Who Wants to Live Forever?

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

22^nd August 2021

 

Psalm 49

Matthew 6:25-34

As I was preparing this sermon this week,
            I found myself struck by the parallels between our Psalm for today,
            and the lyrics of two contemporary Psalms
            which take the form of pop songs.
 
Both these songs, like Psalm 49,
            reflect on the fleeting nature and value of life.
 
The first is from the 1970s, and was written by Brian May the astrophysicist,
            who also happens to be the guitarist for the rock band Queen.
 
It’s the song, ‘Who Wants to Live Forever?,
            and it was the theme tune for the film Highlander,
            which, starring Sean Connery,
                        tells the story of an age-old war between immortal warriors,
           
Here’s a couple of the verses:
 
There's no time for us,
There's no place for us,
What is this thing that builds our dreams,
            yet slips away from us,
Who wants to live forever?
 
There's no chance for us,
It's all decided for us,
This world has only one sweet moment
            set aside for us,
Who wants to live forever?
 
The other song is more recent,
            and is from the 2008 Coldplay album Viva la Vida,
and here’s an extract of the lyrics.
 
I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
 
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"
 
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand
 
I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing,
Roman Calvary choirs are singing.
For some reason I can't explain,
I know Saint Peter won't call my name.
Never an honest word.
That was when I ruled the world.
 
Both these songs take us right into the territory
            addressed by Psalm 49,
which asserts the fatalistic reality
            that rich and poor, wise and foolish,
            all share the darkness of the grave for eternity.
 
This psalm is one which fits the category
            often known as the ‘psalms of disorientation’.
 
These psalms give voice to the realisation that the old certainties of life:
            health, wealth, and prosperity;
are in fact capricious blessings,
            and useless as a method of judging a life’s worth.
 
Health can desert us in an instant,
            wealth and prosperity can be taken from us at a moment’s notice.
The evil prosper and the righteous suffer,
            and there seems no justice to any of it.
These are the insights of the psalms of disorientation.
 
Like the deposed king in Coldplay’s song,
            who sweeps the streets he used to own,
power is no guarantee of happiness.
 
So Psalm 49, along with the other psalms of disorientation,
            challenges us to look at our lives,
            to consider the so-called certainties of our existence,
and to realise that the seemingly unshakeable pillars of our world
            are merely pillars of salt and sand.
 
And so Psalm 49 invites its readers to consider two ways of living,
            which it characterises as the way of life, and the way of death.
 
It is seeking to correct a profound confusion
            about what in fact makes for life,
because many people all too easily and wrongly
            regard the way of death as the way of life.
 
So this morning, as we consider the significance of our own lives,
            let’s allow this psalm to lead us on a journey
            from the way of death to the way of life.
 
Psalm 49 begins by setting out its audience,
            and on this it is universal in its scope.
This is a psalm for all peoples,
            for all the inhabitants of the earth,
            for low and high, rich and poor together.
 
This isn’t just a message for the People of God,
            and it isn’t a message for the rich alone, nor for the poor.
It’s for all of us,
            and the reason for this universality
            is that it is a psalm in the tradition of ancient wisdom literature.
 
The clues are there in the opening verses
            when it speaks of ‘wisdom’ and ‘understanding’,
             of the ‘proverb’ and the ‘riddle’,
which suggest that what is about to be taught
            is not going to be obvious common sense.
 
This psalm is going to take its readers beyond the superficial
            into the world of the deep hidden wisdom of God,
            that belies the easy and obvious wisdom of the world.
 
In fact, the counter-intuitive nature of the wisdom on offer here
            has already begun to be revealed,
            in the universal nature of the call to wisdom.
 
The world does not teach the rich alongside the poor,
            it does not educate the stupid alongside the wise.
 
We see this in our own society where,
            despite the best aspirations of comprehensive education,
advancement to the higher echelons remains stubbornly dependent
            on the wealth and status of your parents,
                        the postcode you lived in,
            the colour of your skin,
                        and the school you went to.
 
The Psalm’s call for all to be taught together, because all are equal,
            is the beginning of its invitation to wisdom,
and an appreciation of the equality of humanity
            remains something we too need to discover in our own lives,
            our communities of faith, and our society.
 
Those who are economically and educationally disadvantaged
            do not, in some way, deserve their lot in life.
And neither do the rich and the successful.
 
One of the glories of churches
            is that they can be places where these barriers that exist in society
                        can begin to be broken down
            as we discover our fundamental equality before God.
 
