David Bahn – Reflections

These things I remember,
    as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
    and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
    a multitude keeping festival.

We easily overlook the two-way blessings of joining with others in worship. We easily think of the ways in which we are uplifted in our worship experiences. We especially appreciate when we sing a favorite hymn. We treasure those special moments when God speaks to us in a sermon. We delight in hearing our favorite Bible passages read. We are encouraged on Easter Sunday when the church is full and we hear the people sing God’s praises and confess their faith, and pray the Lord’s Prayer. These are good things. We should thank God for them.

But there is another side to all these things. If we are edified and encouraged by all these things, what about the others who are worshiping with us? Might they be encouraged in like manner? Do we not also have the opportunity to bless others when we sing the hymns, confess our faith, and pray? Do our smiles and friendly greetings also mediate courage and comfort to others in the Body of Christ? Of course they do.

Back to 8-year-old Tommy. It’s likely he was a blessing to the other boys and girls that evening as well. It’s more than likely that those who have experienced the pain of losing a dad or mom by divorce or death also needed the comfort he was seeking. This is a two-way blessing – given and received. Martin Luther calls it the “mutual conversation and consolation” of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Next time you go to worship, consider not only the needs you carry with you, the desire to be fed spiritually, the desire to be inspired, and the hope to meet God. Think also of the others who are gathering there. Seventy-five to ninety percent of the people who visit a church for the first time have just experienced a week they hope never to repeat again. Perhaps not that many regular church-goers carry those same disappointments, but some surely do. And if you are encouraged, look around for others who may need your smile, a friendly greeting, or to hear your robust confession of faith, and maybe even your sincere and humble confession of sins.

You might just be part of the throng of blessings given and received.

Bruce was a most amazingly gifted counselor. I was directed to him by a member of the church I was serving at the time. She said that she saw some amazing things happen in the counseling room as he probed, observed, waited, and commented. I decided to go see him because there were things in my life that I just couldn’t get beyond. Issues that were forever unresolved. And I too saw some amazing things happen there.

Like the time I was lamenting being overlooked by my reckoning at a conference I was attending. He said, “You mean God and you wasn’t enough.” Struck a deep chord in me. Or the time we were talking about some particularly difficult times in my younger years and how God did or did not intervene. He said, “God isn’t a wimp. He could have stopped that. Do you know what he wanted from you then?” He went on to help me understand that God desired me to turn to him and find comfort from him in those hard places. Quite a challenge to be sure. There are more examples I could list, but when I read these verses,

Deep calls to deep
    at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
    have gone over me…

…I think of Bruce. He had a deep well from which he drew the wisdom of God. And God spoke deeply to me through Bruce. His was no surface faith. His was the Mariana Trench of deep truths of God, and I was deeply impacted by the wisdom, love, and grace he shared with me.

David speaks here of being overcome by the breakers and waves of God, even as he expresses appreciation for the depth of God’s steadfast love, pure wisdom, profound grace, and far-reaching truth. St. Jerome once said that “the Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for theologians to swim in without ever touching the bottom.”

There’s good reason for us to consider both extremes of that quote. We far underestimate the profound implication of Jesus’ death and his promise of eternal life if we relegate the Christian faith to a simple transaction: you-believe-in-Jesus-and-you-get-to-go-to-heaven. By the same token, however, if you think that the Christian faith is too inaccessible and because you cannot understand it’s mysteries, it should be relegated to the philosophical debate academies, you are missing the simple truth that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 

Deep calls to deep. God is calling us to a deep love for him, a deep faith in his goodness, a deep love for one another, and a deep desire to be with him and experience his salvation. That is worthy of deep thought, deep thanks, and a deep desire for more of God.

I’ve been thinking about the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well (cf. John 4:1-42). She apparently had some degree of spiritual perception and understanding. She knew that it was not proper for a Jew to speak to her, a Samaritan woman. She knew there was a difference in understanding about proper worship practices and places. She also knew that Messiah was coming. She is not a pagan. She was a sinful woman. But who cannot understand why she was forced into that lifestyle given those times and the choices she had just to survive. I don’t want to paint her as purely a victim here. We don’t really know her story other than that she had been married five times and was living with a man to whom she was not then married.

We do know she was thirsty. She came to the well to draw water. Jesus would offer her living water. She would wonder how to get it so she would never have to come to this well again. Jesus would tell her he knew more about her than she ever supposed. And when she was caught out by him, she sought to gain some freedom by questioning him about other things: where and how to worship, what the Messiah would reveal, and ultimately left her bucket to tell everyone her truest thirst had been slaked. Fully. Delightfully. Graciously. Profoundly graciously.

