rightful claim to
Torah, other than to come to it as a stranger and alien. This is true of you too, if you are also a
Gentile, and most who hear or read this are.
However, when the God of creation came to the creation as a human man,
Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh, something changed.
Paul describes this change in Romans
11. He calls Gentile Jesus-followers
“wild olive shoots” who were grafted into the tree (v.17). In other words, in Jesus, we Gentiles are
brought into the Chosen People. Jesus
does not replace Torah. Jesus embodies
Torah. Torah is not rendered obsolete
because of Jesus. Because of Jesus Torah
reaches fullness. Torah is fulfilled in
Him. And all who come to faith in Him, even
non-Jews, are adopted as daughters and sons of God.
So, God, including the word of God,
is our horizon. This is our destiny, our
goal, and our limit. Sometimes, God as
our limit does mean, we don’t go there.
We don’t do that. Sometimes the
limitations set by God do in fact restrict us.
But the point is our lives are richer and happier by staying within the
boundaries God sets.
Other times, the limits set by God mean we can
go father and do more than it seems might be humanly possible. David defeats Goliath. Esther saves her people from extinction. Joseph and pregnant Mary survive the arduous
journey and make it to Bethlehem.
Both in restraint and
in exceeding all possibility, we are bound by the relationship we have with
God. Either way, we are slaves to God
whom we know by Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, enslaved to God, we know we are absolutely free.
The symphony of praise in the first
six verses of Psalm 19 launches an all-out assault upon the cathedral of
scientific naturalism. Evolutionary
science sees no purpose in nature other than survival. Natural phenomena do not praise God or tell
God’s story, says the scientist. Natural
phenomena exists without planning and without goals. We look to sky and see a dazzling diamond
display of stars that the astronomer will tell us are all, like our sun, giant
burning orbs. “Twinkle, twinkle little
star, how I wonder what you are.”
No. There
is no wonder. The astronomer knows what
it is: a flaming gas ball.
No.
Psalm 19 defiantly rejects this soulless explanation. “The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (v.1). For millennia, obeying the instruction of
Jesus, we have loved God with “all our mind” (Luke 10:27-28), and gathered learning
upon learning. We who worship also
appreciate the achievements made by men and women of science. We know the astronomer is right. The beautiful night time lights are flaming
gas balls. But before we learned that,
we knew God and we still know God. So
the Psalmist is also right. The heavens
do indeed tell his glory.
Yes, singer of the Psalm, God does set a tent
for the sun, and when that sun comes out, it does come out like a bridegroom emerging
from the wedding canopy (v.5). Yes, the
sun runs its course in joy. Along with
our knowledge of astronomy, we know God.
Because Jesus came, lived a life in which he teaches us how to love,
died for us, and rose from the grave, we have relationship with God. When we gave our hearts to Him, we were all
made a part of God’s people. Torah,
perfected in Christ, has become our horizon.
Our life is directed by God. We
are headed toward God.
One of the most important results of
living God-directed lives is our sense that God is present, is able to hold our
lives, and wants to be involved, to be in relationship with us. Last week, the central point was that belief
= faith. That’s not all faith is, but it
is at the very least that. We when we live in faith, we fully believe that God
is present and thus our lives are lived fully submitted to God as our
Lord. God as we know God in Jesus is
master of our lives.
Therefore, we expect God to act in
our lives. We absolutely believe that
God will step into the flow of history and to alter that flow by changing the
course of events for the better. More
individualistically, we expect God to, out of his love for us, act in tangible
ways in our lives. One author refers to
this as living life with the full expectation of “Abiding Astonishment.”[ii] We believe God will do the miraculous. But what happens when God doesn’t? What do we do when we expect abiding
astonishment and come away unimpressed?
How do we handle it when we believe we will get abiding astonishment,
and instead we get disappointment?
·
The
cancer is ends not in a healing, but in a funeral.
·
“Til
death do us part” is shattered as he finds a younger woman more attractive and
leaves behind the wife of his youth and the kids they had together.
·
We
send our kids off to school in the morning with a full lunch box and a
heartfelt prayer for their safety and their learning, and then we lose our
voices in paralyzing terror when we hear that the shooting happened in our town
this time; in the school where our kids go.
·
Holocaust
in Germany; atomic bomb in Japan; killing fields in Cambodia; genocide in
Rwanda; endless civil war in Syria.
God was supposed to act. But God didn’t. Then what?
