(inspiring music)
- If you've ever been lost, I
mean really dangerously lost,
it's a profoundly frightening experience.
I recently saw a movie called Lion.
And it's a true story about
a five year old Indian boy
looking for his brother on railroad cars
where they would often look
for things left by passengers.
The little five year old, however,
falls asleep in one of the cars.
And he wakes to find that the
train has left the station
and there's no one in the car.
And the train takes him 700 miles
from his home in Khandwa, to Calcutta.
He's five.
When he arrives in Calcutta,
he doesn't speak the language there.
He cannot tell people where he came from
because he does not know.
He cannot pronounce his full name.
And he must survive on the streets
at five years old in
Calcutta, for a few weeks.
He didn't have a single reference point.
Nothing is familiar.
He's completely disoriented.
And you'll have to watch the movie
to see how it goes out,
there's no spoilers there
'cause that's just how it sets up.
But you know, part of
what we do in coming back
for another semester at
Biola and part of the reason
we come to worship, what
worship and chapels add
to our experience here,
is to keep us oriented.
It's to help us not get lost.
It's to return us to what is real.
And it's to help us worship
because here's the truth.
We become what we worship.
We become what we worship.
There's a novelist, now deceased,
named David Foster Wallace.
And I think his faith was a
little unclear to most of us.
But he really seemed to understand
that everybody worships something.
Indeed, worship is what we have
in common with nonbelievers.
Everybody worships something.
And in a commencement address
in 2005 to Kenyon College,
a private liberal arts college in Ohio,
not particularly a religious college,
although it has religious
roots, he says this.
In the day to day trenches of adult life,
there is actually no
such thing as atheism.
There is no such thing as not worshiping.
Everybody worships.
The only choice we get is what to worship.
And an outstanding reason
for choosing some sort of god
or spiritual type thing to worship
is that anything else will eat you alive.
If you worship money and
things, if that's where you tap
real meaning into life then
you will never have enough.
You will never feel like you have enough.
It's the truth.
Worship your own body and
beauty and sexual allure
and you will always feel ugly.
And when time and age
start showing on you,
you will die a million deaths
before they finally plant you.
Worship power and you will
always feel weak and afraid
and you will never, ever have enough power
over things to keep those fears at bay.
Worship your intellect.
Being seen as smart.
And you will end up feeling stupid.
You'll end up feeling like a fraud.
Always on the verge of being found out.
So we gather again today
to worship what we know
and who we know is the one true god.
To give ourself to someone
that will not eat us alive.
But someone who loves
us and offers us life
and I've always loved Peter's response
when Jesus says a few hard
things and other disciples
walk away, other would
be disciples and Peter
turns back to Jesus, Jesus says,
are you going to leave too,
and Jesus says where would we go?
Who else would we worship?
You have the words of life.
Lauren asked you to open to Psalm 86
so why don't you do that now?
Psalm 86.
You might get out a pen as well or some,
a journal, some of you bring
journals, I recommend that.
In the psalm that Lauren
read when we opened,
the psalmist is returning
to what he knows to be true.
What he knows to be real and true.
And if you scan the first
several verses of Psalm 86,
you will see it in the forms of be.
Am, is, are.
The psalmist...
Says, you are my god.
You are forgiving, you are good.
There is no one like you.
You are great, you alone are God.
And so on.
In English we would call
this the indicative mood.
And in Greek too.
This is Hebrew.
But in English we would call
this the indicative mood
and of course this means,
this simply indicates
what is true and real.
What is concrete.
So the psalmist is
returning in worship here
to name what is true.
What is concrete, what is real.
He is orienting himself again.
Scholars say Psalm 86 is
soaked in the language
of other psalms, for
instance, we find it echoed
in Psalm 145, verse 8.
Psalm 86 says, you Lord
are forgiving and good,
abounding in love.
This is language from other
psalms like Psalm 145,
the Lord is gracious and merciful,
abounding in steadfast love.
The Old Testament scholar
Walter Brueggemann
calls Psalm 145 and those
like it psalms of orientation.
He divides the psalms
into three major types,
and one type he calls
psalms of orientation.
And they're called such
because they orient us
to what is real and to what gives us life.
So psalms of wellbeing
or psalms of orientation
evoke seasons that we sometimes
experience of wellbeing.
When we feel gratitude for
the constancy of blessings.
Which in a variety of
ways give us joy, delight,
goodness, coherence.