I wonder if she had ever prayed this psalm. Did she realize she was longing for the presence of God in her life even more than she yearned for a peaceful trip to the well? Did she understand that God had not forgotten her? Did she somehow know that there was more to the mysteries of religion than where and how to worship? Did she pray in the middle of the night for God’s steadfast love? Did she wonder if the people of that town would ever stop taunting her? Did she somehow hold on to hope in the face of all these things?

We don’t know the answers to those questions. But we do know that whenever we face taunting, isolation, fear, sleeplessness, and deep discouragement, God is only a prayer away. We’re in good company if we lament our hardships and our sins, and seek God’s steadfast love. Whether it’s the long way around we take to avoid the taunts of others, the anxious and sleepless moments of dread as we think about possible future happenings, or guilt and shame over past choices and present temptations, we can pray this psalm: with David. With the sinful woman at the well. With the tax collector in the temple (Luke 18:13). And getting to the end of the psalm, we can pray:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
    my salvation and my God.

Amen.

Mick Jagger couldn’t get it: he was never satisfied. The leech, sheol, a dry land, and fire (according to Proverbs 30:15-16) never get enough. Or as Blaise Pascal famously said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every [person] which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” That is the sentiment of Psalm 42. The image of a deer panting for streams of water is a powerful way to express a yearning for God, and not anything else.

Sometimes, however, I wish it was more true of me. It’s so easy to yearn for things other than God. From food to fun or money to recognition, it’s far too easy to misplace my yearnings. This psalm is, therefore, a challenge and an aspiration. It is a reminder of my truest and most important need, as well as a way for me to focus on a better desire. Rather than a hot fudge Sundae, the acclaim of people, or a lottery win, I need God’s presence. And so do we all.

It should remind us that we are not yet fully in the presence of God. He is with us at all times. Jesus promised as much as he gave the Great Commission (Matthew 28:20). God is with his people, and has promised this again and again. (cf. Joshua 1:9; Isaiah 43:2,5) But we too often wander from his presence. We lose sight of him and his ways. We willfully disobey him. We ignore his blessings. We undervalue his love.

The worst suffering of Jesus was endured on the cross when he cried out in anguish in the face of God’s abandonment. (Matthew 27:46) This psalm is a prayer of yearning for the opposite. One day that prayer will be fully and perfectly answered. In those times of anxiety, fear, and loneliness, we can pray this psalm with the confidence that God is with us. We can draw near as be gather with other believers in the name of Jesus. We can celebrate the real presence of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper. We can call on God in prayer, confident that he hears us and answers our prayers. And we can bend our yearnings toward the fullness of God’s presence in every moment of every day.

I was preaching in the Arkansas Depart of Corrections Varner Unit. This high-security state prison for men is located about 30 miles from where we lived at the time. Our church offered to bring our choir to perform our Easter cantata there. The chapel was full to capacity. More than 200 men – all in white overalls – sat tightly-packed in the pews. There were Amen’s and other expressions of agreement and encouragement throughout my sermon. One man sat on the front row and every now and then shouted out, “Think about it!”

It’s not a man sitting on the front row calling out think about it here, but rather an obscure word. The word selah (סֶלָה,) occurs three times in this psalm. The meaning is not controversial, but  it is unclear. Some say it’s a liturgical term, calling for a musical interlude, or some liturgical action. Others suggest it is a call to pause and reflect. A friend said, in jest, “It’s what David said when he came to the end of a verse and couldn’t remember the next line!” I like the idea of selah being an invitation to pause and reflect – to think about it.

The first occurance of selah is at the end of the second strophe of Psalm 32:

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
    through my groaning all day long.
⁴ For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
    my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

Guilt renders us anxious, and we can groan, and even waste away under its weight. I have previously shared how fear did that to me many years ago. We are to see God’s hand in our times of anxiety, fretting, fear, and restlessness. Certainly we must see the hand of God in times of unresolved guilt, calling us to repent. While it could be the devil stirring up false guilt, or even bringing up previously-forgiven sins, it can also be God wanting us to experience a deeper sense of peace through an honest confession of our sin. His desire is not to cause us pain for pain’s sake, but to drive us to confess our sins and find his mercy and forgiveness. Think about it.