One of the tragedies of churches
            is that too often they preserve, mirror, or even amplify
            the divisions within wider society.
 
From Christianity’s shameful collusion with slavery,
            to its oppression of women,
            to its exclusion of those who are LGBTQ+,
I think we still need to discover the wisdom of this psalm
            that, before God, all are equal.
 
But this conviction of equality
            is only the beginning of the wisdom on offer here,
because it has yet to address the question of justice,
            of why it is that the good and the faithful often end up impoverished;
            while the schemers and dealers so often come out on top.
 
This is the question of theodicy
            that we’ve spoken about previously in our series on the psalms;
and it isn’t a speculative or theoretical question,
            it’s an experiential question for many of us.
 
Life can sometimes be incredibly unfair,
            and how are we going to square that with a belief in a God of justice?
 
Well, says the psalm, death is the great leveller.
 
All the imagined advantage of wellbeing and power
            that the rich take comfort in,
is in fact of no consequence from the perspective of the grave.
 
As the modern proverb succinctly puts it,
            ‘you can’t take it with you’.
 
We’re all equal before God,
            and we’re all equal in the end.
So, what’s the point of life?
            What are we to do with our three-score-years-and-ten?
 
Is it a question of enjoying it now while you’ve got it?
            Or is there more to life than the drive to fulfil our desires?
 
This is where the psalm takes us next,
            as it reflects on the purpose of life from the perspective of the grave.
 
And the first area that it addresses
            is that of the experience of fear.
 
The Psalmist asks, rhetorically,
            ‘Why should I fear in times of trouble?’ (v.5).
 
For so many people, fear is the dominant and driving force
            that keeps them from living fully the life that is before them.
 
Clearly not all fear is bad:
            a fear of falling from a great height is healthy and perfectly sensible.
But if your fear of heights stops you
            going up the Eiffel Tower to see Paris by moonlight,
that fear has long since ceased to be life-preserving,
            and has instead become life-inhibiting.
 
And so many of us are constrained and constricted by our fears:
            fear of failure, fear of loneliness,
                        fear of rejection, fear of change,
            fear of uncertainty, fear of getting hurt,
                        fear of being judged, fear of inadequacy,
            fear of missing out, fear of losing control,
                        fear of something bad happening;
all these and so many more hold us back,
            and stop us being who we were made to be.
 
Well, asks the Psalmist, and I paraphrase:
            ‘What’s the worst that could happen?
                        You’re going to die anyway, we’ve already established that,
                        so don’t be afraid.’
 
But the freedom from fear
            that we gain by looking at life from the perspective of the grave
isn’t cast as a kind of self-help mantra
            to unlock success and wellbeing.
Far from it.
 
Unlike the myriad of websites
            who promise systems for overcoming fear
                        and achieving your potential,
            this Psalm takes the opposite view.
 
There’s no point accumulating wealth and power for its own sake,
            and no point being envious of or intimidated by those who do.
They can’t take it with them,
            so it’s meaningless.
 
Better to do something else with your life,
            something that has an eternal value,
            rather than a temporal valuation.
 
Those who are pleased with their lot in life go down to Sheol,
            to the darkness of the grave,
            and all their efforts amount to nothing (v.14).
But there is another way.
 
The Psalm offers it to us in the extraordinary v.15.
            ‘But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, f
            or God will receive me’.
 
The meaning we seek in life is found not in wealth, power, and privilege;
            and neither is it found in the asceticism of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
Rather, life’s purpose,
            that which transcends the moment and acquires eternal value,
is found in God,
            in realising that one’s status and value
            are not a function of possessions or education,
but of knowing ourselves to be God’s dearly-loved children.
 
The rich cannot redeem themselves (v.7),
            but God can and does redeem the lives of those who trust in God.
 
All the moments of our lives find their eternal value
            as they are received into the eternally loving arms of God.
 
We need to be careful here
            not to try and impose a belief in the afterlife
            on this ancient Jewish text;
that way of looking at what happens after death
            had not entered the Jewish tradition
            at the time this Psalm was written.
 
This isn’t talking about who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell,
            and I don’t think we should do so either!
 
Rather, this is the Psalmist’s answer to the question
            of what makes for a meaningful life in the face of injustice;
            and the answer is simple.
 
A meaningful life is a life that is meaningful to God.
            A life of eternal value is found in a life focussed beyond itself,
                        on the divine other,
            rather than on the temporary rewards of the here-and-now.
 
