open spaces

For each finite thing I saw an end –
            but your command is exceedingly broad.   Psalm 119:96

Broad. Wide. Spacious.

This is the Psalmist’s experience of the “commands,” the “mitzvot” of the Lord. I’m struck by how little we really see. Think about it – what “mitzvot” would the Psalmist be experiencing as so “broad” and “spacious”? Leviticus? Numbers? Deuteronomy? I’m pretty sure we feel pretty cramped in those legal spaces. But he sees something more far reaching than the Great Plains.

We mimic Jesus announcing with such bravado, “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find it.” We, of course, include ourselves in that “narrow few.” Yet perhaps the very narrowness of which Jesus speaks, perhaps the very reason so few find this way to life, is that so few of us, relatively speaking, have the capaciousness of soul to truly take in the wide open spaces of God and his “mitzvot.” Most of us, religious and irregilious, are far too busy constructing our constricting little boxed explanations for life and the world and vigorously defending them.

But the psalmist has found a plain. A wide open space full of possibilities.

Western intellectuals that we are, we often affirm confidently that every statement of Scripture has but one interpretation if understood correctly (and guess who has that correct interpretation?). It’s almost as if we think a word is equal to no more than the sum of its letters and a sentence no more than the sum of its words.

Really?

I’m struck by how little we really see.

Paul, rabbi that he was, could look at a seemingly straightforward statement like Deuteronomy 25:4 “Don’t muzzle the ox when it’s treading out the grain” and see something much more. “Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be a partaker in his hope” says Paul (on a day when he was feeling very Shakespearian…1 Corinthians 9:9-10). Paul moves from ox and threshing to hope and gospel and messenger. Judged by our typical “what did the original author intend” measuring rod, that seems a bit of a leap. And it is – but only for those who don’t yet know the famed wisdom of Rafiki and who don’t know how to “look harder.”

Paul sees two “layers” in Deuteronomy 25:4 and then went so far as to say that the lower layer was “altogether” what God had really meant all along.

Paul saw two layers. Other rabbis said that every word of the Torah had 70 faces and 600,000 meanings. Maybe they overstate the case. Maybe they didn’t count nearly high enough. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves just how inspired the Word really is if we view it in such definable, finite terms. The infinite God giving us a finite revelation. Such a finite Word seems hardly “living and active”…seems more like a specimen jar and smells of formaldehyde.

Open spaces.

Reminds me of Alan Jacobs description of C.S. Lewis in The Narnian:

Lewis’ mind was above all characterized by a willingness to be enchanted and it was his openness to enchantment that held together the various strands of his life – his delight in laughter, his willingness to accept a world made by a good and loving God, and (in some ways above all) his willingness to submit to the charms of a wonderful story, whether written by an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, by Beatrix Potter or by himself. What is “secretly present in what he said about anything” is an openness to delight, to the sense that there’s more to the world than meets the jaundiced eye, to the possibility that anything could happen to someone who is ready to meet that anything. For someone with eyes to see and the courage to explore, even an old wardrobe full of musty coats could be the doorway into another world.

Or even an old Book filled with what some consider but musty words.

Mattie's Psalm

God of vengeance, O Lord,
    God of vengeance, shine forth!
Rise up, O judge of the earth,
    bring down on the proud requital.
How long the wicked, O Lord,
    how long will the wicked exult?
They utter arrogance, speak it,
    all the wrongdoers bandy boasts.
Your people, O Lord, they crush,
    and your estate they abuse.
Widow and sojourner they kill,
    and orphans they murder.
And they say, “Yah will not see,
    and the God of Jacob will not heed.”
Take heed, you brutes in the people,
    and you fools, when will you be wise?”
Who plants the ear, will He not hear?
      Who fashions the eye, will He not look?
The chastiser of nations, will He not punish,
    Who teaches humankind knowledge?

                                               Psalm 94:1-11 Robert Alter’s translation

I had the pleasure this morning of “murmuring” Psalm 94, among others.

Having just viewed True Grit this past weekend, I couldn’t help but see Psalm 94 coming out of Mattie Ross’ mouth – the fiesty 14 year old girl who narrates the story.

First, on the film, I’m trying to remember the last time I found myself just basking in such cinematic beauty. I haven’t seen everything thing the Coen brother’s have done, but I’ve seen some of their more quirky pieces (Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou) and have thoroughly enjoyed them. This film definitely bears their mark, but they’ve ventured into new territory for them (from what I’ve seen) and done it masterfully. I saw the original theatrical version with the Duke on the big screen forty years ago and so I knew where the story was going (this time with the Dude), and how it would end. And I loved every minute watching it get there. It’s not so much a re-making of the 1969 film but a re-creation of the story, with a few telling differences. This one was far more, well, gritty. And overlaid atop that grittiness was a soundtrack that stirred me to the depths with its simple, haunting subtleties and it drew me in as I watched, Mattie’s theme throughout being strains of the classic hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. It was simply beautiful.

Hope that doesn’t oversell it.

But this story of a young girl seeking justice after her father’s murder suddenly sprung before me in the words of the Psalm I was muttering this morning. David and his fellow psalmists didn’t live in the Old West, but we could say that they lived in an Old East that had much in common with it.

