there is none like you flute piece

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Lent 2009

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Calendar of Events

February S M T W T F S

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

2/14-15 Marva Dawn will be speaking at Heritage. An internationally renowned theologian, author, and educator, Marva serves as Teaching Fellow in Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, BC, Canada. A scholar with several graduate degrees and a PhD in Christian Ethics and the Scriptures from the University of Notre Dame, Marva is also a popular preacher and speaker for people of all ages. She is the author of numerous articles and over 20 books, several of which have won awards and\or been translated into Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, and other languages. She has preached and taught at seminaries, clergy conferences, churches, assemblies, and universities throughout the world. 2/21-22 The Psalms : An Overview 2/25 Ash Wednesday Worship service at 7pm 2/28-3/1 Simplicity: When God is our shelter

March S M T W T F S

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 23 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

3/7-8 Sin: When God does not satisfy 3/14-15 Disappointment: When God lets you down 3/21-22 Celebration: When God comes through 3/28-29 Trust: When God is faithful

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April

S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

4/4-5 Hope: When death comes near 4/10 Good Friday Worship service at 7pm 4/12 Easter Sunday Worship services at 7:00am, 8:45am, 10:15am, 11:45am

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Worship The theme that we’re pursuing this year at Heritage is “Worship”. We’ve looked at… [summarize the messages that have already been completed]. During Lent, we’re immersing ourselves in the Psalms, and seeking to let their shape form our worship. Lent Toward the end of the 4th century, the church began a practice of setting apart the 40 days before Easter to prepare themselves for the great celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, which is what Easter commemorates. This period - Lent - was a time of focused study, prayer, fasting and preparation for those who were to formally enter into the church through baptism on Easter Sunday. This preparation was not just for those who were seeking to enter the church - rather, it was for the whole community, as the church collectively prepared to celebrate the wonderful work of faith and redemption that the Holy Spirit had begun in their hearts. Traditionally, the 40-day period did not include the Sundays, and so Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, occurs 46 days before Easter Sunday. The season of Lent has fallen into disregard in the contemporary evangelical church, in part because it has been associated with the sort of “high church” liturgical worship that some churches have rejected as ritualistic and lifeless. However, many churches that had originally rejected formal or deliberate liturgy are now returning to practices that incarnate biblical spirituality in communal traditions of disciplined reflection and worship. Observing the season of Lent is one such communal discipline, which we at Heritage practice, to bring our entire church together in a focused practice of preparing our hearts for the work of God among us. As we enter together into this Lenten journey this year, we come to the Psalms. One hundred and fifty pieces of poetry, simple and complex, comforting and harsh, triumphant and defeated, rejoicing in righteousness and despondent in sin… words from the heart to God, to people in the presence of God, from people who had learned that when all is said and done, what remains is what is said to God, what is heard from God, what is done by God and what is done in response to God.

There are so many ways to enter into this wonderful book, and the

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particular approach we’ve chosen during Lent is to see the Psalms as our framework of expressive worship through the changing seasons of life. The Psalms keep us engaged with God at a heart level through every up and down that life brings our way. We begin a simple life in God, our shelter in the storm. He is our safe place, the one in whom we hope, the one we seek to follow, the one who promises to satisfy our soul. To our grief, we are sometimes drawn to find satisfaction elsewhere, and that is the essence of sin. There are times when we pray, and trust, and petition, and keep seeking him, and he lets us down – he does not meet our expectations nor does he fulfill our hopes. We are disappointed, discouraged, depressed. And there are times when he comes through for us in a time when we had all but given up. We celebrate his goodness to us. We look back on a life of journeying with him, and realize that he has been faithful to us in good times and bad. He’s been with us when we sensed him and when we didn’t. And he has been faithful… and we find within our hearts a deep trust in this God we love & worship. And in the end, as life draws to a close, we find a confident hope within us, for our times are in his hand. In all these seasons, God is the one we are called to listen to, to sense, to be aware of, to speak to, to pour out our hearts to… If the Psalms show us anything, it is that the people of God are always seeking to be in communion with God, turning to him in every season of life, in good times and bad. The depth of faith that the Psalms show us isn’t reflected in how well the psalmists handled the vicissitudes of life – it is seen simply in that they are always talking with God, crying out to him, celebrating with him, proclaiming his praises, grieving their sin, lamenting their tragedies, remembering his steadfast love & faithfulness. He is the context of their lives, and he is the context of ours. It is in God that we live and move and have our being, and to the extent we live in that awareness, and express that awareness to our God with utter honesty, speaking, waiting, listening, responding… to that extent we bring him true worship. Our reflection & meditation through the season of Lent will take us through these six selected seasons of our heart – Simplicity, Sin,

