King David statue outside his tomb in Mount Zion Jerusalem, Israel.
I am reading through the Old Testament in my daily devotions on a plan that will take me through the Bible chronologically throughout the year. I have been reading through the books of Samuel and Chronicles that tell the story of David’s life, among other things, and I am reading some of the Psalms David wrote. Today, I read Psalm 18.
Psalm 18 is a song David wrote to the Lord “when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.” The reading plan I am following is chronological, and that would put this Psalm near the end of David’s life. The timing of if make the things that strike me about it all the more… well… striking.
The most striking thing about the Psalm (and David’s life) is that he implicitly and intimately trusted God. We see this in the first five verses:
1 I love you, Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3 I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I have been saved from my enemies. 4 The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. 5 The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me.
David always turned to God. When he was overwhelmed, as expressed in this Psalm, he turned to God. When he was victorious, he turned to God. When he failed to live up to God’s standards, he turned to God, and when tragedy struck, he turned to God.
In everything David did, he was fully and intimately mindful of God. Here David said, “In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to God for help.” (Ps. 18:6) All of David’s life was lived in relation to and in orientation toward God.
1 Corinthians 13[1] was the subject of the sermon I watched this morning online. Perhaps, my favorite all-time chapter in the Bible. It’s a popular favorite, too, recited at weddings and funerals and known to people who aren’t particularly religious.
Some things that stand out to me from the sermon are these things: Love isn’t a feeling; it’s something you do. Talent, skills and giftedness are things we value, but they don’t require or demonstrate love. An eloquent and inspirational speaker without love is like a clanging gong or cymbal.
I liked the analogy of the guitar solo vs. a gong solo. Who would do that? No one does a gong solo. A gong solo is like talent without love. Nothing but noise.
Not even prophecy, or knowledge or faith that can move mountains is worth anything if I don’t have love. If I give everything I own away to the poor and give my body up to be burned at the stake (the ultimate religious sacrifice), but I don’t have love, I gain nothing.
As I think about these things, it occurs to me that love isn’t (just) something that we do. It’s certainly true that the love being described isn’t a feeling that comes and goes. Love is more like a commitment than a feeling in that sense, and it is (partly) something that we do; but it’s much more than that.
Nothing is normal about these times right now. Daily case totals and death tolls are front of mind, reminding us of the tenuous uncertainty of life. Though people may question the significance of the numbers, compared to cases and death tolls from the flu, for instance, the preoccupation of the world with this global pandemic labeled COVID-19 is a daily reminder of our own mortality.
Someone speaking of personal experience in World War I remarked, “There are no atheists in the trenches of Europe.” The same idea was echoed in World War II: “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Indeed, Impossible times and situations that snap us out of our comfortable mundane existence have that kind of effect on us.
I doubt that it’s true )that there are no atheists in foxholes). As a generalization, though, there is some kernel of truth there. Many a person who has no interest in God, turns to God in times like these.
YouVersion, the maker of a downloadable Bible app, recently reported on April 15, 2020, historic numbers of people accessing their app, the largest increase in engagement with their app in the last 6 weeks during this time of worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. A record 1.6 million prayers were added in just one month. They claim the pandemic has triggered a virtual spiritual awakening.
The app tracks downloads. When I first checked it, I saw it had been downloaded 421,462,195 times. I started writing this piece a day ago, and I am just getting back to it now. Not quite 24 hours later, the app has been downloaded 421,546, 815 times. That’s an increase of almost 85,000 in less than 24 hours!
With the spike in downloads of just one Bible app (among many), it seems that people really are turning to Scripture in this time of crisis and difficulty.
That leads me to wonder: when the crisis blows over, will people go back to their “normal” lives? Will the new normal include daily Bible reading, prayer and meditation?
Mary Magdalene, Mary, & Salom walking up to the bright empty tomb of Jesus Christ early Sunday morning
Three days and two nights ago, Mary’s entire world came crashing down. The earth opened up and swallowed Jesus, whom Mary loved, into the abyss. Mary’s world was thrown into darkness and confusion, leaving only soul crushing grief, bewilderment, and emptiness.
She barely had enough time to get him down from that tree on which he had died. A very generous leader risked his life and reputation to help her with the body and prepare the body properly for burial before Sabbath began. (John 19:42) It was the least they could do.
The shock of his arrest and the whirlwind of everything that followed came upon her in a rushing torrent so quickly that she was completely overwhelmed, reeling, barely able to breath. The that unbelievable, astonishing, implausible whirlwind of events ended with his death. It’s all too unreal.
When the devotion of last minute burial preparation ended and the tomb was sealed, tornadic activity gave way to the silent weight of reality. The yawning emptiness and overwhelming grief descended on Mary as she labored to get home in the darkness.
All the men abandoned Jesus as their world began to unravel. The petty squabbling at dinner the night before left Mary confused about what Jesus had been saying. Jesus was trying to tell them something important, but she could only remember bits and pieces….
Something about a cup… and pouring out his blood and…. It was all so surreal and confusing. So impossible to accept.
Igt seemed clear to her in retrospect that Jesus seemed to know what was going to happen. She remembered seeing it in his eyes. He was resigned to it, but she didn’t understand. How could she have understood?
All the mysterious things Jesus said during the exciting and hopeful years they traveled with him played in her mind like a long, beautiful symphony suddenly ending in a grand, discordant cacophony that would not resolve before it faded into a whimper. The mystery seemed so poignant, but no less momentous and ominously empty. Through the looming darkness, a slight flame of hope sputtered as she recalled these things like a lone survivor clinging to whatever is close hand in the receding waters of a tsunami .
