Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: Psalm 31,1.2a.5.7-8; Psalm 31,2b.3. Quinquagesima

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Psalm 31,1.2a.5.7-8; Psalm 31,2b.3. Quinquagesima

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

Psalm 31,1.2a.5.7-8; Psalm 31,2b.3 1517

Quinquagesima or Estomihi (Sonntag vor der Passionszeit) 022

Nestor, Bishop at Sida in Pamphylia, Turkey. Martyr 250

26. Februar 2017

1. О Lord, You are the God who works wonders; make known Your Might among the nations, so that they see Your arm redeem Your Church. Amen. (Gradual)

2. Be a Rock of refuge for me, a Strong Fortress to save me! For Your Name’s sake You lead me and guide me; In You, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame; in Your Righteousness deliver me! Incline Your ear to me; rescue me quickly! Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O Lord, Faithful God. I will rejoice and be glad in Your Steadfast Love, because You have seen my affliction; You have known the distress of my soul, and You have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy; You have set my feet in a broad place.

3. »Be a Rock of refuge for me, a Strong Fortress to save me! For Your Name’s sake You lead me and guide me;« Psalm 31 is one of several psalms that inspired Luther’s writing of his hymn A Mighty Fortress is our God. This hymn is a song of deliverance and salvation by the hand of Christ. Jesus told His disciples in the Gospels that this deliverance would take place through His rejection, being killed and rising from the grave. His disciples did not receive that teaching with thanksgiving for they thought such an undignified end for the Messiah could not happen. But Jesus patiently taught them that to be lead and guided by Him is to ultimately to be lead to the foot of the cross and guided to the empty tomb three days later.

4. »In You, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame; in Your Righteousness deliver me!« The Christian faith teaches at its very core that the refuge of God is at the cross and the tomb. Death and the Grave are shameful in our eyes, and with good reason. No one wants to suffer and die. We want to live healthy and fulfilled lives. But Jesus tells us that what is shameful is most glorious in His Father’s eyes. True righteousness is not earned by doing the works of the law; the Pharisees taught that, and Jesus rejected their teaching. Jesus taught that true righteousness is a gift of grace given to us by God, and that Jesus Himself merited this righteousness for the whole world. Our old Adam with its sinful flesh refuses to receive this grace. We would rather earn God’s favor on our own, with works we devise for ourselves from the law so that we can measure ourselves and monitor our pious progress. Such ideals seep their way into our cultural identity, so that a phrase like God helps those who help themselves is believed by many to actually be a verse in the Bible.

5. »Incline Your ear to me; rescue me quickly! Into Your hand I commit my spirit;« The Psalmist knows the wicked heart of man and knows that people are quick to fall for the deception of self-righteousness as that espoused by the Pharisees. He thus exhorts God to rescue us from such inward looking platitudes of self-redemption. Left to our own idolatrous religions we would soon discard God from the equation all together, or at the very least relegate Him in silence at the far corner of the room. This is what Peter and the other disciples intended in their rebuke of Jesus when He talked about His death and resurrection. God’s grace is not easily understood, and even the apostles did not comprehend it when Jesus first taught about grace and redemption. The Psalmist thus exhorts us to commend our spirit unto God.

6. »You have redeemed me, O Lord, Faithful God. I will rejoice and be glad in Your Steadfast Love,« The Psalmist knows that our redemption is alone from God. He redeemed us because one of His Divine attributes is steadfast love. Such love is long-suffering. While Jesus clashed with the Pharisees over their false teaching of self-righteousness by doing the law, Jesus nevertheless loved them and wanted them to see their error and receive the grace He freely wanted to give them. Jesus’ disciples constantly showed an inability to grasp some of His teachings, in part because it went against what many of the rabbis and Pharisees had taught them. Yet Jesus continued to teach them and correct their erroneous thinking.

7. »Because You have seen my affliction; You have known the distress of my soul.« The gospel actually infuriates people. You would think it would be the exact opposite, but when people who have invested their lives on a philosophy or religion that teaches you must save yourself, hearing that such works merit nothing people may become angry at hearing nothing they do justifies them before God and it calls into question the very core of their beliefs. Such realizations are prone to anger and efforts to justify their beliefs as equally valid to the Christian faith. Such a religious crisis leads to a distress of the soul.

8. »And You have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy; You have set my feet in a broad place.« The gospel ultimately leads the distressed soul to the rock-solid foundation of the faith. Christ is the Cornerstone of this faith and the mighty fortress built upon Him is a castle built to withstand every assault and distress. Jesus says His Church is just such a fortress: the very gates of hades shall not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16,18). The banner that flies from the Church’s rampart is: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who was rejected, killed and rose from the dead (Matthew 16,16; Mark 8,31). Amen.

9. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, we begin our journey with You up to Jerusalem; guide our meditations upon Your Passion, so that we see everything that is written about the You, the Son of Man, by the Prophets has been accomplished. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

✠

All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Psalm 31,1.2a.5.7-8; Psalm 31,2b.3. Quinquagesima

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