Psalm 90 looms before us this coming Sunday – at least its last six verses – and is the source for Isaac Watts’ (1675-1748) paraphrase, the beloved hymn “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” [ELW 632]. Both hymn and psalm contemplate the mind-boggling power and majesty of Almighty God while reminding us mortals that God was, is, and remains God long before anything else existed. Psalm 90 reminds us as well the sobering truth of Genesis 3:19 we hear on Ash Wednesday, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Indeed, God has fashioned all that has been “on earth as in heaven…”, both “seen and unseen,” including our own sense of time’s unfolding [check Genesis 1 & 2 as well as the first article of the Nicene Creed]. Despite our frailty, our mortality, and our iniquities, the psalm does not try to belittle or dismiss us, God’s wayward creatures. The psalm is blatantly honest about God’s and our reality in order to “teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom [Psalm 90:12].” Importantly, the psalm also reassures us that we need not cower before the Godhead. God, who first fashioned us in the divine image and likeness, continues to supply us with whatever we need but not always what we might want – God is NOT a vending machine of self-gratification! Return, O Lord…, the psalmist asks, Satisfy us by your steadfast love in the morning, so shall we rejoice and be glad all our days.
All our days… is a telling phrase, for it suggests that we are to live perpetually mindful that we are God’s own family 24/7 and not just Sunday morning Christians who muster up the energy to check in once a week, or maybe twice a week in Lent. The psalm concludes with a prayer that God’s graciousness be upon us and that the Creator continue to bless us by prospering the work of our hands all our days, not just on the presumed “default” day for Christians. Alas, a good deal of the traditions, habits, and thoughts about how we are to spend the “sabbath” tend to reinforce such sporadic exercise of Christian behavior. On March 7, 321 Emperor Constantine declared that Sunday was to be an official day of rest in the realm, although it took the work of Puritans during the 16th and 17th centuries in England to impose a day of somber reflection, abstinence, and required church attendance as the fitting way to observe the Sunday “sabbath.” Biblically, there is only one day set apart as “holy,” the seventh day of the week designated by the 4th Commandment as a day to be kept holy [Exodus 20:8]. Its purpose, however, was that we rest and enjoy God’s handiwork with the Creator, not cast forbidding gloom on the day: God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good… So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation [Genesis 1:31 and 2:3].
Despite the Sabbath declaration in Exodus 20:8 and Constantine’s edict that Sunday is to be the official day of rest in the realm, Surprise!!!, there is no New Testament equivalent. In fact, the first day of the week remained a workday, and still is for many. Much later, it took King James I to publish his Declaration on Sports in 1617 to recover a sense of enjoyment of the day, commending … “archery, dancing, “leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation” as permissible sports, together with “May-games, Whitsun-ales and Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles,” also “women shall have leave to carry rushes to the church for the decorating of it, according to their old custom.” For some reason, bear- and bullbaiting, along with bowling, remained off-limits. At about that same time references begin to appear regarding suitable attire for this recently recovered day of rest and enjoyment. This was possible because more people were able to afford having a “good set” of clothing to bring out on very special occasions. Such became known as one’s “Sunday best” or “Sunday Go to Meeting” clothes, “gay apparel” as voiced in “Deck the Halls,” and the related “glad rags,” ones party clothes, not to mention ladies’ “Easter bonnets with all the frills…,” as well as spiffy ushers’ jackets, or the myriad women’s “hats” [almost an understatement] in several Evangelical traditions. The “hat ladies” and their elaborate creations were immortalized in Michael Cunningham’s Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats, a beautifully presented photo essay published on Reformation Day in 2000. It is well worth reading.