They tell us that God is reliable.
That his word is coherent.
And that his law seems to rule the world.
In other words, psalms of orientation
kind of stretch over us a canopy.
That all is well, that God is in control.
And that we can count on these truths
like sailors counted on stars
to navigate, and even
though the earth would move,
our lives would move, even
though our lives change,
even though circumstances
change, the stars
can always be counted on
to orient us each night.
Louis says something similar about
how he came to Christianity.
He says I believe in
Christianity as I believe
that the sun has risen,
not only because I see it,
but because I see everything else by it.
So why do we gather for worship?
We gather together to look at the stars.
We gather together to look
at what is unchanging,
what is true, because
even over the weekend
we can get a little lost.
We gather together to orient ourselves.
But it's true.
Sometimes we get disoriented.
Sometime like stars in the
daytime, you just can't see them.
You know they're there,
you know enough doctrine,
you know enough truth, you've
been oriented enough time
but like stars in the daytime
you look up sometimes and go,
I know they're there but
I really need to see them.
And so Walter Brueggemann says there's
a second category of psalms.
There are not just psalms of orientation,
but psalms of disorientation.
And we often call these psalms of lament.
And there's fully 50 of
them in the scriptures.
And that's actually our
psalm today, Psalm 86,
is a psalm of disorientation.
And in seasons of
disorientation what we sense,
or what we feel,
is anguish.
Maybe hurt, maybe
alienation, maybe suffering,
maybe even death, that
the well ordered universe
in which good triumphs over evil
doesn't seem to be a reality.
In which doing the right thing
doesn't always seem to be rewarded.
And where sometimes it
seems no one is in control.
The psalmist we see is
clearly in such a period,
if you look at just the
first, again, six verses
of your psalm you can hear,
not the indicative voice
that declares what is,
but the plaintive voice,
the longing voice that is asking
for what is to become real.
Hear me and answer me,
he says in verse one,
for I'm poor and needy.
Guard my life, in verse two.
Save your servant.
In verse three, have mercy on me.
In verse four, bring joy.
And then again in verse
six, hear my prayer.
In verse 14 he tells us why
and what the problem is.
Men have risen up against
him and are seeking his life.
And usually what happens
as we move into seasons
of disorientation is
indeed that there has been
a change in our circumstances.
We are at something of an impasse.
We don't know how to get through,
we don't know how to find life,
we don't know how to go forward.
The change could be a
sudden change in our health.
Could be a sudden change in our finances.
It could be that relationships
you've relied upon
have suddenly disintegrated
and it's disoriented you.
It could be that our
plans have fallen apart.
And maybe it's not just
us, maybe it's what we see
in the people around us.
Or even those we hear of.
Refugees, for instance, are
perhaps the most painful symbol
of people being caught in disorientation,
ejected from the places and languages
that have oriented them,
caught between countries.
The word refugee actually
means to go in search of.
When we often experience
disorientation we experience it
as we move from a place
like this which orients us,
from a worship service that
orients us, out into the light
of day where we finally are entangled
in a world of things we cannot control.
In a world of people who do
not do what we want them to.
In a world of circumstances
that we can't change.
I was amused by a recent
psychological study
that explains why I don't
like to watch football games
that I've taped after they're done.
Right, and the folks at Berkeley
who did this psychological
study realized that when
people are watching a football
game that's over already,
they may not know the score.
You know, you do this,
you tape it, and you say
I'm gonna watch it later, don't text me,
no one talk to me, don't
tell me what the score is.
The reason why people don't
even like watching it afterwards
is 'cause they think when they're rooting
for that field goal kicker
to make the field goal
they're actually helping him.
They think subconsciously that
there's something about their
support for the team at the
moment that means they are
in control a little bit
of the circumstances,
of course that is a fantasy.
But the illusion of control
is buried deep in us
and the shock of disorientation,
is to suddenly discover,
I'm not in control.
The script I am writing for
myself is not working out.
I am disoriented, I don't
know what part I play.
I love Madeleine L'Engle's
poem, called Act III Scene II.
Madeleine L'Engle you
might know from her novel
whose name I'm forgetting, help me.
A Wrinkle in Time, thank you this person.
L'Engle writes,
And we're missing the first
line, but I'll give it to you.
Someone has altered the script.
My lines have been changed.
The other actors are shifting roles,
they don't come on when
they're expected to.
