Preview email to Psalms Group for 3/7/21
Dear Psalms friends,
Doug and I ate dinner with my daughter Anne on the patio of Whiskey Cake last night, our first meal in a restaurant since last May, just before the Covid surge. It was a huge blessing in many ways, but especially having Anne all to ourselves with the rest of her family either skiing or “beaching.” It reminded me of the mystery of the Divine capacity of God to love each of us as if there were only one of us. May God continue to grace each of us with “glory sightings” (a la James Vaughan) as we continue our Lenten journey.
Sunday will be the third Sunday of Lent. Here’s our petition from the Collect for the third Sunday in Lent (BCP, 606): “Look with compassion upon the heartfelt desires of your servants, and purify our disordered affections that we may behold your eternal glory in the face of Christ Jesus.” Yes, we ask God to clear out all He finds undesirable in our “disordered affections.” We surrender ourselves again in ongoing repentance, abandoning our cherished dreams and resentments to God’s assessment.
Along with this Collect, we’ll include part of The Great Litany (BCP, 91) and and all of the Kyrie Pantokrator: A Song of Penitence (BCP, 81-82) in our opening liturgy. The Kyrie Pantokrator is a classic of penitential devotion. It is a prayer of repentance taken from The Prayer of Manasseh, found in The Apocrypha which we Anglicans read “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine…” (BCP, 774)
King Mannasseh is presented in 2 Kings 21:1-18 as the worst possible sinner and the basic cause of the downfall of Judah. In 2 Chronicles 33:10-17, while his wicked deeds are not in any way denied, Manasseh is pictured as praying earnestly and humbly to God during his year-long (?) imprisonment. Can someone as despicable as Manasseh (who probably had Isaiah sawed in half) be redeemed? “If he was irredeemable there might be doubt about who could repent and be heard, in other words, doubt about God’s measure of mercy being as great as God’s measure of justice. God is not only Creator and Sustainer, but also Redeemer—compassionate, long suffering and very merciful (v.7). God, therefore, appointed repentance not for the righteous, but ordained it for sinners, even for Manasseh (v.8).” (The New Oxford Annotated Bible, AP, 281)
Following our lectionary readings and our Lenten theme, our focus psalms this week will be two more of the penitential psalms, Psalm 143 and Psalm 6, both Davidic psalms.See pages 8 and 354 in The Songs of Jesus. Like last week’s Psalm 130, Psalm 6 is a cry of a person who knows that their own sin is the root of their problems; whereas Psalm 143 is a complaint of someone who clearly understands that he struggles with sin also, but who is currently being pursued and crushed by a strong and evil enemy. He is trusting God for urgent rescue, thirsty for God, depending on God to come through for him and lead and guide him. He wants God to teach him to do God’s will, and he wants God to silence and destroy his enemies. These psalms teach us how to ask God for mercy and for justice, for ourselves and for others.
Look for a lesson on Psalm 143 and Psalm 6 tomorrow, and may God continue to give each of us a strong sense of His presence as we journey with him to Easter.
In the grace and love of Christ,
Toni