Paradigm shift

I will be taking a quick break from Psalm 119 to run a few thoughts by you I had as I was reading this week.

The story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman is pretty popular. That is a dangerous thing when it comes to Biblical passages. When was the last time we dug deep into a passage like the Lord's prayer instead of thinking "Oh, I know that...I have read it a million times". This text offers the same dilemma. We look at it and think we already know what is coming so we simply skim quickly to cross that off our "Read the Bible in a year" plan and find ourselves, unjustifiably, content with ourselves. But this passage confronts that idea head on.

Jesus is the greatest of missionaries when he comes to earth and lays down the splendor of His position for a time. Here he, again, displays just how his mindset is that of a missionary. He leaves Judea to avoid dealing with the Pharisees (admit it, you would too) and heads to Galilee. Instead of doing what many Jews would have done and avoid Samaria; he goes straight through. This may not seem like much but it is similar to asking a Yankees fan to hang out in Boston (only on a scale much greater). The Samaritan people were sell outs and half breeds. Instead of maintaining their unique standards in their covenant from God they just adopted the sinful practices of the people who invaded. They lost the unique worship of the true God and moved their temple from Jerusalem. That, in and of itself, was a huge problem because the temple was in Jerusalem.

Jesus finds a woman at a well who is obviously not welcome with the other women because she is drawing water in the middle of the day in the hot sun (6th hour was about noon time) instead of the cooler morning. For space sake I will not really deal with Jesus discussion about living water (maybe another day). But I do want to pick up in vs. 16. Jesus gives us a pattern to deal with here where he is incredibly kind to the woman but still has to deal with her sin. We can't deal with people without having to deal with their sin. He does it in a kind way that is both firm but gentle...we all could learn from this. He tells her to bring her husband out and she, truly but slyly, tell him she has none. He points to her past of immorality and promiscuity. She then asks a question that is filled with controversy waiting to fall all over the place: Our fathers worship here and your people worship there. Which is right?

As a good Jewish rabbi, Jesus would have been expected to respond: Jerusalem. But he doesn't. In typical Jesus fashion he doesn't answer the question the "right" way but instead he introduces a huge paradigm shift: Neither. True worshippers are not worried about location but spirit and truth. Spirit and truth....we say that a lot but do we ever really stop to think what that mean? As I stopped for a bit to think about the implications of these principles I came up with a few ideas. I am mostly going to deal with corporate worship but the same ideas can be translated over to individual lives of worship.

Spirit: Joy and heart in worship. I am not going to get into the big worship war going between traditional and contemporary because I have seen some people belt out and enjoy the old hymns just as much as they do with a drum set and guitar lead worship set. I, for one, love both. There is a lady at our church who dances (not in a distracting way) a bit during singing and raises here hands. I can imagine the passion of the creatures around the throne shouting "Holy Holy Holy!" and not just mumbling it. There must be an authenticity to our worship that is stirred up in our soul. A deep over reaction to the truth that worship is not just empty emotion is that there is often very little emotion in our worship of out great King. Am I saying that one must be weeping and singing loudly for it to be authentic worship? No. I am saying there must be passion in our worship. Worship in spirit.

Truth: "Bring forth the royal diadem and crown him Lord of all!". An awesome song that is sung in churches probably every week. But does anyone know what a diadem is? Anyone? Comment if you figure it out. This is the excellent balance to spirit and spirit the balance to this. There must be truth to our worship. Know what you sing and why you sing it. If you wanna belt out "Come Thou Fount" then do it! But find out what and "ebeneezer" is first (not scrooge). There is a great danger in singing and being caught up in intense moments of worship at a church and not knowing what we are dealing with.

Your word Pt 1

Let me give a quick intro to what the Psalms are and are not. The psalms are not a series of small catchy phrases that make great illustrations for coffee mugs. They are intense cries from the heart of their writers. They are a song book full of praises to God and reflections on His character. They give us intense insight into the heart of a man after the heart of God. In these 150 poems/songs we see pain, joy, love, fear, and an intense longing to know God. They, of course, are inspired by God in all that they contain but it is a great mistake to think of them outside of their human authors element.

Psalm 119 is long...really long. It is the longest chapter in the Bible and is longer than many books. It is a deep look at a great attitude toward the Word of God (herein called the law, testimonies, precepts, statutes, commandments, etc). It nearly seems to be a deep exposition of the first Psalm.

Psalm 119:1 opens the song with the same word that Psalm 1 opens up: Blessed. The word translated into Latin is where we get the term Beatitude which are as well "Blessed" statements that Jesus makes. Blessed are those who walk in the law of the Lord, who keep His testimonies, who walk in His ways...etc. What do these things all draw us to? To the Bible as the Word of God. We are called to not only know the Word (intellectually) but to become deeply acquainted with what it says and then to follow it. What does this look like for us? For a Pastor it means preaching everything that is in the Bible and not just the fun, easy to swallow things. For the layman it means reading things like Obadiah and Lamentations. If we are to be faithful to Gods Word we even have to take some time to get into the long "And ___ begat ____" passages and to see their importance. It means that we look at the books of the Law and see their implications. It means looking at the Gospels to see a pattern of a true Christ-like life pattern (who better than Himself to show you). Reading the letters of the NT with their context as the filter for what they are saying. It means knowing the whole counsel of God and then applying it to our lives so that we don't simply become people who gaze into a mirror and wander away unchanged. What are we promised when we take serious the commands of God? Blessing. I am not saying that if you live for Christ your life will be easy and your bank account running over like the cup from the 23rd Psalm. I am not a scholar by any means but I tend to think that these blessings come in the form of the action. My blessing is to walk in the way of God and to keep His commandments. My blessing comes in being faithful to what He desires for and commands me to.

I gues this is what happens when I get busy and get out of habit for a week....which then turns into weeks. Well, back on track starting this week and a book review coming out of Scott Wilson's "Steering Through Chaos". So be looking for that...and don't forget to invite others to read.