Luke
23:32-43; Psalm 139
4th
Sunday in Lent
I believe most all of you know that
I deeply love a lot of different kinds of music. Every episode of my life seems to be scored
by one sort of soundtrack or another.
It all helps me to relax, feel inspired and to interpret this wide world
we live in. Do you have a similar
relationship with music?
And when rock ‘n roll, country, folk
and Celtic influences get fused together, it becomes a Richmond, VA based band
by the name of Carbon Leaf. The band name
was inspired during a brainstorming session between the singer and the lead guitarist
on a rafting trip during their college years.
This is one group that truly fits the “indie” music label. On any given Carbon Leaf song, you’ll hear
tenor vocals and wonderful harmonies backed by great musicianship on the usual
instruments along with pennywhistles, bagpipes, bouzouki, and the occasional
hurdy-gurdy.
But I’m most drawn to the original,
poetic lyrics crafted by lead singer Barry Privett. In an interview, he noted that they are
positive though probably bitter-sweet and that he avoids the negative intoning
of someone who feels victimized. “I
just try,” he said, “to put a sense of destiny and empowerment into my perspective.”[i]
One song I love in particular is
called “Sparklers.” It seems Barry was
staring up at fireworks or shooting stars one night and was inspired to write
these words – “A little speck falls into the sky, rubs against the night in a
flash of fiery light, little specks fall, pebbles, dust, and sand, things we
hold inside our everyday hands.” Isn’t
that a nice description? But what did it
more deeply mean to this gifted songwriter?
He went on to write, “Somehow, somehow, we come alive just as we’re
flaming out … we wish ourselves whole, we hope ourselves pure, we will
ourselves different, and we pray ourselves upright … the tears, the scars, the
laughter, the love, the ebb and flow under the stars up above, how on earth, if
we're just floating on by, can all this darkness breed such beautiful light?”
I find these words to be a sample of
extraordinary thinking. Exactly the kind of thinking we are all
encouraged to do during this season of Lent.
I consider them extra-ordinary because they offer more than an ordinary
description of what can be identified by sight. They are extra-ordinary because they
express meaningful insight that connects our little lives with the whole universe. They speak to what is happening in the
heavens – the stuff that is burning out as well and bringing beautiful light – in
the context of the broad spectrum of our human experiences here on earth.
This is the kind of extraordinary
thinking we find in the ancient songs known to us as the Psalms. In Psalm 139 the songwriter within King
David placed humankind squarely in the context of creation with its vast array
of light and darkness. And did so professing that there is no place
in the entire universe where any human can hide from the presence of our
God. This was not at all threatening to him. It was
a great comfort because David believed we are fearfully and wonderfully made,
knit together by God in our mother’s wombs.
We are a very special part of all of the Almighty’s wonderful
works. And while we cannot ever fully know the thoughts
of God, we can trust that God knows every single thought we are having. Again, this is not a threating truth, for
God alone has the power to rescue and relieve the thoughts we don’t want to
admit to harboring in our heads and hearts.
Here is where the Psalm is particularly
extra-ordinary. Most of us are familiar
with and like the part of it about our being knit together by God. We find comfort in believing God knows and
fully loves us. But how many of us are comfortable with verses
19-22? Let me read those again -- “O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me — those who speak of you
maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil! Do I not hate those
who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them
my enemies.”
I feel these are such hostile, awful
words. But also brutally honest. King David certainly had to contend with
being terrorized by many a bloodthirsty enemy. I don’t believe any of us here have had to
do that lately, if ever. Yet we know of
enemies. We know of being threatened,
attacked for one reason and to one degree or another. We
know the fierce desire to protect ourselves and others against all that puts
our security and well-being in jeopardy be it from the actions of another
person, a natural disaster or an illness. We know how much we hate feeling vulnerable
and how quickly we can turn that hatred outward. Yes … such hostile, awful, brutally honest
word. But we can relate to them.
What’s quite extra-ordinary about
them is that they weren’t expressed to glorify wickedness and evil. They were expressed as a prayerful plea, a
way of asking God to search out the wickedness in David’s heart. It is therefore an act of repentance. The
Greek New Testament word for repentance is metanoia. It is a combination of the words meta, which means “beyond,” and nous, which means “mind.” So to repent literally means to go “beyond
the mind.” It means “adopting a new
mind-set, going beyond ordinary ways of thinking, perceiving, and responding to
life.”[ii] And as Majorie Thompson remarks in her very
insightful Lenten Study on the topic of forgiveness, “The beginning of
repentance is putting ourselves in God’s hands, acknowledging that we need what
only our Creator can give.”[iii]
And
so King David, after confessing the hate in his heart and asking God to be the
executioner of enemies, humbly begged to be soul-searched. He did not want this wickedness in his
heart. So he placed it in God’s great care,
believing God already knew all about it anyway. And, more importantly, he turned to God
alone to lead him beyond it, to the everlasting holy way. David
condemned himself for his sin, acknowledged it for God to judge, and then
trusted that God wouldn’t kill him for it but would instead lead him to a different,
divinely extraordinary life. This is
the same manner of repentance we hear the criminal hanging on a cross next to Jesus
profess in Luke 23:40-42. And upon that
repentance, Jesus made possible and promised him a place in the heavenly
kingdom. May our thoughts and words of
repentance follow the example of King David and this criminal on the cross.
So what song is in your heart
today? Are you making time during these
Lenten days to do some extraordinary thinking? Are you asking God to search you, seek out
any wickedness within you? To then lead
you into a more divinely extraordinary life?
To Easter? Amen.
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