Then comes the second invitation:

I acknowledged my sin to you,
    and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
    and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

Clearly this shows that God’s desire is to give us peace, relief from shame, and to forgive our sins. In the acknowledgement of our sin we find truest peace. Jesus put it this way, “…the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) God sets us free when we stop pretending we’re good enough to approach him, and acknowledge our sin and seek his forgiveness. Think about it.

Then comes the third:

Therefore let everyone who is godly
    offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
    they shall not reach him.
⁷ You are a hiding place for me;
    you preserve me from trouble;
    you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

We are all urged to confess our sins to God. We are all urged to acknowledge our need for his deliverance. We are all to recognize and avoid the dangerous torrents of destruction that come to those who do not repent, and to rejoice in God’s deliverance. Think about it.

Think about it. We suffer if we don’t confess our sins. God forgives the sins of those who acknowledge their transgressions. He delivers us from the catastrophic destruction that comes upon those who do not repent. Pause and ponder these things. Think about it!

Are you one in a million? Are you in the elite class? Do you qualify for this exclusive opportunity? At least sometimes we want to fit into this category of society. We are really happy to be Diamond and get the free room upgrade, or Elite Status and get the seat upgrade on the plane. Or what if somehow we snag a VIP invitation which puts us at the front of the line and the best seat at the concert? We’re good with that. And tell the truth, if you’re the only one in the HOV lane? You’re good with that, aren’t you?

On the other hand, David says, “Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him.” (v. 6) On the one hand it seems like good and godly advice: we should all pray. That’s what godly people do. We should pray when God may be found – not just in our moments of urgent need and only on our schedule of personal convenience. We should “at all times and in all places” (cf. Proper Preface for Communion) give honor to God. 

A closer look at the context of this verse reveals a more nuanced meaning. This verse falls within a psalm about needing to confess our sins, and receive God’s forgiveness. It’s all about not wasting away in our groanings because we refuse to acknowledge our sins and need for God’s forgiveness. It’s all about sin and grace, truth and mercy.

Godly people, we must conclude, need to confess their sins before God. We who follow Jesus must admit that we fail to do so all too often. One failure to follow Jesus is too often, but we fail daily. We drown the old nature only to find him popping up out of the water the next day to take us down into the swirling abyss of transgressions and sins.

Luther says the we must drown the Old Adam daily because the he is such a good swimmer. The rush of the great waters can all too easily catch us by surprise and overwhelm us. This is a life-long, every-day practice. Luther says that the entire life of the believer should be one of repentance (the first of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses of 1517). We are – even the godly – both saint and sinner.

“The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do,” says Paul. (Galatians 5:17)

If you struggle with this, take heart! It is proof of the Holy Spirit’s work in you. Otherwise we would never worry about sin, repentance, guilt, or failure. But with the Holy Spirit we can embrace this verse wholeheartedly, confident that by remaining steadfast in our repentant spirit, we will not be overwhelmed by the waters.

The Arbinger Institute’s excellent book, Leadership and Self-Deception is an eye opener. In every possible way it challenged me to look at others from a totally different perspective. I didn’t always do it, but it did prove helpful when I faced challenges with colleagues in ministry, coworkers and ministry team leaders whom I was leading and supervising. It’s not a dismissive and perfunctory “It’s not you, it’s me” approach to working with others. Rather, it calls us to consider whether I’ve written someone off, put them in a box, or misunderstood them when I don’t see what I want in someone’s performance. I highly recommend the book.

An example comes to mind. Years ago I was working with congregation members to rewrite the constitution of our church. In that process, the main person to write it, was saying things I didn’t agree with, or (I later learned) correctly understand. I commented to another member that Joe [not his real name] “didn’t really get it.” To my horror, I later discovered that the comment was conveyed to Joe. I came to realize that I was the one who didn’t get it. And even though I said as much to him, our relationship was completely severed. We never recovered. I had hurt him too badly. I thought I understood. And perhaps I did have a better handle on things. But I certainly didn’t understand him. I had deceived myself and put him in a box of my making: the wrong box.

David laments the time he refused to acknowledge his sin. He suffered physically in the throes of his silence and refusal to consider his own failures and shortcomings. His bones wasted away, he says. God laid his hands on David. He not only allowed him to suffer, it’s apparent that he caused David to suffer in his resolute unwillingness to confess his sin.

That was an act of God’s love for David. Rather than let David continue to suffer under the delusion of his guiltlessness, God brings David to his knees so that he will confess his sins and find forgiveness. Self deception not only hurts others – putting them in a box of their guilt and failures in which they do not belong – it is self-destructive. Self-deception is self-destructive.

