You're so vain. You probably think this psalm is about you. ~ Psalm 98 (Songs We Sing While We Wait series, No. 4)

Sing to the Lord a new song,
    for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm
    have worked salvation for him. ² The Lord has made his salvation known
    and revealed his righteousness to the nations. ³ He has remembered his love
    and his faithfulness to Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen
    the salvation of our God.

⁴ Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth,
    burst into jubilant song with music; ⁵ make music to the Lord with the harp,
    with the harp and the sound of singing, ⁶ with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn—
    shout for joy before the Lord, the King.

⁷ Let the sea resound, and everything in it,
    the world, and all who live in it. ⁸ Let the rivers clap their hands,
    let the mountains sing together for joy; ⁹ let them sing before the Lord,
    for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness
    and the peoples with equity. ~ Psalm 98

In 1971 the famous singer Carly Simon recorded the song, “You’re so vain.” The song is ranked #92 on Billboard’s Greatest Songs of All-Time and is an amazing and snarky critique of a self-absorbed lover about whom Simon asserts “You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” The song continues to thrill many listeners in part because Simon has never been willing to divulge publicly the name of the person that she was referring to, leading to many prospective candidates: Warren Beatty, James Taylor, David Bowie, David Cassidy and even Cat Stevens. Well, our Psalm today is #98 and while it might not be as popular to as many people as “You’re so vain,” it too is a song that critiques are own self-absorption and our sense of what salvation and worship is.  Carly Simon has said that her song is really a composite about three different men and funny enough that’s also true of our Psalm which reflects upon three different characters in God’s unfolding plan. And what’s funny is that none of the three are “you.”

1.    This song is not about you. It’s about God’s “right hand” man, vss. 1-3.

Vs. 1 tells us that it’s by God’s “right hand” and his “holy arm”

that victory is won. Throughout the Old Testament the “right hand” or “holy arm” were metaphors used to capture God’s power and care to deliver. God’s right hand will do for others what they can’t do for themselves – bring stability, justice and salvation to the whole earth. But in the book of Isaiah the term also connected to more than a “what” but a “who” - the messiah, the coming king. Isaiah 53, echoing Psalm 98, says:

The Lord will lay bare his holy arm
    in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see
    the salvation of our God. Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
 and like a root out of dry ground. But what kind of king? What does God’s arm look like?

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
³ He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.  (Isaiah 53:1-3)

So the “arm of the Lord” turns out to be a person. And not just any person but an unattractive man of suffering who was held in low esteem. Who is this man?
Well, the Psalm gives us another clue by the word translated “salvation” in the NIV or “victory” in the NRSV which occurs three times in vss, 1-3. The Hebrew word is yeshuah, which could also be used as the basis for a proper name. The Old Testament name “Joshua [Yehoshua – He delivers/saves/(gives) victory] and the New Testament name “Jesus” are both derived from yeshuah (“Jesus” is simply a transliteration of the Hebrew into Greek [Ιησούς]. The Gospel of Matthew says that the angel said to Mary, “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

So the new song we are invited to sing is a recognition that God has accomplished a victory in a surprising and unattractive way. The “arm of the Lord” reminds us that our salvation is secured by God and that we sing a new song and worship in spite of our circumstances. The pain and waiting we experience, in other words, do not determine our end. It is God who does that by himself.  

But also, the song we are invited to sing should offer us a certain humility while we wait. It’s easy to read about God’s “holy arm” and imagine awe-inspiring, terrifying, cataclysmic events. But when we recognize that Psalm 98 is speaking about Isaiah’s unattractive messenger and the small baby born in backwater Bethlehem are God’s holy arm then we should be careful about reading such metaphors literally rather than as mysterious and surprising and recognize that God saves the world through small and even unattractive ways.

2.    This song is not about you. It’s about people to the ends of the earth, vss. 1-6.

Psalm 98 reveals an odd tension in that we (Trinity Covenant, you, me) are never directly invited to sing, commanded to shout, but that it’s ancient “Israel” and “all the earth.” And while I’m not saying that it doesn’t include us – it does - it certainly doesn’t have us at the front of the line or in the first few rows. It’s the recognition, in other words, that worship is not about you. I’m not saying that we can’t have a thoughtful discussion about proper worship and our role in it. I do wish to remind you, however, of the solid and sound Biblical principle that such a conversation can never be lead with the phrase, “I don’t like . . .” or “I like . . .” Proper worship is to be about God and the story of God in Jesus Christ and God’s deliverance through Israel to the whole earth and all of creation. We are the unmentioned yet included middle.

