When I was a teenager I went to a Bible camp down in Virginia.
I’ve preached about that place a few times.
Camp!
I had great friends and had great times… in spite of the Bible parts…
That doesn’t sound right, coming from the mouth of a preacher does it?
The teachings that they offered there did influence my theology – but I think my beliefs formed somewhat in contrast to what was taught there.
I may not have agreed with their way of living Christianity… but, nonetheless, I have some very real things to thank them for.
When I got too old to be a camper, I worked for a summer at that camp. I was the guy who hauled garbage. I drove an old 66 Ford truck that kept stalling out on me. It was so rusted, you could see the ground passing underneath the cab. That truck was on its last legs!
Among my friends, there was a Black man in his mid-twenties who worked in the kitchen.
His name was George.
But he pronounced it “JOaWj”
I’m not making fun of George. He was a good friend – a few years older than me, so I looked up to him a little bit. He was quiet, but he smiled a lot of the time, and his mouthful of bad teeth appeared when he laughed. We would sit around smoking cigarettes talking after the dinner clean up shift was over.
He was impressed with me, I think, because I came down from that legendary place called “New York City.”
The reason I recall him for you, this morning, is because he had a verbal habit that I had never run into before I met him.
If you told him something – almost anything, he would respond with a question. It was always the same question.
“For real?”
But with his thick Virginia accent, it was like this:
Fo reAW?
If he was barely listening, he would say it absently, almost under his breath…
Fo reaw…
But if he was really interested, he would give the question a beautiful wondering lilt:
“Fo REAW?”
**
Hear the opening words of Psalm 17:
I am pleading for your help, O Lord;
This psalm sounds like a prayer. It sounds like a very personal prayer.
But who is praying?
Tradition identifies this psalm – Psalm 17, as a “Prayer of David.”
So is that the answer?
Are we overhearing a personal prayer that King David composed?
Perhaps.
There are those who believe that David wrote all the psalms that are attributed to him, and those who do not. In the ancient world, they didn’t concern themselves with copyright laws, as we do today, and people often wrote things and attributed them to someone else in order to honor that person.
So it’s complicated.
We don’t really know.
But do we really need to know?
There is another way of thinking about this “personal prayer.”
Psalm 17, like many psalms, is written in the first person, so when you or I read it – especially when one of us reads it out loud, as Liz just did – the unmistakable impression one gets is that “I” am the person praying.
The reader feels like “I”
And so does the listener.
It’s a floating “I” that settles on whoever considers themselves an “I”
Which is, of course, every single one of us.
This “Floating I” is a very real and very powerful thing. Our ability to identify with, even place ourselves within the experience of another person – this is precisely what makes literature and movies and all other forms of storytelling so compelling.
I need hardly point out that this same principle is core to our traditions of liturgy and worship.
When the psalmist – whoever he might have been – writes “I am pleading for your help, O Lord” he knows two things…
He knows that he is expressing a sentiment that is felt by many people, not just himself… and…
he knows that, by writing these words, he is putting that sentiment into the mouths of people, who will also speak them.
There’s a kind of magic to that. The author – whoever he was – has projected his ideas and his convictions across thousands of years, from ancient Israel, to Jaffrey, New Hampshire…
It’s amazing to think about…
But…
at the same time…
Just because the psalmist has done this… it doesn’t guarantee that his words will actually mean anything to me.
To put words in my mouth is one thing. Making me believe it – planting the meaning into my soul – that’s something different entirely.
I can read your words out loud, O Psalmist – or the words can be read to me – and yet I reserve the right to remain utterly indifferent to the depth of the sentiment expressed.
If I so choose…
As you know, a number of the more formative years of my childhood were spent in New Zealand.
The public school in New Zealand in the 1970’s was not like American public schools of today. An English colony, New Zealand modelled the culture of its schools around a British bitter, stiff-upper-lip authority.
Too punish a child – boys, really, never girls – a teacher might order the kid out into the hallway, compel him to hold out his hand, and commence to deliver “six of the best” across the open palm with a leather strap.
Mister Griffiths, my 3rd Form teacher, was a frustrated old man who did not like my naturally rebellious air. Suffice it to say, I had several run-ins with his legendary strap.
Corporal punishment was not the only thing liberally applied to youngsters in that school.
We were also subjected to morning assemblies that were peppered with prayers and hymns.
Imagine my horror and dismay when I saw the very same man – Mr Griffiths – who, yesterday, seemed to glorify in hitting me with a leather strap, standing at the lectern today, intoning a humble supplication on behalf of my immortal soul!
I was no dummy.
I saw, with the clarity of youth, what was going on. Religion – Christianity in particular – was providing a convenient screen that protected, even endorsed the actions of cruel authority. Piety and punishment were in cahoots, and my young hands took the stinging blows that were the unholy result.
What bloody awful way to be introduced to the Christian faith!
Where was Jesus?
With this indignity in my hot young mind, I was utterly indifferent to the prayers that I was compelled to repeat.
Actually I was more than indifferent. I actively fought against letting them in. If I caught a whiff of religion my first response was suspicion. The ground of my soul was hardened and no seed could find purchase there.
Those bitter old men, mumbling prayers while hiding leather straps behind their backs! What authority did they have to speak to God on my behalf?
So you see… if the psalmist had put words in my mouth, they would have turned to dust.
At that time, my indifference was a matter of pride.
**
When my friend George said the words “For Real” his voice rose at the end in that distinct way that we use to insert a question mark.
“Fo reaW?”
To this question, there was an answer that could be given…
You could respond using the same phrase, but without the question mark. You could use the vocal intonation that replaced the question mark with an exclamation point:
“For reaw!”
When I look at Psalm 17 today… when the psalmist puts his words in my mouth now, they do not turn to dust.
Why?
What has changed?
Now – in my 60th year – I recognize something in these words. I recognize an essential ingredient that cuts through all the hypocrisy the way dish soap cuts through grease.
This essential ingredient tills the ground that was hardened by those bitter old men. My soul is softened. Receptive.
The psalmist tells us, without hesitation, what that essential ingredient is…
Here is that opening phrase of psalm 17 again – this time followed immediately by the next phrase:
I am pleading for your help, O Lord; for I have been honest…
The Psalms – there are 150 of them – were collected over centuries. They are sometimes called the “Hymnbook” of the Old Testament – but they were more than just hymns – you can find prayers, confessions, laments. The psalms are vast in scale, and diverse in sentiment, but two things are true of all 150: they are all poetic, and they are all honest!
In their worship life, the Jews of antiquity were unfailingly honest with their God.
They were “for real!”
Not with a question mark…
but with an exclamation point.
The difference between that question mark and that exclamation mark is, for me, the discernment that lies at the core of the life of faith.
We need to always be asking ourselves if we are being real…
If we cannot answer with an exclamation point… if we cannot firmly assert that we are being honest with God then, we know that we are being fake.
Being fake…
To be fake is to cheat not only yourself, but God too. You cannot be dishonest with yourself, or with others, without also being dishonest with God.
That’s why the psalms are so filled with passion. They are designed for worship, but they are not content to only express awe and wonder and devotion. They are also filled with anger, impatience, pain and sorrow.
They offer up to God, with open hands, the hard realities of the lives we lead.
They are being real with God.
They are being honest.
Vulnerable.
When I was young, I was angry at God.
I was angry about how people used God as an excuse to be mean.
As a person of faith, I now hear in psalm 17, a voice that says:
If you are angry, tell God that you are angry.
If you learn how to be honest with God then maybe… maybe you will learn how to be honest with yourself…
And this is the core of what it means to be a person of faith.
For real?
For real!
Amen