Psalm 16: 1-11 (links validated 7/17/24a)

This sermon commentary has noted the Christian appropriation of parts of Psalm 16 to tie in with the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead and his promise that one day we will all be raised. The psalm as originally written and conceived likely was not heading in that direction. The other very famous instance of an Old Testament passage now interpreted almost exclusively in a Christocentric way comes from Job 19:25-27. In that chapter Job is once again defending himself to his not-so-comforting friends who are sure Job is suffering as punishment for some sins Job seems unwilling to fess up to. But suddenly in the midst of Job’s marshalling his best counter-arguments he launches into the now well-known words “I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.” That Christians have turned this into a verse predicting the resurrection of Jesus and then the resurrection of also our bodies was cemented into place by Georg Friedrich Handel who in his oratorio Messiah turned those verses from Job 19 into a lyric aria that directly jumps from Job 19 to the resurrection of Christ. Many commentators, though struggling to make full sense of what Job is saying in that 19th chapter, are fairly certain that whatever Job meant by this in the context of his robust self-defense in the face of his condemnatory friends, it was not what Handel did with it. Still, did biblical writers convey more than they knew? By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit might they have written things the full and final and ultimate meaning of which even they could not have guessed? The traditional answer to that has been “Probably. Many times, probably yes.” Maybe Psalm 16 and Job 19 are two such instances that point forward to a reality that now comprises the very core of the Good News that just is the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Lord.

A minister passed through his church in the middle of the day. Decided to pause by the altar and see who had come to pray. Just then the back door opened, a man came down the aisle. The minister frowned as he saw the man hadn’t shaved in awhile. His shirt was kinda’ shabby and his coat was worn and frayed. The man knelt, bowed his head, then arose and walked away. In the days that followed each noon time brought this chap And each time he knelt just for a moment, a lunch pail in his lap. Well, the minister’s suspicions grew, and robbery was his main fear. He decided to stop the man and ask him, “Whatcha’ doing’ here?” The old man worked down the road. Lunch was half an hour. Lunch time was his prayer time, for finding strength and power. “I stay only moments, see, ‘cause the factory is so far away; As I kneel here talkin’ to the Lord, this is kinda’ what I say: ‘I just came again to tell You, Lord, how happy I have been, Since we found each other’s friendship and You took away my sin. I don’t know much of how to pray But I think about You every day. So, Jesus, this is Jim just checkin’ in.’” The minister feeling foolish, told Jim, that this was fine. He told the man he was welcome to come and pray just anytime. “time to go,” Jim smiled, said “Thanks.” He hurried to the door. The minister knelt at the altar, he’d never done it before. His cold heart melted, warmed with love, he met Jesus there. “I just came again to tell You, Lord, how happy I have been, Since we found each other’s friendship and You took away my sin. I don’t know much of how to pray But I think about You every day. So, Jesus, this is me just checkin’ in.’” It was past noon one day, the minister noticed that old Jim hadn’t come. As more days passed without Jim, he began to worry some. He went to the factory and asked about Jim and found out that he was ill. The hospital staff was worried, but he’d given them a thrill. The week that He was with them, brought changes in the ward. His smiles, a joy contagious, changed people, his reward. The head nurse couldn’t understand why Jim was so glad, When no flowers, calls or cards came, not a visitor he had. The minister stayed by Jim’s bed, he voiced the nurse’s concern; No friends came to show they cared; Jim had nowhere to turn. Looking surprised, old Jim spoke up and with a winsome smile; “The nurse is wrong, she couldn’t know, that everyday at noon He’s here, a dear friend of min, you see, He sits right down, takes my hand, leans over and says to me: ‘I just came again to tell you, Jim, how happy I have been, Since we found each other’s friendship and I took away your sin. I always love to hear you pray I think about you every day. And so my dear Jim, this is Jesus just checkin’ in.’”

