The festal shout

My daughter got up at 4 am on Saturday to drive with her friend to Boston for the Stanley Cup parade. Arriving early on the parade route, they were in prime position (front row) for observing the celebration. From the pictures and her report it seems to have been a joyful and happy event, notwithstanding police prepared for riots.

While I was not there, I think that I can safely assume that it was noisy. People don’t celebrate publicly in large numbers silently. Add to this fact of human nature the realization that it has been 39 years since the Bruins won the cup and one can imagine that it was very noisy, with much cheering and shouting of happy people. People shout when celebrating big things.

And not just sports championships. In Psalm 89 we read:

Happy (or blessed) are the people who know the festal shout!
they walk, O Lord, in the light of your presence.
They rejoice daily in your Name;
they are jubilant in your righteousness.

Well clearly they are happy, because they are shouting. Either that or the psalmist needs help discerning joy from anger. And festal perhaps deserves some definition. It is the shout associated with a feast, a celebration. The psalmist knows that when we celebrate, we make noise.

What is interesting, however, is the subject of the celebration. The shout is because these people walk in the light of God’s presence. The bruins and their fans were shouting because they possessed a large and heavy trophy, a symbol of their hard work and victory. Those who know THE festal shout yell it out because God himself is their possession. They rejoice daily in his name.

This text, like many others in the bible, makes me ask the question; “Do I really get it yet?” God has given himself as our possession. That’s big and my response is so small.

I’d like to know the festal shout. And the song of the Lamb. That my life may be a feast of thankfulness to the God who is with us.

What have you done for me lately?

A sometime actor and politician from Nova Scotia once wrote a book called, What have you done for me lately?: A politician explains. (out of print, alas) The book is, in essence, a politician’s lament about a fickle public with short memory. This may be a paradigm shift for some, a politician’s lament rather than our lamentations about politicians. Politicians, usually, are not people who garner our sympathy. But having grown up in a political household, I have some appreciation for the shortness of human memory. Indeed, having grown up in my own body, I have the same appreciation.

We are forgetters. Or expressed another way, we are existentialists, all about the present moment and its existence, not historicists, remembering what has been. In the midst of today’s distress, we will have forgotten last week’s joy. Some of us are more inclined to this than others.

The author of psalm 77 perhaps understands this. He is experiencing some distress. “In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord.” (v.2) And part of his experience is the felt absence of God:

“Will the Lord spurn forever,

and never again be favorable?

Has his steadfast love forever ceased?

Are his promises at an end for all time?

Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he in anger shut up his compassion? (vv. 1-9)

In the middle of the existential angst, there is the question, “Where is God?” The psalmist knows how to deal with this, though. He IS an historicist. The second half of the Psalm is the cure for the doubt of the moment. Verse 11 and 12 read like this, “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.” God’s past action is the best predictor of his future faithfulness.

I am fickle and have a short memory. I am always looking at what is currently problematic and am not naturally inclined to look back at progress or the past faithfulness of God. It took a manager at work to start to teach me on at least an annual basis, to look back and ask, “Where were we a year ago? What progress have we made?”

This can be applied to our professional lives but also our spiritual lives. In my distress, I can choose to recall the past faithfulness of God with thankfulness, instead of lamenting, “What have you done for me lately?”

Feeding and being fed

It is so comforting to read the Bible. Except when it isn’t. There is so much that we read about the love of God, his action for us and his saving power. That’s the comforting part. And then there are the other parts - the ones that challenge us and give us a good dressing down. One of the values of following some systematic system of reading the Bible, such as a lectionary, is that it keeps us from just returning to the comfort and forces us to encounter the challenge. Both are necessary.

For example, I was reading in Hebrews today (from the BCP lectionary) and read this:

About this I have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. (Hebrews 5:11-12)

Now wouldn’t that go over well coming from the pulpit on a Sunday morning? It is not the sort of thing we usually hear, although there must be circumstances in the 2000 years since the writing of this epistle that something very similar needed to be said.

The heart of the challenge is to grow up spiritually. The author had been writing about Jesus as high priest, offering himself in suffering, learning obedience through that suffering and being made perfect. That is indeed hard to explain to us who are comfort lovers.

Later in chapter 6 he has an image of what these milk-feeders are like:

For the land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. (Hebrews 6:7-8)

Very pointed and not very comforting. I have heard the complaint from many a Christian that “I am not being fed.” I wonder what the writer to the Hebrews would have thought of that. Not much, is my guess. By now you should be feeding others, not being fed yourself. You are taking in the rain and producing weeds.

Once, at the end of a long day of Jesus’ teaching before thousands of people, the disciples, likely tired and hungry, suggest to Jesus that he send them away to buy food. And Jesus says, “you give them something to eat.” (Matthew 14:16) They have very little to offer, but Jesus takes it and makes it enough. What is interesting is that the people are filled and satisfied and so are the disciples.

Are you hungry? “By this time you ought to be teachers.” Try feeding others. You might find that you become filled yourself.

God both there and here

Robert Browning once comfortingly penned, “God’s in His heaven - All’s right with the world.” (from Pippa’s Song) It strikes me that he only deals with half of the story.

Today is the feast of the Ascension, forty days after Easter. Always a Thursday because Easter is always a Sunday. On this day we remember that Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, ascended to the Father in heaven. Many of the lectionary texts, especially the appointed Psalm focus on the authority, rule and reign of God –

"For the Lord Most High is to be feared;
he is the great King over all the earth.”" Psalm 47:2

"O Lord, our Lord, how exalted is your Name in all the earth." Psalm 8:1

In the Ascension of Jesus we see the Son returning to the Father to rule and reign with him. God’s in his heaven – All’s right with the world. And that is a comforting thought amid trial and temptation.

But it is only half the story. While he is in his heaven he is here among us. Jesus said to the disciples, “if I do not go away the Helper will not come to you. But if I go I will send him to you.” (John 16:7)

Jesus, just before his ascension promises that he will be with us always. He ascends to the Father and sends us the Holy Spirit so that God’s in His heaven and God’s on his earth. At the feast of the Ascension I am reminded of Jesus’ rule and authority with the Father, his transcendence. I am also reminded of his very real presence with us, his immanence. Both are profoundly comforting

Both of these realities are captured in the Collect for Ascension Day in the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.