Reading this ancient wisdom Psalm in the twenty-first century,
            it brings a surprisingly contemporary challenge.
 
To a world of consumer capitalism,
            which finds meaning in possessions, status, and privilege;
            this psalm opens the door to another way of finding value in life.
 
It confronts us with a God who seeks out for new life
            precisely those marginalised by the present system.
It invites us to embrace its wisdom,
            which critiques the economic powers of our society;
and it disarms the power of fear
            that holds us subservient to systems of social control.
 
If our trust, our ultimate trust, is in God,
            then the days allotted to us have an eternal value,
and life is encountered as truly and fully meaningful,
            both to us, and to God.

Is Confession Good for the Soul?

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
15th August 2021

Psalm 51.1-17; Mark 1.4-9

Listen to this sermon here:

I’m one of the Trustees of the Christian Enquiry Agency,
            which runs the website www.christianity.org.uk
 
One of the features of this website,
            in addition to a large selection of excellent articles
            introducing people to different aspects of the Christian faith,
is that we offer an opportunity for people to send in their prayer requests.
 
Those of us who are trustees get these prayers requests through in real time,
            and they are also distributed more widely in anonymised form,
            in a monthly prayer email.
 
It is, I have to say, a fascinating insight into people’s prayer lives.
 
People often type their request
            in the form of the prayer they want to articulate to God,
            and these can be raw, profound, moving, and heartfelt.
 
I would say that most of the prayers fall into the category of intercession;
            people asking God for something for themselves, or for someone they love.
So there are prayers about financial stresses,
            relationship difficulties, and medical problems.
 
Much more rarely there are prayers of confession,
            and almost always these are related to sexual ethics,
            as people confess their sexual sins to God, seeking forgiveness.
 
Which makes me wonder
            what people think sin, confession, and forgiveness are about.
Is it only about lust, infidelity,
            and the actions that arise from these?
 
Well, as we come today to the latest instalment
            in our summer series looking at some of the Psalms,
we find ourselves at possibly the most famous prayer of confession ever uttered.
 
The normal heading for this Psalm is almost certainly a later addition,
            and it ascribes the Psalm to David,
                        as his prayer of confession for his adultery with Bathsheba
                        and his murder of her husband Uriah,
            uttered after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan.
 
Whether or not this is truly the origin of Psalm 51,
            it certainly works in this context,
and it locates the Psalm in the world of lust, infidelity,
            and the actions that arise from them.
 
What is interesting, I think, is how the Psalm develops from this starting point
            as it works its way through the theological themes
            of confession, repentance, and forgiveness.
 
So as we come now to look at this famous Psalm,
            I want to pose a couple of questions for us to consider:
What is a prayer of confession?
            And what do we think we’re doing when we pray one?
 
So, to Psalm 51.
 
The first couple of verses set in place
            the themes and vocabulary of confession
            that the rest of the Psalm will explore in more detail,
so let’s hear them again now:
 
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
            according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
 
These are great words to hear at a baptism, aren’t they?
 
There is an interweaving in these two verses,
            of human action with God’s action,
an interplay between what we might call our cultic deeds and the divine response.
 
One of the cultic deeds of our faith is the act of baptism.
            It is a ritual, a symbol and a sign,
            a bit like the sharing of bread and wine at a communion service.
 
And in a moments of cultic action such as baptism or communion,
            we dare to believe that God is also active.
This is what makes bread, wine, and water
            into sacramental elements at the heart of our faith.
 
So as Lanze went down into the waters of the baptismal pool,
            we believe that God met him in those waters,
            according to God’s faithful promise.
 
In the act of baptism, as in these opening verses of the psalm,
            human need is laid bare:
we express publicly our longing
            for our transgressions to be blotted out,
            for our iniquity to be washed away,
            and our sins to be cleansed.
 
And in return God extends mercy,
            God reaches out to us in steadfast love.
 
And so we see both the human need and the divine response,
            we see cultic action and covenantal promise interwoven.
 
And in this interplay between our action and God’s action,
            we discover that forgiveness is always God’s action,
            forgiveness is always God’s initiative;
but we also discover that forgiveness always affects our own actions,
            as we respond to what God has done.
 
God’s action and our response are not mutually exclusive,
            rather they are inextricably intertwined,
as we enact in our lives the forgiveness that God offers,
            as God’s forgiveness becomes transformative in our lives.
 
