For Lent this year I am spending time in the Psalms with the help of Elizabeth Caldwell’s new book Pause: Spending Lent With the Psalms.
The first week of Lent has found me in Psalm 25, considering the theme of “paths”. Caldwell leads her readers in a series of reflections regarding where we find ourselves in our present moment, and how we measure this moment according to this push and pull in Psalm 25 between its two central descriptives- waiting for God and taking refuge in God. Quoting Walter Brueggemann, she writes,
This mismatch between human ambiguity and divine singularity is the hallmark of biblical faith
Hence we find the invitation. The invitation from Caldwell to consider
- How has our path of faith been enriched or hindered by the ways we have come to or continue to understand the nature of God’s relationship with humankind
And then by the Psalmist to consider, could it be that in our turning our face upwards to God we might find that God is the one who has been waiting and present all along.
One of the outcomes of these invitations is encountering a very real and present tension- do we fear that instead we might find a God who is otherwise? If so, Caldwell’s question wonders about where this fear emerges from. As she says, we all inheret our paths of faith. We do not walk these paths apart from the world that shapes us. Thus part of the challenge, part of “seeing a way forward”, to borrow Caldwell’s words, “requires vision, strength and imagination.”
It is this last one that captivated me. For when we feel stuck in what what feels like a reality framed by God’s absence, God’s judgment, whatever it is that frames our beliefs in the present about the nature of God in our lives, this is when those longings and desires for a God who is present and with us and acting for us requires seeing differently. It requires a sanctified imagination. Or in other words- a realized hope. It is here that the Psalmist can provide us a pattern for moving from a place of fear to a place of hope:
Psalm 25 is structured in the following way:
- Beginning (verses 1-3)
- Middle (4-15)
- Conclusion (16-21)
Caldwell points out the significance of two repetitions of three- 3 times of waiting (3, 5, 21), and three times of affirming God’s hesed, or love (6, 7, 10). Its here where we find that push and pull, that te
The chapter is also framed by two bookends which begins in verse 1 with an act of turning upwards (I lift up my soul) so that ones oppression and struggle might be made low. This has the sense of changing ones vantage point, of gaining a different point of perspective in the midst of difficulty and struggle. Of changing spaces in ones “imagination”, not to do away with the struggle, but to frame it in light of God’s promise to show up in its midst. An imagination that is able to hold the promise of God to make right what is wrong in this world.
The other side of the bookend, the concluding section, similary begins with a refrain, but this time it is marked by the request for God to “turn to me”, once again evoking the repeated phrase “do not let me be put to shame.” As in, do not let my act of turning be in vein. Do not let my act of turning show this hoped for expectation to be wrong.
In my struggle, I turn with the expectation that God will likewise turn and face my struggle.
This feels so resonant with my own life. In my experience, this is the tension that a life of faith represents, reality pushing in threatening to overturn my imagination, and my imagination pressing back to say no, there is more to this reality than I can see from this present vantage point.
My eyes are upward. God, please, make yourself visible in the silence, in the absence. This is the sanctied imagination, informing what it means to wait on the Lord.
The flow of the introduction outlines some first steps- To(wards) you I turn. To you I give my fears and longings and desires.
The next step, repeated three times in verses 1-3, is found in the refrain “do not”, which rings out simitaneously as both a proclamation and a request. Perhaps most striking is the way this phrasing appears to hold God to account.
It is as we enter the middle section that we hear what the Psalmist is holding God to account for- “your name” (verse 11). Thus this is not about getting God to bend to our demands, but about us trusting in who God has declared Himself to be. It is about claiming this to be true in the midst of a reality that appears to say otherwise. That appears to throw the whole thing into question.
Do not, O Lord, for your “names” sake.
These do nots then gain clarity and specificity in verses 4-7 as they morph into do’s.
- Make me
- Lead me
- Be mindful of me
- Do not remember my sins
If God has said, or more correclty in light of God saying that He is good and upright (verse 8), we come to an important therefore in the passage. Therefore,
- instruct
- lead
- teach
In what? In steadfast love and faithfulness (verse 10).
What’s striking here is the immediate connection that emerges within this tension filled plea for God to “do not” (and subsequently to do), and the clarifying invitation presented for us to choose one path or another. Or, as I imagine this phrasing, to either follow the path of our fear on one hand, or to follow the path of our hope on the other. As the Psalmist states, “teach them the way that they should choose.”
Theologian Michael Gorman has been a big influence on my life when it comes to my theology, adhering to what he calls participationalism, or participationalist theology. The philosophy behind this is simple- as opposed to propositional knowledge, knowledge (of God, of the world, of self, of others) comes through participation. We know by living. We know through participation in a given reality. But this pushes even further. More statedly, we know what we live. Thus to live differently is to see differently, to know the world, to know God, to know one’s self, to know others, differently.
This knoweldge, the knowledge we week when we turn our face towards God, is for those “who fear the Lord”, the Psalmist declares in verse 14. And in a fascinating use of poetic repetition, this arrives in response to the preceding question, who are they who fear the Lord (verse 12). This brings together the two fundamental relationship of this act of sacred imagination between doing and knowing. Who are the ones who fear the Lord? The ones who fear the Lord. To fear the Lord is to become one who fears the Lord.
