March 3, 2002 -- THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation. (Ps. 95:1)
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42
Psalm 95
Title: “Preparing for a consciousness of God.”
This psalm would have been appropriately sung as pilgrim worshipers approached the Temple for a festival. Which festival, Tabernacles, maybe, is uncertain. It is fitting for any of them. When the Temple no longer existed this psalm came to be used in the synagogue as an opening of the service, a call to worship. Even now it opens the Morning Prayer of the Catholic Church and is called the “Invitatory Psalm.”
Some scholars think that there was an annual celebration, perhaps during the New Year’s Festival, when Yahweh was symbolically enthroned as king, reminding the people of his sovereignty and that this would be one of the psalms sung. Since there is no real evidence for that, it is best to view the psalm in the broader context of a more or less typical “entrance liturgy.” As such the people would process from outside the Temple, through the courts of the Gentiles and Women up to the entrance of the Priestly Court wherein was contained the altar of sacrifice and the Holy of Holies. It is best to think of a recurring cultic-liturgical observance as the setting. The psalm, whose date of composition cannot be fixed, lends itself quite well to “psychological entrance,” into God’s presence as a beginning for all prayer, formal and informal, even if originally it was one of the great festival psalms.
It divides into two parts. The first part has two strophes: Verses one to five, is an extended call to worship God as creator and king of creation and verses six and seven, repeats the call in terms of God as shepherd and king of Israel. The second part, verses seven “b” to eleven, is a prophetic warning that entrance into God’s presence or Temple requires obedience to his word.
In verse one, Come…sing joyfully: The verb, r-w-`, in the hiphil form, “make a joyful noise,” indicates exuberant, noisy shouting such as a human king would receive upon entering a city.
“The rock of our salvation,” “Rock” is a title of honor for God, recalling the sacred, saving rock of the desert providing water for the people. The altar of sacrifice would also be a rock and remind them of God’s presence, reliably strong, stable yet capable of moving with his people.
In verse three, for: This important word, ki in Hebrew, always follows calls to praise or thank. It introduces the reasons, more or less concrete, present and past, for praising or thanking God.
“The great king over all gods,” going back to Melchizedek in Genius 14: 18-20 God, Yahweh, was equated with the Canaanite “Most High God.” As such he was honored as creator of the world, sustainer, and Lord of any and all other gods.
In verses four and five, earth…sea: As creator, the extent of his power is limitless. “The depths of the earth,” the domains of the powers of death, and “the tops of the mountains,” the dwelling places of the deities of life, are subject to him.
Verse six, enter…bow down in worship: If an earthly king receives homage, is prostrated before and genuflected to, how much more appropriate should such body language be for God. Practically speaking, this posture kneeling would give more people a chance to see and hear what was going on.
Verse seven, God’s well-tended flock: God is “our God,” the God not only of the universe but also, specifically, of Israel, his special people. This special relationship is described in shepherd imagery common in the Near East to express a king’s proper role vis-à-vis his people.
“That today you would hear his voice”: The mood changes abruptly. A prophetic message is heard. Perhaps a priest or a cultic prophet or some Temple official speaks a warning that entrance into the presence and Temple of God involves extra-Temple behavior consistent with what God has revealed. “Hearing his voice,” does not merely mean listening to words. It means obeying them. Both in Hebrew and Greek the words for “hear, listen” also mean “obey.”
Today: This is the “liturgical or spiritual” present, reminiscent of Deut 4:40; 5:3; et al. The community is to make no essential distinction between God’s activity in the past and in the present. The word of God declared today makes that word present, no matter how long ago it was first uttered or written. “Today,” means now, the time for decision, the avoidance of procrastination.
Verse eight, do not harden your hearts: The wilderness generation is an example of the attitude of “hardened hearts.” They grumbled against God because they were not happy with their circumstances (Ex 17:1ff; Num20: 1ff). That generation beheld God’s works as does the present one, but they remained hardened.
