Monthly Archives

May 2020

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

Praying the Psalms

Many people respond to scripture in confrontational ways. Either they proof-text its content, citing chapter-and-verse “evidence” to prove they’re right. Or they come to the texts ready to fight. (Often folks in the latter group have spent a lot of time with the first group.) To be fair, scripture has plenty of confrontational material—enough to please both sides. But confrontation leads to negative ways of being: pride, fear, delusion, bullying, and so on, all of which the Bible guides us away from.

Instead, scripture calls us into meaningful engagement, opening new doors to divine understanding. Gaelic Christians called these experiences “liminal” or “thin places” where we straddle the literal and ephemeral. Such close encounters are illuminating and welcoming, if occasionally mystifying and even unnerving.

It’s in the thin places that our prayers resound most forcefully because they come directly from us and flow directly to God without a lot of logical and material interference. In classic Christian parlance, this is intercessory prayer, where we bridge the gap between known and unknown, praying for people we’ve never met or things we may never fully know. These thin places are extraordinarily creative spaces where we tell God all about it, even if we’re not altogether sure what “all” of it is.

The Psalms teach us to pray in this manner, because they instruct us in the power of metaphor. Bono, U2’s lead singer, says, “God can only be approached through metaphor—and that’s art.” So the Psalms teach us to pray artfully, pushing our imaginations and vocabularies to say what can’t be articulated, to describe what can’t be explained.

Classic example: The psalmists call God a “rock,” knowing God is not a rock. Yet the metaphor says much about a God who is reliable and solid and steadfast, a summit to climb atop when trouble engulfs us, a foundation to build on when everything else fails. Calling God a rock brings God into sharper focus. It expresses a way knowing God that defies precise language. Now we’re in a thin place, where the literal falls away and the material becomes meaningless. God is a rock because God is so much more than a rock.

To pray the Psalms, then, is to discover how to pray like a psalmist. We turn prayer into a creative act where imagination is a blessing and freedom prevails. Scripture calls us into close encounter rather than polarizing confrontation. The psalmists provide words until we can summon our own. We follow them into their thin places in search of ways into thin places for ourselves.

Join us this Thursday at 7:30 CDT as we wrap our series, “Praying the Psalms.”

You can access the study group here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274
Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

We need your help!

As we think about the future of Gather, please let us know what gifts you bring and would like to share with the community. There are many roles that have to come together to make Gather happen every week. This includes setup, technical support, worship, managing handouts and information, coordinating drinks, and teardown. We need your help. Please let us know what type of service you’d be interested in!

Watch God Work,
Tim & Shea

As we prepare to become a vibrant worshipping community, we invite you to enjoy a Spotify playlist that captures the kind of worship we hope to embrace. Give it a spin while you’re driving. Make it your workout jam. Add it to your devotional time. Most of all, feel yourself becoming part of a sacred village of believers who love their God and one another!
Check out the Gather Worship Playlist here.

WISE WORDS

Happiness and the Avid Learner

Around 500 BCE, when Israel’s priests compiled the anthology we now know as the Book of Psalms, they were very intentional about its organization. Based solely on content, it’s apparent the editors considered how the poems conversed with one another—how one psalm’s placement before or after another added dimension to both. We don’t know exactly how the collection was used in worship or daily devotion. But a through-line is clearly detectable, a certain way of seeing and engaging the world and its Creator that the editors sought to instill in the hearts and minds of Israel.

Psalm 1 offers a wonderful contrast of parallels that launches wisdom as one of the book’s crucial themes. It paints the portrait of a contented individual and explains why that person does so well. First, it explains he or she avoids foolish company. “The truly happy person doesn’t follow wicked advice, doesn’t stand on the road of sinners, and doesn’t sit with the disrespectful,” the poet tells us. Instead, happy people “love the Lord’s instruction and they recite [it] day and night!” (Ps. 1:1-3).

That is to say, the person who can discern foolishness and not be lured into its trap is someone who’s hungry for wisdom. The happy person loves God’s instruction so intensely he or she can (and does) recite it at all hours. Thus the Book of Psalms begins with a fascinating idea: enthusiastic learning is foundational to wisdom. More than that, according Psalm 1, it’s key to success. Everything the avid learner does prospers.

