Psalm 119.97-105
Carolyn Lamb’s long and well-lived life came to an end on Thursday. Just days before Christmas, I paid her a bedside visit in her home. Knowing she was under hospice care, I grabbed my prayer book and made sure I arrived at the hour her son had said she would most likely be awake and aware. I dressed the part. When she opened her eyes and saw my clergy collar, alarm shot across her face.
“Am I dying?” she asked, hoarsely.
“We’re all dying,” I said, “You’re just a little closer than most.”
She pointed at my collar and black shirt.
“Oh this,” I explained, “I just wear this so no one mistakenly thinks I’m here to clean the gutters.”
She laughed. I sat down at the edge of the bed next to her. Having seen the Veterans of Foreign Wars license plate on her Cadillac outside— a Cadillac the size of a time-share condo, I told her about my boys enlisting in the Army. She nodded, approvingly. And as her wakefulness came and went, she told me about meeting her future husband at a Navy dance. She stopped abruptly near the end of her story.
“You’re an awfully sexy man for a preacher.”
“Yes, ma’am— at least, that’s what I tell myself.”
She pulled the covers up to her chin and looked me over again.
“What happened to your hair?”
“Cancer,” I said, “It fell out and then it all grew back on my shoulders.”
She laughed and then coughed a shallow cough.
“I bet you’re a good dancer.”
“Not sober,” I smiled.
“I didn’t think preachers drank.”
“I like to maintain a few vices. You know, so I can relate to sinners.”
We bantered like that, back and forth, for a long while. Then we prayed. And then I placed my hand on her head and pronounced the absolution and the gospel promise of her baptism. Finally, I read the twenty-third psalm. When I moved from the edge of her bedside, she grabbed the sleeve of my clericals. She didn’t say anything, but I recognized the panic in her eyes. I’ve seen it before; I’ve even seen it in the mirror a time or two.
“You don’t need to be afraid, to die,” I said and stroked her hair.
“How do you know?” she said softly, “You ain’t ever died.”
“No,” I admitted, “But I’ve come close a few times.”
And I thought about the psalm we had just prayed, “You are with me; your rod and your staff, comfort me. You prepare a table before me…you anoint my head with oil…”
“I don’t know what it’s like to die,” I said, “But I do know the you and the your in that prayer we just prayed. I know you don’t need to be afraid of him. None of us do.”
In 1937 the Gestapo shut down the Emergency Pastors’ Seminary in Finkenwalde, Germany where Dietrich Bonhoeffer served as the director. The closure of the school coincided with a ban that forbid the theologian from preaching or publishing. Nevertheless, the seminary continued to operate underground and its director continued to write, including an unfinished volume now entitled Ethics. Bonhoeffer composed the work in fragments while living in seclusion and serving as a covert participant in the German resistance through his role in military intelligence. While Ethics was never completed or prepared for publication, it clearly reflects the extreme historical pressure in which he wrote it. In particular, writing as one who is himself under judgment, Bonhoeffer speaks unsparingly about the failure of the church to see clearly the moment in which it found itself and her failure to speak truthfully about the obedience the commandments required of them. In one chapter of the manuscript, Bonhoeffer issues a long lamentation, intending the confession not as an instrument of condemnation but as an invitation to see.
To see with the vision the Word of God makes possible.
”Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
Bonhoeffer writes:
“The church confesses that it has not professed openly and clearly enough its message of the one God, revealed for all times in Jesus Christ and tolerating no other gods besides. The church confesses its timidity, its deviations, its dangerous concessions. It has often disavowed its duties as sentinel and comforter. Through this it has often withheld the compassion that it owes to the despised and rejected. The church was mute when it should have cried out, because the blood of the innocent cried out to heaven. The church did not find the right word in the right way at the right time. It did not resist to the death the falling away from faith and is guilty of the godlessness of the masses. The church confesses that it has misused the name of Christ by being ashamed of it before the world and by not resisting strongly enough the misuse of that name for evil ends. The church confesses itself guilty of violating all of the Decalogue; it confesses thereby its apostasy from Christ.”