And they don't say the
lines I have written
and I'm being upstaged.
I thought I was writing this
play, with a rather nice
role for myself, small but
juicy, and some excellent lines.
But nobody gives me my cues,
and the scenery has been replaced.
I don't recognize the new sets.
This isn't the script I was writing.
I don't understand this plot at all.
Well to grow up is to find
the small part you are playing
in this extraordinary drama
written by somebody else.
To grow up is to find the
small part you are playing
in this extraordinary drama
written by somebody else.
You see the psalmist in our Psalm 86
is trying to hold on to his orientation,
he is trying to hold on to
the story God has written,
which we can call in
shorthand the covenant.
The covenant given at Sinai
which was, I will be your god,
to the people on Sinai,
you will be my people,
and I am leading you to
life, to a promised land
and indeed our psalm
language here in 86 echoes
the very language in
Exodus 34 where God was
unfolding the story.
And was saying, I will be
your god, are you still in?
Even though you're in
the middle of the desert.
See the danger in times of
disorientation for the Israelites
was always idolatry, always
like well maybe there's another
god out there we can
turn to for Salvation.
Now I doubt you and I
actually think that way,
I don't think we think, well,
we're gonna end up worship
another god, no that's not how we think.
But I tell you what does happen,
in times of disorientation,
we wonder if the great
truths that we have learned
in the times of orientation,
are really true.
Is God really near?
Does he really deliver?
Is his wisdom really
the path of Salvation?
Am I really on his radar?
In times of disorientation
we want to know these truths
of orientation in a deeply tangible way.
Where we go from knowledge
out there to knowledge
in the body and in the heart.
The Reverend Joanna Collicutt in her book
Psychology and Christian
Formation, tells a story
of a pastor who opened
the morning one time
by saying, how many of
you know God loves you,
raise your hand, and of
course every hand shot up.
And then he said, well
raise your hand if you know
that God likes you.
And there was universal hesitation.
See some of our truths
still need to make their way
down into our hearts.
So what do we do in
times of disorientation?
How do we let the truths of orientation
come down into our lives
and into our hearts?
Well we continue to worship.
We continue to return and we
worship with our whole life,
offering it to God,
knowing again as Peter said
that only you have the
words of life, Lord.
And the line in verse 11 which
now has been quoted trice
this morning already.
Is where the psalmist lands.
Teach me your way, Lord,
that I may rely on your faithfulness.
Give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.
See the covenant is God's
promise to be with us
but our part in that
covenant is, in some sense,
the easier part.
Where we say you've given
me a way to walk in,
and Lord I will continue to walk in it.
This is our theme verse for the year.
Undivided is our theme.
And it's a prayer.
Lord, give me an undivided heart,
help me keep returning to you in worship
for my wisdom and my Salvation.
Now I don't have time to look
at this metaphor of the path
or the way that is
throughout the scriptures.
But I can tell you two things about it.
The path was the way of life
that knew that the commands of God
were a picture of the
good life, you got that?
The commands of God are not
just random prohibitions.
Or random recommendation, they are
a picture of the good life.
A life in which there is not injustice.
A life in which there is not greed.
A life in which there is not lying.
So the way is a picture,
or at least a path,
to the good life.
Which means it's also a path to Salvation.
And this is Salvation
understood in the broad sense
that the Hebrews would know
it, in terms of just rescue.
So when he says, teach me
your way O Lord, he's saying
teach me the way of
life that leads to life
and brings Salvation.
And of course as in all things
Jesus went before us in this, right?
Jesus allowed himself to get entangled
in life on the ground.
Coming from a place of
orientation with the Trinity,
he allowed himself to
come down into a world
of possible disorientation.
I mean, he was the son
of God, he was the logos
of the universe, there in
eternity past, there in Creation.
And he chose to become Jesus.
A human, weak.
Somewhat powerless.
Person dependent on God the Spirit.
He allowed himself to become
dependent on the Spirit
to show us what life
could be if we entered
this world which we are,
and dependent on the Spirit
and of course we see that
Jesus working with the Spirit
throughout his ministry,
the Spirit conceived him.
The Spirit anointed him,
the Spirit empowered him,
the Spirit sustained him,
and the Spirit raised him.
So God inserted himself
into human history.
And surely,
what Jesus experienced on
the cross when he said,
where are you God, was a
moment of disorientation.
When he allowed himself to experience
what it was like to go through a season
of disorientation.