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Disappointment, Celebration, Faithfulness, and Hope. We will learn with the psalmists to live life in honesty in God’s presence, pouring out the depths of our heart to him, finding in that catharsis the healing and trust and restoration that we need. Most of all, God seeks to be in simple, honest and constant relationship with us – and when we learn to be in real relationship with him & with others in his presence – through every season of life, we find ourselves being transformed, changed, healed, renewed. These themes will guide our communal life as a church through our journey together during Lent. The weekend messages will explore these themes as they emerge from the text. And our weekday disciplines as a church will focus on spiritual practices that guide us into studying these themes, reflecting upon them, praying through them, learning to live them out - as individuals and in community, pursuing God in the company of friends. Spiritual Disciplines Richard Foster, in his book The Celebration of Discipline, writes: “Superficiality is the curse of our age... The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.” The pathway to being deep people, deeply immersed in the life of Jesus and living life from that place is the pathway of regular disciplined practices of engaging with God, his Word, his people and his world: practices that we commonly term spiritual disciplines. As Dallas Willard puts it, the spiritual disciplines are "simply a matter of following Jesus into his own practices, appropriately modified to suit our own condition." During this season of Lent, we at Heritage are going to focus on a particular set of disciplines around the Psalms, and practice these disciplines in a weekly cycle. These disciplines will take time. We suggest an undistracted period of 15 minutes daily, a time where your heart and mind and soul are genuinely able to enter into the discipline.

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The Week We’ll begin the week on Sunday with reading the Psalm that we’re focusing on that week. We’ll read the text, and pick out a verse or passage that catches our attention. We’ll set ourselves the goal of memorizing that verse or passage by the end of the week. On Monday we’ll read a reflection on the psalms, with the intent of being equipped to study the Psalms with attention and care. The reflections are chosen from a range of writers whose work we recommend highly. If you find a particular reflection of singular interest to you, get the book from which it’s taken. We hope that the writers, books and reflections chosen encourage you to read their work on the Psalms. On Tuesday we’ll spend our time reflecting on what we’ve read in the text, what we heard in the weekend message at the service and what we read on Monday. This will be a period of being quiet in our hearts before God and his word, asking him to speak to us, listening to him, waiting on him. On Wednesday we’ll journal & pray. We’ll write down whatever we sense God speaking to us from the text, from the message, from our reading. Our prayer will simply be a reflection back to God of all that has entered our hearts and minds as we’ve engaged with the text, as we’ve reflected upon it. The more adventurous among us are encouraged to actually re-write the Psalm of the week, speaking to God from our own contexts & circumstances. On Thursday we’ll share all that God has been showing us to one or two trusted friends, companions on the journey. We’ll pray for each other. On Friday we’ll make commitments. We’ll take all that God has spoken to us about, and translate that into specific commitments that we will practice. We’ll share those commitments with our friends, our companions on the journey, for help and support in staying obedient. Our hope is that through the few weeks that we practice these disciplines, God will transform us as individuals and as a community of faith (as we discuss these things in our life-groups), that he would draw us closer to his heart and to each other. Our hope is that these disciplined practices will form us into becoming a true offering of worship to our Lord Jesus.

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Resources We’ve selected a range of resources that you will find helpful for further study and reflection on the Psalms. Sermon

You may listen to each week’s message online at http://www.heritagecc.org/message-archive/

Commentaries

Tremper Longman III & David Garland, “The Expositor’s Bible Commentary : Psalms”, 2008 John Goldingay, “Psalms”, volumes 1-3, 2006-08 James L. Mays, “Psalms”, 1994

Books

Patrick Henry Reardon, “Christ in the Psalms”, 2000 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible”, 1970 John D. Witvliet, “The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship”, 2007 Nahum M. Sarna, “On the Book of Psalms: Exploring the Prayers of Ancient Israel”, 1993 C.S. Lewis, “Reflections on the Psalms”, 1958 Walter Brueggemann, “The Message of the Psalms”, 1984

Audio

Bruce Waltke, “The Psalms”, available at http://tinyurl.com/6lwp29 Eugene Peterson, “The Psalms”, available at http://tinyurl.com/6l5dc6

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Preparation Week: The Psalms Sunday, February 22, 2009

Sermon Notes

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Preparation Week: The Psalms Sunday, February 22, 2009

Read : Psalm 86 Hear me, LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Guard my life, for I am faithful to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God;

have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to you all day long. Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you. You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you. Hear my prayer, LORD; listen to my cry for mercy. When I am in distress, I call to you, because you answer me. Among the gods there is none like you, Lord; no deeds can compare with yours. All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name. For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God. Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead.

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Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God; a band of ruthless people seeks my life— they have no regard for you. But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. Turn to me and have mercy on me; show your strength in behalf of your servant and save the son of a woman who served you before me. Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me.

Psalm 86, TNIV

Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below.

