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Psalm 31.4-5, 12-14

Take me out of the net, that they have secretly set for me *
for you are my tower of strength.
Into your hands I commend my spirit *
for you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth.
I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind *
I am as useless as a broken pot.
For I have heard the whispering of the crowd; fear is all around; *
they put their heads together against me; they plot to take my life.
But as for me, I have trusted in you, O Lord *
I have said, you are my God.

As a self-reliant person, it is hard for me to reconcile a God that created me this way for a reason, yet also wants me to find my strength and trust in him. How am I supposed to know the point at which I find my limits and God’s power begins? Or does this look more like a Venn diagram? These are confusing questions for me to consider.

One of my greatest fears is of being useless or weak. Take my calendar, for example. Before Covid, I famously wouldn’t look at a week or month in context. Rather, I tend to make commitments based on whether I am technically free at a given moment, rather than decide if I was truly that indispensable to take another thing on. Rather than try and seek God as a source of strength and discernment, I filled my calendar as if I had something to prove, and that I was in control.

Now I look at my calendar and I see monotony, if not boredom many days. The vast but temporary restrictions imposed by COVID has been a bit of an experiment in understanding what my life could be like with fewer commitments and (certainly) a lot less control. The environment I can control is perhaps contained within the same four walls, doing the same five activities, with the same people, every day. And honestly, one of those people is a toddler, so really -- I can’t control what happens within these four walls, either.

And so, 2021, with all its potential, has at least, for the moment, brought a forced moment of putting God back in His place as my source of strength and trust. It’s always been true, but the past year has really driven it home, that no one or nothing else in His world can come close to being as steadfast as He is.

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Matthew 23.1-12

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.


Something new stuck with me in this reading that I never noticed before. "Jesus said...The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it."

Jesus goes on to say that these Pharisees and scribes do not act as they teach, so do not act like them. However, considering how Jesus criticizes their behavior so verbosely, it is surprising to me that he does not tell his disciples to discount everything these scribes and Pharisees do AND say. It reads very much like the old adage, 'do as I say, not as I do.'

Why is it that Jesus instructs the disciples to do whatever these scribes and Pharisees teach them? The passage states it is because these scribes and Pharisees "sit on Moses's seat." I am not sure exactly what this means, but I assume it means something to the effect of they are following in the tradition of Moses's teachings. So part of it seems to be that the tradition and foundation of these scribes' and Pharisees' teachings in Moses is so solid that their teachings are derivatively good. However, these teachings must be inevitably difficult to follow if the teachers themselves are not doing so.

There is something else here that is speaking to me. Somewhere in this passage I receive the message that everyone has something to offer. Yes, these teachers are vain, they love titles, and positions, and power. However, they still have something to teach worth hearing. The instructions to follow these teachers' teachings reads to me as Jesus saying 'don't throw out the bath with the bathwater.' Despite these scribes and Pharisees acting in an ungodly way - and of course actions speak louder than words - their words still have value. They may act in very human ways, but Jesus tells us to still listen to them, to still do as they SAY to do.

I find this so interesting, and there is something godly in it. We are all human, and I know too often I get tied up in prestige, power, and the rat race (which often feels like a hamster wheel these days). However, that does not mean we do not hold some wisdom, that we do not have something to say that is worth listening to. And while certainly it is more important how we act, and that we strive to act in the ways Jesus asks us to, that does not necessarily mean we should always be silent. God speaks through us, even if our feet don't always move with the words.

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Daniel 9.4-10

I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, “Ah, Lord, great and awesome God, keeping covenant and steadfast love with those who love you and keep your commandments, we have sinned and done wrong, acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and ordinances. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land. “Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame, as at this day, falls on us, the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you. Open shame, O Lord, falls on us, our kings, our officials, and our ancestors, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by following his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.

Until I read this confession of Daniel I had not thought much about confessions themselves. This is a religious confession, so there we will remain. The confession begins in the first person singular, and Daniel pretty quickly dispatches his transgressions. He then begins with “we” which seems through the course of the next six verses to be sufficiently broad to include the entire congregation, all of the Israelites, the entirety of the people.

Daniel makes this confession when the Israelites have been living in hard times, the people dispersed and enslaved. The nation, the congregation has transgressed. The transgressions against the Lord, “the great and dreadful God,” are listed. The list may seem general, but I suspect any pious member of the congregation could list the specifics of the laws broken, the prophets disdained. The “men of Judah…..the inhabitants of Jerusalem…” knew the laws as their descendants know those same laws today.

But we are not members of this congregation. We do not tend to believe that nations are punished by the Lord. As a nation we look away from transgressions beyond the immediate and passing fashionable ones. No “creditable authority,” that is, no modern Daniel, is proposing the current pandemic as a punishment of God. A couple of prominent evangelists suggested the 911 attacks on our nation were God’s punishment for our misdeeds and transgressions. But their words were vilified immediately to a degree leading to public retraction and apology.

As with Daniel in verse 4 we do have our confessions on the individual and personal level, our “Confiteor”--our prayer of acknowledging our sins and asking for God’s mercy. The Confiteor, which is beautiful, is exquisite in its vague nature regarding sins and transgressions. I think that if we enjoy, believe in and take comfort from confession but we do not believe in punishment or real specificity of our transgressions, perhaps we should look more closely into ourselves to explore the precise purposes confession, public or private, may serve for us.