So perhaps the Psalmist is inviting people to not only sing a new song in terms of spontaneity but also to sing a song infused by a new perception. Reflect on the fact that worship has been happening since the dawn of creation and remains what the whole earth is invited to do. And this means that worship is to be about what we do in the world and for the world. We need secular (from the Latin meaning “worldly”) worshippers who make this recognition in the check out lane in the grocery store, when paying bills, when commuting to work. All of these places or times are chances to sing and worship. And we sing because it’s not about us – it’s not about our bad day, or our boredom, or our entertainment. It’s about the done deal of our salvation in Jesus Christ for the world. You don’t have to work for it but you are commanded to sing and even shout.

3.    This song is not about you but don’t neglect the baby (and I don’t mean Jesus), vss. 1-9.

Verses 7- 9 are rich in imagery and promise. “The earth” and “the world” are used to describe what God invites to worship and that which God is coming to judge. The word translated “earth” [‘erets], identifies the whole of the earthly realm  (people and creatures) (Genesis 1:1, etc.); tebel [world] means earth’s habitable space (planet).
In Psalm 90, we read in verse 2 that God “formed” the earth -- ‘erets, and the world -- tebel. The word translated as “formed” is the verb for a woman being in labor (see, for example, See Deuteronomy 32:18; Isaiah 13:8; 26:17, 18; 51:2; 66:7,8; Jeremiah 4:31; Job 15:7; 39:1; Psalm 51:5 (7); Proverbs 8:24, 25; 25:23). Thus, in Psalm 90, we have an amazing depiction (and not solitary, see above) of the creator God as a woman in childbirth giving birth to the world. And the earth, Psalm 98, picks up is not some abandoned child in a dumpster but the object of God’s affection. The earth is God’s baby. Do you treat that baby well?
Vs. 3 reminds us that God’s love for people, creatures and planet is hesed “steadfast”. The OT word for God’s unmerited and faithful love. What does such steadfast love for the planet look like? I was going to talk to you at this point about record levels of pollution in our rivers, the horror of plastics in our seas, and the plight of carbon emissions on mountains and glaciers. I was going to describe our behavior as any anything like what Psalm 98 says. I was going to do that – but instead I’d like to tell you a story.

In the Life of St. Francis, by the medieval theologian Bonaventure, we find Francis struggling with a deep personal dilemma: Should he retire from the world and devote himself entirely to prayer or should he continue traveling about as a preacher of the gospel? To answer this question,

Saint Francis sends brothers to seek the advice of two of his most trusted colleagues: Brother Sylvester and his sister Clare. The word comes back very quickly from both that it is their belief that God wants Francis to keep proclaiming the good news of God’s steadfast love. No sooner does Francis hear their response than he immediately stands up, and “without the slightest delay he takes to the roads, to carry out the divine command with great fervor.”

Now the typical reader at this juncture, would probably expect Bonaventure to portray Francis as rushing off to the nearest village or marketplace to begin preaching the gospel to the people gathered there. But that’s not where Francis goes. According to Bonaventure: 

“He came to a spot where a large flock of birds of various kinds had come together. When God’s saint saw them, he quickly ran to the spot and greeted them as if they were endowed with reason…. He went right up to them and lovingly urged them to listen to the word of God, saying,  ‘Oh birds, my brothers and sisters, you have a great obligation to praise your Creator, who clothed you in feathers and gave you wings to fly with, provided you with pure air and cares for you without any worry on your part.’…The birds showed their joy in a remarkable fashion: They began to stretch their necks, extend their wings, open their beaks and gaze at him attentively. He went through their midst with amazing fervor of spirit, brushing against them with his tunic. Yet none of them moved from the spot until the man of God made the sign of the cross and gave them permission to leave; then they all flew away together. His companions waiting on the road saw all these things. When he returned to them, that pure and simple man began to accuse himself of negligence because he had not preached to the birds before.”

Bonaventure’s story of Francis preaching to birds is pretty odd. Had Francis not just learned from his special advisors that God wanted him to continue his preaching ministry? And should we not assume that the primary audience of his preaching should be other human beings—and not bunches of birds? Bonaventure, like Psalm 98, is trying to shock us into widening our horizons, and into learning with Saint Francis that the whole family of creation deserves gospel care and ought to be invited to praise God along with us human beings. Maybe just as Francis accused himself of negligence for not inviting the birds to praise God with him, so we need to admit the same kind of negligence, too. We have not cared well for God’s baby. We have filled this baby’s crib with trash. We have not “let” her sing.

Francis had a keen sense that all creatures—not just humans—must be included in the celebration of Christmas. Francis’ biographers tell us that he wanted the emperor to ask all citizens to scatter grain along the roads on Christmas Day so that the birds and other animals would have plenty to eat. Walls, too, should be rubbed with food, Francis said, and the beasts in the stable should receive a bounteous meal on Christmas Day. He believed that all creatures had a right to participate in the celebration of Christmas.

