“What the Lectionary Doesn’t Say”

Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

Psalm 78 in its entirety is a brief history of Israel spanning the centuries between the nation’s deliverance from its bondage in Egypt up to, and possibly beyond, the Babylonian exile. I read the verses from Psalm 78 suggested by the lectionary. Now I’m going to share some more verses, some of those that the lectionary writers chose to omit. In the words of the late Paul Harvey, “And now for the rest of the story.”

Verse 11: “They forgot what [the Lord] had done, and the miracles that he had shown them.”

Verse 17: “Yet they sinned more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert.”

Verse 21: “Therefore, when the Lord heard, he was full of rage; a fire was kindled against Jacob, his anger mounted against Israel…”

Verses 56-58: “Yet they tested the Most High God, and rebelled against him. They did not observe his decrees, but turned away and were faithless… They provoked him to anger with their high places, they moved him to jealousy with their idols.”

Wrote Alton H. McEachern about Psalm 78: “The theme of this psalm is the repeated disobedience of God’s people in spite of all his mighty acts on their behalf. It is presented as the riddle of rebellion.”

Not quite the rosy picture painted by verses 1-4 and 12-16. In spite of all God did for his chosen people they kept rebelling against his rule; they kept breaking his law and disobeying his commandments. Over the generations the people were first obedient and then not. There was an ongoing cycle of obedience, disobedience, consequences, repentance, and obedience, and then more disobedience which started the cycle all over again.

The disobedience and consequences for it were what was meant in verse two’s reference to dark sayings. This psalmist was teaching the whole history of Israel: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Not only was he lifting up the mighty acts of God, but also the people’s acts of disobedience its painful aftermath. Do this – obey me – and prosper said the Lord, but do that – disobey me – and suffer the consequences.

What exactly was behind all that disobedience? Maybe there’s a clue or two in this morning’s prayer of confession, especially as it picks up the theme of this morning’s reading from Philippians, the words of Paul about having within us the same mind as Christ Jesus. “… as the Christ you showed us that love looks not to its own interests, but to the interests of others. We lament how little we resemble you in your humility, dedication, and love. We are driven too often by ambition and conceit… We speak of love, but resist the sacrifices love requires.”

Paul was addressing his words to a church being torn apart by competition and conflict, by ambition and conceit. All too often this is reflected in another line from our prayer of confession: “We defend our views, arguing without understanding.”

Israel was torn apart – theologically, socially, economically, and politically – by its peoples’ disobedience in regards to reflecting the humility, dedication, and love of the Lord to the world. There was a whole lot of ambition and conceit at work, and often too little willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to loving God and one another. I’m sure that many of the Israelites over the generations defended their views, especially those dealing with their own self-interests, hard-headedly arguing about things they no longer understood – like what was required of them in their covenant relationship with God.

They were impatient with God, living out the words of a recent commercial: “I want it all, and I want it now.” And all too often, when God didn’t come through quickly enough, they went whoring after strange gods, going up into the high places to worship them. These gods were more attractive: less ethically demanding and more “it’s-all-about-me” oriented. The frosting on that deliciously deceiving cake we call apostasy was their freedom to worship these new gods by way of gross sexual misbehavior. What a way to justify the sin of lust! Just call it worship.

But that’s not all that was going on. The children of Israel were using and abusing one another: sexually, financially, and legally. God’s commandments about loving one’s neighbor, respecting his or her freedom and property, and guaranteeing a non-biased judicial system went unheeded. And those who had no financial or political clout, people like defenseless widows and orphans, were at best ignored and at worst exploited. In time the classless, egalitarian society that God demanded of his people was split into two groups: the haves and the have- nots. And by the way, all that egalitarian stuff is made pretty clear in the 25^th chapter of Leviticus.

God said worship me and me alone. They worshipped other gods. The Lord demanded restraint, sexual and otherwise. They allowed themselves to be ruled by greed, envy, lust, and pride. The Lord told them to take care of one another, especially the poor and defenseless. They took everybody for as much as they could get. Along the way they ignored not only their own theology, but their own history. Never was the old adage about those who forget their history being doomed to repeat more appropriate.

What about us? What about the church’s history? Over the centuries have those who professed to follow Jesus always been faithful and obedient? Well, no, we have not. We may not have worshipped idols but we’ve still managed to go whoring after a whole bunch of false gods. Some horrible things have been allowed and even applauded by the church in the name of Jesus: the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the corrupt eras of both the papacy and Protestantism. Kings and queens have been allowed, with the church’s blessing, to claim and abuse their self-appointed divine rights. Non-believers have been slaughtered and tortured. I don’t think Jesus was amused. I’m pretty sure the classic prophets would have been appalled.

Okay, that’s history in which we were not involved. We are not responsible for the sins of our ancestors. We often have to deal with the consequences, but we’re not responsible. In terms of the history of the church the 1973 “A Declaration of Faith” tells us: “We confess we are heirs of this whole story [the church’s history]. We are charged to remember our past, to be warned and encouraged by it…”

We are heirs of this whole story that is the history of the church: the good, the bad, and the ugly – our own dark sayings from of old. We need to be encouraged by the good stuff while at the same time needing to learn from the bad and ugly. The children of Israel refused to learn from their mistakes. They didn’t want to hear all those dark sayings from of old, to be reminded of their sinfulness.

The truth is, neither do we. We want to celebrate the mighty acts of God and pay homage to those places in history where men and women of God stood up and said, no more. And we should! We don’t want to be reminded of the darker parts of church history, and let’s be honest, the darker parts of our personal histories.

One of the reasons for that is we know deep in our hearts how easy it would be for us to repeat some of that history. There will always be false gods tempting us away from the straight and narrow of path of righteousness with cheap promises of a less demanding way of living, a way of life in which we can ignore the Ten Commandments and Sermon on the Mount. There will always be voices assuring us that the status quo, even when it is immoral and unethical, must be maintained. There will always be forces – those powers and principalities about which Paul wrote – that want us to give in to our ambitions, conceits, and other forms of self-interest even if those things ruin our lives, destroy our families, corrupt and demolish our society, warp our culture’s ethical views, wreck the church, and make a mockery of the cause of Christ.

We need to pay attention to those dark sayings from of old. We need to remember our history, especially those parts of it we’d rather forget. We need to strive, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, to love the Lord our God with all that we have and all that we are, while loving our neighbor as our self. We need, as Paul wrote to the Philippians, to have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus. We need to model his humility, dedication, and love. We must not be driven by ambition and conceit. Amen.