Climbing to a Holy Holiday Attitude
1 A Song of Assents. Of David. I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go into the house of the LORD." 2 Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem! 3 Jerusalem is built as a city that is compact together, 4 where the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, to the Testimony of Israel, to give thanks to the Name of the LORD. 5 For thrones are set there for judgment, the thrones of the house of David. 6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: "May they prosper who love you. 7 Peace be within your walls, prosperity within your palaces." 8 for the sake of my brethren and companions, I will now say, "Peace be within you." 9 Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek your good. Psalm 122, New King James Version
John Piper once remarked that one of the reasons Paul heard the Lord so clearly is that the apostle walked everywhere he went. Piper contrasted a walking age with its built-in stretches for contemplation, its technological inability to fill life to the margins, with our own noisy age so ready to crowd out thought.
That highly selective Piperism, along with Christ's regular example of coming apart with selected disciples or altogether by Himself has been all I have needed to fully enable my inner introvert. Go away, world, I'm contemplating! Or, at any rate, I'll say I'm contemplating in order to avoid the friction and growth involved in life in community. Properly insulated, I can convince myself that I and anyone who cultivates a Biblical attitude is above and apart from, for instance, the holiday bustle which begins this time of year.
For us, Psalm 122 is a confrontational gift. David is accompanying other pilgrims up to the Temple Mount. This is his country's holiday season. In place of the ugly sweater, in verse one, he locates his gladness. He reminds himself that he was glad when his regular routine, including some of the musings that have made the sweet psalmist's one of the most recognizable voices in history, were interrupted. Some interruptions, David sets the tone, or holy interruptions.
Honoring the Holy One at the vital center of the holiday season involves putting oneself where other people are. David inconveniences himself and the prerogatives of royal business to relocate his feet, and the rest of himself attached to them. Those feet, he says in Psalm 122:2, are crammed around Jerusalem's gates as he intermingles with his countrymen. Even find a way in verse three to convey, "It's crowded," with a Christmas card positivity. Can we since the sanctity in being compacted together just as readily as when God calls the introvert apart from community?
Verses four and five show that David is determined to change more than location. He is in the process of changing how he sees those with whom he celebrates the holidays. Crowd? Sure. Tribes with barriers, and rivalries, and histories of slights? Absolutely. Verse four confesses the reality of one community coming from many factions Americans can recognize in our founders' aspirations.
Looking at this text from the perspective of the New Testament, especially Revelation, we can see perhaps more clearly than he did the splendor of tribal differences being subsumed beneath the shadow of thrones. American Christian from the Bible Belt, you will rule and reign with Christ along with urbanites from the blue states, and brothers and sisters in Christ from the Asia, to Africa, to the Middle East. These are tribes. Identity in Him is overarching. Are our tribal differences with fellow parishioners, coworkers of the Christmas party, or family members across the table, too much to overcome?
What a lovely place, then, to pause and pray for peace, as Psalm 122:6 pleads! The congestion and busyness is real, Lord! Our differences are more distinct, and may be galling, in close contact and under pressure. The plea now that we see individual differences under trying conditions is that prosperity extend beyond us and our kind, most narrowly defined. The holiday spirit of biblical vintage flows into every neighborhood of verse seven's literal Jerusalem, and our Jerusalem.
The wholeness of David's shalom, his peace, is such that he wanted to flow into palaces. Do we believe in the inexhaustible nature of the Lord's prosperity such that we would want those in the palaces of our culture to prosper even more? Can we set aside at least for the holidays our residual angst that when others prosper, they prosper at our expense?
David refuses to rehearse and recycle what comes most easily for him. What he thinks and what he says, he says in verse eight for the benefit of his companions in this enlarged sense. Member of the crowd with his elbow in my ribs, peace be with you. Tribes, peace be with you. 1%, peace be with you. In the close quarters and class animosities were peace is most needed, he is determined to give it off the closed orders without being asked. His message, rehearsed yet all the more sincere for the discipline of rehearsal, is peace be with you.
Why this bigger, stretching, sense of peace? David's answering final flourish in verse nine shows the well of goodwill from which he draws as he heads into his holiday season. "Because of the house of the LORD, I will seek your peace." What, exactly, is the vision that keeps David dancing amid such commotion? Does he mean the house of the Lord is building in events contemporary to David's life, as God has promised to establish David's dynasty? If so, we can rejoice in that, as we go into the holidays actively looking for ways in which the Lord is demonstrating Himself in the here and now at home, among relatives, and in the workplace.