More and more, Francis harbored within himself a profound instinct that the saving plan of God was to touch every part of the created world. For how could it not? John tells us that “all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” And the weary world rejoices!

"That His glory may dwell": Singing Peace Amidst Christmas Wrath ~ Psalm 85 (Songs We Sing While We Wait sermon series, No. 2)

You, Lord, showed favor to your land;
    you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
2 You forgave the iniquity of your people
    and covered all their sins.
3 You set aside all your wrath
    and turned from your fierce anger.

4 Restore us again, God our Savior,
    and put away your displeasure toward us.
5 Will you be angry with us forever?
    Will you prolong your anger through all generations?
6 Will you not revive us again,
    that your people may rejoice in you?
7 Show us your unfailing love, Lord,
    and grant us your salvation.

8 I will listen to what God the Lord says;
    he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants—
    but let them not turn to folly.
9 Surely his salvation is near those who fear him,
    that his glory may dwell in our land.

10 Love and faithfulness meet together;
    righteousness and peace kiss each other.
11 Faithfulness springs forth from the earth,
    and righteousness looks down from heaven.
12 The Lord will indeed give what is good,
    and our land will yield its harvest.
13 Righteousness goes before him
    and prepares the way for his steps. ~ Psalm 85

This sermon did not take me where I thought it would. When I planned out our Advent series, I was expecting it to be more romantic comedy – “Love and faithfulness meet together”, the Psalmist giggles. “Righteousness and peace kiss each other,” he whispers. But as I read the text carefully, sat with it, spoke with some of you who are struggling, I couldn’t escape the elephant in the room. That if we are to understand this text at all, worship the God for whom it is about, enter into Advent waiting, practice peacemaking, then we have to talk about wrath. And so this Psalm quickly moved from a Rom-com (romantic comedy) feel to a very different kind of song. A song more like

this (click here).

Okay, I think you get the point. Is that God? Is that what the Psalmist is telling us – that Yahweh is an angry God for whom we should sing, “You’d better watch out. You’d better not cry. You better not pout I’m telling you why. God is coming to kill the whole town!” Well, “no” is the answer but a “no” that demands a thoughtful response rather than dismissive one because the text does talk about God’s anger. And truth be told, it’s a bit ambitious, if not ludicrous a friend advised me, to deal with such a delicate topic in such a short time on a Sunday morning but I couldn’t escape it. So please know that I’m not going to be exhaustive and that I realize that there’s much more to be said on the issue. So I ask for a certain grace. But we need to talk about Christmas wrath. I know, I know, it’s like the underwear that you would get from your Aunt Myrtle – what kind of Christmas gift is that?

1.    When considering God’s wrath focus on the verbs (vss. 1-3).

Verses 1-3 function as a call to confession reminding the people and God of God's past saving acts. God's grace is actively on display in the verbs used “favored,” and “restored.” The verb “forgave” in vs. 2 literally means “carried” and the verb “covered” means “to smother.” So vs. 2 can also be read: “You carried the evil of your people and smothered all their sins.” That’s strong language.

We like to think of God as always loving and forgiving and He is. But we also live in a world in which there is real evil and real consequences to our actions that hurt others, ourselves and all of creation. Wrath takes seriously the fact that him, her, you and creation are all objects of God’s love. So if we stick closely to the text two things stand out: 

 1) One is the activity of what God is doing to wrath. Wrath is something God “sets aside” or “withdraws” and “turns from.” Wrath is nothing that God stokes, fumes or rants about. That’s what people do but not God. The word order reveals that while God is in the right to be angry; it’s not something that God actively engages. No, he “set’s it aside.” 

2) The second thing to notice is God’s motivation. What animates God? Verses 1-3 reveal that favor, carrying, and covering, are the heart of God and what animate wrath. In part this is illustrated by the object of God’s actions. As much as we might imagine that God’s wrath is for God’s enemies alone, and thus we are quite happy to pronounce it on others, our text says that it is an experience of God’s people whom God loves (vs. 2). So we begin to move toward a better Biblical understanding when we understand wrath as a metaphor of sorts for God’s anger towards those God loves when they hurt

or harm those whom God loves. This can sound very abstract so let me offer an analogy: I love my children. Now, if I walked into a room and saw one of my sons beating up the other, I’m not going to sit idly by and allow the one to harm the other saying, “What can a do? I love my son and so will let him do what he wants.” On the other hand, I’m not going to jump into the fray and in return beat the offender to a pulp saying, “This is what you get because I love my son.” So wrath is God’s challenge of love and the experience of that love in the presence of sin. But love is always what motivates God to handle wrath differently, to take responsibility for it and for our failure to live peaceably. Remember the verbs.