Notice, Bonhoeffer insists that violation of the Ten Commandments is apostasy not from generic deity, not from the so-called God of the Old Testament, but (strangely) it is specifically a betrayal of Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim.
In his first epistle, John the Evangelist writes, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” John unspools that logic chain for five more verses before he posits an assertion that is both astonishing and false. “No one,” John claims, “has ever seen God.” Straightforwardly, this is not true. According to the scriptures, Abraham lunched with the LORD by the oaks of Mamre. Not only does Hagar see God, she is the first in the Bible to name him, “The God of Seeing.” “For truly,” Hagar proclaims, “here I have seen him who looks after me.” In the year King Uzziah died, the scriptures report, the prophet Isaiah saw the LORD high and lifted up. Eve and Adam not only saw God, they walked with him in the garden in the cool of the day. Moses hid himself in the cleft of a rock so that he would be spared seeing all of the visible God.
The God of the Bible is not immune to time. He makes a history with us. He not only speaks, he shows up. He alights upon our ears and he appears before our eyes. So why does the apostle make such a strange claim as “No one has ever seen God?” Jacob wrestled with the LORD. “I have seen God face to face,” Jacob testifies as he limps his way to Esau.
No one has ever seen God?
Jacob got close enough to see the whites of God’s eyes.
The Gospel of John concludes its prologue by making the same odd assertion as the epistle, “No one has ever seen God.” Again, this is not true, for the Bible tells me so: Amos saw the LORD standing beside the altar. “No one has ever seen God,” the Gospel of John announces before unveiling the mystery in the second clause of the verse, “God the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.”
He has made God visible.
According to God’s Word, whenever anyone in the scriptures saw or supped with God, the God they saw with their eyes and heard with their ears was the God who is human. Although Jesus comes after Moses and Isaiah— as he comes after John the Baptist— he is before them (in both senses of that word), and so can be known by them. As the Book of Hebrews attests, Jesus of Nazareth “is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” The New Testament even claims that Moses’ faithfulness was both from Jesus and for Jesus. In other words, anyone who knows God, anyone who has ever known God, and anyone who will ever know God, knows him as Jesus— even if they do not yet have the gospel language to identify him.
Anyone who has seen God has seen Jesus.
Because no one has ever seen God except in Jesus.
The prophet Ezekiel testifies that seated above heaven’s throne he witnessed “the figure of one who had the appearance of a man.” Question: Why did the prophet say he saw a man seated in the place of the LORD? Answer: Because the one seated at the Father’s right hand is a man. The NAME of God is Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Mary’s boy is always— eternally— the visibility of the Father. No one has seen God apart from Jesus. The voice that spoke from the Burning Bush was a voice Mary would have recognized. The hand that inscribed the law onto tablets of stone had a hole Pilate put in it. Thus, the you and the your that repeat throughout all one hundred and seventy-six verses of this psalm refer to Jesus.
“Oh how I love Christ’s law!
It is my meditation all the day.Jesus, your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
for it is ever with me.I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies, Christ, are my meditation.I understand more than the elders,
for I keep Jesus’ precepts.I hold back my feet from every evil way,
in order to keep your word, LORD Christ.I do not turn aside from your rules,
for you have taught me, Jesus.Your commandments, O Christ, are a lamp unto my feet
and a light for my path.”
Anyone who has known God— it is Jesus they have known.
Just so, to violate the Decalogue is to betray him.
“Oh how I love your law!”
In his Meditation on Psalm 119, Dietrich Bonhoeffer addresses the potential for such impossibly sanguine verses to accuse us. After all, who among us can honestly say that we meditate on the LORD’s commandments all day long, every day, much less delight in them? About such verses in this psalm, Bonhoeffer asks, “Does God’s word say too much here? Is there one Christian for whom this is true?”
To which, Bonhoeffer answers:
“But if we ask this question, we have already turned our attention from God’s word to ourselves, from the mighty promise of God to our inability. With this we come instantly under the influence of sin, which wants to keep us from trusting God’s word…The “you” with which the psalmist addresses God indicates that throughout this psalm it is not the human being who is addressed but God. Moreover, the one who commands, not the commandments, is the focus. We are encountered here by a You, not an It.”