But we know, Christians, that the true, ultimately resplendent, house of the Lord is coming DOWN in the fully intact New Jerusalem that will not know a human hammer. Because of the house of the Lord, because of the community that the called out on will share together forever, we can actively seek each other's peace now. In developing the deferential in earthly interactions, we are actively pick up the habit that will be ours for eternity. Anything we lose in the process of keeping the peace and avoiding distractions from the glory of God is not worthy of comparing to what is to come.
John Piper once remarked that one of the reasons Paul heard the Lord so clearly is that the apostle walked everywhere he went. Piper contrasted a walking age with its built-in stretches for contemplation, its technological inability to fill life to the margins, with our own noisy age so ready to crowd out thought.
That highly selective Piperism, along with Christ's regular example of coming apart with selected disciples or altogether by Himself has been all I have needed to fully enable my inner introvert. Go away, world, I'm contemplating! Or, at any rate, I'll say I'm contemplating in order to avoid the friction and growth involved in life in community. Properly insulated, I can convince myself that I and anyone who cultivates a Biblical attitude is above and apart from, for instance, the holiday bustle which begins this time of year.
For us, Psalm 122 is a confrontational gift. David is accompanying other pilgrims up to the Temple Mount. This is his country's holiday season. In place of the ugly sweater, in verse one, he locates his gladness. He reminds himself that he was glad when his regular routine, including some of the musings that have made the sweet psalmist's one of the most recognizable voices in history, were interrupted. Some interruptions, David sets the tone, or holy interruptions.
Honoring the Holy One at the vital center of the holiday season involves putting oneself where other people are. David inconveniences himself and the prerogatives of royal business to relocate his feet, and the rest of himself attached to them. Those feet, he says in Psalm 122:2, are crammed around Jerusalem's gates as he intermingles with his countrymen. Even find a way in verse three to convey, "It's crowded," with a Christmas card positivity. Can we since the sanctity in being compacted together just as readily as when God calls the introvert apart from community?
Verses four and five show that David is determined to change more than location. He is in the process of changing how he sees those with whom he celebrates the holidays. Crowd? Sure. Tribes with barriers, and rivalries, and histories of slights? Absolutely. Verse four confesses the reality of one community coming from many factions Americans can recognize in our founders' aspirations.
Looking at this text from the perspective of the New Testament, especially Revelation, we can see perhaps more clearly than he did the splendor of tribal differences being subsumed beneath the shadow of thrones. American Christian from the Bible Belt, you will rule and reign with Christ along with urbanites from the blue states, and brothers and sisters in Christ from the Asia, to Africa, to the Middle East. These are tribes. Identity in Him is overarching. Are our tribal differences with fellow parishioners, coworkers of the Christmas party, or family members across the table, too much to overcome?
What a lovely place, then, to pause and pray for peace, as Psalm 122:6 pleads! The congestion and busyness is real, Lord! Our differences are more distinct, and may be galling, in close contact and under pressure. The plea now that we see individual differences under trying conditions is that prosperity extend beyond us and our kind, most narrowly defined. The holiday spirit of biblical vintage flows into every neighborhood of verse seven's literal Jerusalem, and our Jerusalem.
The wholeness of David's shalom, his peace, is such that he wanted to flow into palaces. Do we believe in the inexhaustible nature of the Lord's prosperity such that we would want those in the palaces of our culture to prosper even more? Can we set aside at least for the holidays our residual angst that when others prosper, they prosper at our expense?
David refuses to rehearse and recycle what comes most easily for him. What he thinks and what he says, he says in verse eight for the benefit of his companions in this enlarged sense. Member of the crowd with his elbow in my ribs, peace be with you. Tribes, peace be with you. 1%, peace be with you. In the close quarters and class animosities were peace is most needed, he is determined to give it off the closed orders without being asked. His message, rehearsed yet all the more sincere for the discipline of rehearsal, is peace be with you.
Why this bigger, stretching, sense of peace? David's answering final flourish in verse nine shows the well of goodwill from which he draws as he heads into his holiday season. "Because of the house of the LORD, I will seek your peace." What, exactly, is the vision that keeps David dancing amid such commotion? Does he mean the house of the Lord is building in events contemporary to David's life, as God has promised to establish David's dynasty? If so, we can rejoice in that, as we go into the holidays actively looking for ways in which the Lord is demonstrating Himself in the here and now at home, among relatives, and in the workplace.
But we know, Christians, that the true, ultimately resplendent, house of the Lord is coming DOWN in the fully intact New Jerusalem that will not know a human hammer. Because of the house of the Lord, because of the community that the called out on will share together forever, we can actively seek each other's peace now. In developing the deferential in earthly interactions, we are actively pick up the habit that will be ours for eternity. Anything we lose in the process of keeping the peace and avoiding distractions from the glory of God is not worthy of comparing to what is to come.
Comments
Post a Comment