And it just makes me think.

Yes, I grasp the transforming nature of the cross and Jesus’ prayer, “Father, forgive them they know not what they do.” I get the injunction to “as much as it lies within you, live in peace with all men” and it’s ultimate follow-up in Paul’s classic challenge to us to “overcome evil with good.” I understand that as followers of Christ we are in the business of “being killed all day long” rather than doing the killing (too bad the Church has forgotten that through much of its history).

But as I hear the heavenly strains of beheaded souls under the altar in Revelation 6 crying out their own, “How long, O Lord?” I still feel the relevance of Psalm 94 in a world that despite our seemingly civilized manners feels very much practically like an Old Testament world.

I don’t think that means we necessarily all start packing pistols and setting out for justice – though to be fair, Mattie didn’t set out as a vigilante seeking to take vengeance like an “avenger of blood” of old, she turns to the law and employs a marshal, and when she does shoot it’s only in self-defense. In the same way Psalm 94 is not crying out for bloody crusade or jihad – but for the divine intervention of justice in human affairs – which is what the Marshal Cogburns of the world are for.

But I do think it means that perhaps by “outlawing” the sentiments expressed in psalms like this (just try praying this psalm in your next small group meeting or church gathering and see what response you get) we have surrendered to a phony, unbibilcal Christian “niceness” evidencing more an emasculated spirituality that conforms to current cultural norms than embracing a truly biblically informed maturity shaped by Christ.

Perhaps such spiritual emasculation is what can make us cringe at the thought of the torments of hell. The fictional Rooster Cogburn doesn’t strike me as one who would flinch at the thought of it for the likes of a Tom Chaney – and as I’ve waded through most of the gospel of Matthew in the past few days, neither does Jesus seem too. Yes he is meek and lowly of heart, but that very statement in Matthew 11:29 comes on the heels of “Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you Bethsaida! Woe to you Capernaum! You think you will be exalted to heaven? You will be cast down to hell.” Makes me think we need to look at that word “meek” again. Now, the very suggestion of parallels between Rooster Cogburn and Jesus Christ no doubt raises an eyebrow or two, but hands down I would choose to stand with either of them in a fight! And the fact is, that’s what we all have on our hands in this world. Reminds me of the classic comment about Aslan – “He’s not safe – but he’s good.” Why do we always seem to be so either/or, so dualistic? He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world or he is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Why do we seem to have such difficulty grasping both, such difficulty “considering the kindness and the severity of God”?

Just wondering about a spirituality that doesn’t have room for such an image of Jesus Christ, of a God who is the “chastiser of nations” – or for Mattie’s psalm of vengeance – as much as I wonder about one that only knows how to play that tune.

Selah.

Psalms - they ain't pretty

Reading the Psalms has been a gritty, invigorating romp.


Part of it has been the pure enjoyment of Robert Alter’s translation of the Psalms. Alter is a foremost Hebrew scholar, and though I’m sure our views differ on many things, he does a wondeful job of catching the pithy Hebrew rhythms of the Psalms, which is the goal of his work. I came to realize I had never really experienced the Psalms until I did so in Hebrew for the first time some twenty years ago. Alter does the best I’ve seen of someone actually catching those Hebrew movements in English.

Though he lauds the beauty of the classic rendering of the King James Version, ultimately he finds it wanting for the simple reason that it is, well, too pretty. The Psalms are not pretty prayers and praise-pieces. They are pithy and pointed and rough, a gutteral sampling of the Hebrew psyche in prayer and worship. They are not refined poetic set-pieces of theology and devotion, they are a roiling and rolling expression of humanity grasping and gasping after God in the midst of a life that all too often makes little sense. More earthy than heavenly – or perhaps better, heavenly glories expressed in earthy rhythms. Heaven meets earth in a sloppy wet kiss. The line from the popular song has stirred more than a few frowns, but it’s not a bad description of the messiness and untidy nature of these ancient Hebrew songs. They are real. As a child I remember being struck by the oddity of seeing men get up to lead congregational prayers and witnessing their voice change and their words suddenly sound very unlike themselves at all. Such men could be reciting and praying seemingly Psalmlike with a King James’ air, but those listening in are hearing more of Shakespeare’s rhythms than the strumming of David.

Which stands as a reminder to me. Prayer and praise are not a performance public or private or otherwise. They are the gritty movements of our own heart and body and tongue as we like the deer pant after the living God in moments high and low. No subject is off-limits, no emotion taboo. If it happens on earth, heaven bends to hear the earthy strains of prayer and praise that issue from it.

The book of Psalms is quoted in the New Testament more frequently than any other Old Testament book (Isaiah is a close second, as I recall). Which means that Jesus and Paul lived in these pages. These Psalms were their climbing companions. When we, like the disciples, would ask either of them to “teach us to pray” they both would ultimately point us here (note that the “Lord’s prayer” that Jesus taught his disciples to pray is just as pithy and pointed, which is why we have remembered and passed it on for nearly two millenia).

May our experience of the Psalms free us from the seeming devoutness of flowery sacred speak, and into the gritty and earthy movements of truly inspired prayer and praise and poetry marked by our own rhythms as we would dare open our mouths in answering speech to God.