Scholars frequently observe that the “B” side of Psalm 1’s ringing endorsement of the commoner’s learning and wisdom is Psalm 2’s warning to rulers. (These pairings are a recurring trait in the collection) The privileged class’s rants and imaginings baffle the writer. Their behavior is decidedly unwise and the abuses that result from their villainy lead to trouble. “Wise up!” verse 10 says, lest the Lord “become angry, and your way will be destroyed” (Ps. 2:12). Taken together, the two psalms paint a powerful picture of the benefits derived from loving wisdom versus the penalties levied against those who foolishly rely on unrighteous counsel.

The Psalms’ wisdom couldn’t be more timely, as each day’s “breaking news” breaks our hearts and hurts our heads. With each day, our leaders’ mental health seems increasingly questionable. Their eagerness to attend to conspiracy theorists and gonzo sensationalists paints a grim picture of hardship that lay ahead for our country. These folks who brag about all their business savvy and powerful connections should know better! The good news is wisdom isn’t a precious gift that only the privileged classes can afford. It’s a simple thing to gain, provided you have the clarity of mind and integrity of intention to reach for it. The Psalms begin by portraying ordinary people who know how to gain obtain extraordinary insight that rewards them bountifully. It’s wise to seek wisdom. That’s the headline in today’s psalms.

Join us this Thursday evening as we continue our look at the psalms with a special focus on the wisdom poems. We meet online at 7:30p CDT via Zoom. See the info below to find out how to access the study.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274
Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

We need your help!

As we think about the future of Gather, please let us know what gifts you bring and would like to share with the community. There are many roles that have to come together to make Gather happen every week. This includes setup, technical support, worship, managing handouts and information, coordinating drinks, and teardown. We need your help. Please let us know what type of service you’d be interested in!

Watch God Work,
Tim & Shea

As we prepare to become a vibrant worshipping community, we invite you to enjoy a Spotify playlist that captures the kind of worship we hope to embrace. Give it a spin while you’re driving. Make it your workout jam. Add it to your devotional time. Most of all, feel yourself becoming part of a sacred village of believers who love their God and one another!
Check out the Gather Worship Playlist here.

PRAYER, POLITICS, AND THE NEW NORMAL

What Good Looks Like

 

God, give your judgments to the king – Psalm 72:1

 

Being a church nerd, I love visiting congregations with innovative worship styles. Discovering a hymnal I’ve never seen is an added treat. I’m always curious about how the songs are indexed and what other content the editors included. To most folks, all that matters is readable print and manageable size. (Nobody sings well if the type is tiny or the book weighs too much.) But for somebody like me an new hymnal opens a window on the spiritual and theological persuasions of its users. What’s going on in a hymnbook says quite a lot about what’s going on in the pews where it rests.

Sometimes the editors go to great lengths to call out special occasions: Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, Wedding, Funeral, and so on. And when you thumb through the selections, it appears poets and composers thought about these moments enough to write songs specifically for them.

This is hardly a new-fangled approach. Scattered throughout The Psalms’ many laments, thanksgivings, and praises, one comes across an occasional poem that is, strictly speaking, occasional. Most often, the hymn is composed for an historic event tied to Israel’s monarchy and the songs, often referred to as “royal psalms,” refer directly—often quite candidly—to the nation’s leader. Some songs come in the form of prayers. Others extol the ruler’s virtues. Often they compare their king to monarchs of surrounding nations. (Surprise! Israel always has the better ruler.) They’re unabashed in their eagerness to idealize a place that, if the Hebrew Bible’s history is correct, often seats unrepentant scoundrels, adulterers, thieves, liars, and connivers. But you wouldn’t know it from the poems.

God, give your judgments to the king, we read in the opening line of Psalm 72. That’s a prayer we should pray for our own leaders. But the royal psalms go beyond vague wishes. They help Israel define what good looks like. The prayer becomes political. It speaks the will of the people, which in turn, defers to the divine will. In other words, the nation and God are aligned. The question becomes how well the king lives up to expectations.

