Psalm Meditation 634
Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time
August 12, 2012

Psalm 81
1 Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
2 Raise a song, sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp.
3 Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our festal day.
4 For it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob.
5 He made it a decree in Joseph, when he went out over the land of Egypt. I hear a voice I had not known:
6 "I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket.
7 In distress you called, and I rescued you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. (Selah)
8 Hear, O my people, while I admonish you; O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
9 There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
10 I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
11 "But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.
12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.
13 O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!
14 Then I would quickly subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes.
15 Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him, and their doom would last forever.
16 I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."
(NRSV)

With my Puritan/American upbringing things like verse 4 catch me off guard. God not only wants us to celebrate, it is a statute, a law, that we do it? We can get so caught up in being serious, and right, and perfect that we forget to celebrate and enjoy what life in God brings to us. I am reminded of advice from those who work in the public eye. They have discovered that the hard work is in the practice and preparation time. The hours of perfecting technique and connecting the dots from one skill to the next finally give way to the performance that is done with near reckless abandon. There comes a time when the driving motivation is celebration.

If only we would let go and celebrate we could open ourselves to the abundance God offers to us. That abundance is probably not the kinds of things you can hold in your hands; the abundance of God is so much more than anything that can be held in one’s hands. God offers things like hope and peace and a sense of abundance that goes beyond the ‘stuff’ of life. According to the psalmist, if we were to submit ourselves to God we would spend less time fretting over things that currently drive us. We would be less concerned with worldly matters and more concerned with things of God.

Our stubborn hearts, following our own counsels, have gotten us into all sorts of fights and arguments with good and bad ideas on every side. These stubborn hearts don’t lead us to God. Stubbornness doesn’t really lead anywhere, it digs in and camps out with no intention of moving for any reason. To walk in the way of God is to move somewhere, to give and take in some way that leads to more relationships than battlegrounds. To walk in the way of God gives more credence to people than theories. To walk in the way of God leads to celebration.

August 6, 2012