But the great news was,
the truths of orientation triumphed.
The Spirit raised him at the most
extreme moment of disorientation.
The sacred canopy that is
over all of us was true.
So what does such
Salvation look like for us
in times of disorientation?
Well I wanna say,
That we sometimes think
that the Spirit's work
is only supernatural.
And it sometimes is.
In times of disorientation,
we should pray for the Spirit,
Lord please take this obstacle away.
Please find a way through this impasse.
And sometimes it happens.
Sometimes it might be
an unexpected healing
that seems to come out of nowhere.
Sometimes it might be an
anonymous financial gift.
Sometimes it might be
the amazing taking away
of an addiction, in a moment.
But I'll tell you more often, it's a path.
More often,
our way out of
disorientation is a process.
In which the Holy Spirit whose job it is
to breathe life into our life
and that's always been his job
from the beginning of our lives.
The Spirit whose job is to
breathe life into our life
will often use what we very
call natural means to do so.
Of course there's nothing
natural in the world.
If everything is created by
God, everything is supernatural.
Everything has the potential
to be used by God for our good
and when he created it he
said all things are good.
And so there is nothing natural.
And often the path out
of our disorientation
involves what we mistakenly
call natural things.
In the last couple years I
experienced a very difficult
and dangerous time in
the life of my family.
And God brought to us a number of people
whom I would say saved us.
They saved us through their expertise,
through their wisdom,
through their encouragement,
through their prayers,
through their service.
And I have no doubt that the
Spirit was empowering them all,
in bringing us life.
So what is it to be shown the path?
To walk in the path is
to walk in the wisdom
the Holy Spirit brings us, that leads us
eventually to rescue.
It might be the wisdom
of others who help us see
the reality of what is actually happening.
Sometimes we catastrophize.
Sometimes we see things
as worse than they are,
sometimes you and I see only the negatives
and sometimes the wisdom of
others can help us re-vision.
Sometimes it'll be through
the expertise of others
in the fields of psychology or medicine.
Sometimes it'll be through
people who teach us wisdom,
teach us how to stay on the
path to make wise choices.
Sometimes it'll be through the
compassionate listening of others.
Sometimes it'll be in the
help we get from others
to develop the virtues we need of patience
and humility and fortitude.
Sometimes it'll be...
Through prayer.
Through developing peace and contentment.
And this is not just our work,
for we know the Holy Spirit
must empower us in those
moments, must take these things
and lead us to the path of Salvation.
So we just need to continue
walking toward God.
And not turn our lives to other
things that may eat us up.
Let the body of Christ minister to you.
Find people who can offer
you wisdom and wisdom
the Holy Spirit can use in your life.
Find a church.
Seek out the sages in that church.
Go to faculty, come to pastoral care.
In a season of disorientation
we need wisdom.
And we need people to
pray it that the Spirit
would use that wisdom to bring us through.
And you know what we may find?
We may suddenly find
ourselves singing a new song.
And yes that is the third
category of the psalms.
There are psalms of new orientation.
And these are seasons when
human life suddenly consists
in terms of surprise.
When we're overwhelmed
with the new gifts of God,
when joy breaks through
despair, and where there's been
only darkness, suddenly there is light.
We hear it in Psalm 40
for instance, a psalm
of new orientation, I waited
patiently for the Lord.
I waited patiently.
I turned, he turned to
me and he heard my cry,
he lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire,
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth.
A hymn of praise to our god.
Many will see and fear the Lord
and put their trust in him.
Songs of, psalms of new orientation
put a new song in our mouth.
It's really the old truths of orientation,
but now they have more detail,
now they have more color.
Now we know them more directly.
Now we have more experience,
now we have more wisdom,
we see all of the places that Salvation
can be brought to us by the Holy Spirit.
And you know what that does?
That unites our hearts to fear God.
And when I say fear God again
I'm thinking of Peter saying,
where else would we go?
But back to you.
And so I wanna invite you this semester
to walk with us as we
move through the psalms,
as we seek an undivided heart.
We will be on a rotation,
a three week rotation
throughout the semester,
of psalms of orientation,
disorientation and new orientation.
They say that the psalms
express almost every emotion
that the human being experiences.
But also teaches us how
to bring every state
in which we're in to God in worship.
(inspiring music)
- [Narrator] Biola University
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to think biblically about everything,
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to education and the arts.
Learn more at biola.edu.