Strangely enough, dressing up and approaching Sunday as a day set apart not only for rest but for explicit Christian behaviors, rituals, and a variety of appointed liturgies does not really resonate all that well with the witness of the New Testament. Certainly Jesus, Mary, and Joseph along with Jesus’ followers continued to follow Jewish customs, including times of prayer and the rite of presentation and purification. It is likely that the boy Jesus celebrated his Bar mitzvah, too. Was that what was happening when he played Stump the Synagogue Teachers when he went with his parents to the Jerusalem for the Passover. However, when Jesus finally establishes his own ministry, calling his band of twelve puzzled souls, such references to Judaic custom and ritual almost vanish from the gospel accounts. Rather, one reads of Jesus and his disciples setting off throughout the region preaching, teaching, and healing. Jesus frequently encounters the increasingly irate Pharisees not only around the synagogues but also when the trusty band of folks had been invited to eat with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus makes it his business to go about the countryside, inviting folks to talk about their fears, hopes, while entertaining their questions, and dining with them.
We read of Jesus’ being ambushed by a young man wanting to understand how he could obtain eternal life. The Mark 10:17-31 account is one of three parallel stories of a rich young ruler with life shaking questions in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is a reflection of how things occur in in the lives of Jesus and his disciples. Anytime, anyplace, we might find ourselves surprised by someone we know or even a total stranger met in passing. They turn to us, unexpectedly revealing their hidden torment or profound sadness. There’s no time for us to read up on heartbreak and irrational anxieties; we can’t just tell them to “Hold that thought!” and promise to get back with them later. Although we’re not expected [by God at least] to pull a miracle out of our sleeve, scriptural passage after passage does imply that we will meet suffering folks with a listening ear and compassionate heart. Jesus didn’t sign us up to read them a prepared list of condemnations and rationalizations. He didn’t; his disciples’ apparently didn’t; neither should we. It may be that we can just offer a sign of friendship and recognition that they, whatever their issues, are still children of God’s own fashioning. WHY that is so is God’s business, not ours, but it is the promise of creation’s story.
Do we ever reflect that such hair-raising encounters with REAL LIFE don’t seem to happen as readily while we’re tucked into our pews. How safe the Charleston churches’ boxed pews must seem! Despite the various architectural and emotional barriers we might try erect, the liturgy itself, along with Sunday School, weekday bible study, Preschool ministry, and visitation of the sick are only part of a complex and ever-continuing rhythm of life peculiar to people of faith. God never made us for a life of glorious isolation – even the hermit religious living by themselves throughout history spent their lives praying for others and the work of Christ’s holy Church, not to mention trying to tame the vices and distractions that explode in all of our skulls each day. What we can and must do is bring the fruits of our ministries experienced in the world’s highways and byways of life to the congregation for its prayerful consideration. We do the work of ministry when we bite our tongues before making abrupt and uncaring comments or demands of our associates or those who work for us. We do the work of ministry when we, the ones the boss has been rude to, refrain from plotting in dark corners rather than with civility challenge unjust actions [that IS what Matthew 18 is about]. We do the work of ministry when we say a gracious, friendly word to the weary or sullen clerk or waitstaff trying to provide what WE need. We do the work of ministry when we say “Hey!” and ask the stranger in the church entrance, at school, or where we work their name, and whether, perhaps, we can be of help.
We needn’t expect a perfect track record of suddenly transformed, radiant souls ready to convert to our way of thinking, doing, and believing. Neither do we assume we’ve been utter klutzes at this outreach thing disciples are supposed to know how to do. It is in the doing of all these things day by day, praying impromptu mini-prayers in the midst of the vagaries of this life, and yes, regularly showing up for worship and Sunday School, choir, and whatever else not only for our own sake, but for the sake of community, too. As an ancient Christian text puts it: “Do not stay away from the meeting, for you deprive the Body of its members,” a concise summary of I Corinthians 12:1-31. That rhythm day in, day out, punctuated by “not staying away from the meeting,” is EXACTLY what the psalmist Sunday is talking about [Psalm 90 12, 14]: _12_So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom… _14_Satisfy us by your steadfast love in the morning; so shall we rejoice and be glad all our days.