Meribah…Massah: “Meribah” means “contention” and, according to Ex 17:1ff, it was the name given by Moses to the place where the people angered God by doubting his presence. “Massah” means “trial, test.” This may be yet another name for the same place. Regardless, the two places came to have the symbolic meaning of being in a “place of alienation,” from God. “Meribah and Massah” are not merely geographical places or historical remembrances, they are “here and now.” The words symbolize what could be the spiritual condition and attitudes of some of the present worshipers.
In verses nine to eleven, your ancestors tested me: They doubted God’s presence and his ability to care for them even though they had seen God at work. Their works and ways no longer corresponded with God’s. God himself points out, through the speaker that this went on for forty years!
Verse eleven, they shall never enter my rest: Those who did not mend their ways would not enter into God’s “rest,” a metaphor for the Promised Land.” But it was more than that. It was a blessing, not material or territorial, but personal, rooted and centered in God himself. The example of the desert generation’s hardened hearts demonstrates that God excludes from his presence and rest those who exclude him from their hearts. “Rest,” would connote protection from enemies and peace, as well as respite from labor.
Sermon
This psalm is about entering into God’s presence. More precisely, it is about pre-entering into God’s presence. It tells us what we have to do to prepare for consciousness of God. In a word, we have to “sing as we walk.” Liturgical processions are not just for show. They are practice for, teachers for, living our routine lives in conscious contact with God. God, of course, is always present and always conscious of us. It is our problem, not his. Just as we must “psyche,” ourselves up for liturgy, so must we “psyche,” ourselves up for the divine awareness. We do so by singing, as we walk, as we walk through our day and our lives.
The liturgical psalms, songs and hymns are great means and aids for heightening our awareness of God. At least, the good ones are. The really good ones both respect the structure of music and scriptural imagery. Singing- publicly in the liturgical assembly or privately to ourselves- saturates our “focused awareness,” so much that it spills over into our unfocused awareness and even, after a while, into our pre-conscious and sub-consciousness. Amazingly, it does all that! Our pre-conscious and sub-conscious form the background, “perceptual environment,” context for our focused awareness. “Focused “awareness, is what we pay attention to on purpose, deliberately, by dint of effort. It is a sort of mental squinting of our eyes. “Unfocused,” awareness is everything else our brains take in more or less effortlessly, even involuntarily. Awareness of God’s presence takes effort. Singing about God takes the effort out of it. We can live in his presence, acknowledging his sovereignty, his salvation, his spirit.
Yet, the psalmist reminds us that that is not all there is to it. We are not only to be psychologically present to God but morally present as well. We must back up our words, our sentiments with deeds and attitudes consistent with God and the songs about him. That moral presence does not make us feel equal to God or deserving of him. Rather, it enhances our enjoyment of his presence. We are more one with him. Recalling the songs sung at liturgy while in the car or shower, at the desk or supermarket, on the couch or the ladder makes present the liturgical act and action and the word in a way similar to what the prophetic speaker meant when he referred to Meribah and Massah in the psalm. It is “liturgical and spiritual” consciousness. Thus, our behavior intensifies our enjoyment of God as we hope it enhances God’s enjoyment of us.
Every day the official prayer of the Catholic Church, the Liturgy of the Hours, begins with Psalm 95. The first words on our lips are those of this psalm. We never tire of singing or saying it. It is an excellent way to enter into the presence of God and stay there. The final line has God swearing in his anger that “they will not enter into my rest.” Before doing any work we are reminded by God that even while working we are in his rest. We are reminded that if we are not focused on him our work will tire us before we even start, just thinking about it. If we are aware of him he promises that nothing will fatigue or beleaguer us. That is not always true and does not always happen because we easily lose our focus. It is our fault that it does not happen, not God’s. But if we get it back again, the words become flesh, real, experienced even on the level of daily routine. Of course, one need not pray this particular psalm or the Liturgy of the Hours, just its sentiments. And to pray them is to live them. Again, it is not enough to be physically in church or psychologically in our mind present to God, we must also be morally present hearing and keeping his word.