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Preparation Week: The Psalms Monday, February 23, 2009

Study: You… From Psalm 86:

You are my God (v2) You, Lord, are forgiving and good,

abounding in love to all who call to you. (v5) For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God (v10) But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,

slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness (v15)

…you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me. (v17)

The Psalms are addressed to a known, named, identifiable You. This is not some remote God, or distant concept, or religious abstraction. The Psalmists are talking to someone familiar… someone with whom they share a past. And they take on the past of the people of God who have gone before them as their own past, their own story. God has been faithful to those who have gone before them, and therefore he will be faithful to them. God has been merciful to those who have gone before them, and therefore he will be merciful to them. They are his people; he is their God – no matter what is going on around them, among them, within them. It is within this context, these memories, this story, that they speak… And their speech is simple, not complex… no guarded phrases that hide the heart. Everything is wide open, no hesitation, no reticence. No practiced phrases that hide reality…

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Here is the rawness of the broken heart crying out in hurt and anger toward God… Here is the untrammeled exuberance of the one who thought it was all over and it wasn’t – God came through… Here is the unprocessed grief over sin… Here is the deep and settled peace of the forgiven. And they speak to God – to You. No complicated titles or labels that distance – a simple You that is more real than anything else in their experience. From Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, 1947

Where I wander – You! Where I ponder – You! Only You, You again, always You! You! You! You! When I am gladdened – You! When I am saddened – You! Only You, You again, always You! You! You! You! Sky is You! Earth is You! You above! You below! In every trend, at every end, Only You, You again, always You! You! You! You!

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Preparation Week: The Psalms Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Reflect Reflect on what you’ve read this week. Here are some questions to guide you in reflection.

1. Describe one of your closest friends, or if you are married, describe your spouse. Do you think you could anticipate what they would think or say in a given circumstance?

2. Describe God. Do you think you could anticipate what he would think or say in a given circumstance?

3. Would you describe your relationship with God as having a comfortable & familiar aspect to it?

4. To what degree are you aware of God’s presence as you go about your day?

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Preparation Week: The Psalms Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Journal Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of Lent, the period of forty days before Easter. It is so called because of the Church’s tradition of making the sign of the cross on people’s foreheads with ash, reflecting the ancient biblical sign of penitence and of Christian witness (see, for instance, Job 42:5-6). Write down your thoughts as you reflect on this week’s material.

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Preparation Week: The Psalms Thursday, February 26, 2009

Pray What have you heard God speaking to you about? Respond to him, in quietness or in speech. Tell him what is going on within you. Write it down, if you find it helpful to focus your heart.

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Preparation Week: The Psalms Friday, February 27, 2009

Commit As you’ve read, studied, reflected, journaled and prayed through this week’s reading, what changes in your life do you sense Jesus leading you into? What one commitment are you being led to make? Write it down.

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Preparation Week: The Psalms Saturday, February 28, 2008

Act What actions can you take today that will put your commitment into practice?

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Week 1: Simplicity Sunday, March 1, 2009

Sermon Notes

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Week 1: Simplicity Sunday, March 1, 2009

Read Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but who delight in the law of the LORD and meditate on his law day and night. They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will be destroyed.

Psalm 1, TNIV Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below.

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Week 1: Simplicity Monday, March 2, 2009

Study A text has texture. Words, woven into a fabric of meaning, have a characteristic feel to them. When our fingers touch textiles, we know what they are good for by their feel – silk for hair ribbons, denim for bib overalls, wool for a ski sweater. When our eyes go over the words of a text and our tongues and lips reproduce the sound of the words, we get a feel for how they are being used and how to take them. Getting the feel of the text is prerequisite to getting its meaning, for if we don’t know how to take words, we will probably take them incorrectly. When we hear words spoken, we pick this up easily through tone and rhythm. Words spoken harshly and jerkily mean one thing, softly and languidly another, and in measured monotone still another – the dictionary meaning of the words is the same each time; the intended and received meaning different. When we read words that are written, we compensate for loss of voice by observing how the words are arranged in the loom of the text. As we discern the texture, we know how to take the text. The Psalms are poetry and the Psalms are prayer: this is the texture of the text. Poetry is language used with personal intensity. It is not, as so many suppose, decorative speech. Poets tell us what our eyes, blurred with too much gawking, and our ears, dulled with too much chatter, miss around and within us. Poets use words to drag us into the depth of reality itself. They do it not by reporting on how life is, but by pushing-pulling us into the middle of it. Poetry grabs for the jugular. Far from being cosmetic language, it is intestinal. It is root language. Poetry doesn’t so much tell us something we never knew as bring into recognition what is latent, forgotten, overlooked or suppressed. The Psalms text is almost entirely in this kind of language. Knowing this, we will not be looking here primarily for ideas about God, or for direction in moral conduct. We will expect, rather, to find the experience of being human before God exposed and sharpened. Prayer is language used in personal relation to God. It gives utterance to what we sense or want or respond to before God. God speaks to us; our answers are our prayers. The answers are not always articulate: silence, sighs, groaning – these also constitute responses. The answers are not always positive: anger, skepticism, curses – these also are responses. But always God is involved, whether in darkness or light, whether in faith or despair. This is hard to get used to. Our habit is to

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talk about God, not to him. We love discussing God. The Psalms resist these discussions. They are not provided to teach us about God, but to train us in responding to him. We don’t learn the Psalms until we are praying them. This texture, the poetry and the prayer, accounts for both the excitement and difficulty in dealing with this text. The poetry requires that we deal with our actual humanity – these words dive beneath the surfaces of prose and pretense, straight into the depths. We are more comfortable with prose, the laid-back language of arms-length discourse. The prayer requires that we deal with God – this God who is determined on nothing less than the total renovation of our lives.

