December 20th

Loser

Psalm #59

It’s not easy to live out one’s faith in our world.  Society tells us to look out for number one, to consume endlessly, to do whatever it takes to get ahead.  To live out faith’s values of humility, gentleness, generosity, and love is not easy.  Ask any Christian young person in high school or college. 

Psalm 59 opens with a four-fold petition:  ‘Deliver me, protect me, deliver me, save me!’   The psalmist sees ‘the enemy’ causing havoc (v. 3-6,14-15).  In vivid imagery he imagines them prowling like hungry dogs, growling ‘if they do not get their fill.’

Is God asleep?  The psalmist prays fervently:

Rouse yourself, come to my help and see!
⁵   You, Lord God of hosts, are God of Israel.
Awake to punish all the nations;
   spare none of those who treacherously plot evil.

The YOU is emphatic and is followed by three designations:

        LORD = Yahweh, the covenant name for God.                                  

        God of Hosts or God of the armies, and                                            

        God of Israel = a relational phrase. 

The psalmist is confident that God will act.  Twice the refrain is repeated at vs. 10 and vs. 17.

‘My loving God will come to meet me….

I will sing praises to You, my strength,                                   

because God is my stronghold, my loving God.’

The reference is to God’s faithful active love.  Our psalmist associates God’s faithful love with the affirmation that God is a source of strength.  Divine love is an effective power in the world!     

We are reminded that there is a deeper reality at work among us, an alternative world which is driven, not by the lust for power and self-gratification, but by the power of love.  Confident in such love reminds us that we can confront our societies practices with transforming practices.  We profess to find a ‘fortress’ in God, and we yield our lives to God in grateful praise (v.16-17).

A TALE OF TWO T-SHIRTS

Nathan Jones, son of Greg Jones, a professor at Duke University Divinity School, went to a summer academic camp as a high school student.  He called home one evening to say, ‘You won’t believe what they put on the official T-shirt we bought.  I won’t wear it!  On the front it said, ‘Accept nothing.’  On the back, ‘Question everything.’ 

Such slogans, observed his father, may sound edgy, but in a very real sense they are the conventional wisdom of our culture.  Trust no one, accept nothing, question everything – everything, that is, but yourself.  You yourself are the only source of truth.

Declining to wear the T-shirt, Nathan put on another.  The front of this black T-shirt read in white lettering, ‘Loser.’  On the back was a quote from Jesus:  ‘Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’  Wearing such a shirt, young Nathan affirmed that his life was not his own.    [Christian Century, Sept. 7, 2004]

Divine love IS an effective power in the world!