Every liturgical procession is a formalized journey or walk. A processing Jew would be reminded of the journey out of the slavery of Egypt, through the desert, and into the Promised Land. That journey could pass through Meribah and Massah contention, grumbling, doubt, apostasy, hardening of heart or it could bypass it. Later, it would remind the Jew of the journey back from the captivity of Babylon. To the Christian it reminds of the final journey into paradise and rest with God. If we do not “sing as we walk,” we may miss the reminders and get sidetracked into and stuck at Meribah and Massah.
God is sovereign, above and over all things, over this world and any other “worlds” he has made.
We live in at least two of those “worlds,” or on two levels of the one world, simultaneously: the physical and the spiritual.
We have a hard enough time paying attention to and in the physical world. Attentiveness to and in the spiritual world is even more difficult, requiring even more concentration.
It is not enough to be merely spiritually including mentally and emotionally aware of God’s presence. One must be morally aware of what entering into and remaining his presence requires- both before and after the point of heightened awareness.
The appropriate speech in the presence of God is song.
The appropriate stance in the presence of God is bowing down in worship.
Divine Sovereignty and human morality: We have no idea how many other worlds God has created. We do have an inkling now, based on our scientific understanding of just our own universe, a relatively meager and elementary understanding at that, that there may well be other intelligent life forms in our own galaxy and or in other galaxies we do not yet know even exist, let alone possibly have intelligent life forms, or their equivalent, within them. Our “universe,” is great and grand, but it may not be the only one. Nor must other “worlds,” be material, as is ours. We certainly know something of the “spirit world,” a world that exists both within and without our own material world. That “world,” or dimension exists in our physical world, encompassed by time and space, yet in and of itself does not take up space and is not limited or bound by time. God has so ordained it that humans live in the physical world by necessity and in the spiritual world by choice. He has told us that the spirit world, the eternal dimension, is the one where we will live forever and that this earthly dimension is temporary. All of this spells God’s sovereignty over all- over this and any other world(s)there may be. Nothing and no one can best God. Even humans to whom God has given free will, the power to reject or deny God, cannot thereby really best God. They can fool themselves and dupe themselves into thinking so, but not really. The sovereignty of God, or awareness of it, prompts worship, obedience, and a constant desire to be on the right side of God. In other words, it motivates morality. It is a free-choice morality, not an enslaving one, for humans can make a conscious and concerted effort to ignore God. Nonetheless he remains sovereign after all.
Liturgical song and gesture: Singing, in and out of liturgy, is stylized speech, speech in a different key, poetic speech. Gestures, in and out of liturgy, are stylized behavior, rituals. Both are intended to express the truth that there is always more to reality than what meets the physical eye. Both stylized speech and behavior lift us out of the routine, the boring, the mundane, into another realm or dimension of living. Singing cheers us up, not down. Even dirges have their soothing effects on the aching human heart. Song belongs to the spirit world. It is the ordinary “speech,” means of communication, of the spirit world. In heaven we will sing our speech. When we sing we make non-singers nervous and uncomfortable. They do not know how to react. Singing does not “fit,” the routine world. Neither do gestures, gestures like flowers and candy to a loved one, like birthday cards, gifts and cakes, like marches and demonstrations for a cause, etc. Stylized behavior enables us to express the otherwise inexpressible, values of the spirit world. Thus, liturgy, besides expressing the inexpressible in human sounds and gestures, also teaches us how to do just that. It is vital to the wholesome human being that he or she or we can express on the physical level of our existence the spiritual experiences we are having. That requires “enfleshing,” them, just as the Word of God became flesh so we could relate to him. Liturgical behaviors, such as processions, have more symbolic, spirit world, meaning than they do physical meaning. Processions are not so much going from one physical place to another as expressing that we are always on the move from one level of consciousness of, eternity, to another. Thus, humans can even have a “procession,” in their minds without physically moving. Amen.