In these COVID days the last three years, we have all thought a lot about vaccines. But as Neal Plantinga once pointed out, in John 3 in his conversation with Nicodemus when Jesus compared what the Son of Man would do to what happened when Moses cured snakebites by lifting up the image of a serpent on a pole, it was kind of a spiritual vaccine to which Jesus was pointing. Like cures like. We defeat diseases by infecting ourselves with a tiny or inert amount of that very disease so our bodies can build the army of antibodies to attack it in the future. (OK, so the new generation of mRNA vaccines don’t work quite like the classic vaccine but the idea is still the same: you use the code, the message, or the actual illness you want to avoid to ward off that very disease.) So in the Gospel: the surprise of the crucifixion and resurrection is that death cures death. Christ’s death inoculates us from eternal death. The very thing the poet of Psalm 16 was in dread of—going down to the grave—somehow became the portal to that everlasting life of delight at God’s right hand that the psalmist desired.

In a commentary he wrote years ago on Psalm 16, my former CEP writing colleague Dr. Stan Mast recalled the 2002 movie titled Panic Room. If you have ever seen it, you know it’s a thriller and a nail biter. Jodie Foster plays Meg Altman, a woman recently estranged from her older husband. She is also the mother of a diabetic daughter named Sarah played by a very young Kristen Stewart. Meg buys a very large home that turns out to have a “Safe Room” replete with a heavy metal door that locks multiple times once a person is inside the Safe Room, which is also equipped with multiple video monitors that connect to cameras throughout the house. The only thing missing is a working telephone and because of the thick cement and steel walls all around, cellphone signals don’t work well either. That of course becomes important when Meg and Sarah have to take refuge in the Safe Room once some well-armed thugs break into the house. Problem is: what the thugs want is a large stash of government bearer bonds worth millions and that the thugs know are inside the Safe Room. As it turns out, the Safe Room does not stay feeling safe for long and indeed, the movie’s title of Panic Room is a double entendre: it is the rom to which you go when you are in a panic but that same panic enters the room with you!...

As the global pandemic stretches on and on, a lot of us are thinking a lot more about vaccines than usual. Many of us got a COVID vaccine, some of us have recently gotten a booster as well as a seasonal flu shot, and now we are pondering whether younger kids will be getting vaccinated against COVID. Small wonder that on the first of November the Oxford Dictionary people entered a new word into its approved list and made it the 2021 Word of the Year: it is the word “vax.” But as Neal Plantinga once pointed out, in John 3 in his conversation with Nicodemus when Jesus compared what the Son of Man would do to what happened when Moses cured snakebites by lifting up the image of a serpent on a pole, it was kind of a spiritual vaccine to which Jesus was pointing. Like cures like...

If you want to see the clear Christian “spin” put on part of Psalm 16, you can go to Google Images and check out “Psalm 16 headstones” to see quite the sampling. I did not want to put any of those pictures on this post because most contain the names of real people and I did not want to risk seeming to exploit a loved one’s grave as illustrative material. But clearly the presence of this psalm on grave markers is a witness to the resurrection of the body promised in Christ. As noted above on this sermon starter, that is a fine thing to do, even if it is quite at variance with anything the actual psalmist had in mind!

An estranged wife and her diabetic pre-teen daughter have just purchased a renovated brownstone in New York. To their delight they discover that the previous owner had installed a safe room. Very soon they discover to their horror that they will need that room, because three burglars break into their new home. Mother and daughter race to the safe room, followed by the sinister thieves. Unfortunately, the previous owner hadn’t gotten around to installing a telephone in that room, so they can’t call out for help. The daughter has no insulin with her and is slipping into diabetic shock. And, worst of all, the intruders know they are in the room. In fact, they have broken into the house precisely to get something that the previous owner had left in that room, namely, three million dollars. In a movie filled with terror, the safe room becomes the title of the movie, “Panic Room.”

A couple of quotes from C. S. Lewis’ Miracles, The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the ‘first fruits,’ the pioneer of life,’ He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. To preach Christianity meant (to the Apostles) primarily to preach the Resurrection. … The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the ‘gospel’ or good news which the Christians brought. (Miracles, ch. 16)

("Before she married, my mother was an accomplished dancer. During the late forties, when I was about three years old, she began to teach dancing and baton twirling. She traveled throughout rural north Georgia, holding classes in the public schools as an itinerant dancing teacher...")

Use google to translate from German to English

(see Second Sunday of Easter)

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