Psalm 119:25-48
The scripture reading for today is a psalmist’s prayer (perhaps “conversation” is a better term to use) with God. The psalmist confesses his wrongdoings and asks God to help him better understand and live by God’s ways. While the first stanza focuses more on confession, in the second we see a move toward a desire to re-commit his life to obeying God’s commandments, and in the third stanza he comes full circle as his confession gives way to the joy of God’s loving forgiveness.
In this psalm, the psalmist is asking God to teach him God’s commandments, to help him follow God’s instruction and guidance in order to once again be faithful. This is raw, uncut, uncensored faithfulness. There are no communities, denominations, or faith traditions mentioned that filter and interpret God’s commandments for the psalmist. He is not seeking to become a better Baptist, Catholic, Anglican, or Jew. He wants to follow God and God alone.
More and more, I hear people say that our world is becoming post-denominational—meaning that the lines that define and demarcate Christian traditions (and religions in general) from one another are becoming hazy. While I think there’s a lot of truth to this observation, the lines that separate Christians from one another are not fading away altogether—they are being recast. Conservative or liberal; traditional or progressive; liturgical or non-liturgical—these are some of the new “post-denominational” lines being drawn. Sometimes they transcend denominations. Sometimes they exist within one denomination. But, however they appear, these new lines represent traditions and schools of thought that interpret what it means to be faithful to God.
The psalmist in today’s reading doesn’t mention any school of thought or any lines in the religious sandbox that he has to stay within. The psalmist wants to know God’s commandments as God intends him to know them. He wants the director’s cut, the version that includes all the frames that other interpretations leave on the cutting room floor. Isn’t this what we should all strive for? Whether we are traditional or progressive, Anglican or Baptist, we can be united in our common question to be faithful to God as God intends us to be. Unedited, unfiltered, raw—this is the faithfulness toward which we should strive.
-Dave Csinos
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Dave Csinos is a Teaching for Ministry Fellow at Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto, and an author and speaker on the topic of children's ministry.
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