Psalm 131
August 9, 2020
William G. Carter
O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore.
Here is a truth about the spiritual life that nobody tells a rookie: it
is possible to become cynical. If you stay at anything long enough, you might
grow spiritually weary. But worse than that, you might become jaded. You can
lose sight of the forest by bumping into the trees. The first bursts of
enthusiasm are tempered by the realities of family and congregation.
It does not begin that way. The children might first discover the love
of Jesus and then realize that mom and dad are not as excited as they are. At
the end of a soul-stirring week of a youth work camp, the teenager is met by an
impatient parent who holds the car keys. “Hurry up, get your things, it’s time
to go.” Or a new member joins a congregation with enthusiasm and soon is gnawed
upon by a few of the old crows. Somebody comes upon a season of revival, starts
praying and reading the Bible, only to discover that the Bible is a very thick
book and answers to prayer are not automatic. Or it has happened with some of
the brand new ministers I've spent time with. Fresh from seminary, they go out to
serve a real church; you know, one of the old-fashioned kind of churches,
with the sinners still inside it.
As we live the Christian life, there are so many things that can temper
our excitement. Sometimes we are frustrated with the people around us. Other
times we are disappointed with ourselves and our own apparent lack of spiritual
progress. The brief confession of Psalm 131 comes from a frustrated pilgrim.
She has been at the journey for a while. In a psalm that may have been written
late at night, the pilgrim surveys her soul and reports what she sees.
“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up.” The destination is Jerusalem and
all that it represents. The journey is toward the temple, the festival, the
celebration, the holy reunion. On the face of it, it is a noble pursuit. Yet
here is the confession of somebody who knows of the detail and the hassles of
travel. There are donkeys to be packed, lodging to be found, meals to be
procured, and children to be consoled. Anybody on the road knows that travel is
not an uplifting experience. A pilgrimage is both a holy journey and a pain in
the neck.
If you and I had the opportunity, we could circle up our chairs and
complain about the trips we have taken. Choose your topic: the price of fuel,
cancelled reservations, charges for baggage, indifferent ticket agents, unusual
food, phones that do not work, filthy accommodations, to say nothing of all
those other obnoxious tourists. It is enough to make you think twice about ever
leaving home. The heart is not lifted up by the details of travel.
And the Psalmist adds, “My eyes are not raised too high.” Not only are
so many travel details mundane, but the excursion is not always a lofty
occasion. If you journey to Bethlehem to see the birthplace of Jesus, you have
to wade through the trinket sellers in Manger Square. As you approach the ruins
of Corinth, the ancient city where the Apostle Paul preached the Gospel, the irreverent
guide will mention it was a sailor’s town with brothels going all the way up
the hill. What were you expecting – heaven on earth? There are so few glimpses
of heaven, I’m afraid, just a lot of earth.
During a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, my father and I had the rare
opportunity to travel to Nablus, a community in the West Bank. We were so
excited about what we would see! Nablus is the location for the well of Jacob,
the actual well from the fourth chapter of John where Jesus spoke to a
Samaritan woman. The tour bus parked on a street full of broken glass. We
traipsed through an unfinished chapel, long interrupted by Palestinian-Israeli
skirmishes. Then we descended an uneven staircase through layers of accumulated
gold and beeswax.
Circling the well, each in our group took a sip of fresh water, as a
New Testament professor retold the story and drew out some insights. Just then,
as we were beginning to imagine the Lord speaking at this well, a surly priest
interrupted and said, “Enough of that, move along, another group is right
behind you. Buy your postcards and candles over here.” Believe me when I say my
eyes were not raised too high.
Then the Psalmist says, “I do not occupy myself with things too great
and too marvelous for me.” How did she know? How did she know that so many
Christians expect to be brought into the presence of something great and
marvelous and then what they discover is the same jumbled mess of humanity that
exists everywhere else?
A man was telling me about his disappointment with his church. It was a
tall pulpit in a major city. They had a wonderful preacher and they paid him extremely
well. In addition to his hefty salary, he had a $90,000 annual expense account
designated just for taking people out to dinner, with free prep school tuition
for his children, among other benefits. There were a few rumors in the air
about him, but they were dismissed as jealousy. Nobody paid much attention
because whenever he preached it was great and marvelous and everybody was so
impressed with the wonderful show.