Eugene Peterson, in Answering God, 1989

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Week 1: Simplicity Tuesday, March 3, 2008


1. If you could pick five words that describe your life today, what would they be?

2. When you read Psalm 1, do you find that it matches your experience of life so far?

3. Have you ever felt that your understanding of God and faith are inadequate to deal with the realities of your life?

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Week 1: Simplicity Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Journal Write down your thoughts as you reflect on this week’s material.

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Week 1: Simplicity Thursday, March 5, 2009


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Week 1: Simplicity Friday, March 6, 2009

Commit As you’ve read, studied, reflected, journaled and prayed through this week’s material, what changes in your life do you sense Jesus leading you into? What one commitment are you being led to make? Write it down.

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Week 1: Simplicity Saturday, March 7, 2009


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Week 2: Sin Sunday, March 8, 2009

Sermon Notes

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Week 2: Sin Sunday, March 8, 2009

Read For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Open my lips, Lord,

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and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar. Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below.

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Week 2: Sin Monday, March 9, 2009

Study From James L. Mays, The Lord Reigns, 1994.

In his Confessions, Augustine tells how he used the psalms in a period of retreat between his conversion and baptism. “What utterances sent I unto Thee, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those faithful songs and sounds of devotion… What utterances I used to send up unto Thee in those Psalms, and how was I inflamed toward Thee by them” (IX, 4). For Augustine it was a time of preparation for a different life, of initiation into a new existence, a period in which habits of thought, customs of practice, and feelings about self and others and the world had to be reconstituted. As part of the transformation, he was learning a new language. He spoke the psalms to and before the Christian God, who was now source and subject of his faith and life. He took their vocabulary and sentences as his own. He identified himself with the speaker of the psalms. He said the psalms as his words, let his feelings be evoked and led by their language, spoke the words that resonated in his own consciousness in concord with those of the psalms. He was acquiring a language world that went with his new identity as a Christian. It was the vocabulary of prayer and praise, the “first order” language that expressed the sense of self and world that comes with faith in the God to whom, of whom, and for whom the psalms speak. Augustine’s engagement with the psalms was not unique, but was typical of early Christianity. In his use of them, he was entering into a practice that went back to the first generations of the church. What was true for him held for the church at large. Of course, not with the same profundity and intensity. Augustine was Augustine. But his experience was representative.

From Eugene Peterson in Answering God, 1989

This is the testimony of someone who began to take seriously the practice of praying through the Psalms regularly. One of the key things that praying the Psalms has sensitized me to is how much our individualistic and technological society works against any inclinations we may have to engage in

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intimate gut-level dialogue with God. Having spent more than half of my life in school being fed information, and four years in college learning specifically how to use motivational language to manipulate people into buying things (I was a media/marketing major), learning that the Psalms have been used throughout the church’s history as tools to train the church in the conversion of language hit me with revolutionary force. It makes sense, in our print-oriented society, that the word of God should come to be seen as a static collection of recorded words, rather than a dynamic oral dialogue in which God continues to speak and we continue to answer. It has been exciting to discover that using the Psalms to pray connects us with the struggles and responses of all of God’s people throughout history. And how, in our fast-paced and noisy society, praying the Psalms can slow us down and cause us to tune into the softer rhythms of nature which are often snuffed out in our frenzy of activity. In my experience of praying the Psalms, I have felt as if I have been suddenly been given the ears to hear the dialogue that has been going on between God and man and to find myself as a participant in the conversation. I have found that praying the Psalms has taken the focus of my prayer off of my needs and ability to do, and put it unto God’s power and activity. I have come to see the Psalms as a guide to reciting the particularities of the battle God is waging against the enemies of his people. As I speak the words of the psalmist, my story merges with his story, widening my perception of God and self beyond my own subjective feelings. In the Psalms, I can see the transformation of the psalmist’s anger and hostility as God gives him new hope and strength. Although at the moment I am praying I may not be experiencing the intensity of pain the psalmist is, reciting his words lessen my fear about the prospects of being in a situation of suffering because I am encouraged by how God has worked in the psalmist’s life. Likewise when I find myself praying a psalm of joy on a day when I feel sad, I am able to hold onto the hope of the psalmist and remember the times God has done great things in my life. Although praying the Psalms every day over the past few weeks has given me a real sense of the discipline which flows from

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seeing the Psalms as a way of connecting myself with God’s historical community, I have not yet begun to speak the language myself with deep emotion or let its rhythms flow through my whole person. I must still mature in the area of letting the Psalms become a means of praying out my anger and hostility and slowing me down in the midst of the craziness of life.

