Scripture: Psalm 85
Sermon: When Justice and Peace Kiss
Topics: justice, peace, silence, evil, Tutu, accommodation, repentance
Preached: Dec. 10, 2017
Rev. Mike Abma
Preamble: The Psalms that Bryant and I are preaching on this Advent Season, Psalm 80 last week and Psalm 85 this week, are both Psalms that actually follow what is known as the Lectionary – a guide of Bible passages for every Sunday of the year.
The Lectionary actually lists Psalm 85: 1-2, 8-13, cutting out much of the middle section.
We are not going to do that this morning.
We are going to read the whole thing.
If you follow the verbs and the verb tenses,
the first section of this Psalm, vs 1-3, talks about the Past.
The second section of this Psalm, 4-9
contains pleas or requests in the Present.
The third section of the Psalm, 10-13, paints a picture of the Future.
PSALM 85
(PAST)
1 Lord, you were favourable to your land;
you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
2 You forgave the iniquity of your people;
you pardoned all their sin.
Selah
3 You withdrew all your wrath;
you turned from your hot anger.
(PRESENT)
4 Restore us again, O God of our salvation,
and put away your indignation towards us.
5 Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you prolong your anger to all generations?
6 Will you not revive us again,
so that your people may rejoice in you?
7 Show us your steadfast love, O Lord,
and grant us your salvation.
8 Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people,
to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
9 Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
that his glory may dwell in our land.
(FUTURE)
10 Steadfast love and faithfulness (truth) will meet;
righteousness (justice) and peace will kiss each other.
11 Faithfulness (truth) will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness (justice) will look down from the sky.
12 The Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.
13 Righteousness (Justice) will go before him,
and will make a path for his steps.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION THE SILENCE OF GOD
I can understand why the Lectionary removed those middle verses from this Psalm.
Those middle verses, 3-7, mention all those hard things about
God’s anger,
and his wrath
and his indignation.
What do we do with that?
So it seems easiest to simply remove it.
But is that right? Is that honest to this Psalm?
I do not think so, and that is why we read the whole thing.
So let’s listen carefully to the whole Psalm.
Listen especially to those requests in the middle part of this Psalm.
There are two main requests:
Restore us again in vs. 4.
Revive us again in vs 6.
Clearly something happened.
Clearly there was a relationship between God and his people (vs. 1-3)
But something went cold,
a distance widened,
and now there is only silence.
Think of what sometimes happens in a marriage relationship.
Take the relationship of an older couple at the beginning of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, Love in the Time of Cholera. The husband and wife have been married a long time, but they get into an argument.
The husband grumbles, “I have been showering for a week without soap.”
The wife shoots back, “I’ve been showering every day with soap – what is your
Problem?”
A seemingly small argument that has roots in deeper resentments.
That night, the couple are lying in bed.
They lie back to back, facing away from one another.
They lie there in silence.
Each feels as if they are the victim.
Each waits for the other to turn,
to admit they were wrong.
There they lay, in silence.
And the silence feels like anger, like wrath, like indignation.
That is probably the anger of God described in this Psalm.
It is the silence of God.
It is the feeling that God has turned his back on us.
It is what C.S. Lewis laments about after his wife has died.
Lewis, in his grief, laments,
“Where is God?
Go to him when your need is desperate, and what do you find?
A door slammed in your face, and silence.”
Silence.
Silence can feel like anger, like wrath, like indignation.
So how can things be restored?
How can things be revived?
How can the romance, the closeness, the covenant, return?
OUR SILENCE
As we lie there,
wondering why God is so silent,
wondering why God is not turning to us,
perhaps we should begin thinking about our own silence.
Yes, our own silence.
By our own silence, I mean:
All the things we want to hide;
All the things we try cover-up;
All the ways we pretend things are normal when they are not.
Like the addictions, and obsessions, and binges we want to cover up,
not wanting to admit to their complete wastefulness,
or face the chaos they are causing in our lives.
Like the silence we keep and guard when it comes to our money.
Did you know that the average North American
would rather talk about their sex life
than openly talk about their financial life.
Why is that? What is there to hide, to cover-up, to be silent about?
You have listened to the news lately, right?