Confession brings freedom, forgiveness, and fullness of life. I wish I had checked more carefully my own biases and assumptions about Joe’s perspective on the constitution rewrite. But an even greater danger lies in any refusal to admit before God our failures and need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. John says that if we say we are without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Apart from him we have no pathway to the Father. Truth is essential to our salvation. The truth is we need God’s forgiveness. We all do. The truth is also God forgives those who confess their sins, and removes them from us as far as the east is from the west. The danger is that we would deceive ourselves into believing we don’t really need it.

At a particular intersection I often navigate, two lanes of traffic turn left. Often the cars in the left-most lane want to merge into the right lane so that they can then turn right at the next intersection. It’s very common to see drivers nose in to the smallest of spaces between cars. I have a rule as we negotiate those turns and lane changes. If someone puts on his turn signal, indicating that he wants to merge into that right lane, I’ll back off the gas and let the merge happen. If not, I’m liable to keep the space a little more tight. I’m not sure my attitude is really all that gracious, but it is what I do. Let me know you want to merge, and I’ll let you merge!

I like to think of that as a metaphor for prayer. The Bible says, “You have not because you ask not.” (James 4:2) In this case it is also a metaphor for confession of sins. David wrote these words one thousand years before John wrote, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins.” (1 John 1:9) This is an eternal truth, revealed by God, and experienced by God’s people for thousands of years. Keep quiet and suffer internal torment and angst. Speak up, and you discover God’s gift of peace.

Bill Wilson codified this for those struggling with addiction, when he laid out the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Steps four and five are a powerful couplet:

Step Four

“We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

Step Five

“We admitted to God, to ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

Further insight about Step Five reminds us:

“All the world’s a stage.” Addicts and alcoholics know this all too well. A huge amount of time and energy is spent acting, pretending, making excuses, manipulating and covering up. Preserving a dishonest lifestyle requires dishonesty–wearing masks and playing charades. Step Five means it is time to put away the masks, stop acting and get ready to take action. 

David had to be confronted in his sin, but once he was, he immediately confessed it to Nathan. The account is found in 2 Samuel 12:1-15. Nathan knew of the sin. But David needed to acknowledge the evil of what he had done, and admit that he had actually sinned. He could no longer pretend that all was well and that his life was truly right. He confessed his sin, and God forgave him.

The same is true for us. If we’re hiding something we need to bring it to the light of day. That may require admitting to yourself that you have actually done something truly wrong and sinful. (If so, join the club! All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.) You might need to speak with a pastor or someone you can fully trust in order to get it off your conscience. You surely must say it to God. I’ve found it helpful to write it out. I’ve done so, and afterward destroyed the document as a means of actively reflecting the reality of confession and forgiveness.

God removes sin from us as far as the east is from the west. We more fully realize this when we admit it and confess our sins out loud.

Maybe you’ve had to deal with shame and guilt that haunts, stalks, accuses, and imprisons. When we’re racked with guilt it is such sweetness to learn of God’s forgiveness. When we’ve seen over the edge of the abyss between us and God, and realized that we cannot span that chasm, it is such joy to learn that Jesus has spanned it for us. When we realize we have hurt our loved ones, or betrayed God’s trust, or failed again to do the good we know we should, the message of God’s mercy is so precious.

But when we don’t even know we need forgiveness, we still do. In Psalm 19 we are led to pray, “Forgive me of my hidden faults.”  In either case – known sins that plague us, or sins of which we are unaware, David reminds us of the blessing of being forgiven. Although this psalm is numbered before Psalm 51, it may have been written later, and in part a fulfillment of part the the prayer there, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with your free spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways…” Perhaps this is David’s way of teaching the likes of me the ways of God.

God’s ways are the ways of forgiveness, mercy, grace, and redemption. In fact, we have no other hope than to be forgiven of our sins if we are to live with God who is pure, holy, and just. So it is most certainly true: Blessed is the one transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

It might be that we need to be confronted in our sin – just as David awas by the prophet Nathan. If so, may the Holy Spirit work in our hearts that which he worked in David’s heart. The upshot of that encounter is a beautiful expression of repentance and forgiveness. Such a blessing!

Nathan said to David, “You are the man! …⁹ Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? … ¹³ David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.  – 2 Samuel 12:7, 9, 13

It’s nothing we deserve. It is God’s gracious and precious gift – through Jesus, for all who repent and believe.