From Nahum Sarna, On the Book of Psalms, 1993

A Jew from Yemen once told me how he celebrated his bar mitzvah back in the land of his birth. The family was desperately poor; there were no parties, no gifts, no excitement, no speeches. The boy simply went to the synagogue on the designated Sabbath morning and read the appropriate portion of the Torah with the traditional blessings before and after. But what left an indelible impression on him, the experience that continues to move him deeply even forty years later, was staying up all the previous night with his grandfather, and together reciting the entire Book of Psalms.

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Week 2: Sin Tuesday, March 10, 2009


1. What patterns of temptation to sin do you see in your life?

2. Why do you think that you are more prone to these temptations than any others?

3. Imagine discussing these temptations with God. What do you think he might say to you as a means to protect you from sin?

4. Now recollect a time when you’ve just fallen into temptation and sinned. What do you think a genuine conversation with God at this point might look like?

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Week 2: Sin Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Journal Write down your thoughts on this week’s reading.

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Week 2: Sin Thursday, March 12, 2009


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Week 2: Sin Friday, March 13, 2009


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Week 2: Sin Saturday, March 14, 2009


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Week 3: Disappointment Sunday, March 15, 2009

Sermon Notes

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Week 3: Disappointment Sunday, March 15, 2009

Read Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.a They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills. Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquityb; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits. They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.c They say, “How would God know? Does the Most High know anything?” This is what the wicked are like— always free of care, they go on amassing wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments. If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children. When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.

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Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors! They are like a dream when one awakes; when you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies. When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you. But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds.

Psalm 73, TNIV Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below.

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Week 3: Disappointment Monday, March 16, 2009

Study : Orientation, Disorientation & New Orientation The following discussion is organized around three quite general themes, poems of orientation, poems of disorientation, and poems of new orientation. It is suggested that the Psalms can be roughly grouped this way, and the flow of human life characteristically is located either in the actual experience of one of these settings or is in movement from one to another. By organizing our discussion in this way, we propose a correlation between the gains of critical study and the realities of human life…

a) Human life consists in satisfied seasons of well-being that evoke gratitude for the constancy of blessing. Matching this we will consider “psalms of orientation,” which in a variety of ways articulate the joy, delight, goodness, coherence and reliability of God, God’s creation, God’s governing law.

b) Human life consists in anguished seasons of hurt, alienation, suffering and death. These evoke rage, resentment, self-pity and hatred. Matching this, we will consider “psalms of disorientation,” poems and speech-forms that match the season in its ragged, painful disarray. This speech, the lament, has a recognizable shape that permits the extravagance, hyperbole and abrasiveness needed for the experience.

c) Human life consists in turns of surprise when we are overwhelmed by the new gifts of God, when joy breaks through the despair. Where there has been only darkness, there is light. Corresponding to this surprise of the gospel, we will consider “psalms of new orientation,” which speak boldly about a new gift from God, a fresh intrusion that makes all things new. These psalms affirm a sovereign God who puts humankind in a new situation. In this way it is proposed that psalm forms correspond to seasons of human life and bring these seasons to speech. The move of the seasons is transformational and not developmental; that is, the move is never obvious, easy or “natural”. It is always in pain and surprise, and in each age it is thinkable that a different move might have been made.

But human life is not simply an articulation of a place in which we find ourselves. It is also a movement from one circumstance to another,

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changing and being changed, finding ourselves surprised by a new circumstance we did not expect, resistant to a new place, clinging desperately to the old circumstance. So we will suggest that the life of faith expressed in the Psalms is focused on the two decisive moves of faith that are always underway, by which we are regularly surprised and which we regularly resist. One move we make is out of a settled orientation into a season of disorientation. This move is experienced partly as changed circumstance, but it is much more a personal awareness and acknowledgement of the changed circumstance. This may be an abrupt or a slowly dawning acknowledgement. It constitutes a dismantling of the old, known world and a relinquishment of safe, reliable confidence in God’s good creation. The movement of dismantling includes a rush of negativities, including rage, resentment, guilt, shame, isolation, despair, hatred and hostility. It is that move which characterizes much of the Psalms in the form of complaint and lament. The lament psalm is a painful, anguished articulation of a move into disarray and dislocation. The lament is a candid, even if unwilling, embrace of a new situation of chaos, now devoid of the coherence that marks God’s good creation. The sphere of disorientation may be quite personal and intimate, or it may be massive and public. Either way, it is experienced as a personal end of the world, or it would not generate such passionate poetry. That dismantling move is a characteristically Jewish move, one that evokes robust resistance and one that does not doubt that even the experience of disorientation has to do with God and must be vigorously addressed to God. For Christian faith that characteristically Jewish embrace of and articulation of disorientation is decisively embodied in the crucifixion of Jesus. That event and memory become the model for all “dying” that must be done in faith. That is why some interpreters have found it possible to say that the voice of lamentation in the book of Psalms is indeed the voice of the Crucified One. I do not go so far, and prefer to say that the Christian use of the Psalms is illuminated and required by the crucifixion, so that in the use of the Psalms we are moving back and forth among reference to Jesus, the voice of the Psalm itself, and our own experiences of dislocation, suffering and death. There are, of course, important distinctions among lament psalms. Thus psalms of the innocent sufferer more directly apply to Jesus than do the psalms of penitence. Nonetheless, taken as a whole, that dimension of the history of Jesus is a major point of contact for lament psalms.