Haven’t you been totally discouraged by
how much energy,
how much brutality,
how much base evil is at work
in all the cover-ups of terrible behavior;
in all the silencing of the victims;
in all the hiding of the truth.
Perhaps as we lie there thinking about God’s silence,
we need to be thinking of our own.
There is another type of silence I want to mention this morning –
Not the active covering up,
But the passive covering up,
what might be called our accommodation of evil.
Desmond Tutu, the now retired bishop in South Africa,
writes about his struggles against the policy of apartheid in South Africa in
the 1970’s and 1980’s.
For those younger people here, apartheid was an oppressive policy in South
Africa that kept all black South Africans as second-class citizens.
In his struggles against this policy, Tutu faced many challenges.
But what did he fear the most?
Was it getting his passport confiscated? No.
Was it being detained or jailed? No.
Was it being killed? No, not even being killed.
So what was Tutu’s worst fear?
Tutu writes,
“The worst thing would have been if I woke up one day and thought
‘Well, apartheid is not so bad.
That would have been worse than death.”
Well, apartheid is not so bad…..not so bad.
Today, we live in a world in which
a lot of people are waking up, and thinking, well, not so bad.
Sexual, predatory behavior? Well, not so bad.
Financial greed and corruption? Well, not so bad.
Environmental devastation and ruin? Well, not so bad.
You name the evil ….
you fill in the blank…..
and people are thinking, Well, not so bad.
REPENTANCE
Restore Us Again!
Revive Us Again!
Do we really want that?
Do we really want Restoration?
Do we really want Revival?
Then there is only ONE way forward – Repentance.
“God will speak peace to his people says verse 8.
And who are his people?
They are the ones who turn to him in their hearts.
Those who turn to him in their hearts.
Another word for “turning” is repentance.
We all need to repent
So that the cover-ups come to an end
So that the complicity stops
So that the dark truths of our lives and this world are exposed to his light.
Here is the thing about people in the world,
and even people in the church:
We want peace, with God and each other,
but we want that peace without justice.
We want love, love from God and others,
but we want that love without the truth.
I find it amazing that in all four gospels,
the first words proclaimed by John the Baptist
and then by Jesus
Are not, “Peace, peace I give to you.”
Or “Come, let me love you.”
No, the first words are:
“Repent!
Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand!”
How close these words are to the Psalm 85:9
“Surely his salvation is at hand
for those who fear him.”
Repenting means not only turning our hearts to God,
that is speaking the full truth to God;
It is also turning our lives to God as well,
That is working for true justice.
Repentance is not simply an attitude adjustment;
It is a total realignment of our lives.
When they asked John the Baptist what this repentance meant,
John the Baptist answered:
Do you have 2 coats? Share with those who have none.
Do you have lots of food and money? Share with those who have little.
Do you have the power of a tax-collector
Or the strength of a soldier?
Then never use that power in an abusive way;
Never use that strength to take advantage of another.
Always seek to protest the dignity of others.
When people start to live lives
that produce the fruit
that is in keeping with repentance,
then the Kingdom of God begins to take root.
The Kingdom of God
Is the place where truth turns to love, and they meet;
It is the place justice turns to peace and they kiss.
It is the place where truth bubbles up from the ground
and justice shines down from the sky,
and everyone and everything flourishes!
That is Restoration!
That is Revival!
That is a Romance Rekindled!
That is the Kingdom taking Root!
CONCLUSION
There is an old Shaker hymn Simple Gifts that ends like this:
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.
To turn, to turn will be our delight,
Til by turning, turning we come round right.
Advent is a season of turning,
Turning to the Lord
Turning with open hearts
Turning with open lives
No more cover-ups,
No more hiding the truth,
No more not-so-bad accommodation of what is evil.
Advent is a season of turning.
And when we turn, what do we discover?
When we turn,
We discover that God has already turned to us.
When we turn,
We discover that God has already turned to us with his Son,
That God has been waiting for us,
That God has been
waiting to restore us,
waiting to revive us
waiting to embrace,
And make us better people than we are right now,
People that keep renewing their minds,
People that keep transforming their lives.
For it is by turning, turning we come round right.
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