Second Sunday in Lent 2015--Trinity Church, Newport, RI

2 Lent

March 1, 2015

Trinity Church, Newport, RI

For dominion belongs to the LORD,

and he rules over the nations.

To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;

before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,

and I shall live for him.

Posterity will serve him;

future generations will be told about the LORD

and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,

saying that he has done it

They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn *

   the saving deeds that he has done.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,  AMEN

I recently went on a retreat at a monastery with my class at Berkeley Divinity School, and I absolutely hated it. With all due respect to the monks, who were gracious and kind, their worship bored me to tears. You see, monastic worship through the Daily Office focuses largely on the Psalms. Great! I love the psalms! Nowhere in the Bible do we more clearly see voices of praise, thanksgiving, lament, anger, you name it. All the feelings. But the monks drone the Psalms. They take looooooooong pauses that I find maddening. The reasoning behind this is that if you read the Psalms slowly you soak them in. They become part of you. In my experience, when you drone them slowly and without feeling your stomach just rumbles really loudly and everyone turns and judges.
Maybe it’s my past life as an actor, but for me the psalms make more sense when I read them out loud and express all the emotions that come with them. The psalms aren’t about quiet submission. Heck, they aren’t even about reverence. They’re about raw human emotion, and sometimes that’s ugly. Today’s Psalm is a little bit misleading because we’re only saying a portion of it, but don’t worry--we’ll get the rest of it on Good Friday. I’m sure it’s one you’re all familiar with because it begins with the words

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I think that if we’re honest with ourselves, that’s a thought we’ve all thought at some point or another. When I’m late to work and my tire blows out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When a child has cancer and dies: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When the Son of God is nailed to a Roman torture device and the most innocent among us is brutally humiliated and killed by a corrupt state: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And yet the Psalmist ends with the words we sang/said today:

Praise the LORD, you that fear him; *

   stand in awe of him, O offspring of Israel;

   all you of Jacob's line, give glory.

Out of lament, out of despair the psalmist can turn to words of praise.

And notice that this praise is communal. It’s not just the individual, but all you of Jacob’s line. The psalmist goes even further, though, as

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to

the LORD, *

  and all the families of the nations bow before him.

This is a future where all of humanity will praise God and rejoice in his goodness, and this vision comes out of a place of deep lament.

With this in mind, I understand a bit better why Peter’s so upset with Jesus in today’s Gospel reading. When Jesus tells the people, in a rather public way, that he is to endure suffering, Peter gets rather upset. Notice that Mark says that Peter “took him aside and began to rebuke him.” Rebuke isn’t a word that we use very often, so to put it into context, rebuke is the word used when Jesus casts out demons and calms the storm at sea. It’s clearly a strong word. In this instance I can’t help but think of Peter as a petulant teenager:

Jeeeez, Mom! I can’t believe you embarrassed me like that in front of my friends!

The student is lecturing the teacher. When Jesus states publicly that he will suffer, it’s not the image of the glorious Messiah that Peter and the Jews of that time expected. They wanted a king that would reign in glory not suffering. Jesus doesn’t really calm Peter down, or at least he doesn’t calm me down when he insists that those who follow him must suffer. Eep!

I think sometimes that’s what I want from God. I just want to be happy. I just want things to go smoothly and everything to be puppy dogs and unicorns and double fudge peanut butter ice cream. But life’s not really like that, and that’s ok. That’s the whole idea behind Lent. During this time of reflection and self-denial I put away the peanut butter ice cream. You see, our humanity isn’t just joy and neither is it just suffering. It’s a full experience. It’s all the feelings. I cannot tell you why terrible things happen. I wish I could, but I just can’t. Like the psalm that goes from My God, my God, why have you forsaken me to Praise the LORD you that fear him, life moves us through sorrows and joys.

Our Lenten journey, however, moves us through the suffering and self-denial of life to the suffering of the cross, to the glory of Resurrection. The NRSV translation of today’s psalm ends saying:

Future generations will be told about the LORD,

and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,

saying that he has done it.

This final phrase he has done it is where Jesus takes his final words on the cross: It is done. The 22nd Psalm moves us from the agony of suffering and death: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me to the glory of resurrection: It is done.

And note what the psalmist says:

Future generations will be told about the LORD.

That’s the real task we’re given here: to tell the story.

Suffering is inevitable. It is part of what makes us human, but even through that suffering God is present in the person of Jesus who loves us enough to endure suffering on a cross. Ours is a God who has known human suffering. Through his incredible gift of life and victory over death by his resurrection, Jesus has given us a story to spread throughout all the world.

Praise the LORD, you that fear him; *

   stand in awe of him, O offspring of Israel

AMEN