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The other move we make is a move from a context of disorientation to a new orientation, surprised by a new gift from God, a new coherence made present to us just when we thought all was lost. This move entails a departure from the “pit” of chaos just when we had suspected we would never escape. It is a departure inexplicable to us, to be credited only to the intervention of God. This move of departure to new life includes a rush of positive responses, including delight, amazement, wonder, awe, gratitude, and thanksgiving. The second move also characterizes many of the Psalms, in the form of songs of thanksgiving and declarative hymns that tell a tale of a decisive time, an inversion, a reversal of fortune, a rescue, deliverance, saving, liberation, healing. The hymnic psalm is a surprising, buoyant articulation of a move of the person or community into a new life-permitting and life-enhancing context where God’s way and will surprisingly prevail. Such hymns are a joyous assertion that God’s rule is known, visible and effective just when we had lost hope. That astonishing move is a characteristically Jewish move, one beyond reasonable expectation, one that evokes strident doxology because the new gift of life must be gladly and fully referred to God. For Christian faith that characteristic Jewish articulation and reception of new orientation is decisively embodied in the resurrection of Jesus. That is why the church has found it appropriate to use such hymns with particular reference to Easter. This means that the use of these hymns and songs of thanksgiving moves back and forth among references to Jesus’ new life, to the voice of Israel’s glad affirmation, and to our own experiences of new life surprisingly granted.

Walter Brueggemann, in The Message of the Psalms, 1984

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Week 3: Disappointment Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Reflect Reflect on what you’ve read this week, in silence. Here are some questions to guide you in reflection.

1. Has there been a time in your life where you felt utterly depressed? Despondent? Abandoned by God?

2. Have you ever experienced what appeared to you to be inexplicable and unjust suffering?

3. Where was God in these times?

4. Have you talked this through with him? What resolution did you find? Where does this conversation leave you in terms of your relationship with God?

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Week 3: Disappointment Wednesday, March 18, 2009


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Week 3: Disappointment Thursday, March 19, 2009


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Week 3: Disappointment Friday, March 20, 2009


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Week 3: Disappointment Saturday, March 21, 2009


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Week 4: Celebration Sunday, March 22, 2009

Sermon Notes

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Week 4: Celebration Sunday, March 22, 2009

Read Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The LORD has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the LORD with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn— shout for joy before the LORD, the King. Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy; let them sing before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.

Psalm 98, TNIV Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below

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Week 4: Celebration Monday, March 23, 2009

Study Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy house of worship, praise him under the open skies; Praise him for his acts of power, praise him for his magnificent greatness; Praise with a blast on the trumpet, praise by strumming soft strings; Praise him with castanets and dance, praise him with banjo and flute; Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum, praise him with fiddles and mandolin. Let every living, breathing creature praise GOD! Hallelujah!

Psalm 150, The Message When I first began to draw near to belief in God (and even for some time after) I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously made by all religious people that we should “praise” God: still more in the suggestion the God Himself demanded it. We all despise the person who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence, or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Worse still was the statement put into God’s own mouth, “What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.” It is perhaps easiest to begin to understand praise with inanimate objects. What do we mean when we say that a picture is “admirable”? The sense in which the picture “deserves” or “demands” admiration is this: that admiration is the correct, adequate or appropriate response to it; that is if we do not admire, we shall be stupid, insensible, and great losers, we shall have missed something. Many objects both in Nature and in Art may be said to deserve, or merit, or demand admiration. But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their beloved, readers praising their

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favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and spacious minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least. The good critics found something to praise in many imperfect works; the bad ones continually narrowed the list of books we might be allowed to read. Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. The worthier the object, the more intense this delight would be. Praise not merely expresses, but completes the enjoyment. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good she is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch.

CS Lewis in Reflections on the Psalms, 1964

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Week 4: Celebration Tuesday, March 24, 2009


1. When was the last time God came through for you when you had all but given up hope?

2. How would you recount your experience of it? Do you think you could write a psalm of celebration and thanksgiving to God that retells the story?

3. What can you do that will keep this experience of God’s deliverance alive for you the next time you are tempted to despair?