2.    When considering wrath, remember it’s a rhetorical question (vss. 4-7).

A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that attempts to make a point rather than elicit an answer. It’s intended to start a discussion or at least draw an acknowledgement that the listener understands the intended message. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” (William

Shakespeare) Or, silly ones like, “Is the pope Catholic?” And so the Psalmists asks, “Will you be angry with us forever?” It’s rhetorical. The point of the question is to prompt a discussion about the fact that God is love. The Psalmist knows that wrath is not who God is. So there’s a bit of important theology here that we miss with grave consequences. Wrath is NOT an attribute of God; that is, it’s not a part of God’s eternal nature. It does not exist alongside God’s holiness, love or faithfulness. God IS those things and will be them forever. God IS love, the Bible tells us (1 John 4:8). However, the Bible never states that God IS wrath. In fact, the message of the Old Testament could rightly be summarized as the “steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end” (Lamentations 3:22). So again, whatever we might say of wrath, the eternal nature of God is to show us his unfailing love.

3.    When considering wrath, remember that Jesus is God’s glory dwelling in our land (vss. 9-13).

When you read Psalm 85 with an Advent lens it is striking to see it as being about the coming of Jesus. Jesus is our peace, we learn in Ephesians 2:14. Jesus is our righteousness, Paul announces to us in 1 Cor. 1:30. Jesus is God’s glory dwelling in our land (vs. 9). So we begin to see what God has done in Jesus Christ as the expression of his unfailing love and his own activity to “set aside” and “turn” from wrath. Jesus is the love child of “righteousness and peace kissing each other.” (vs. 10)

Jesus is “faithfulness springing forth from the earth, and righteousness looking down from heaven.” (vs. 11). Whatever we might say about wrath has to be said with Jesus in mind. So we should question any description of God that doesn’t sound like Jesus because Jesus IS, Paul tells us, the very image of God and that in him the fullness of God did dwell. (Colossians 1:19; 2:9). Or, as one theologian put it, “God is Christlike and in him there is no unChristlikeness at all.” So who God shows himself to be in Jesus is simply what he always is; he doesn’t decide to be like Jesus for thirty-odd years or even thirty thousand. And funny enough – Jesus’ relationship to wrath is less about what he gives and, like Psalm 85, more about what he carries, covers, forgives, even endures.

4.    Remember what we did when glory dwelt in our land (read any Gospel, if you forget).

The funny thing about preparing our hearts for Advent and telling the story of Christmas is that if we tell it straight it’s a brutal and scary story – Mary and Joseph not finding anyone who would take them in, the odd people who actually come like pagan magicians and filthy shepherds, the murderous threats of a ruler so insecure and wicked as to kill innocent children rather than risk his political fortunes, and Jesus with his parents fleeing the violence as refugees to Egypt. And when we tell it straight, we realize something quite striking and terrible – that it’s not God’s wrath that we should so much fear but our own. The Gospel of John reminds us of a harsh reality of what we human beings do when God’s “glory dwells in our lands” – we reject him. John’s own odd version of the Christmas story tells of God’s light and glory, Jesus, the Word, moving into our neighborhood full of grace and truth and our response. “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to his own home, and his own people did not accept him.” (John 1:10-11) In the end, the oddity of Christmas, the strangeness of the story of God coming to save us from our sins is not God’s anger but our own.

Whose wrath should we fear more, I wonder? The God who loves us without measure or ourselves?  I don’t know if you noticed but I skipped one verse of our Psalm – vs. 8: “I will listen to what God the Lord says; he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants – but let them not return to stupidity (or “folly”).”  The warning serves as a reminder that the people of God have been in this place before, and the people will be there again. The response to God's peace should be more than words, it involves a change in behavior. It involves an honest confession that I often act stupidly and don’t want God’s Christmas gift of peace.

I want to sing my carols and to keep my enemies.

I want to have my nativity and distrust foreigners and people without homes.

I want to tell of Angels singing, “Peace on earth. Good will toward everyone” and

maintain my support for war and violence.

I want this baby but I’m not sure that I want his peace. I’d rather have a tank and

strike my enemies from the face of the earth.

And I stand at the manger with a motley crowd and recognize wrath in my heart. I

realize that I’m being stupid. I look at the baby and whisper, “Restore us `again, God our Savior, and put away your displeasure toward us.”

And the baby laughs and grabs my finger – “And love and faithfulness embrace; righteousness and peace kiss.” And tears come to my eyes as I pray, “Please, Lord, carry our evil and smother our sins, again.”