This long psalm about the commandments is not about the commandments.
It is about the Giver of them.
“I don’t know what it’s like to die,” I said, “But I do know the you and the your in that prayer we just prayed. And I know you don’t need to be afraid of him. Not a one of us does.”
“You mean God?”
“Yes,” I said, “Sort of. God is just a generic noun. It’s not even a name. I meant Jesus. The you and the your in that prayer— in all the psalms, for that matter— refer to Jesus. And I’ve met him. I know you don’t need to fear him.”
“Can you pray with me again?” she asked.
It was a hot Indian summer day, and the gathering space for worship at Trenton State Prison felt claustrophobic with humidity. Sister Rose led the inmates through the simple liturgy and, as the assistant chaplain, I preached a homily on a passage from 1 Corinthians. After the service finished, as Sister Rose and I took down the makeshift altar and some of the men stacked chairs, a small inmate with an oily face and long fingernails named Christopher crept up to me.
It had been his second or third time in worship.
“What you said— what you preached— about how God give Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins,” and then he patted his chest, “I’m here for that.”
Not catching his meaning, I nodded and invited him to come back next week.
“Nah dog,” he said, “I mean, if what you preached is God’s promise— then I believe it. I take him at his word. I have faith.”
I smiled, about to give him a lame attaboy.
But he wasn’t done.
Quickly, Christopher followed up his profession of faith with an uncomfortable question, “I have faith. So, that means even after everything I done, I’m right with God?”
I hesitated.
I stalled because in that prison, like many prisons, the inmates who attended the Christian worship service did so because the nature of their crimes was such that church was the only place outside of their cells where they safe. Most of my congregants at the prison had committed unspeakable assaults upon the most vulnerable population, crimes that— almost to the person— had been perpetrated on them when they were children too.
Christopher was naive enough to think I hadn’t heard him.
“Preacher, I said I believe. I take God at his word. Does that mean I’m right with God?”
To say yes ran counter to every conception of justice I knew.
Nevertheless: “Yes. Yes, you’re justified.”
And Christopher smiled and then exploded in tears, like a chain somewhere within him broke loose.
“That’s crazy!” he laughed with new life.
“No,” I said, “It’s God’s gospel.”
After he’d settled and wiped his eyes, Christopher looked at the two of us and asked if he could confess the sins that no longer condemned him. Sister Rose gestured us to sit at two of the remaining chairs. I sat facing him and I listened and gritted my teeth as he confessed crimes so ghastly I hope one day I can forget ever having heard them. When Christopher was done confessing, I put my hand on his head like Sister Rose had taught me. I laid my fingers in between his unkempt corn rows. His head was hot and sweaty and greasy and I felt certain the Lord— or maybe his Enemy— was testing me to see if I’d do the deed and hand over the goods.
“In the name of Jesus Christ…” I began.
He cried again as I absolved him of his sins.
When we were done, he stood up and straightened his khaki uniform.
“Now that you done saved me,” he said, “You gonna tell me how I’m supposed to live?”
I shook my head.
“Behavior— that’s law not gospel,” I started to explain, “I’m not here to tell you how to live.”
He looked at me with the same incredulousness with which he’d greeted the gospel.
“Dog, if you don’t tell me what he wants me to do up in here, how I am ever supposed to know who he is?”
In the Book of Jeremiah, the Word of the LORD comes to the prophet, hollering, “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no purpose. Steal, would you, murder, commit adultery, perjure yourselves, burn incense to Baal, follow alien gods that you do not known?— and then come presenting yourselves in this Temple that bears my name, saying “Now we are safe”— safe to go on committing all these abominations. Do you take this Temple that bears my name for a den of robbers? I, at any rate, am not blind.”
Do you take this Temple for a den of thieves? The Word of the LORD that appears to Jeremiah sounds like Jesus. Because it is Jesus. Anyone who has seen God has seen Jesus. Because no one has ever seen God except by Jesus.