Quite often royal psalms are dismissed as anachronistic relics of an ancient form of government. Worse still, some try to turn them into messianic prophecies, which they are not. But these songs remain relevant because they speak to an urgent need in any time or place: the hope for honest, upright, and caring leadership. These psalms are yardsticks we can use even now to measure how well our own government is doing. And they set a high enough standard to ensure there is always room for improvement.

Join us this coming Thursday as we continue our series “Praying the Psalms” with a closer look at the royal psalms. We meet at 7:30p CDT via Zoom. You can access the study here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274
Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

We need your help!

As we think about the future of Gather, please let us know what gifts you bring and would like to share with the community. There are many roles that have to come together to make Gather happen every week. This includes setup, technical support, worship, managing handouts and information, coordinating drinks, and teardown. We need your help. Please let us know what type of service you’d be interested in!

Watch God Work,
Tim & Shea

As we prepare to become a vibrant worshipping community, we invite you to enjoy a Spotify playlist that captures the kind of worship we hope to embrace. Give it a spin while you’re driving. Make it your workout jam. Add it to your devotional time. Most of all, feel yourself becoming part of a sacred village of believers who love their God and one another!
Check out the Gather Worship Playlist here.

TESTIFY!

Our Stories Tell a Bigger Story

 

“Thank God I don’t look like what I’ve been through!”

The first time I heard it I laughed out loud. I was driving to Sunday worship with the radio cranked up full-volume to the local gospel music station. The host, a fierce woman with the on-air persona of a warrior, shouted it in agreement with a caller who was giving God thanks for always making a way and bringing him out of trouble.

I laughed because I immediately understood what she meant. I shouted “Amen!” out loud to no one in particular. And then tears began to flow. Thank God I don’t look like what I’ve been through!

Sparing you the gory details, there’s no telling what I would look like. But I promise it would not be pretty. One thing I’ll say without hesitation: once that seed was planted, it has continued to produce a profound sense of thanksgiving in me—the kind of thanksgiving that provokes awe and humility and jubilation and effusiveness.

Biblical psalms of thanksgiving pivot on similar emotions. The poets are shamelessly grateful they don’t look like what they’ve been through. In some cases, their poems are hymns intended for the entire community to sing together. In others, they express personal gratitude for God’s mercy and goodness. Some of the thankful psalms are longwinded and rather exaggerated (even melodramatic) in their enthusiasm. Others border on gut-wrenching in their raw recognition of how saving grace and deliverance changed their lives.

All thanksgiving psalms testify. They describe a singular journey from lamentable life seasons of disorientation and despair and resolve in recognition of divine help. Yet they touch common nerves and resound with common themes. These accounts are shaped for sharing. The psalmists realize their stories take shape and accrue power when they’re told… or prayed… or sung.

“Thank God I don’t look like what I’ve been through” presumes others are getting a good look at you and seeing beauty, composure, confidence, health—all the things that belie the struggles behind your testimony. It assumes folks are interested in your story because they either a) have their own stories to tell or b) need to hear stories from folks lived to tell the tale.

Our course, our gratitude pleases God. But it also reaches us in ways that only testimony can. We are living proof of divine grace. Our personal stories tell a bigger, shared story. We belong to God and one another and whatever details may give our thanksgiving unique features and texture, our gratitude resounds with the same theme: Thank God we don’t look like what we’ve been through. Amen and ashé!

Don’t miss this week’s conversation about thanksgiving as we continue our series, Praying the Psalms. We meet live online every Thursday at 7:30p CDT via Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274

Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

We need your help!

As we think about the future of Gather, please let us know what gifts you bring and would like to share with the community. There are many roles that have to come together to make Gather happen every week. This includes setup, technical support, worship, managing handouts and information, coordinating drinks, and teardown. We need your help. Please let us know what type of service you’d be interested in!

Watch God Work,
Tim & Shea

As we prepare to become a vibrant worshipping community, we invite you to enjoy a Spotify playlist that captures the kind of worship we hope to embrace. Give it a spin while you’re driving. Make it your workout jam. Add it to your devotional time. Most of all, feel yourself becoming part of a sacred village of believers who love their God and one another!
Check out the Gather Worship Playlist here.