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Week 4: Celebration Wednesday, March 25, 2009


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Week 4: Celebration Thursday, March 26, 2009


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Week 4: Celebration Friday, March 27, 2009


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Week 4: Celebration Saturday, March 28, 2009


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Week 5: Faithfulness Sunday, March 29, 2009

Sermon Notes

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Week 5: Faithfulness Sunday, March 29, 2009

Read Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever. to him who alone does great wonders, His love endures forever. who by his understanding made the heavens, His love endures forever. who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever. who made the great lights— His love endures forever. the sun to govern the day, His love endures forever. the moon and stars to govern the night; His love endures forever. to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt His love endures forever. and brought Israel out from among them His love endures forever. with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His love endures forever. to him who divided the Red Seab asunder His love endures forever. and brought Israel through the midst of it, His love endures forever. but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; His love endures forever. to him who led his people through the wilderness; His love endures forever. to him who struck down great kings, His love endures forever. and killed mighty kings— His love endures forever. Sihon king of the Amorites

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His love endures forever. and Og king of Bashan— His love endures forever. and gave their land as an inheritance, His love endures forever. an inheritance to his servant Israel. His love endures forever. He remembered us in our low estate His love endures forever. and freed us from our enemies. His love endures forever. He gives food to every creature. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.

Psalm 136, TNIV

Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below

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Week 5: Faithfulness Monday, March 30, 2009

Study : Praying the Psalms Most Christians for most of the Christian centuries have learned to pray by praying the Psalms. The Hebrews, with several centuries of a head start on us in matters of prayer and worship, provided us with this prayer book that gives us a language adequate for responding to the God who speaks to us

The stimulus to paraphrase the Psalms into a contemporary idiom comes from my lifetime of work as a pastor. As a pastor I was charged with, among other things, teaching people to pray, helping them to give voice to the entire experience of being human, and to do it both honestly and thoroughly. I found that it was not as easy as I expected. Getting started is easy enough. The impulse to pray is deep within us, at the very center of our created being, and so practically anything will do to get us started - “help” and “thanks” are our basic prayers. But honesty and thoroughness don’t come quite as spontaneously.

Faced with the prospect of conversation with a holy God who speaks worlds into being, it is not surprising that we have trouble. We feel awkward and out of place: “I’m not good enough for this. I’ll wait until I clean up my act and prove that I am a decent person.” Or we excuse ourselves on the grounds that our vocabulary is inadequate: “Give me a few months - or years - to practice prayers that are polished enough for such a sacred meeting. Then I won’t feel so stuttering and ill at ease.”

My usual response when presented with these difficulties is to put the Psalms in a person’s hand and say, “Go home and pray these. You’ve got wrong ideas about prayer; the praying you find in these Psalms will dispel the wrong ideas and introduce you to the real thing.” A common response of those who do what I ask is surprise - they don’t expect this kind of thing in the Bible. They’re shocked to read Psalms 6:1-2: “Please, God, no more yelling, no more trips to the woodshed. Treat me nice for a change; I’m so starved for affection. Can’t you see I’m black and blue, beat up badly in bones and soul? God, how long will it take for you to let up?” or Psalm 71:12-14: “God, don’t just watch from the sidelines. Come on! Run to my side! My accusers - make them lose face. Those out to get me - make them look like idiots, while I stretch out, reaching for you, and daily add praise to praise.” And then I express surprise at their surprise: “Did you think these would be the prayers of nice people? Did you think the psalmists’ language would be polished and polite?”

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Untutored, we tend to think that prayer is what good people do when they are doing their best. It is not. Inexperienced, we suppose that there must be an insider language that must be acquired before God takes us seriously in our prayer. There is not. Prayer is elemental, not advanced, language. It is the means by which our language becomes honest, true, and personal in response to God. It is the means by which we get everything in our lives out in the open before God.

David wrote,

“God, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand. I’m an open book to you; even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking... “Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; Cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I’m about; See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong - then guide me on the road to eternal life.

Psalm 139:1,23-24 But even with the Psalms in their hands and my pastoral encouragement, people often tell me that they still don’t get it. In English translation, the Psalms often sound smooth and polished, sonorous with Elizabethan rhythms and diction. As literature, they are beyond compare. But as prayer, as the utterances of men and women passionate for God in moments of anger and praise and lament, these translations miss something. Grammatically, they are accurate. The scholarship undergirding the translations is superb and devout. But as prayers they are not quite right. The Psalms in Hebrew are earthy and rough. They are not genteel. They are not the prayers of nice people, couched in cultured language.

And so in my pastoral work of teaching people to pray, I started paraphrasing the Psalms into the rhythms and idiom of contemporary English. I wanted to provide men and women access to the immense range and the terrific energies of prayer in the kind of language that is most immediate to them, which also happens to be the language in which these psalm prayers were first expressed and written by David and his successors.

I continue to want to do that, convinced that only as we develop raw honesty and detailed thoroughness in our praying do we become whole, truly human in Jesus Christ, who also prayed the Psalms.

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Eugene Peterson in The Invitation, 2008

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Week 5: Faithfulness Tuesday, March 31, 2009


1. Think back about your life, in five-year periods. Identify one significant way in which God was faithful to you in each period.

