To Know Fully As We Are Known (2)

 

It occurs to me that Psalm 139 is as vast as the night sky, as deep as the deepest ocean abyss, and as astonishing a melding of the macroscopic with the microscopic you could hope to find in 24 verses of poetry. So compact, indeed, as to include and transcend, in the very best mystical tradition, the awe and astonishment, the indignation and outrage, the marvellous and mysterious, and so much more that arises in our every consideration of YHWH: Father, Son, and Holy, mothering Spirit.

I concluded Part 1 by observing: “Reading the Psalms daily (I have adopted Wright’s habit of my “five-a-day”!) enables me to gradually orientate myself, discover the shiny as well as the shadowy parts, the bright illuminations, and the dark imaginings.” Here, in Part 2, we will consider the contrast as well as the cohesion of darkness and light, Heaven and Hades, the speed of Light, and “slowness” of Dark. Psalm 139:7-12 (NASB) reads, 

Where can I go from Your Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, You are there;

If I make my bed in Sheol [Hades], behold, You are there.

If I take up the wings of the dawn,

If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,

Even there Your hand will lead me,

And Your right hand will take hold of me.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,

And the light around me will be night,”

Even darkness is not dark to You,

And the night is as bright as the day.

[Hebrew Lit: And as the night, so also the day]

Darkness and light are alike to You.

In the additional notes to Charles Spurgeon’s commentary on Psalm 139, he includes this observation on verse 6 (“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me”) from James Alexander, writing in The [American] National Preacher, 1860: There is a mystery about the Divine Omnipresence, which we do not learn to solve after years of meditation. As God is a simple spirit, without dimensions, parts, or susceptibility of division, he is equally, that is, fully, present at all times and in all places…Here we have a case which ought to instruct and sober those, who, in their shallow philosophy, demand a religion without mystery. It would be a religion without God; for “who by searching can find out God?” [Job 11:7] On this, I think, can we all agree.

Having ascertained in the first stanza, that God knows all that there was, is, or will ever be about us; that God anticipates our every thought, word, and deed, and that God has [his] hand upon us to protect, prevent, and promote, and that God loves us notwithstanding all that awesome knowledge, the Psalmist now reflects on the impossibility of not being in God. Paul summed this up, quoting Greek poetry: “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) The essence of “sin,” as far as we are concerned, lies in the ignorance - or rejection - of our essential one-ness with God; in our denial of our “in-Godness,” always and everywhere. God, in Spirit, is everywhere, and eternally present. We can run; but we cannot, actually, hide!  

“If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol [Hades], behold, You are there.” We saw, before, that God’s “dimension” is heaven; the earth is ours. Naturally, if we “ascend” dimensionally we find God. Equally, though, if we “descend” to the place Jewish Scripture, mythology, and theology considered the deepest and lowest place “under the earth,” and known as Hades (Greek) or Sheol (Hebrew) we discover a non-place, a place of emptiness and darkness. Bad translations insist on calling this dimension “Hell.” (Joseph Carlyle noted, “Hell” in some places in Scripture signifies the lower parts of the earth without relation to punishment…By “Heaven” he means the upper region of the world, without any respect to the state of blessedness…)  Yet God is here too! How come? Christ-come, that’s how! He came to lead a host of captives, captive before the foundation of the world: In our timeframe: at the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. (Greek Orthodoxy has always honoured this, as their iconography shows Jesus going “down” to rescue humankind all the way back to Adam and Eve. Traditionally, the Saturday between “Good Friday” and Easter Sunday morning, is referred to as “The Harrowing of Hell”, whereby Christ descended to liberate those imprisoned there.)

(Anastasis)

“If I take up the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will take hold of me.” Were we capable of travelling at the speed of Light; were we able to live in the deepest, undiscovered, unchartered unknown depths of the oceans, we would still be unable to be “outside” of God, and God’s presence. As David recalled in Psalm 23 – “Even though I pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no harm for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” This is, figuratively, the same idea as “there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will take hold of me.” We are guided, supported, protected, and preserved always, and everywhere, whether we acknowledge it, or not.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,

And the light around me will be night,”

Even darkness is not dark to You,

And the night is as bright as the day.

[Hebrew Lit: And as the night, so also the day]

Darkness and light are alike to You.

In John’s gospel, 1:4-5 we read, In Him was life, and the life was the Light of humankind. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome [“understand” in some translations] it. (This is what I meant by “the slowness of Dark!) In his first letter (1 John 1:5), John re-iterates: This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If you’ll excuse the pun, there are different shades of meaning here! 

(First image of a Black Hole - NASA)

Because we also read in Scripture,

…that men may know, from the rising of the sun

 and from the west, that there is none besides me;

I am the LORD, and there is no one else,

The One forming light and creating darkness,

Causing well-being and creating disaster;

I am the LORD who does all these things.

(Isaiah 45: 6-7)

Traditional commentaries work with the KJV and similar offshoots (NRSV and NIV, for example) that begin the stanza with “If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,” and which leads them to conclude this is all about us supposing we can be doing our bad deeds under the cover of darkness. Which is futility itself, because God can see in the dark, since dark and light are “alike” with God! (There is no reason to disregard that interpretation, though, and it has some merit. Indeed, in Job 34: 21-22 we read, “For his eyes are upon the ways of a man, and he sees all his steps. There is no gloom or deep darkness where evildoers may hide themselves.)

However, if we keep the Hebrew word שׁוּף (shuph), the meaning is “to bruise; crush, gape upon, crave, or even, seize.” The same word is found in Job 9:17, For He crushes me with a tempest… Even more significant, (it seems to me, anyway), is its first appearance in Genesis 3:15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

For me, therefore, understanding this passage to be one of encouragement, rather than a not-so-subtle threat, the fact that we fear the danger of light turning to darkness – or love, joy, peace, faith and blessing somehow being overwhelmed and becoming death and disaster - chimes much more realistically with Psalm 23.

Paul, unconsciously (probably!), summarises this stanza from Psalm 139 in this way:

What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honour at God’s right hand, pleading for us.

35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39, NLT)

Doesn’t that put the whole thing in perspective; “the awe and astonishment, the indignation and outrage, the marvellous and mysterious, and so much more that arises in our every consideration of YHWH: Father, Son, and Holy, mothering Spirit,” as I wrote, above? Every morning I pray this Psalm I am, momentarily, awed and speechless as I attempt to get my head around the inclusion and transcendency of this Holy-Spirit-breathed prayer-poem-paeon.

Next time, we will meditate upon our primordial creation (“in the beginning”) and how as God is, so we are. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. (1 John 4:16-17)

Amen. Go well, Wayfarers.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

From the collection by Mercy Aiken who works with the Network of Evangelicals For The Middle East, and who co-wrote Yet in The Dark Streets Shining – A Palestinian Story of Hope & Resilience in Bethlehem with Bishara Awad.

“What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear expensive clothes and indulge in luxury are in palaces. But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: “‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’"
--Jesus, speaking on John the Baptist, who lived in this very wilderness

Grace and Peace.