Lanze spoke movingly earlier
            of wondering if he was not ‘good enough’ for baptism,
and as Martyn reminded us in his sermon last week:
             none of us ever are.
 
We always stand in need of forgiveness, never more so than at the moment of baptism.
 
And so Psalm 51 continues with its words of confession:
 
vv 3-4
For I know my transgressions,
            and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight,
            so that you are justified in your sentence
            and blameless when you pass judgment.
 
The insight of these verses is to do with the nature of sin,
            and it’s something I think we need to hear, and hear clearly.
 
Sin, according to Psalm 51, is a violation of our relationship with God.
 
It may have a social manifestation,
            such as David’s adultery with Bathsheba,
            and his murder of her husband Uriah,
but these are not the sin, they are the consequences of sin.
 
Sin, according to this Psalm, is always first and foremost a theological problem,
            it is not about moral, ethical, social, or psychological wrongdoing.
 
It may have moral, ethical, social, or psychological consequences,
            but sin is in essence theological,
                        it is the violation of God,
                        it is the fracturing of our relationship with God.
 
So the forgiveness of sin
            is primarily about the restoration of the sinner’s relationship with God.
And only secondarily about the restitution of wrongs,
            or the restoration of human relationships.
 
Sin is not the harmful actions we enact against other people,
            it is always the harm we do against God.
 
This is because sin is a theological concept, not an ethical one.
 
This isn’t to say that we don’t do wrong to others, of course we do.
            And we are called to seek their forgiveness,
            and to offer forgiveness to those who trespass against us.
 
But sin is something different: sin is always and only against God,
            and this means that forgiveness for sin is God’s prerogative alone.
 
Whether or not we are forgiven by those whom we have wronged
            is an independent issue to whether or not we are forgiven our sins by God.
 
This matters, and it matters a lot,
            because many of us live with guilt and shame for much of our lives.
 
We live with the consequences of our actions,
            and indeed of the actions of others towards us.
 
And human brokenness and fracturing of relationships
            are not something it is always within our power to resolve,
            even if we wanted to  which, if we are honest, is not always the case.
 
But our status before God,
            as those who are washed, cleansed, and eternally loved,
is a status that is independent of our other relationship complexities.
 
The forgiveness that we seek,
            the forgiveness that blots out our sin and shame and guilt,
            is God’s alone to give,
which means no human, no matter how powerful their hold over us,
            has the power to withhold God’s forgiveness from us.
 
And then we come to verse 5, and we need to spend a moment or two here,
            because it has an unhealthy and unhelpful history of interpretation.
 
St Augustine, the Christian Bishop from the 4^th century,
            developed a doctrine that came to be known as
            the doctrine of original sin.
 
This is the idea that everyone is born sinful,
            because everyone is born as the result of an act of sexual union,
            and sex is inherently sinful.
 
This means that everyone has a built-in urge to do bad things,
            and to disobey God.
 
I think it tells us a lot
            about how Augustine experienced his own sexuality and sexual desires,
and superficially you can see how it ties in with v5 of this Psalm:
 
The Psalmist says,
Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
 
However, we need to avoid overlaying
            Augustine’s wrestling with his own demons,
            onto this ancient Hebrew text.
 
This verse does not state that sex is sinful,
            and nor does it infer that the writer of the psalm has a corrupt beginning,
            and nor does it suggest that the writer’s mother is morally implicated
                        as the daughter of a sinful Eve.
 
Rather, to get to the heart of this,
            we need to again separate out sin, from ethical or moral behaviour.
 
Augustine’s sense of sinfulness
            was inextricably intertwined with sex, and sexual behaviour,
and as Western Christians, we are the heirs
            to that way of understanding sin.
 
But what if sinfulness is a theological state,
            rather than an ethical one?
 
If we go back to our definition of sin
            as a broken relationship with God,
then the Psalmist’s claim to have been born guilty
            takes on a very different connotation,
one which is theological rather than ethical.
 
The Psalmist is realising that there was never a time when he,
            and I think we regrettably have to assume this is a man,
there never was a time when he experienced himself
            as ‘right’ with God.
 
This is someone who knows from their own experience of life,
            that their relationship with their creator
            has always been in need of restoration;
and who has come to understand that by their own efforts
            they cannot, and have never been able to,
            ascend to the heights of God’s righteousness.
 