2. Write a psalm that retells the story of your life from the perspective of God’s faithfulness to you.

3. Are you able to “pray the psalms”, entering into the story of those who have gone before us in the journey of faith? Does it feel right? Or is it awkward?

4. What lies ahead of you that could prove difficult or challenging? How can you ground yourself in God’s faithfulness today to prepare for what you see coming?

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Week 5: Faithfulness Wednesday, April 1, 2009


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Week 5: Faithfulness Thursday, April 2, 2009


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Week 5: Faithfulness Friday, April 3, 2009


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Week 5: Faithfulness Saturday, April 4, 2009


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Week 6: Hope Sunday, April 5, 2009

Sermon Notes

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Week 6: Hope Sunday, April 5, 2009

Read Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. They say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. If you say, “The LORD is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. “Because they love me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue them; I will protect them, for they acknowledge my name. They will call on me, and I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will deliver them and honor them. With long life I will satisfy them and show them my salvation.”

Psalm 91, TNIV

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Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below.

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Week 6: Hope Monday, April 6, 2009

Study The problem with worship that focuses on equilibrium, coherence and symmetry is that it may deceive and cover over. Life is not like that. Life is also savagely marked by disequilibrium, incoherence, and unrelieved symmetry. In our time – perhaps in any time – that needs no argument or documentation. It is a curious fact that the church has, by and large, continued to sing songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as disoriented. That may be laudatory. It could be that such relentlessness is an act of bold defiance in which these psalms of order and reliability are flung in the face of the disorder. In that way, they insist that nothing shall separate us from the love of God. Such a “mismatch” between our life experience of disorientation and our faith speech of orientation could be a great evangelical “nevertheless” (as in Habakkuk 3:18). Such a counterstatement insists that God does in any case govern, rule, and order, regardless of how the data seem to appear. And therefore, songs of torah, wisdom, creation, and retribution speak truly, even if the world is experienced as otherwise. It is possible that the church uses the psalms of disorientation in this way. But at best, this is only partly true. It is my judgment that this action of the church is less an evangelical defiance guided by faith, and much more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to acknowledge the disorientation of life. The reason for such relentless affirmation of orientation seems to come, not from faith, but from the wishful optimism of our culture. Such a denial and cover-up, which I take it to be, is an odd inclination for passionate Bible readers, given the large number of psalms that are songs of lament, protest and complaint about the incoherence that is experienced in the world. At least, it is clear that a church that goes on singing “happy songs” in the face of raw reality is doing something very different from what the Bible itself does. I think that serious religious use of the lament psalms has been minimal because we have believed that faith does not mean to acknowledge and embrace negativity. We have thought that acknowledgement of negativity. We have thought that acknowledgement of negativity was somehow an act of unfaith, as though the very speech about it conceded too much about God’s “loss of control”.

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The point to be urged here is this: the use of these “psalms of darkness” may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith. It is an act of bold faith on the one hand, because it insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way. On the other hand, it is bold because it insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. Everything properly belongs in this conversation of the heart. To withhold parts of life from that conversation is in fact to withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God. Thus these psalms make the important connection: everything must be brought to speech, and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God, who is the final reference for all of life. But such a faith is indeed a transformed faith, one that does not conform (cf. Rim 12:2). The community that uses these psalms of disorientation is not easily linked with civil religion, which goes “from strength to strength”. It is, rather, faith in a very different God, one who is present in, participating in, and attentive to the darkness, weakness, and displacement of life. The God assumed by and addressed in these psalms is a God “of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Life is now understood to be a pilgrimage or process through the darkness that belongs properly to humanness. While none would choose to be there, such seasons of life are not always experiences of failure for which guilt is to be assigned, but may be a placement in life for which the human person or community is not responsible and therefore not blamed. The presupposition and affirmation of these psalms is that precisely in such deathly places as presented in these psalms, new life is given by God. We do not understand how that could be so, or even why it is so. But we regularly learn and discern that there – more than anywhere else – newness that is not of our own making breaks upon us.

Walter Brueggemann, in The Message of the Psalms, 1984

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Week 6: Hope Tuesday, April 7, 2009


1. Have you ever experienced the death of someone very close to you? How did this shape you?

2. Do you ever find yourself contemplating your own death? What thoughts and emotions do you experience in this consideration?

3. Have you ever been in a life-threatening situation? A dangerous accident, a serious illness? What thoughts and emotions did you find within you afterward?

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Week 6: Hope Wednesday, April 8, 2009


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Week 6: Hope Thursday, April 9, 2009


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Week 6: Hope Friday, April 10, 2009

Commit Today is Good Friday. The church remembers together the crucifixion and death of Jesus. As you’ve read, studied, reflected, journaled and prayed through this week’s reading, what changes in your life do you sense Jesus leading you into? What one commitment are you being led to make? Write it down.

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Week 6: Hope Saturday, April 11, 2009


there is none like you flute piece

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