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This photo was taken on one of my morning walks in Italy last summer. I often found myself taking pictures of places where life emerged from rocks, fences and other structures that might seem to inhibit growth. Instead, what I came to see was the free interplay between structure and imagination. |
Becoming Free
Psalm 119
Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.
Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart,
who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways.
You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes! (Psalm 119:1-5)
This week begins with Psalm 119—a full 176 verses of almost desperate pleading to God. The psalmist acknowledges the importance of steadfastness in following God’s statues; offers praises and gratitude; manifests delight in God’s decrees; promises faithful observance, meditation and witness. The psalm is an exercise in saying the same thing in as many different ways as imaginatively possible. It gives the word “implore” a whole new dimension! The words are so repetitive and insistent that they almost suggest confession—and indeed they are confessional. What has the speaker done to make him beg God repeatedly, “Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart….Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain. Turn my eyes from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways.” From where does his insecurity arise? What arrogance has left him so alone? Why does he believe God has abandoned him to be pursued by enemies? Why is the touchstone of God’s law so important to him?
When I enter the achingly persistent language of this psalm, I am reminded of a line from Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks!” Yet, unlike Queen Gertrude, who ironically hides her own guilt in this protestation, the psalmist pleads his case to God with a kind of innocence, humility and trust that borders on wonder. His insistence, his efforts to convince God of his good intentions, are almost childlike. He clearly believes in the power of God’s law to shape him, free him, save him from his persecutors. He confesses that God’s “judgments are right, and that in faithfulness you have humbled me.” Even while his soul “languishes” and his “eyes fail with watching for (God’s) promise,” he prays for his heart to remain “blameless.” He writes: “For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten your statutes.” Even though his suffering makes him shrivel with sorrow, he returns in hope to the guiding love expressed in the laws of God. Haven’t we all felt such withering?
As we make our way through this week, we are called again and again to rely on God’s commandments—words of help and instruction about how to live meaningfully—our anchor in times of distress and confusion—the place from which our creativity and imagination thrust themselves into purposeful being. These are not laws that carry the threat of punishment or abandonment, but rather promises of salvation and freedom—of fulfillment in what it means to be human and loved by God. God’s promises are “exceedingly broad,” says the psalmist. They give life, make us wiser, provide a “lamp unto (our) feet.” Theologian Tripp Fuller tells us that we sometimes confuse ascension and resurrection, and that we underestimate salvation. Salvation, he says, should be seen not as leaving earth in some mystical cloud, but rather about being resurrected within a moral structure that pursues restoration and justice here and now—the kin-dom of God that Jesus came to announce. We know what happens when we forget our foundational teachings, and both the psalmist and the writers of the gospels return us repeatedly to our dependence on them for renewal, discovery, becoming, and, indeed, resurrection. We, like the psalmist, have the freedom to choose. We are not imprisoned by the Word, but instead are liberated and made new by it. Jesus shows us that.
I love Psalm 119. It bears reading slowly and attentively. It requires a quiet “sinking in.” It acknowledges our doubt, fear and guilt at stumbling from the right path. At some point (and for some of us, often), we all find ourselves in the position of the psalmist—when we feel lost and acknowledge the need for God’s guidance in very tangible ways—when our “eyes shed streams of tears because (God’s) law is not kept”—because we have not kept it. We recognize our shortcomings and failures, but we are also free to offer to God our good intentions if that’s all we have. As Thomas Merton famously wrote:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead
of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am
actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact
please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that
I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this
You will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Despite the psalmist’s distress, Psalm 119 is an incredibly hopeful song full of love and justice and faithful promise for those who delight in God’s ordinances. If nothing else, it reminds us that the instruction God has given us is not a burden, but rather a liberating framework that releases our best and truest selves. Not a burden, but a source of peace, delight, deliverance, justice, and love. Above all, Psalm 119 is a prayer—and one that feels both agonizing and joyful—a lot like being human. As Thomas Merton wrote: “To pray in spirit and in truth enables us to enter into contact with that infinite love, that inscrutable freedom which is at work behind the complexities and the intricacies of human existence.”
May you rest in your beautiful humanity today. I offer you this collect for contemplation:
God whose gift of freedom sometimes frightens me,
I turn to you in my confusion and uncertainty, acknowledging the moral failings of
the world and of my own actions.
Light your lamp, placing in my hands the promises of my essence and of my flowering,
reminding me that your abundant love contains all that is and all that ever will be.
Help me find delight and joy in your commandments. AMEN
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