As she reached her destination for the night, she recalled that Jesus wouldn’t let anyone try to defend him. “He just gave himself up!” she thought. He utterly gave himself over to them. It was so painful to watch.
But even in his weakness he was noble. He was so beautiful. He seemed like everything they thought he was. Even in the end. Even as he resigned himself to death…. She wept and the torrent of her tears broke through the dam of the brave front she put on through all of it.
“Those men!” she thought, “They didn’t do anything. The torrent took an angry turn. “They were always arguing about who was the greatest.” Her thoughts tumbled like rocks that could not withstand the current. “They couldn’t even stay awake with him! Jesus needed them!”
She let out a long, mournful gasp as she recognized the dark cloud threatening her and swallowed her anger.
“They could have, at least, gone with him! But, they left him,” she mourned. “They saw it happening, but they pretended not to know!” her thoughts raced again. “They didn’t lift a finger. When Jesus needed them most, they abandoned him. Peter even claimed he didn’t know Jesus! Peter!” She stopped as the dark cloud threatened again.
Mary and the other women would not leave him. They saw the whole, unimaginable thing … and John. “At least, John was there…. Not that he did anything, either,” Mary recounted.
She realized, “If it wasn’t for Joseph, who knows where his body would have ended up.” Mary was grateful that Joseph owned a tomb nearby and even more grateful that Joseph and the people with him helped with the body. (Luke 23:50-53). Even so, Mary couldn’t help but wonder, “Where they were earlier – when Jesus needed someone. Anyone!”
Even as she felt her heart constrict in anger and frustration, the realization came in like the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore, “They could not have stopped what happened.” There were powerful forces at work that Mary did not understand. She softened, and she wept.
They didn’t have time to prepare him properly. It was the Sabbath, and night was upon them. The hours labored by through the night. The force of things undone kept slept at bay. Everything weighed so heavily on Mary’s heart. She needed to get to him as soon as she could, as soon as the doaw broke and Sabbath was over.
Mary was up before the dawn. Sleep was not an option anyway. She hurried to the tomb, where she met Joseph and Nicodemus who came through with the spices and ointments for Mary to prepare the body in the soft light of the morning. (Luke 23:56)
The hopeful sounds of birds gently singing in the still of the early morning might have lifted her heart on any other day. She was drowning in sadness, as tears came in waves. She could hardly see at times.
Tears she could not manage to wipe way with the back of her hands fell from her cheeks into the mixture of ointment and spices. She recalled the day she wiped her own tears from his feet with her hair in repentant gratitude and joy, knowing her sins were forgiven, and her life was forever changed.
The dam of whatever shame might have remained was swept away. Her tears turned to waves of uncontrollable sobs. She could not resist them. She gave herself over to them in a gush of new gratitude for all Jesus had done, and she could not continue until the waves of emotion passed.
Mary could not adequately express the depth of gratitude for Jesus for rescuing her from the demons that haunted and tormented her from her youth. She tried. It wasn’t enough. She didn’t care what anyone thought, but it still wasn’t enough.
Nothing had been more precious to her than the ointments she collected… until Jesus set her free. None of those precious ointments mattered anymore. They were all she had, and they weren’t enough. She would have spent her entire life pouring her very self out for him.
The grief returned, and she desperately longed to wind back time. The impossibility of it all was maddening; it seemed so impossible, yet it was so formidably real. Those demons lurked again in the back of her mind. She caught herself again, shuddered, and and devoted her weary mind to the ointment and spices and the body of her precious love, Jesus, lying lifeless at her side.
Like many people, I suppose, I have been thinking about the phenomenon known as “deconstruction” since it has become popular to tell deconstruction stories in recent years. A deconstruction story is an “anti-testimony”; it’s a testimony of a journey from belief in the God of the Bible to non-belief in the God of the Bible.
Last summer, a high profile Christian worship leader and the guy who wrote the book urging Christians not to date (that created a generation of non-dating Christians) “deconstructed”. They walked away from their faith and publicly announced it, blogged about it, were interviewed about it and became celebrities of the walk away from faith movement.
Other notables come to mind as well, but I am not going to name them. That isn’t the point. I only recount these stories to demonstrate that “it’s a thing”, as my kids say.
Old timey religious folks used to call it “backsliding”. By that, they meant turning back to a sinful lifestyle, lured away by the temptation of sin. I remember people calling it “falling away”. By that we meant, losing faith, not being able to hold on to it.
Deconstruction seems to be a much more noble and honorable thing to do than backsliding or falling away. (I say that not without my tongue in cheek.) Deconstruction suggests that you had a hand in it. You didn’t backslide against your better judgment or let faith slip through your fingers; you rolled up your sleeves and dismantled your faith, and you found that it didn’t fit back together again.
It’s scientific, right? So it must be a good thing.
Deconstruction is popular, I believe, because skepticism is gaining in popularity. Scientists, like Neil de Grasse Tyson and pseudo-scientists, like Bill Nye, “the Science Guy”, have ridden that wave of popularity scaling away religious (and philosophical) ideas and replacing them with science, because (they say) science has all the answers.
Deconstruction is science, right?
I don’t buy it for a second that science and religion are incompatible, and neither do many scientists. I participated in a Zoom conference just this morning with a biochemist who is a believer. On the other hand, deconstruction might not be the evil that some Christians may believe it is. In fact, I think, deconstruction can be a good thing.
Navigating by Faith 