In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther insists that “Anyone who knows the Ten Commandments perfectly knows the entire scriptures.” Jesus himself says so about himself to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, “All the Bible is about me.” But it is not simply that Jesus reveals the commandments to Moses. We only know one another— we only know anyone— through speech. Therefore, it is not primarily that Jesus reveals the commandments to us; the commandments reveal Jesus to us. We know Jesus because Jesus has spoken. He has done more than make himself seen. He has shown us his will. And by showing us his will, he has revealed his character.
Jesus does not simply reveal the commandments. The commandments reveal Jesus. Before and behind each word of Torah is Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim. As the psalmist says, the law is a lamp in that it illuminates Christ. “You shall have no other gods before me.” Jesus is the one who wants to be LORD alone and LORD in all things for you. Jesus loves you like a jealous lover, wanting no other gods to rival your heart’s affections. Jesus wants you to make no graven images because his only image is you. Jesus refuses to take his Father’s name in vain. Jesus honors his Mother— even from his cross. Jesus neither kills nor covets. Jesus does not lie. It is Jesus who wants you to do the immigrant in your land no wrong because once even the Holy Family were immigrants in the land of Egypt.
The law illumines Jesus.
As the church fathers insisted to a person, knowledge of God, faith in God, cannot be separated from the attempt at a holy life— the word of the cross must be yoked to the way of the cross— because the one who gave his body on a tree just is the one who revealed his will on Sinai. The imitation of Christ is necessary for the knowledge of Christ exactly because the commandments shine a light on him. The gospel does not rescue you from the burden of being a Christian because the one whose resurrection the gospel announces is the same one who gave the law to Moses. It is Jesus who has no desire for your worship if you have only apathy for the injustice in your midst. He desires mercy and not sacrifice.
“If you don’t tell me what he wants me to do up in here, how am I ever supposed to know who he is?”
In his unfinished Ethics, Bonhoeffer’s long lamentation continues:
“The church confesses itself guilty of violating all of the Ten Commandments. It confesses thereby its apostasy from Christ…The church confesses that it has witnessed the arbitrary use of brutal force, the suffering in body and soul of countless innocent people, that it has witnessed oppression, hatred, and murder without raising its voice for the victims and without finding ways of rushing to help them. It has become guilty of the lives of the weakest and most defenseless brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.
The church confesses that it has coveted security, tranquility, peace, property, and honor to which it had no claim, and therefore has not bridled human covetousness, but promoted it.
The church confesses it has not made the loving care of God credible. By falling silent the church became guilty for the loss of responsible action in society, courageous intervention, and the readiness to suffer for what is acknowledged as right. The church is thus guilty of the government’s falling away from Christ.”
Jesus does not merely reveal the commandments. The commandments reveal Jesus. The law is not an It. It is a You. Just so, our obedience to the commandments makes Christ credible. And, according to Bonhoeffer, the church must make Jesus credible. We must make God credible by living in such a way that his promises appear trustworthy in the flesh. We must embody a life together that makes the mercy of Mary’s boy imaginable.
And the word credible is key. Our obedience does not earn us anything; salvation is by grace alone. Our obedience does not earn us anything, but it does reveal whether we actually know him. Whether we trust the you and the your in this prayer. Because if the law reveals Jesus, then a life shaped by it will reveal him too. Apart from such obedience— the attempt at it, the gospel is just noise. And the world already has enough whistles and gunshots, cries and recriminations.
“If you don’t tell me what he wants me to do up in here, how am I ever supposed to know who he is?”
I saw Sister Rose watching to see how I would obey Christopher’s request.
“Come back on Tuesday,” I said, “For Bible Study. We’ll look at the two mountains, Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount.”
“But can’t you, like, just give it to me now, short and sweet— tell me what I’m supposed to do?”
“Sure,” I said, “You’re supposed to try to live in a manner that makes no sense— no sense whatsoever— if Jesus Christ is not the risen LORD.”
Anyone who has seen God has seen Jesus. Because no one has ever seen God except by Jesus. Which means, God cannot be glimpsed apart from Jesus. And here’s the rub: you are his body and thus light for the world. God is nowhere to be seen in this world apart from a people who make him credible.
So hear the good news:
You can.
The you and the your can be trusted. I’ve met him.
You can live in a manner that makes no sense if Christ is not risen indeed.