What happened to all that sanctimonious sentiment about horizons and
Torah, that flowery grandiosity about the heavens telling of God’s glory? Where is God’s glory now?
The answer depends upon what we
believe. If you started out not truly
believing in God or God’s involvement in life, then pain will bring your
unbelief to the surface. Many
unbelievers spend their lives in church.
They recite the Lord’s Prayer. They sing the doxology and the praise
songs and the hymns. They take
communion. However, when deep pain and
crushing disappointment come, suddenly, they no longer think much about
God. The loss of faith is loss of
something that wasn’t quite real in the first place.
However, if you start out with a
deep faith and abiding trust in God, and then disappointment comes where you
expected astonishment, your response to pain will not be the abandonment of
faith. When life hurts, you might
angrily ask, “Where is God?” But if you
are a believer, you won’t ask, “Is there a God?” That’s not something you’d consider.
Psalm 88 is the plaintive song of
one who feels isolated, crushed by God.
Ecclesiastes paints a bleak, fatalistic picture of a world God has left
to run its course. Job rages the
tortured cry of pain as he thrusts blame for all his woes in God’s lap. Jesus, quoting the Psalms, cries out, “My
God, My God, why have your forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46). In the tradition of these Biblical witnesses,
when life gets hard for us, if we truly believe in a real God, an active and
present God, then we raise our voice to that God.
We need to be reminded of this because life
gets tough. From the depths of pain, we
desperately need to cast our eyes upon the horizon, upon the God who
saves. What do we see when we do? The sun, the sky, the stars, raise God’s
praise in the first six verses of Psalm 19.
But then it takes a turn in verse 7. It initially seems to be a very dull, dry
turn. From “the sun coming like a
bridegroom from his wedding canopy,” we get “law, decrees, precepts,
commandments, ordinances.” Yawn. How do these arid concepts offer comfort or
hope or some light to us when we are beleaguered by burdens, beaten down by
pain and loss? How do decrees or commandments
rescue us from our disappointments and help us once again fix our eyes on God,
our horizon?
The singer of the Psalm puts verbs with the
nouns. “The law of the Lord … [revives]
the soul,” when the soul needs reviving.
The decrees give wisdom. The
precepts bring rejoicing to our hearts.
The commandment enlightens our eyes.
The ordinances of God surpass gold in value. The singer of the Psalm ponders the law of
God and finds life in it. Because we
come to Torah by way of Jesus, we know what kind of life Torah gives. “I have come that you might have life and
have it in abundance” (John 10:10).
These verbs amplify Torah appropriately.
Life is full when life is the life of God. That full life is our horizon.
The final verse of Psalm 19 is one many
preachers pray right before they preach.
“Let the words of my mouth and the mediation of my heart be acceptable
to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer” (v.14).
If I want the words I have spoken this morning
to be acceptable to God, those words have to help you see God even when you
find yourself in difficult circumstances.
Even when we suffer, we need to look to the horizon and see God and see
a way to hope. Thus, I reiterate what
was said last week and what was said on the very first Sunday of Lent. God is present. Jesus left the disciples with these word when
he ascended at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. “Remember I am with you always, even to the
end of the age” (28:20b).
God is with us. When we inhabit His law as we understand it
through the life and teaching of Jesus; when we feel him fill us as we gather
here, in the community of our brothers and sisters in the church family; and when
we sense his Holy Spirit, present wherever we go. The wonder of God, the abiding astonishment,
is that God is the horizon, that distant point to which we are headed. God is also at home deep in our hearts. And God is all around us. Each statement is true.
In our good times, we sing the song of Psalm
19, “The heavens tell of the glory of God.”
In our down times, we move to the second stanza, “The law of the Lord is
perfect, reviving the soul.” And, where
we spend most of our lives, in between the mountain top of exultant joy, and
the lowest valleys of gray despair, in our unremarkable times; God is there
too. “The commandment of the Lord is
clear, enlightening the eyes” (19:8b).
Fight with God or praise God, or silence your
mind and listen to God. But always,
always, stay attuned. We keep our eyes
on God, our Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
In Lent, the season of turning away from sin and turning away from
temptation and distraction, we also turn to something. We turn to the horizon, our God. We turn to him and walk in faith.
AMEN
[i]
Brueggemann, W. (1997). Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony,
Dispute, Advocacy. Fortress Press
(Minneapolis), p.445.
[ii] Brueggemann,
W. (1991). Abiding Astonishment: Psalms, Modernity, and the Making of History.
John Knox Press (Louisville), p.52.
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