15 May 2011
Psalm 23
The 23rd psalm is the one we read for comfort. It’s often read at funerals, gravesides, or bedsides of those who have died. Dwelling in the house of the Lord “forever” as the old Revised Standard Version reads, is often thought of as “going to heaven when you die.” But in the new version it reads “my whole life long.” What’s up with that?
What’s up with that is access to older manuscripts, and further study of the language and the context. What’s up is a maturing of the interpretation.
It is not for the next life only that we hope. God assures us, time and again in scriptures, that it gets better. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. (In another psalm.) Joseph is betrayed by his own brothers, sold into slavery, sent to prison on a bad rap, but God uses it all for good. He is freed, enriched, and he lives to make peace with his brothers.
Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth are widowed, childless, and impoverished, but they persevere in faith and become grandmother and mother to the royal house of David.
Israel is led into exile, but God restores and returns their children to the land.
That is the gospel, the good news that carries through the Hebrew scriptures and into the Greek New Testament. The life of the apostles as recorded in the book of Acts is not without danger, not without suffering, but time and again there is rescue and restoration.
These have been discouraging times. It’s was a hard winter. So many of our friends have been ill. There is so much pain. Natural and unnatural disasters; and nasty, wedge politics. But I have found strength in music. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t sing along with the collection of tunes on my laptop that I have entitled “Good for the Soul”-- a mix of blues and Motown and roots music. In order to share the solace of music with others, I have begun posting an occasional “Song of the Day” on my Facebook page.
While looking for a new “song of the day” for my Facebook page, I came across Broadway’s response to the Trevor Project. In response to last year’s suicides of young gay Americans, the Trevor Project seeks to promote a message of hope.
It gets better, better better… It gets better, better, better, The pain will let up, let up, let up, If you fall just get up, get up, get up, Oh, cause there's another way. It gets better, better, better, The world gets lighter, lighter, lighter, So be a fighter, fighter, fighter, Oh, just live to see that day.
God works in mysterious ways. The message of the gospel bubbles to the surface in all kinds of places. This is the message that God has been trying to get through to us for millennia: It gets better. This is the message immortalized in the stories of scripture and the songs and psalms of the faith: it gets better. This is the message of resurrected Christ: It gets better.
God knows life is hard. Jesus knows, life is hard. Look what Jesus went through (that’s what Peter wrote in his letter), look what Jesus went through. Look what lengths the powers that were in charge went to, to silence the word of hope: they crucified him. But even death cannot stop the word.
Do not be weary. Don’t give up. It get’s better. Amen.
