Skip to main content

His steadfast love endures forever!

His steadfast love endures forever! (Psalm 118.1-20 https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)
Then as now, Israel often found herself up against it, encircled by enemies. At these difficult times in the life of the nation, when people were anxious and distressed, this psalm was a source of comfort. 
It seems likely that the worshippers processed into the temple led by the priests and perhaps also the king. The priests would chant some of the lines, and the worshippers would echo them back, asserting their faith in God's power to help them.
The message is clear. It’s foolish to try to build alliances with other princes or for the nation to put its trust in politicians to come up with clever solutions to its predicament when the people can take refuge in the Lord, knowing that he is on their side. Even when they’re pushed hard, so that they’re falling, the Lord will help them. He’s their true strength and has become their salvation. 
The Lord may have punished the nation severely, but he’s not given it over to death. At the gates of the temple the worshippers cry out to be allowed in, and God lets the righteous enter.
Jeremiah knew this psalm. At the beginning of the nation’s long exile he alludes, in the passage that we explored yesterday, to going up to the house of the Lord again to celebrate God's everlasting love. He believed that sentiments like those expressed in Psalm 118 had given the nation false confidence that it was somehow impregnable to disaster. But it wasn’t. In the end Israel was given over to exile and death after all, despite all the anxious petitions for God's help. 
Does that mean the people's faith in God had been misplaced? Like the psalmist, Jeremiah thinks not. If the nation can become truly righteous, instead of taking God’s help for granted, it shall not die, but shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.
For Christians, righteousness comes ‘through Christ alone’, and his death is the guarantee that even if we’re given over to death we shall live again to recount the Lord’s saving power.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his ...
14 comments
Read more

Giotto’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds

John 1.10-18 In the week before Christmas the BBC broadcast a modern version of The Nativity which attempted to retell the story with as much psychological realism as possible. So, for instance, viewers saw how Mary, and Joseph especially, struggled with their feelings. But telling the story of Jesus with psychological realism is not a new idea. It has a long tradition going back seven hundred years to the time of the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. This nativity scene was painted in a church in Padua in about 1305. Much imitated it is one of the first attempts at psychological realism in Christian art. And what a wonderful first attempt it is - a work of genius, in fact! Whereas previously Mary and the Baby Jesus had been depicted facing outwards, or looking at their visitors, with beatific expressions fixed on their faces, Giotto dares to show them staring intently into one another’s eyes, bonding like any mother and newborn baby. Joseph, in contrast, is not looking on with quiet a...
1 comment
Read more

Overcoming separation

1 Peter 1.3-9, John 20.19-31 This year our eldest son will turn 40, but back in the day - when he was five or six perhaps - he was a master at delaying bedtime. Just as we were trying to tuck him into bed he would come up with a range of intriguing and important questions which he felt we wouldn't be able to resist.  For instance one of his questions that I remember is, ‘Where is God?’ When we counteted with something like, ‘God is everywhere,’ he was ready with his next question, ‘If God is everywhere, why can't we see him?’  It's a good question, and it takes us straight to the heart of today's lectionary readings. That was exactly the question which Thomas posed to the other disciples about the risen Jesus on the First Easter Day, and which the writer of the First letter of Peter addresses too. At Meriden we have been using a Lent liturgy which was written by the awarding winning poet and children's author Jan Dean. In her spare time she’s also a Church of Englan...
Post a Comment
Read more