“Looking to the Lord”

Psalm 123

Listen carefully to this sentence: “The Christian is a person who recognizes that our real problem is not in achieving freedom but in learning service under a better master.”

And now this one: “God did not become a servant so that we could order him around but so that we could join him in a redemptive lifestyle.”

And finally: “God is not a servant to be called into action when we are too tired to do something for ourselves, not an expert to be called in when we find we are ill equipped to handle a specialized problem in living.”

Those sentences come from one of the first books by Eugene Peterson I ever read, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Using Psalms 120 through 134 as a background, Dr. Peterson takes a probing look at various aspects of the Christian life. The theme for his exposition of Psalm 123 is “service.” To be a Christian is to be a servant not only of God, but also of others.

The model for such servanthood is Jesus Christ. Jesus, the very incarnation of God, modeled servanthood by washing the feet of his disciples on that last Passover night he spent with them. He carried out a demeaning task usually reserved for slaves. The next day he went so far as to humble himself by dying on a cross. He was the Suffering Servant, dying to free us from our domination under sin and death.

Jesus had the very power of God at his fingertips. He used it to heal not hurt, to bless not curse, to bring freedom not oppression, to invite not impose. He never used it to bully anybody or to boss anyone around. He never demanded that anyone kowtow to him. He came to serve not be served.

Those who first sang those songs that are Psalms 120 through 134 did so as they made their pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem. In today’s Psalm they sang of lifting up their eyes to the Lord in the same way that a servant lifts them up to his or her master. Their prayers were not demands. The mercy they sought could only come as a free gift from God.

They didn’t fall weeping and wailing before God their Master. Although in awe of the Lord God Almighty, they were not trembling before him in fear. They sang their song – they prayed their prayer – to a Master they trusted to be merciful. They weren’t looking for some new and different behavior on the part of God. In faithful humility they waited for God to be the God they knew and loved, the God who knew and loved them.

These were people who were used to being looked down on, and often even arrogantly overlooked as if they counted for nothing. They had felt the haughty contempt of those who presumed to be better than they were. Their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt, serving masters who were harsh, cruel, and merciless. The God to whom they sang – the Lord to whom they prayed – was often their only reliable source of mercy.

It’s ironic that over the centuries the people of God who have so often been on the receiving end of God’s mercy have all too often turned upon others with merciless scorn and hateful contempt. Even more ironic is the reality that they who were to be servants of God sometimes acted as if God was at their beck and call. They sought to manipulate God, to bend him to their will, to remake him in their own image.

The opening quotes from Dr. Peterson address the temptation to manipulate God. He is not a slave to boss around. He’s not some hired gun we call in when we get in over our heads. Grace, mercy, and love are not commodities we can coax from God with a little prayer, a little piety, or even a great deal of money. God is not for sale.

Nor are our fellow human beings ours to use, abuse, and manipulate. They are not to be viewed by the church as customers to whom we must market the Good News of Jesus Christ. They are not stark statistics upon which we base our sense of accomplishment or failure. They are not giving units whom we recruit and then manipulate into to refilling the church’s coffers. They are people God created and loves. They are people for whom our Lord Jesus died. The creating Father God does not abuse his children. His incarnate Son Jesus never manipulated them.

The Gospel is something we are called to freely share with all those who have never heard it. We who have been blessed with the healing, saving, and redeeming love of Jesus are commanded to invest that same kind of love in others. We do not selfishly hoard it. We do not anxiously hide it. We give it away, praying that those in whom we have invested it will in turn invest it in others. And thus by the power of the Spirit is it multiplied, sometimes five-fold, sometimes ten.

One of the lessons we modern Christians can learn from the ancient singers of today’s Psalm is to trust God to be God. We don’t need to beg for his mercy. Nor do we need to earn it. It isn’t something we can buy or steal. Surely we cannot demand it of God. We simply have to live by a faith that knows that ultimately God’s mercy will be poured out on us. We have to believe that in God’s good time he will deal with those who oppress, enslave, use, abuse, and manipulate us.

So here we are. Why? To worship and praise the Lord our God, enjoy fellowship with each other and experience together the fellowship of the risen Christ, here with us by the power of the Holy Spirit. To sing, pray, and be fed on God’s Word. To acknowledge God’s abundant grace and mercy. To confess, repent, and experience pardon. To give back to God part of that which he has so generously blessed us. To rededicate all that we are and all that we have to God’s purposes.

We’re not here to earn divine brownie points. We’re not here out of some selfish suspicion that by our presence we can get God to give us what we want. We’re not here to thump our chests as we proudly let God know what great Christians we are. We’re definitely not here in order to further exercise any sort of self-righteousness. Never, ever are we to go forth from here into the world singing – or even thinking, “Jesus loves us more than them, because we came and sang a hymn.” That’s not what our worship is all about.

It’s about loving God with the sum total of our beings – hearts, minds, souls, and strength. It’s about serving God with the humility that comes from knowing that God doesn’t have to love us, but still does. It’s about preparing ourselves for whatever ministry and mission to which God might call us. It’s about hearing the Gospel in a way that enables us to better share it with others. It’s about once again experiencing mercy in a way that reminds us of our calling to show such mercy to others. It’s about better understanding the servanthood of Jesus Christ in order that we can better be his servants in the world.

In a few minutes we will have the privilege of deciding how much of our financial resources we can pledge to Christ and his Church in 2006. If we have already made that decision, it will be a time in which to rethink or adjust it. There will be a moment in which we will dedicate our pledges and promises to God for the coming year. More than anything else it will be a time to rededicate every fiber of our being to the work and will of God.

We’re not signing a contract. We’re not renegotiating some mythical amount that we consider to be our share of the church’s rent for 2006. We’re not doing it in order to impress God or show off for one another. We’re not buying God’s blessings – they’re not for sale. In no way are we seeking to manage God or manipulate him into giving us what we want.

We are promising to give what we give to God as a response to how much he has given us. It is an act of thanksgiving. It is an act of praise. It is an act of love – we love him because he first loved us. It is an act of servanthood. It is a sign and symbol of our trust in God to be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – Creator, Redeemer, Source of Life and Faith.

And all our promises, all our pledges, all our tithes, all our gifts are to be offered in the same spirit that is today’s Psalm: “As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.” Amen.