Thus, although this sounds obvious and trite, I think it holds profound significance for our lives. The true essence of faith is not blind hope, but willful allegaince to that which we believe to be true. Faith is, more appropriately, rendered faithfulness. This is what brings the Psalmist to the concluding verses.
To you I turn (verse 1) now becomes God, turn towards me (verse 16). Relieve me (verse 17), consider my affliction (verse 18-19), guard my life (verse 20). All of this is stated to be God’s action.
For I take refuge in you (verse 20). For I wait for you (verse 21). These thins are indicative of our action, setting us in direct relationship to the God we trust will meet us in this movement, in this dance.
If it is true, as Caldwell suggested at the start, that we all inherit the paths that shape us, the Psalmists firm conviction becomes this simple, stated truth. By allowing our imagination to change the space we occupy, the place in which we stand, we then find ourselves being shaped differently precisely as we begin to live into this new reality. As the Psalmist puts it, a new reality that is shaped through integrity and uprightness. This is the hoped for transformation that we seek in the midst of our present. Thus this should buffer any temptation to want to reframe this as “if I do this, God will redeem me,” which is one step away from rewriting this Psalm to read “if I do this, I will redeem myself.” This notion is precisely how we come to trade a sanctified imagination for our present reality in the first place. The psalmists call is for God to preserve (verse 21) them through their participation, a participation which flows from occupying a different vantage point, a different vantage point. Which is to say, our participation mirrors the reality which we occupy, the reality which we give allegiance to.
A final point I’ve been mulling over. The juxtaposition of the popular image of narrow and wide paths is familiar to most, even if one is not directly familiar with the scriptures. It has become part of our common language, not unlike the phrase “the prodigal son.” This may be taking too much liberty here, but I found myself wondering about the usual interpretation of this motif as representing the easy and hard path. Meaning, we are called to choose the hard (narrow) path over the easy (wide) one. Setting this within this context of this Psalm, with the Psalmist asking God to instruct us on the right path, it might then be understood that our present reality is easy, but the path that God requires of us is hard. This seems to be a bit at odds with what I’m hearing from this passage though. I wonder if there is room to consider a slightly different approach to that whole motif. Here the picture is one of uncertainty. I am on this path and the gap between my fears and my hope feels and appears wide. Thus the temptation is to align ourselves with this reality, acting as though our hope is not true. We begin to seek after the many ways this wide path affords to try and make it through on our own in a world where the promises we hold to do not prove true.
In contrast, the narrow path emerges as a reshaping of how it is we travel this travel the path we are on with God. It is a narrowing in on God’s persepective. It is obtaining a knowledge that reshapes not our circumstances, but how we see. It allows our circumstances to move us towards necessary transformation. It exchanges that uncertainty for hope.
The hard part then is not the travelling, but the turning. Why is that the hard part? Because we fear it might prove not to be true. We fear that our imagination, our hope, might prove false. Thus we stay stuck on the wide path, fighting our way forward on our own terms, desperate to cling to our illusions, or even giving in to them when they prove themselves to be false. This is easier than facing those fears head on, because the much harder thing is taking the risk that faith represents.
Perhaps this is where the books invitation to “pause” really comes into play, into a point of clarity. Pausing not so that it might lead us into a place of inaction, but rather to lead us towards a place of clarified action. Where we are free to act. The act of turning towards God so that our fears can be reshaped by hope. The act of reclaiming the freedom to imagine.
The final refrain in Psalm 25 reads as follows
Redeem Israel, O God, out of all its troubles
This is ultimately where this week has brought me. This is where the I, or the me, of the passage suddenly gets recast, at least for modern readers of the text whom might be conditioned to see everything through the lens of the individual, within a larger story called “Israel”. A story, if we’ve been paying attention, that is found both in the familiar language of exile which covers this text, but also in the language of promise, or covenant. The Psalmist is speaking not just of Gods particular action in their own life, but of the broader question of the expected promise of God’s redeeming act which holds each and every particularity, every hope, desire, and need, in its grip.. The ushering in of the promised new reality, the new creation that the story of Israel imagines for us in the face of what is the true enemy- the enslaving Powers of Sin and Death. Its a stark reminder that no matter where we find ourselves in the present, all of our particualars are caught up in this essential word- God is making all things new in our midst, and God has made all things new in our midst. God is true to His name, a name that has been revealed through the story of Israel.
This is in fact the good news of the Gospel. In the person and work of Jesus we find the inbreaking of this promise in the resurrection of the one who fulfills it. The story no longer speaks from the position of exile, it speaks from the position of this resurrected reality, echoing with the Psalmists own longings and desires by saying the time is now, the long awaited knidgom has finally come. God has in fact been turned in our direction all along. As modern readers of the Psalm then, what informs our waiting is the perspective of this new, resurrected reality where a redeemed Israel gets caught up in its own wanted vision and imagination- Jesus’ fufillment of this story, of this idea called Israel, is now, at long last, proclaiming the redemption of the whole.
How much more then do we stand with the Psalmist saying,
Make your ways known to me, Lord; teach me your paths (25:4)
The Stories of my Life 