Newsletter October 2011

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Psalm 119:105
Psalm 119 is an acrostic in the Hebrew language with each of the 22 stanzas beginning with a different letter of the alphabet and each of the eight lines in each stanza beginning with the same letter in the Hebrew. It is a very clever devise for those who can read it in the original language and probably a handy tool for memorizing the psalm. Our hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, points to this acrostic when it puts both the Hebrew letter and the English spelling of the letter at the head of each stanza from “alef” to “tav”. But like most of you, I do not read Hebrew other than a few common words like שלם so I cannot appreciate the pattern of the psalm as the people of the Old Testament did.
What I can appreciate in the psalm is the exuberant love for God’s word that fills every stanza. Unlike the perception that the Bible is a dry and dusty old book, Psalm 119 says “lead me in the path of your commandments for I delight in it” (verse 35) and “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long.” (verse 96) and “your decrees are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart” (verse 112). The author of Psalm 119 had a deep emotional and joyous relationship with the written Word of God. Read it or listen to it or recite it from memory and his heart was filled with joy and delight.
When I was much younger Psalm 119:9 was a verse often in my mind: “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to thy word.” I did not want to be angry or carry a grudge or easily take offense, and it was so helpful to remember the words of scripture in this psalm and the high standards Our Lord set in the Sermon on the Mount and even more helpful to see Our Lord’s compassion and mercy toward the sinner. In particular, Jesus’ words to the paralytic lower by ropes through the roof of the house in Matthew 9:2 “Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven” were powerfully reassuring in moments of guilt.
Now that I have reached an age where I see how old temptations never cease and new ones pop up from time to time, passages from the epistles are more on my mind, like Philippians 3:12 “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” and that wonderful passage in Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” At this stage of life perseverance and continuity are on my mind, as the world continues to change and the old battles with sin and suffering continue unabated. The “age of Aquarius” that dawned when my generation came of age in the 1960s has not been as bright as we once thought it would.
The day will come when I hope to be able to say with St. Paul in 2nd Timothy 4:7 “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” I just hope I have a few more laps to run.
There are passages in the Bible for almost any situation, passages which come alive when we have a lively knowledge of them. The writer of Psalm 119 came to find delight and joy in God’s Word because he meditated on it often. He read the Word, he listened to the preachers, he thought about what he read and how as it related to his life. The use of the whole Hebrew alphabet in Psalm 119 points to how the Word of God relates to the whole of human life, whether it is understood as from A to Z or alpha to omega or alef to tav. The scriptures are just as important to the old man reading a passage for the umpteenth time as it is to that new young reader with her brand new Bible reading a story for the very first time.
In September our parish gave Bibles to the third graders so these new young readers could read for themselves the stories that their parents and teachers have been telling them. Our fifth graders are preparing for holy communion by reading what the Word of God says about this life-giving sacrament. Our 8th and 9th graders continue to meet with me to explore further the Word of God. And the women of our church are working through the Gospel of Mark in a new WELCA Bible study. Most important of all, the Word of God, read and proclaimed, sits squarely at the center of every Sunday worship service. My younger pastoral colleagues sometimes say to me, “Gary, you’ve preached for 35 years so this passage has come before you as a sermon text at least ten times. What do you say?” And I find there is always something new and fresh, because God’s Word is “living and active” as Hebrews 4:12 says. It continues to be a “lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”