Then one of his girlfriends posted his e-mails and text messages to her
on a blog. His third wife got a little hot about it and left him rather
publicly. Someone announced the minister had exhibited the same behavior at the
other end of the state. Three prominent church leaders huddled together and
agreed to pay him a half million dollars if he would slip away quietly. When
his denomination got wind of this sorry business, they moved quickly to press
charges – but The Reverend up and quit his membership, renounced their
jurisdiction, so that nobody could touch him. Nobody, that is, except God.
That church leader told me this story with tears in his eyes. He said,
“I will never go back to that church - or any church - ever again. I cannot
believe what he did. I do not believe he got away with it.” He was shocked and
dismayed to discover the Christian church has sinners in its pulpits and pews. He was sufficiently dismayed that he no longer
occupies himself with things too great and too marvelous for himself.
All who have put in their time living the faith are tempted to lower our
eyes, reduce our expectations, and settle for what is trivial and ugly. There
is something about the holiness of God that brings out the worst in people. The
immense grace of God will expose the pettiness of the church. What’s the
result? The faithful stop looking so high and settle for something far less
than God.
There are hundreds of distractions from the spiritual journey. People
will take all kinds of emotional detours that lead to dead ends. In my years as
a pastor, I have known people to depart from churches over the color of the
sanctuary paint, the choice to provide hospitality to a group of outsiders, the
selection of curriculum, and the use of Folgers crystals during coffee hour. It
is not that these folks switched congregations so they could get upset about
something else somewhere else. What is troubling is that they simply stopped
going anywhere at all – because of paint, strangers, curriculum, and instant
coffee.
Just the other day, a friend told me why a family stopped attending her
church. Ready for this? One of the church deacons noticed the family had been
absent, so he phoned to say he missed them. They were so offended by the
attention that they decided to stay away – which they were already doing.
I can
understand the Psalmist’s confession, can’t you? “O Lord, my heart is not
lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.” Depending on how you read it, it may sound
like self-disgust. Some scholars say the nuance is actually one of humility,
that the Psalmist admits, “I am really small-minded, O God. Save me from my
pettiness.”
We do not know the circumstances. As with many of the psalms, the splinters
of particularity have been sanded away. What we do have is the middle verse: “I
have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother.” It points
us to one of the ultimate benefits of faith, namely consolation. We may hold the
heart-felt knowledge that, even if there are cranky and cynical Christians all
around you, at the heart of our faith is some real help. Forgiveness can really
happen. Truth can be told. God's grace will cover our imperfections. Our
imagination can be lifted out of the mud. God will give us quiet and calm.
This psalm sounds like it was written by a woman. I imagine her gazing
down upon the nursing child on her chest. It prompts her to remember that faith
provides the basic food of life. We are fed by hope, specifically the hope that
the Lord of Israel is greater than all of our pettiness and short-sightedness.
The very One who brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt will not allow us to be
captive to our fears. “Like the child who is upon me,” she says, “so is my soul
calmed by the Lord.”
One scholar suggests this poem is a lullaby, a mother’s song for a
whimpering infant.[1] How appropriate! “Don’t
let the small stuff upset you,” she prays. “Lean down and rest upon your
Mother.” That is the call to consolation – to settle down and trust God. Let go
of trouble, and fall asleep. Some of us can remember the experience, even if
our mothers have been gone for a while.
In many ways, the psalm resembles another famous lullaby of the
scriptures, the verse that somebody called the “now I lay me down to sleep”
prayer of the ancient Jewish child. That's the verse from another psalm, Psalm
31:5, and you may remember the words:
“Into your hands, I commend my spirit.” Jesus quotes those words while
he is on the cross.[2] Then he goes to sleep, confident
that all is in his Parent’s care.
When we are tempted to count our troubles late at night, where do we get
the consolation that allows us to fall sleep? When critiques and complaints
threaten to drag us down, where do we really put our trust? Not merely with one
another, but with the God who is pictured as attentive as a nursing Mother. The
psalm says, “Cuddle in close to the One who loves you. Don’t worry. Stop
fretting. Be still.” We never outrun this message.
Life
can be difficult, long and hard enough to invite cynicism. With the Psalmist we
might confess, “My heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I
am preoccupied with things that are not as great and marvelous as God.” Go
ahead – confess these things when you must, confess them so that you are free
of them. We must never let our complaints enslave us.
After
we get them off our chest, God's invitation is to cuddle down and offer these
words from a hymn as our prayer: “O make me Thine forever, and should I
fainting be, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.”
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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