Daily Advent Reflection: December 16
Third Wednesday of Advent
Psalms 119:49-72 · 49, [53]
Isa. 9:8-17
2 Pet. 2:1-10a
Mark 1:1-8
I learned to pray the Daily Office while a peer minister for the University of Colorado’s Canterbury campus ministry. One of the peer minister’s duties was to share leadership of daily 8am Morning Prayer. These services were sometimes attended by two or three people, and never more than five. Not only did I learn the rhythm of prayer that shapes my life as a person of faith, I was also exposed repeatedly to great swaths of the psalter.
One morning we read a portion of Psalm 119, the longest of the psalms. After finishing Morning Prayer, the priest of the parish turned to me and declared, “I can’t stand that psalm! He’s such a suck up and brown-noser, and he just goes on and on!” Her words have stuck with me ever since, and I can’t read the psalm without noticing how full of himself the psalmist seems to be in this moment. “Their heart is gross and fat, but my delight is in your law” (Psalm 119:70). Ugh.
Fortunately, the other thing I learned about the psalms during this time was about balance. For every imprecatory psalm there is a psalm of praise; for every Psalm 119 there is a Psalm 53 to balance it out. “Every one has proved faithless; all alike have turned bad; there is none who do good; no, not one” (Psalm 53:3). It might not be uplifting, but at least it’s honest.
When I read these portions of the psalter together I see a reflection of myself. There are moments when I delight in the law of the Lord, when I “hasten and do not tarry to keep [the Lord’s] commandments” (Psalm 119:60) and there are moments when my confidence is so shaken by the lack of my own faithfulness that I condemn not only myself but all around me, sure that all people will be found faithless by God. What I look at myself in these psalms I see a way to increase compassion toward myself and those I greet each day at the Hospitality Center. None of us can be expected to live like Psalm 119 at all times. We have experienced too much brokenness and sin is rooted deep within. And yet, we are also not all condemned as Psalm 53 might lead us to believe.
Instead, the truth is found in yet another portion of the psalter we read today: “God will ransom my life; he will snatch me from the grasp of death” (Psalm 49:15). This verse is an important corrective, reminding me that the primary actor in the drama of the life of faith is not me or my neighbors. The primary actor in the drama is God. It is God who meets me in my pride and in my faithlessness; it is God who saves. As the darkness continues to deepen around us and our waiting for the coming of Jesus continues, let us find rest in the good news of God, the hope of our salvation.
The Rev. Seth Raymond
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and Hospitality Center, Racine