The human psalmist writes: "Pour out Your anger on the
nations that do not know You, and on the kingdoms that do not call on Your name
... Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors ..."
The Divine and Eternal God speaks through the
prophet Jeremiah: "My
joy is gone; grief is upon Me, My heart is sick. Hark, the cry of My poor people from far and
wide in the land: 'Is the Lord not in Zion?'"
It can be suggested that both passages were written
roughly in the same time period during the Exile and by the same people (though
not necessarily the same person) -
AND BOTH with completely different notions about the Lord. The psalmist prays for judgment against the "nations
... who have defiled Your holy temple" - and yet the prophet
conveys thoughts from our Heavenly Father whose holy heart is broken not by
these uncircumcised invaders but by His own circumcised people of the Holy
Covenant ("Why have they provoked Me to anger with their images, with their
foreign idols?")!
It is easy to connect these passages with so many
others to provoke a sense of conviction and guilt against the faithful who
should never have allowed themselves to reach such state of spiritual neglect,
and the value of conviction and guilt cannot be overstated when it comes to the
spiritual cleansing of earnest repentance.
Beating people over the head time and again, however, produces little
more than "scar tissue", an ambivalent lack of sensation that is no
longer even capable of, let alone concerned with, a healing response. What do we do with this?
It is important to remember that the Psalms in
general are prayers written by prophets and priests as well as some which can
be indirectly attributed to King David or at least attributed to the period of
his reign as king. There are psalms of
joy as well as psalms of lamentation, expressions of a people no more and
certainly no less fickle than we are today.
Psalm 79 is just such an example of a people who
pray for judgment against invading nations - AND YET they pray out of the
"other side of their mouth" not to be held responsible for the "iniquities
of our ancestors". It would
appear this is a people who refuse to look too closely at themselves to
determine that the problems they are experiencing are not coming from outside -
but from within. It is a lot like what
we do today in blaming our government or foreign terrorists for invading our
"bubble" without realizing there is no political or military solution
for what truly ails us.
The prophets are another story altogether. These men have been anointed and commissioned
by the Holy God to speak in His behalf to His people, so these words carry a
little more weight - especially when Jesus brings these words forward into a
new generation to show essentially the same people that not much had changed
from the time of the Exile to the Messianic period when our Lord quotes the
prophet Isaiah: "This people honors Me with
their lips, but their heart is far from Me.
In vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of
men" (Mark 7:6-7).
There was recently an interesting speculation from
an atheist writer who commented that these and so many other passages come
dangerously close to suggesting that the people of God knew nothing about this
God. And then, of course, this atheist goes
further to point out that the very same holds true for Christians who claim a
Messiah but seem to know even less about Him even today! This is the very same spiritual ignorance
cited by the prophet Muhammad in the 8th-century which gave rise to Islam - an
alternative religious expression that sought to reconnect the "people of
the Book" (Jews and Christians alike) to the original faith of
Abraham. So what are we supposed to do
with this?
It is one thing to be accused by an unbeliever. It is another thing altogether to stand
accused by the Eternal Judge: "My people are foolish; they do not
know Me" (Jeremiah 4:22). Or from St. John: "He came to His own, but His
own did not receive Him".
In spite of this willful ignorance and rejection
comes this eternal prayer from Messiah: "Forgive them, Father, for they do
not know what they are doing." In
the face of the Ultimate Rejection, the Messiah - the very One sent directly to
us by our Holy Father - nevertheless prays for our forgiveness, and it was in
that moment when the entire human race was redeemed
by the blood of the Sacrificial Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the
world; forgiven for willful
neglect may be another story altogether, but this is a story which continues to
be written!
Sin is defined as a "transgression against the
moral or divine law", but sin is also defined as "estrangement";
that is, a broken-ness in fellowship and relationship. This estrangement does certainly come when we
willfully commit an act of transgression against the clearly stated will of the
Most High God.
This estrangement also comes when we willfully
choose not to pursue a familiar relationship with the Holy God in Christ Jesus
through His Divine revelation in Scriptures but rely instead strictly on
"feelings", feelings borne of emotions which can often betray us -
especially when our feelings are, more often than not, completely irrational
because they are based strictly on what we THINK we know rather than what we
ACTUALLY know.
After 2000 years of preaching the Gospel of our Lord
through His Holy Church, one might think we would know more by now. Do we?
Can you pick up your Bible and turn to any random page, read what is
written and say, "Oh. I didn't know
that"? If you can - and I suspect
we all can - then we do not "know" enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment