Psalm 25:1-22 (links validated 9/1/26a)

Long about 1982 when the second Star Trek movie came out, moviegoers were introduced to the fictional “Project Genesis.” The Genesis device was said to transform matter at a sub-atomic level, reorganizing matter into life-generating materials. Early in the film in the scene you can see here Captain Kirk along with Spock and McCoy watch a video demonstration that shows Genesis transforming a dead, lifeless moon into a planet with breathable air, beautiful mountains and lakes, trees, and so forth. In the video we can see first what looks like the burning off of the old and then very soon the coming to life of the new. In a somewhat quirky way, that transformation is akin to what we have been pondering in this sermon commentary. When grace overwhelms our lives, we are changed, transformed. To riff on the Apostle Paul, the old is gone and the new springs to life. The one simply must follow the other.

Over the years the Star Wars series of movies introduced people to a once-common concept and practice. For a lot of history until more modern times, most people knew that the path to becoming a skilled craftsman in any given field involved apprenticing yourself to a master. In the Star Wars world of Jedi Knights, learners known as Padawans would be assigned to a seasoned Jedi Master (think Yoda) who would instruct the aspiring Jedi on every level both through active teaching and just as importantly (or more importantly) through active role-modeling. But for many people in the more modern world, this did seem like a throwback to a long abandoned model of learning. Being an apprentice and a journeyman and so on got displaced at some point with things like getting a college education or taking shop classes in high school. This does still happen in some fields. In Japan, for instance, you cannot become a certified sushi chef without a long apprenticeship with a master chef. In fact, for the first year or two of such instruction, the apprentice chef is not even allowed to touch a knife! He or she must first watch what the master does and only then be able to take up a sushi knife themselves and touch an actual fish. Biblically and in places like Psalm 25, however, this is still a solid model to follow. We apprentice ourselves as student to the ultimate Master who is Jesus Christ. The Greek word for “disciple” after all means “student” at its most basic level. And that is what we are: students who along with the psalmist plead over and again to learn the truth but also to be shown the way to do things as we travel with the Master down the straight paths he alone can show us.

I think it was Winston Churchill who once noted that when he left home at the age of 18, he did so convinced that his father knew very little about life and surely did not have much he could teach to the headstrong young man Churchill was at the time. But then he noted that some years later after he turned 30 and began to have conversations with his father on various things, it was amazing how much the old man had learned in just 12 short years!

Some time ago I read an article about memory in which the author pointed out that printing written materials was never designed to replace memory but to help us memorize better. But over time, precisely because we have so much that is already written down, the act of memorizing has waned. This is also why we don’t even know the telephone numbers of people we call all the time: they are stored in the phone’s memory so you just hit “Jill” such that if you ever need to call Jill from a phone that is not yours . . . These days if you want to win “Jeopardy” on TV, you had better know a lot in your head. For most of us, though, we don’t need to remember stuff: we can always Google it after all. So it goes with many things, including Scripture...

Sometimes it seems that for all the appeal it has on the surface—and for all the things about it that really are correct—the “What Would Jesus Do?” mantra needs almost as often as not to be replaced with—or at least supplemented by—another question: What Would Jesus NOT Do? What would Jesus NOT say? It sometimes feels like a lot of ugly things that also Christians say and do—sometimes to even fellow Christians on Facebook much less to people who do not share the Christian faith—would be avoided if we wondered what Jesus would not do or say...

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The July 1986 Life magazine dubbed the stretch of US Route 50 that crosses the center of Nevada “The Loneliest Road in America.” That particular section of Route 50 spans mostly desolate terrain that’s pockmarked by several large valleys and basins. Life called it lonely because there are long distances between the few small towns on the road and relatively low numbers of people travel on it. Psalm 25 talks a great deal about God’s “ways” and “paths.” Yet those who seek to travel in faith along those ways sometimes feel like they’re the loneliest highways, not just in America, but also in the whole world. Those who wish to let God teach them about and guide them along God’s ways may feel as though no one is traveling in obedience with them. Yet those who travel US Route 50 through Nevada from east to west end their lonely journey alongside one of North America’s most dazzling natural wonders, Lake Tahoe. There’s a metaphor that will, with the Holy Spirit’s help, preach and teach.

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