And this is a profound insight,
            because it takes us into another theological aspect of sin:
            that of idolatry.
 
When humans try to become like God,
            they end up constructing God in their own image,
            and in the end they simply end up worshipping themselves.
 
None of us, by our own efforts, can become righteous.
 
Rather, like this Psalmist, we need to realise
            that instead of making God in our image,
            we are made in God’s image,
and we are therefore created to have a relationship
            with the God who is beyond us, other to us,
but who nonetheless draws us inexorably into a relationship
            with the one who alone can declare us righteous, forgiven, and restored.
 
The Psalmist knows that they don’t measure up,
            and can never do so through their own efforts,
not to some human standard of behaviour
            but against God’s righteousness.
 
And so they look to God for help,
            asking that God will teach them wisdom in their inner heart,
that God will give them the gift of discernment,
            that will enable them to make new, truthful, faithful decisions.
 
The writer of this Psalm longs to be different,
            even if they know that the transformation will be a life-long process.
 
And they know that the impetus for change
            must come, ultimately, from God.
 
None of us can, by our own strength, attain righteousness.
            We all, like the Psalmist, stand in perpetual need of the grace of God.
 
And so the Psalmist asks, implores God to purge him, to fill him,
            he asks that God’s face will turn from his sins,
                        that God will blot out his iniquities,
            and that God will create in him a clean heart,
                        give him a new and right spirit.
He longs for God to not exclude him,
            that God will now withdraw the life-giving Spirit from him.
He wants a restoration of relationship with God,
            a resurgence of joy, deliverance from evil,
            and the strength to meet each new day.
 
To all of which, I am sure, each of us would say ‘Amen’.
 
Because we too know what the Psalmist is discovering,
            which is that confession and forgiveness is not a one-off event.
 
Those of us who have already been through the waters of baptism,
            who have already enacted in our lives the symbolism
                        of washing, purification, and resurrection,
we know that life goes on,
            and that despite our best efforts,
            we continue to fail to measure up to the righteousness of God.
 
The baptised stand as much in need of God’s mercy and grace
            as the unbaptised.
 
The difference is that we, like the Psalmist of old
            have committed ourselves publicly to the journey of faith.
 
We will keep on trying,
            even as we continue to stumble along the path.
 
The call here is to become people of hope.
 
Counter-intuitively, those who are most alert to their failings,
            to their sinfulness,
            to their deep alienation from God,
are those who have most cause to hope in the active grace of God.
 
Those who know they are empty,
            have most hope of being filled.
 
And so as the Psalm comes to its conclusion,
            the writer, despite all the anguish that has gone before,
is nonetheless able to turn their voice to praise.
 
Not in their own strength,
            but as a response to the faithfulness of God:
 
¹⁵ O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
 
The very lips which had previously been speaking
            words of self-abasement and hopeless resignation,
become the lips that exalt God.
 
Praise is the end result of a process,
            not its beginning.
 
Praise is what emerges once we have encountered God
            in all God’s righteousness and in all our sinfulness.
 
Praise is the product of a restored relationship
            with the God or righteousness.
 
Praise speaks always of God’s grace, God’s action,
            God’s outreaching into our lives
            to draw us into the eternal embrace of forgiveness and acceptance.
 
As Walter Brueggemann puts it,
            ‘True worship and new living
            require a yielding of self to begin again on God’s terms.’
 
And here we meet a profound challenge to our practices of worship.
 
If we have reduced confession and repentance to personal ethical or moral choices,
            we have missed the point that this Psalm has brought us to.
 
It’s all about the restoration of our fractured relationship with God,
            and the relocation of ourselves in right relation to God.
 
Sin is not what we do, it is who we are before God,
            and forgiveness is God’s response to our sinful nature.
 
When we realise that righteousness is not something we can achieve
            by modifying our behaviour or assiduously guarding our thoughts,
we come to understand that it is all, always and only, of God.
 
Only God can make us clean,
            and any consequent change in our actions
            arises from God’s prior action in us.
 
When our sins of pride, idolatry, and selfishness against God are confessed,
            then our lives are restored as God forgives us and grants us new life.
 
So when we confess our sins,
            we are confessing the brokenness of our relationship with God;
and the forgiveness God grants us,
            is the restoration of our souls to the one who breathed us into being.
 
This psalm takes us beyond any efforts of our own to become righteous,
            and instead invites us into God’s righteousness,
which is transformative not only of our own lives,
            but of all people, and all creation.