June 28, 2026
Series: Dwelling with the Psalms
In case you’ve forgotten the first verse from the psalm, here it is: “Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us.” (Psalm 78)
Some people call this “the Christian Education” psalm, and
for good reason. It speaks of teaching. It speaks of the faithful tradition of religious
education. A wise teacher speaks to the covenant community and says, “Listen
up!” Class is in session. It’s time to learn. The teacher says, “I’m going to
reach back and grab the truth from our past, and I’m going to bring it right
here and give it to our future.” The word for today is “remember.”
What do you remember? Can you remember
There was that Sunday when I preached in the church where I grew up. Just like old times. The stained-glass windows gave the room an underwater glow. The sanctuary rug still smelled the same. There was the balcony where the preacher’s son and I folded paper airplanes out of worship bulletins, then accidentally dropped them while his old man was preaching. I was confirmed in that room. I was ordained there, first as a deacon, then as a pastor. The memories flooded my imagination.
Suddenly, there was Bonnie Ballard, one of my early Bible teachers. Years ago, Miss Ballard made me memorize three psalms, nine Beatitudes, and the Lord’s Prayer. She taught me that Presbyterians don’t “trespass,” they fall into debt. She selected me to play Joseph in the Christmas pageant because I was prematurely tall and I didn’t have a lot of speaking lines. She was probably bewildered when God grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “You’re going to be a preacher.”
My experience might be a little specialized, but all of us are here today because somebody like us taught people like us. They reached into the past to grab the riches of our heritage, and they offered them as gifts to fund your heart and mind. Can you remember?
And then, just a year ago, I went to the 40th reunion of my seminary class. The grounds crew has pulled the ivy off the buildings, but the place still looks like a country club. We gathered in the lecture hall where I remember thinking, “I had no idea what they are talking about.” We worshiped in the chapel where I preached early sermons to classmates who sat with clipboards, ready to evaluate what I said and how I said it. And there was the portrait of my professor, Dr. Bruce Metzger. His name is literally printed in the front of our pew Bibles; the dude was old.
That old schoolhouse tried to teach me and succeeded somewhat. They set me on a trajectory to keep learning for the rest of my life, which is the greatest gift of a good education. When it comes to faith, we do not download facts. Rather, our minds must be formed. Our hearts must be shaped. It takes a while.
One consolation is making friends to join you on the journey. When I walked over for dinner one night, I saw a familiar dormitory window on the fourth-floor dormitory window. That’s where a friend we nicknamed “Rocket” resided. He had a bad habit of dropping water balloons on visiting theologians he didn’t like. I admired his courage.
All of this, I tell you, is a parable. What can you remember?
There is much that today’s Psalm remembers, more than we can bear. Psalm 78 is not all pleasant and joyful. Oh no. If we reach back into the past, we must deal with the things we have done, or the things we have left undone. We have to face all those devices and desires in our twisted hearts.
Psalm 78 tells a lot of honest stories. It does not withhold the truth. The poet who composed this psalm pushes to remember where we’ve come from. Then says, “Do you remember the fine mess that we fell into?” The Psalmist offers one story after another of how God did something good, and people of faith goofed it up.
For instance, “Can you remember when we were slaves in a
foreign land? We were down in
And then, “Do you remember when we were in the desert? The sun was pounding down, we were walking around without water, we were complaining about the heat, we were wondering how we would survive. God said, ‘Whack that rock with a stick, and I will give you living water.” That’s what Moses did – but we complained about it.
There is no use in whitewashing history. In our time, every time, somebody will try to smooth over the past. Nobody likes to hear that human slaves built much of the White House. Or that President Andrew Johnson was impeached for attempting to undo the Civil War. Or that we have many painful moments in our history that we would like to forget – yet as the Psalmist says, “We will not hide these things from our children.”
Are there things you’ve discovered about our past that you did not previously know? Have you ever smoothed over the pain of those who lived before us? It’s convenient. It’s smoother. Yet that’s where the lessons, the real lessons, can be found.
Another school story: One September day in 1978, I walked onto the enormous campus of my university. I didn’t know a lot of people. It was overwhelming. There were four hundred classmates in my first-level biology class. Whew, I needed a coffee! So, I stumbled over to the cafeteria. There was a huge demonstration at the campus center, and a big sign, “We must never forget.” And then, large prints of atrocities that had once happened in the death camps of Germany.
Maybe I knew there has been a Holocaust, but I tell you the truth: it was never mentioned in my high school history class. I was appalled. Immobilized. It was a lot to process. And either I had never been told or had not been paying attention.
Maria Harris, the Roman Catholic educator, speaks of the “null curriculum.” That’s the material you don’t teach. Somebody omits, ignores, or leaves unsaid an important lesson. As she points out, “ignorance is never neutral, omission is intentional.”[1] We cannot grow as believers, we cannot grow as human souls, unless we face the best and the worst of what it means to be human.
So, we look back and remember. We confront the truth, the whole truth, and not merely the convenient half-truth. And we learn something about ourselves.
A friend suggested David McCullough’s book on the Johnstown Flood. If you’ve never heard the story, two thousand Pennsylvanians drowned in 1889. The Johnstown Flood was one of the greatest natural disasters in this country. And did you know? The flood was caused by God and the Presbyterians.
For God’s part, God sent a lot of rain. As for the
Presbyterians, they were people like Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and Henry
Clay Frick – wealthy industrialists who made millions on steel and railroads.
They built a hunting camp about fourteen miles uphill from Johnstown. When
summer came, it was a great place to escape from the stress of their mansions
in
And God sent the rain, the Presbyterians neglected their dam, and the flood roared down the hill. Those rich old Scots said, “Maybe we should start summering in the Adirondacks, or in Paris.” As David McCullough reminds us, “There is a danger in assuming that because people are in positions of responsibility they are necessarily behaving responsibly.”
O people of faith, are we willing to remember? Can we look honestly at the human condition? Can we be transparent enough to confess where we’ve wandered? And what we have neglected? Only then can we also confess the hope that God has planted within our souls.
Scholars tell us Psalm 78 is a salvation history psalm. It is Israel’s honest recital of their own faults. It is also the narrative of God’s persistence. You and I hold a sacred story of how God has stuck with us – even though God could have chosen people far more faithful and better tempered. God chooses to work through the likes of us. That’s part of the lesson.
Like that moment in the movie theater. We watched as a young singer began her rise to fame – and her business manager began to get too big for his britches. The lady a few seats down exclaimed, “Now, don’t you forget where you come from.” That was the best part of the movie. It was the lesson that needed to be taught.
So where do the people of God come from? We come from the steadfast mercy of God. Don’t ever forget this. t God makes each one of us and calls us precious. Don’t forget that, in the language of the psalm, God “snorts with indignation” when we forget where we’re from. Don’t forget that God gives us this day our daily bread, even as we keep testing and pushing up against such generosity. And whatever else, don’t forget that God stays with us through every wrong turn on a bumpy road, and expects us to do better.
According to Psalm 78, God has had plenty of reasons to dump this unfaithful people, yet God will not do it. God stays faithful, because a promise is a promise, a covenant is a covenant. God stays with us - - and that is the great parable. That’s the hidden mystery of how a holy God keeps bending down toward people with bloody hands and dirty fingernails. It has less to do with our behavior, and more to do with God’s character. Infinitely more.
“Listen,” says the Teacher, “and I will open my mouth in a
parable. I will utter things we have heard and known which we will not hide
from our children.” Still, God stays
with us. That is the parable.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Maria
Harris, Fashion Me a People: Curriculum in the Church (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1989).
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