Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY on February 26th, 2012
A printable PDF file can be found here
If we expect everybody to love us we will be disappointed. People don’t love all people. People love some people. The people closest to them. Some family. Some friends. Maybe a special friend. But beyond that, generally speaking people don’t love people.
When a performer comes on stage or actor holds up their latest award and says, “Thank you, Thank you, I love you all, I love you!’ they are just using words. They like the fact that you help them love themselves, but that’s as far as it goes. Sadly that’s as far as it goes in a lot of relationships, even close ones. It's easy to declare love towards those who make us feel lovable.
So it is hardly surprising that when Jesus was asked about what the two most important commandments were He said they both had to do with loving things outside of our selves. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love is so tough, comes so unnaturally to us, and seems so alien to us that God couldn’t make it an option or a suggestion but had to make love a command.
I realize I'm dealing with generalizations here. So here's another one. When people are faithful they tell the truth because they have nothing to hide. But people are not faithful. People are unfaithful and to cover it up they tell lies. We are not a faithful society. The divorce rate is staggering. The amount of deception and half truths that go on in any single workplace in any single year is vast. Even those who have the greatest responsibility over us, those who excel in the realm of high finance or especially of politics are legendary in their ability to never tell the whole story.
The probability is that we learned unfaithfulness at an early age. Our parents asked us to do something and we didn’t want to do it, so we told a lie. We reinforced it in school when, if we could get away with it, we got away with it. We saw everybody else doing it so we did it. We probably carried it into our working life. We probably carried it into our relationships.
We are in the season of Lent and on each Sunday I'm in the pulpit I’ll be taking a look at a Psalm reading suggested by the Common Lectionary. Today it is verses 1-10 of Psalm 25 and I particularly want to draw your attention to verse 10 of the Psalm which reads;
“All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep His covenant and His decrees.”
for those who keep His covenant and His decrees.”
In this verse God’s covenant is associated with two Hebrew words ‘chesed’ translated here as ‘steadfast love’ (but in other translations as ‘mercy’ or ‘loving kindness’) and ‘emeth’ translated as truth or faithfulness. In the Old Testament the only place the words ‘chesed’ and ‘emeth’ are found together is in reference to God. They are never applied together to any human being in the Old Testament, only to God. God alone is pictured as being both loving and faithful.
This is good! Because when you look around at the world, the qualities of love and faithfulness exhibited by people like you and me are shaky. We can’t always count on each other. But we can always count on God. So it is that our Psalm begins by addressing God;
To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul. O my God, in You I trust;
Make me to know Your ways, O LORD; teach me Your paths.
Lead me in Your truth, and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation;
(verses 1-2 & 4-5)
This Psalm is traditionally attributed to King David. David was quite a guy. In today’s terms, if you picked your favorite president, your favorite religious leader, your most dashing movie star, your most admired sports star and your most honored war hero… and you rolled them all into one… then you’d be getting close to the sort of regard that David was held in.
Yet despite what others were kind enough to say about him, David knew better. He knew he was quite capable of loving in the wrong way. He knew how deceptive his heart could be. He was acquainted with the reality of being a sinner. He was unfaithful and had paid a high price for his infidelity.
So when he wants help, he doesn’t look to his advisers or his counselors or his court. He cries out to God. Only God can really be trusted. It is God’s truth that David needs to set his life back on track. It is God alone who can be his salvation. It is God’s way that he desires to follow. He’s tried the other ways. They didn’t work. He needs one who can show real love and real faithfulness.
The gospel passage from the lectionary today speaks of Jesus beginning His ministry. Mark does not elaborate in the way Luke and Matthew do on all the details of His baptism and His temptations. We’re simply told that at His baptism He is declared the Son of God and then that the Spirit leads Him into the wilderness where He is tempted for forty years before being ministered to by angels. The impression given is that here is one who has broken the mold. Here is one who might just prove to be faithful and true!
With the benefit we have of knowing how the story unfolds we see how in the ministry of Jesus Christ, ‘chesed’ (that is loving kindness and mercy) and ‘emeth’ (faithfulness and truthfulness) were perfectly expressed. The characteristics David speaks of as only being present in God are plainly evident in the life and work of the Son of God.
In our prayers we can come in confidence through Christ before God and make the Psalmists prayer our own. Here are some of the things that the Psalmist seeks from God.
Protection from enemies. ‘Do not let my enemies exult over me.’ We all have enemies. Maybe not enemies in terms of specific people, but certainly enemies such as illness, and misfortune and tragedy. Such things are ever present threats to our security. So it is right that we join the Psalmist in this prayer. ‘Don’t let the things that would wreck our life have the victory over us, Lord’
Guidance. ‘Lead me in Your truth, and teach me’. There is no shortage of sources from which we can ask for guidance. Some can be good. Some can be bad. It can take time to learn the difference. But God has given us a way of discerning right from wrong in the Scriptures of our New and Old Testament. One of the defining things about the people of God was that when they were teachable and willing to learn they moved forward. But when their hearts were hard and in their arrogance turned to other sources for their values then they lost their way. To be Christian means allowing the teachings of Jesus to take priority over all other messages that come our way. Psalm 25:9 ‘He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble His way.’
Forgiveness. “Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions”. Sins of both the past and the present cause us to stumble in our walk with God. God is loving. God is merciful. God is faithful to the covenant God has made with us through Jesus Christ who died that we may be forgiven. We began our Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday by reminding ourselves that we all have fallen short of being the people God would have us be. We meet on this First Sunday of Lent to recall that through Christ we can be forgiven, our sins remembered no more and can walk in a better way with God. Psalm 25:8 ‘Good and upright is the LORD; therefore He instructs sinners in the way’
As you travel through this season of Lent, I invite you to hold in mind the love and faithfulness of God. People can let us down. People can be anything but loving. People can be unfaithful. But not God. In Jesus Christ we see One who perfectly expresses the ‘chesed’ and ‘emeth’ of God, His loving-kindness and mercy, His truth and faithfulness.
Maybe we can make the Psalmists prayer our own Lenten prayer;
“To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in You I trust”
To God’s name be the Glory.
Amen.
Rev Adrian J Pratt
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